Iwakura, An exhibition at the Briggait, Glasgow

Olczak, Susie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9615-5514 (2012) Iwakura, An exhibition at the Briggait, Glasgow. [Show/Exhibition]

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Abstract

IWAKURA 岩倉 was an exhibition at The Briggait, Glasgow. Iwakura was a village on the northern edge of Kyoto, Japan. Nearby was the arts and humanities university Kyoto Seika University, where the exhibition’s contributors had met. Iwakura referred to the place and memory of where these artists met and lived together during an exchange programme in Japan. The exhibition aimed to look at the effects of this exchange programme, and to consider how the experience had impacted each artist’s work or even method of working. It raised questions about how living in another country such as Japan could shape and inform an artist’s perspective: whether language barriers could be crossed through art; whether multiple perspectives could be exhibited; whether traditional skills could be integrated into contemporary artwork; and what constituted an individual culture - especially one so often described as esoteric as Japan - when globalisation bound different nationalities together to form subcultures. The exchanges took place with institutions such as Glasgow School of Art, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Michigan, Australian National University, The Cooper Union, California College of the Arts, ENSA Paris-Malaquais and Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique. Iwakura featured new works by UK-based Susie Olczak, Alex Tobin, Phyllis Smith, Tokyo-based Katherine Roblou and Danish artist Tilde Lerche Engstrøm, as well as international guests from Seika’s sister institutions in the United States, France, Australia and Germany.

Item Type:	Show/Exhibition
Related URLs:	https://www.kyoto-seika.ac.jp/eng/ https://www.susieolczak.co.uk/about
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Arts, Culture and Environment
Depositing User:	Susie Olczak
Date Deposited:	01 Apr 2026 09:04
Last Modified:	01 Apr 2026 09:04
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/15993

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