Ocula Report Havana Biennial 2019: Constructing the Possible 17 Apr 2019 : Federica Bueti for Ocula I first visited Havana in November 2016, a few days after Fidel Castro died, and just under a year before Hurricane Irma hit Cuba in September 2017. Since then, much has changed, including the hand-painted signs that punctuate the journey from the airport to the city centre, which today do not celebrate the revolution so much as the 'Unidad y...
Ocula Conversation Andrew Stahl and Guo Xiaohui The exhibition Beyond Boundaries at Somerset House in London (12 March–2 April 2019) marked the historic contributions of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (CAFA) and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, on the occasion of their 100th and 150th anniversaries, respectively. Spread across several rooms of Somerset House's...
Ocula Report The National 2019: New Australian Art 13 Apr 2019 : Elyse Goldfinch for Ocula The National 2019: New Australian Art features work by 70 contemporary Australia-based artists split across three venues: the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) (29 March–21 July 2019), as curated by Isobel Parker Philip, curator of photographs at AGNSW; Daniel Mudie Cunningham,...
Daido Moriyama (b. 1938, Osaka, Japan) is amongst Japan’s most celebrated photographers, renowned for his radical approach to both medium and subject. Initially trained in graphic design, Moriyama moved to Tokyo in 1961 to pursue a career as a freelance photographer. There, he became the most prominent artist to emerge from the short lived yet profoundly influential Provoke movement, based around the experimental photography magazine of the same name. Moriyama’s bold, uncompromising images, with their grainy aesthetic and gritty subject matter embraced the subjective philosophy of Provoke, liberating photography from tradition and interrogating the very nature of the medium. His first major series, Japan: A Photo Theatre, was published as a photo book in 1968. It documented the vast urbanisation experienced by Tokyo, and more generally Japan, in the wake of the Second World War, recording a disintegration of traditional values and revealing the dark underbelly of city life. Influenced by the work of William Klein and Andy Warhol, as well as the writings of Jack Kerouac and the experimental theatre of Shūji Terayama, Moriyama in turn has extensively inspired subsequent generations of photographers with his discordant impressions of city life and chaotic vision of everyday existence.
Daido MoriyamaHIKARI TO KAGE (Light and Shadow), 1982 Vintage gelatin silver print
Daido MoriyamaHow to Create a Beautiful Picture 6: Tights in Shimotakaido, 1987/ 2014 Gelatin silver print
Ocula Report Go East: The Gene & Brian Sherman Contemporary Asian Art Collection 5 Jun 2015 : Jane O’Sullivan for Ocula Yang Zhichao’s Chinese Bible is both unyieldingly monumental and humble. In the latest presentation of the work in Sydney, all 3,000 of the diaries he has collected from Beijing’s fleamarkets are placed in neat rows on a large, rectangular plinth. Dated from 1949 to 1999 they record 50 turbulent years in China’s...
Ocula Conversation Gene Sherman & Suhanya Raffel Collector and Curator When Australian collectors and philanthropists Gene and Brian Sherman moved from South Africa to Australia in 1976, Gene says they instantly recognised a “buzz about Asia” that they weren’t expecting.As an academic teaching French literature, the push towards Asian languages also put her out of a job. “I went into...
Related Press Daido Moriyama: An interview with Bree Zucker BOMB Magazine : 9 January 2017 Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama has garnered near-cultic fascination since his images began to infiltrate the American consciousness in the late 1990s. At that time, his work rode to prominence on the wave of discovery surrounding Japanese photography—especially for book enthusiasts, who championed the strangely beautiful amalgam of poetic...
Related Press Tokyo: photogenic to its very core The Japan Times : 14 December 2016 With Tokyo being the object of so many excellent photographers’ interest over the last 150 odd years, it’s entirely legitimate that the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum should be bringing it home. What’s on display in the first exhibition, displayed on the third floor, is a selection from the museum’s world-class permanent...
Related Press The urban chaos of Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama Art Radar Journal : 30 May 2016 Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris launched a major show of the Japanese photographer’s most recent work in February 2016. Charting some of Moriyama’s most significant oeuvre of the past decade, the exhibition brings to the fore the artist’s lesser-known colour photography as well as a new body of...
Related Press Photographers in Focus: Daido Moriyama Nowness : 12 April 2016 Arguably East Asia’s most famous street photographer, Daido Moriyama has gained an international cult following for his uncompromising, high-contrast black and white shots of Tokyo’s bustling streets. A new documentary from Italian director Andrea Cossu delves into the world of the master photographer’s often-overlooked color...
Related Video & Audio Daido Moriyama: The Mighty Power Nowness / 11 December 2012 : 20 December 2014 Acclaimed Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama's sensual approach to the urban landscape is revealed in this edifying short by the Hong Kong-based filmmaker Ringo Tang. Now in his 70s, Moriyama shot to fame when his grainy black-and-white images depicting a post-war Japan in flux won the country's New Artist Award in 1967 and has since had major...
