In a new exhibition at Sydney's Art Here Gallery, two Australian photographers explore Japan's unique culture from an outsider's perspective.
The Head On Photo Festival continues its month-long celebration of photography with 'An Ideal Destination', by Caroline McLean-Foldes and Mim Stirling. The exhibition, currently featuring at Redfern's Art Here Gallery, is the result of the artists' curiosity, enchantment and love affair with Japan. Sharing a common history in cinema studies, McLean-Foldes and Stirling's nostalgic fantasies about Japanese culture were explored through their separate travels to Japan and separate photographic practices. Their mutual feeling of being touched by Japan and Japanese culture, and its impact on their individual artistic practices, led them to produce 'An Ideal Destination'.
Stirling’s series 'Shot Reverse Shot' sourced images from Japanese Samurai genre films and their Western remakes, recombining them to introduce characters and a conversation, a false narrative between two worlds. The images, originally on film, were digitised to DVD, transmitted through an analogue TV, and then finally captured digitally. The images question ideas of originality and the concept of cryptomnesia in contemporary cinema, which describes the phenomenon of the reappearance of a long-forgotten memory as if it were a new experience.
Using Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor for her visit to Japan, Caroline McLean-Foldes’ series 'Wonderland – Through the Looking Glass' explores the artists view of Japan as a sacred realm of magical landscapes and spirits.
'An Ideal Destination' will feature at the Art Here Gallery, Redfern, Sydney, until June 20.
