Thursday 15 April, 2021
6:00pm BST
Image: Isao Miura, Warm Rain 2 & Nursery Shoots (stalks & oil on canvas, 40 x 80 cms)
Speakers:
Dr Christine Guth, Author
Isao Miura, Artist
Chris Beckett, Poet
Veronica Sekules, GroundWork Gallery
About the Talk
April marks the start of the rice growing season in Japan. This month’s Third Thursday online event celebrates rice in Japanese art to coincide with the opening of a special exhibition, Japan Water at the GroundWork Gallery in Kings Lynn, West Norfolk. Artist Isao Miura, originally from Akita prefecture in northern Japan, will discuss his rice inspired art, and distinguished historian of Japanese art and design, Christine Guth, reflects on her visit to Inakadate in Aomori to visit the extraordinary rice paddy art created by rice farmers in their fields.
About the Speakers
Dr Christine Guth led the Asian design specialism at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum’ postgraduate programme in the history of design. She gave the Toshiba Lectures in Japanese Arts for the Sainsbury Institute on Hokusai’s Great Wave: Biography of a Global Icon, subsequently published by the University of Hawaii Press. Her other extensive publications include Longfellow’s Tattoos: Tourism, Collecting and Japan, and Art of Edo Japan: The Artist and the City 1615-1868.
Isao MIURA is a Zen Japanese painter and sculptor based in London. He trained first in Japan and then at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He is currently translating Matsuo BASHO’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North into visual images in order to reinvent it for a contemporary audience.
This event is part of the Japan-UK Season of Culture 2019-2020
The Third Thursday Lecture series is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and Yakult UK.