Stepping into a Hiromi Tango instillation is like seeing the results of her chaotic/kawaii soul stripped bare and laid out, in all its lo-fi psychedelic glory. There’s origami, balls of wool, faux flowers, needle-crafts, nick-knacks, letters, sequins, dolls and every shade of pink. Hiromi’s art is one of intimacy and conversation. She temporarily occupies public spaces like shop windows with her personal things and her self, and from there she interacts with anyone who passes by, swapping letters and gifts, even having them sleep over. Currently on show in the IMA’s Fresh Cuts exhibition is the most recent incarnation of the Japanese-born Brisbane-based artist’s Hiromi Hotel series, which dissolves the line between public and domestic spaces, as well as the artist/spectator divide [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]