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By: Damien Worst
Date: 16th Aug 06
Medium: Mixed
Drink: Dandy shandy
What:
Rapt!: 20 Contemporary Artists From Japan
Where:
Various locations in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane; Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Kings ARI, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), RMIT Project Space, Spacement, West Space, Seventh Gallery, LOOP Bar, and many more.
When:
From late August to early September onwards
How much:
All events free
Contact:
Rapt! Online
Image by:
Tomoko Konoike at the Centre for Contemporary Photography
Rapt! is billed as a timely survey of contemporary art emerging from Japan, but will also encompass projects that cross national borders, including an artist-in-residence program that is producing works based on the artists' experiences in Australia. Rei Naito is set to create an installation in a mud brick home by Alistair Knox, and Yuki Kimura is producing work in response to the endlessly weird architecture of our own Melbourne Zoo.
The exhibitions include work in every medium you can think of and a couple you definitely can't, but each exhibit promises to shift our view of the contemporary Japanese art away from the Murakami 'superflat' and Mariko Mori's heavily ritualised worlds.
The massive program of Rapt! will last throughout the rest of the year, with launches for the exhibitions and residences beginning in the next couple of weeks, and a celebratory launch at LOOP bar on October 12. But if you can't wait to get an inkling of the exhibition styles on offer, head to the corner of Swanston and Collins Streets from August 24 to see a installation by the Atelier Bow-Wow group and Taira Nishizawa, where a greenhouse will be confusing passers-by for two weeks.