Ukio
4 creative works found
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I should have called this one something like “Sorry Hokusai”. I have a bad habit of butchering fine art in my more ‘fine art’ works, but I do only do so because the associations people make with those artworks are essential to the point being made. I guess it’s a bit like trying to say something in English when the only word for it is in Japanese. Sometimes it’s just better to nick a word from another language than try to come up with your own. This picture is a little anachronistic, as it pictures 16th century Japanese peasants, running from the blast front of the Nagasaki bomb (actually taken from a photo of the explosion itself) as Apache helicopters make a beeline for the horizon (machines not used until the Vietnam war). This is all about the clash of eastern and western values, particularly in Japan, which has always been a bit a war with itself over how much of western culture to embrace. You can’t see it at all on the image at this size, but the whole thing as been textured and bled to look like ink on paper.
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I’ve had a lot of good feedback on this one, so I thought people might like to see it on a tee.
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I read this book called ‘Dogs and demons’ last year, in which Alex Kerr bemoans the Japanese governments pitiful treatment of the countryside. Aparrently, the construction industry is given free reign all over the country, so picturesque mountains and rivers are blasted, filled and razed to make way for roads and buildings which, for the most part, nobody uses. The terrible irony is that these projects do nothing for the economy – if anything they lose money, AND they’re destroying the tourist industry – the one industry which could be truely lucrative for japan. I haven’t seen any of this for myself (although i hope to someday soon), but this piece is a little response to Kerr’s book. You can’t see it very clearly here, but the bin is filled with typically Japanese detritus (hello kitty, dried squid, sushi etc). I hope it also makes a universal point about the very human tendency to both romanticise the natural world and to simultaneously debase it.
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