Japan Water

The artists in GroundWork Gallery’s exhibition, Japan Water take us on a journey from the significance of water in Japanese art and culture, to our own.

Water is important for Japan’s economy and indeed its survival. Tea, sake, rice, fish, handmade paper, hot baths: so many keystones of the Japanese way of life depend on clean, pure water. However, water is also under attack and nowhere more so than in Japan, where the 2011 earthquake and tsunami led to Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant leaking radioactive material into the sea, and where for decades acid rain has polluted rice farms and forests on the north west coast of Honshu, Japan’s main island.

Water is an urgent matter of concern in the UK too. Here, though we have very different landscapes and customs, we will be able to reflect on ourselves more clearly through the eyes of another culture.

Of the artists: Lisa Keiko- Kirton, Isao Miura and Nana Shiomi are Japanese natives who now live here. Jonathan Meuli and Hakan Topal are European, but their work is strongly influenced by Japanese experience. They each tackle the huge subject of water and its power, from purity to pollution, from calm to turbulence.