Art of Japan

The Peter Scott Gallery on campus is hosting two new exhibitions with an international flavour - Art of Japan and Sankofa: Ceramic Tales from Africa.

Utagawa Kunisada, Female Artist, c1810-20, surimono woodblock print, Image © Peter Scott Gallery

The Art of Japan is an exhibition of Japanese prints and paintings from the Peter Scott Gallery Trust Collection at Lancaster University and on loan from Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery. Lancaster University’s international art collection features work by Japanese artists dating from the 17th Century onwards, including Buddhist woodcut prints, surimono prints, scroll paintings and careful studies of the natural world. The collection also includes prints from the 1950s and 60s and work by Shiko Munakata (1903-1975), considered to be Japan’s most famous 20th Century artist.

Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery holds one of the most comprehensive collections of Japanese prints outside of London. The collection includes landscapes, pictures of famous courtesans, portraits of actors and scenes of everyday life by masters of the Ukiyo-e school such as Hokusai (1760-1849), Hiroshige (1797-1858) and Utamaro (1753-1806). Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, literally translated as ‘images of the floating world’ portray life in part of the capital Edo, now known as Tokyo, as it was from the early 17th to the late 19th Century.

The Gallery’s Manton Room hosts Sankofa: Ceramic Tales from Africa, an exhibition exploring the ways in which contemporary ceramics in Africa draw on older traditions to shape new directions. Sankofa is a word from the Twi language of West Africa that means ‘learning from the past to move forward to the future’. This exhibition has been curated by Moira Vincentelli, Senior Lecturer and Curator of Ceramics at the University of Wales Aberystwyth, in collaboration with Manchester Museum, and is based on field trips to Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana and South Africa.

May is Museums and Galleries Month, a UK-wide celebration of museums and galleries organised by the Campaign for Museums.

The exhibitions run from 28 April to 30 May and will also be open on the Bank Holidays of 5 & 26 May. The Gallery will be open during the exhibitions from Mon - Fri 11am-4pm and late Thurs 11am-9pm. Admission is free. www.peterscottgallery.com