Gods and monsters: ‘Japan supernatural’ at AGNSW

Japan supernatural, exhibition installation view with the work of Takashi Murakami, Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney, 2019–20; artworks © the artist; photo: Jenni Carter, AGNSW

Summer in Japan is largely an occasion for the underworld, when ancestors’ spirits are closest to the living realm, and goose bump-inducing ghost and monster stories help cooling off during hot humid nights. ‘Japan supernatural’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (until 8 March), on show over Sydney’s own summertime, offers a richness of yōkai (monsters and spirits) and yūrei (ghosts) from the Japanese visual arts field from the eighteenth century until now and ranging in genre from bawdy comedy to terrifying horror. 

The exhibition begins with Toriyama Sekien’s handscroll Night procession of the hundred demons (1772-81), presented as a seminal representation of yōkai that influenced centuries of artists to come, with further scrolls, theatrical masks, netsuke and woodblock prints demonstrating how the exciting visual potential of ghosts and monsters became a fixture of the Edo period (1603–1868) and beyond. Room after room of tree spirits, river-dwelling kappa, large-nosed tengu, merry shapeshifting tanuki, mountain crones, blood-drenched women in childbirth and sinister foxes follow Sekien’s codification. Likewise, visual consistency is evident in the pale and legless yūrei hanging scrolls and prints.

Contemporary works are woven through the exhibits, with Miwa Yanagi’s ‘Fairy Tale’ photographic series (2004–05) freshly contextualised within the tradition of yōkai crones. Chiho Aoshima, who has been making nature and death cute since the late 1990s, presents large-eyed tree spirits and musical gravestones. In contrast, the gothic splendour of Nihonga-style painter Fuyuko Matsui’s expressions of human decay can be read as part of the maternal yōkai convention. 

A 25 metre-long work by Takashi Murakami, In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow (2014), shares room with nineteenth-century woodblock prints. Made for his self-described ‘debts’ to Edo masters, Murakami’s work connects to his forebears to thrill viewers with bold imagery of skulls, immortals and giants, while his towering blue and red ogres of Embodiment of ‘A’  and Embodiment of ‘Um’ (both 2014) deliver a large dose of kitsch.

Emily Wakeling, Sydney

For the full article, see Art Monthly’s forthcoming April 2020 issue.