Open wide for a little taste of manga artist Yuichi Yokoyama’s melt-in-your mouth pastels …

Fellow Osakans Tomoko Inagaki and Takuma Uematsu first paired up on the occasion of a group exhibition called I meet … , which showcased various artist collaborations. They hadn’t initially intended to form a unit, but the experience of working together was so rewarding that they decided to join artistic forces, under the moniker Ine wo Ueru hito (meaning “person who plants rice” and incorporating both their names INagaki and UEmatsu).

“The concept of Ine wo Ueru hito is to remove ego and think beyond ourselves,” the artists say. “Usually artists work and think individually. We are both also individual artists and think individually, but in this unit we try to produce work by thinking about and caring for the other. We don’t fight and cherish the process of making the works peacefully.”

Their first collaborative works One day, I meet… Parts 1 + 2 were exhibited in Tokyo at HPGRP Gallery and Nadiff last month, and from next week they will be shown at Spooky Action at a Distance, the Big In Japan exhibition of Japanese video art opening at Black & Blue Gallery on December 4 from 6pm. Combining sculpture, illustration and performance, the two part video is teeming with visual trickery, reconfigured animals and the strangely comforting relentless mundanely of vacuuming.

I think it would be best if I let Kiiiiiii introduce themselves. Kiiiiiii according to Kiiiiiii:

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drums…..lakin’ a.k.a REIKO TADA

lakin’ the Kiiiiiii loves….

Queen!

PERRY&KINGSLEY, Jackson5, Ramones, mute beat, KRAFT WERK, C-C-B, Yoko minamino….Ra-men, TV programs for Children(like SESAME STREET), Stickers and her cat(named “NYAN”)!

Lakin’ is a illustrater ,a designer and liryc & song writer in Kiiiiii.

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vocal…….ut a.k.a UTAKO TAYAMA

ut loves…..

MICHAEL JACKSON!

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, NEU!, tama, Miho nakayama…..SPAGHETTI, macaron, pho, Cosmetics(Paul&Joe,anna sui…e.t.c) and her dog (named “STOMP”)!

u.t. is an actress in TETSUWARI ALBATROSKET.

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When we met each other for the first time, we were 12 years old. Since then,we have been special friends like DJ & KIMMY in “FULL HOUSE”!

++We play songs by……The Wiggles, Chip munks, Roco’s modern life by NIKELODEON, Hooley dooleys, Michael Jackson, and kiiiiiii ( Almost all songs are written by Lakin’ except for cover songs.)!

Live footage and video works by Kiiiiiii will be featured at the Big In Japan event (CarriageWorks, December 2) and exhibition (Black & Blue Gallery, December 5-19), so you can get yourselves properly acquainted with the self proclaimed “masters of girl magic”.

Illustrations by Tada Reiko of Kiiiiiii.

Masaya Nakahara’s Monthly Hair Stylistics albums (including Big Audio Dynamite Shit, 30 Minute Panty People and Electric Success In The Ghetto) are made up of heavy, intense noise experiments with irresistible  dashings of hilarity and silliness. Nakahara – who is also a film critic and novelist – does all the accompanying album art works, and their chaotic, semi-explicit bricolaged imagery is in keeping with the style of his recorded sounds. Monthly Hair Stylistics are issued by Nakahara’s record label Boid.

Somebody said my last post was a tad verbose. They were probably just stupid but here’s one with as few words as possible. A look back at the psychedelic posters of Aquirax Uno, a prolific and vastly influential graphic artist and illustrator of the 60’s and 70’s who had a penchant for the erotic and the weird …

Meet Takeshi Hamada’s pet tiger. The type designer and art director founded the e-magazine as a project back in his student days. Since 2000 it has existed as a platform for visual experimentation with the only restriction being the dimensions of the virtual ‘pages’. Luckily for us, all back issues are archived on tiger.org, making for a mouth-watering buffet of utterly original graphic design, illustration, page layout and photography.

These pages are from last issue of Tiger, which was way back in ’07. Here’s hoping there’s more to come.