Author(s): Rachel Kent

Artists & Styles

Tatsuo Miyajima is one of Japan’s leading contemporary artists, known for his immersive and technologically-driven sculptures and installations. This Sydney-exclusive exhibition will be his first major survey exhibition in the Southern Hemisphere, encompassing key works from the beginnings of his career to the present.

Central to his practice are numerical counters that count from 1 to 9 repeatedly using light-emitting diodes (LEDs), then go dark momentarily. For Miyajima, the cyclical repetition of numbers, along with the shift from light to dark, reflect the importance of time. He draws inspiration from Buddhist philosophy, with its exploration of mortality and human cycles of death and renewal.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Tatsuo Miyajima is known for his immersive, technology-driven sculptures and installations. This will be his first major solo exhibition in Australia, encompassing key sculptures and installations from the beginnings of his career to the present, as well as video and performance works which have expanded his object-based practice over time. The exhibition will be curated by MCA Chief Curator Rachel Kent, who worked closely with Miyajima on her international exhibition Marking Time, which inaugurated the newly re-developed MCA’s opening season in 2012. Miyajima has held solo exhibitions in Japan, the United States and Europe over the past two decades, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1997), the Hayward Gallery, London (1997), Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (2004), Art Tower Mito, Japan (2008) and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2011). He represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1999 with the vast installation Mega Death – which will form a highlight of his Sydney survey – a room-scale installation of brilliant, blinking blue LEDs, each representative of human life or energy. A silent, twinkling memorial to the Holocaust, the lights are programed to switch off at intervals, plunging viewers into complete darkness momentarily, before lighting up and counting once more.