Tenniscoats is: Saya and Takashi Ueno, and a plethora of floating members >>> Stripped back, left-field pop and delicately psychedelic folk >>> Sweetly naieve melodies, detuned pianos, woodwind instruments and distorted synthesizers >>> About to bring their emotive live performances to Australia, thanks to Room40! [read more]

“To be there where I think I am not, to disappear where I think I am, that is what matters.”

Like her fellow Japanese self-costuming photographic artists Yasumasa Morimura and Tomoko Sawada,  Kimiko Yoshida’s work shows that art is about transformation and photography, in particular, is a medium of performance. Because her bodily decoration and physiognomy are so motley and elastic she would be beyond recognition in her hundreds of self-portraits, were it not for their uniformly square, front-angle head-and-shoulders format. But then, ‘self-portrait’ isn’t really the right term; these are not images of herself but of costumes; fantasy selves have swallowed her up completely. [read more]

So we haven’t done a rap about our love for Rei Kawakobu but that doesn’t mean there’s not an abundance of love (and rapping skills) here. Not only has she revoutionised fashion with her eccentric and uncompromising vision, she’s nurtured a whole new generation of designers under her mummy wings. Another Kawakobu protégé, Nozomi Ishiguro worked as a design assistant for Junya Watanabe at Comme des Garçons for 12 years before forming his own label in 1998. The simple philosophy behind Nozomi Ishiguro Haute Couture is “there is no such thing as going too far” and his designs are always reaching new heights of vivid exuberance and hilarity. Do I feel a rap coming on? [read more]

Hiroaki Umeda will be lighting up The Studio at the Sydney Opera House next month when he brings his otherworldly moves and aesthetic to Australia for the first time  [read more]

Surely the most narcissistic of all mediums, video art since its rise to fame in the 1960s has been closely associated with explorations of the self and, more broadly, the nature of identity. At the forefront of the rise of video art was Takahiko Iimura, an artist whose explorations of selfhood delved deeper into the unknown than many of his contemporaries and successors. Having spent most of the ‘60s in New York mingling and collaborating with the likes of Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol and Yoko Ono, he returned to Japan in the early ‘70s and continued his experimental work there [read more]

My how the world would be dull without magnetic fields. No microphones, no rockets, no doorbells, no compasses, no cassettes, no credit cards, no magnet space wheels, no passive aggressive fridge notes between housemates, and no liquid magnetic art from Sachiko Kodama [read more]

Namaiki are graphic designers, club owners, music fiends and arguably the original Guerilla Gardeners [read more]

Shibakouen Hamutaro’s ongoing documentation of dilapidating theme parts around Japan [read more]