June's big event
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3rd New Malden Arts Festival 
- including
» from 18 June:
NANTA! 
- Read the programme summary on LKL here
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Category Archives: Visual Arts
A manhwa artist at war
28-Jun-09
The Manhwa exhibition at the Korean Cultural Centre finished this week, in preparation for the new Living Heritage exhibition. It was an interesting exhibition, giving some of the history of manhwa from its beginnings in early twentieth century newspapers, to the graphic novels which are avidly consumed today and which form a major part of the Korean content industry.
Exhibitions with such a broad remit can never hope to do more than scratch the surface of the work of individual manhwa artists, but, by chance, in the last couple of days writer Andrew Salmon has introduced us to the work of Kim Seong-hwan (김성환), one of Korea's best known cartoonists. Born in 1932 in what is now North Korea, he was ...
Distinctively Korean sales at Christie’s
28-Jun-09
Coinciding with the interest in Korean art being generated by the Korean Eye: Moon Generation exhibition in the Saatchi gallery, Christie's are holding an auction of contemporary photography on 1 July, in a sale which includes several Koreans who have featured on the pages of LKL.
Probably the most eminent of the photographers represented is Bae Bien-u, who had a solo show at the Bozar exhibition in Brussels earlier this year, and who a couple of years ago had a celebrity investor in the shape of Sir Elton John.
Other photographers familiar to the London art scene are the following artists:
Bae Chan-hyo, who exhibited at 4482 and at Purdy Hicks;
Debbie Han, one of the early exhibitors at I-MYU, and included in the ...
Living Heritage at the KCC
27-Jun-09
An Exhibition of Intangible Heritage Properties produced by twenty-five of Korea’s finest Master Craftsmen and Women. 29 June ~ 21 July 2009
The Korean Cultural Centre proudly announces the upcoming exhibition of Living Heritage at the Korean Cultural Centre UK.
The title Living Heritage is one given by UNESCO that refers to the most fragile of cultural assets: the collective knowledge behind the expressions, beliefs, rituals, dance, music, cuisine, customs and skills of each community. We have brought together a vast range of beautiful pieces from 25 Korean masters, each revealing an essence of Korea through its supreme craftsmanship. The pieces will include the finest examples of textiles, ceramics, paintings, silver work, furniture and traditional beverages to name but a ...
London salerooms get Korean bug
24-Jun-09
Two of London's main art dealers and auction houses are majoring in Korean art at the moment. Phillips de Pury, tucked in behind the old Army & Navy store in Victoria, has an exhibition and sale of major contemporary artists which it hopes will become an annual event, while Christie's is preparing for an auction of contemporary Korean photographers, as well as a couple of other Korea-related items.
It's encouraging to see Korean art maintaining a toehold in the market, in the face of so much interest in contemporary Chinese work. But the Phillips sale has a lot of sponsors behind it - including Standard Chartered and the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Both salerooms have a quality portfolio of ...
The Manhwa 100 Workshop
15-Jun-09
Celebrating a Centenary of Korean Comics
The Korean Cultural Centre
Tuesday 23rd June 2009
‘Finding Your Own Way’
With Damian Gascoigne
As a culmination of this summer’s centenary celebrations of Manhwa at the Korean Cultural Centre UK, we are proud to announce that the guest speaker for The Manhwa 100 Workshop will be established illustrator; Animator and senior lecturer at London’s Kingston University, Damian Gascoigne.
The workshop will be held at The Korean Cultural Centre on Tuesday 23rd June at 6pm and will feature:
A discussion on Damian’s influences and his connection with Manhwa
A live drawing session demonstrating the specifics of character design for animation and graphic novels. Using his own work as an example, Damian will guide the audience through each step of the ...
Lee Jae-hyo has shown at the Albermarle before, and together with Park Seungmo was included in the Albemarle's stand at the London Art Fair back in January. The remainder of the quartet assembled by curator Tom Woo are Kim Yeon and Cha Jongrye. It is a harmonious collection, and as your eye moves from work to work common themes constantly present themselves.
The gentle contours, swirls and parallel lines in Park Seungmo's wire sculptures were echoed repetitive metal commas of Lee Jaehyo's work and in the layered curves of Cha Jongrye's wood carvings; the modular style of Cha's compositions picked up in the scintillas which make up Lee's universe; the natural woods of Lee and Cha mirrored in Kim Yeon's frozen ...
Ragnarok – one of Korea’s top manhwa
20-May-09
Manhwa in Korea was born 100 years ago. From their beginnings as cartoons in the newspapers, they have grown into long-running graphic novel serials with spin-offs in online games and big screen adaptations.
Among the most celebrated of modern Manhwa series are Priest (Hyung Min-woo) and Ragnarok (Lee Myung-jin). Both of these have been translated into English and are available through Tokyopop. The original versions were published at the rate of one every couple of months. Priest, a gothic western which is to be turned into a Hollywood film, is still going, while Ragnarok, which was originally envisaged to carry on for forty volumes has ground to a halt after 10 as the author concentrates on building out the related online ...
100 years of Manhwa at the KCC
16-May-09
Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) and Korean Cultural Centre (KCC) UK celebrate the centenary of Korean comics ‘Manhwa’ with a host of interrelated special exhibitions, events and film screenings, 21 May - 24 June 2009.
Special Exhibitions
Manhwa: A Language of Unlimited Imaginations
Manhwa celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2009. This popular art form holds a long and cherished history that began with the first publication of Doyoung Lee’s political cartoons in “Daehanminbo.” This print newspaper was founded on June 2, 1909, and manhwa was born along with it. Manhwa is an art form used to comment on a wide variety of topics. It can often spotlight societal injustices. Sometimes, manhwa tells marvelous tales of dreamy romance. Other times, the art form simply ...
Waiting with Dae-hun Kwon
10-Mar-09
On visiting Rachmaninoffs gallery in Hackney, the main exhibits are initially familiar to those who know of Dae Hun Kwon's (권대훈) work from his installations at I-MYU, the Bargehouse and elsewhere: white images of bare trees in a forest created by the shadows cast by tiny tabs illuminated by a slowly changing pattern of halogen lights.
In a larger than usual installation at the Bargehouse last March, Kwon experimented with making a mysterious face appear among the trees as the light changed (see the video here). This work is a further exploration of Kwon's theme of seeing regularity, and often human faces, in the seeming randomness of the bare tracery of a tree's branches:
In the Rachmaninoffs installations, we see a further ...
Mudang and minhwa
28-Feb-09
When we think of pre-modern Korean aesthetics, we think of the restrained tones of Koryo celadon, of the austere white of Choson porcelain, the subdued tones of Chong Son's landscape paintings. But, as Charlotte Horlyck reminded us in her introduction to the informative day of decorative arts and folk customs at SOAS, that is only half the story.
L to R: Michael Pettid, Chŏng Pyŏng-mo and Kim Soon-young
Shamans and Spirits
Michael Pettid kicked the day off at breakneck speed, probably attempting to pack too much material into too short a time. For those who could keep up with him, there was a wealth of fascinating fact and folklore.
Tracing their lines back to the myth of a god coupling with a she-bear, early ...
Jennifer Barclay visits the Korean Cultural Centre on its first birthday, experiences Choi Jeong-hwa's exhibition, and meets the KCC's director, Kyuhak Choi.
It’s been a few months since I visited the Korean Cultural Centre, so I’m pleasantly surprised to be surprised by it again. I arrive to find stern armed guards in helmets staring at me. Larger than life. They are, it turns out, plastic models of Korean traffic cops. Just inside the door is an enormous lotus flower that inflates every few minutes.
Further inside, there are museum-like displays of plastic objects, disposable yet beautiful when grouped together: novelty toothbrushes, watches, an oystercard, a pen, a child’s shoes, a disposable cup. Most unsettling is a dream-like room with garish rubbery flowers ...
Forge of Nature
29-Jan-09
Lee Jaehyo was born in Hapchen, Korea, in 1965 and obtained his BFA in Plastic Arts from Hongik University, Seoul, in 1992. His first solo show was in 1996, but it is really in the last few years that his career has snowballed, with three solo exhibitions in 2007 and four in 2008 - including one in New York. A prolific artist, he now has a team of people who helps him create his work, without whom it would be impossible to generate the painstakingly crafted. His work has a distinctly modern feel, and would be very much at home in the clean lines of Korea's contemporary domestic architecture; and reportedly he has a deal with the Hyatt hotel chain ...
Oriental male, Western female
17-Jan-09
One of the most memorable images in the 4482 exhibition on the South Bank last October was a large, carefully staged, meticulously lit photo of a scene from a fairy tale. An elaborate coach looks as if it could turn into a pumpkin at any moment. It's certainly not going anywhere, despite the alert coachman sitting up front, because no horses are harnessed to it. A footman studies a glass slipper lovingly placed on a scarlet cushion. And gazing out of the picture at the viewer is an immaculately dressed woman in a fine wig. Her face and chest is carefully made up in ceruse, giving an authentically "pale and interesting" complexion to go with the timeless, vaguely Georgian period ...
Korean Artists in London Art Fair
14-Jan-09
Back in October last year Beccy Kennedy reported from the 4482 show: 40 Korean artists in London under one roof in a single exhibition. This week there are at least six Korean artists under one roof in Islington, represented by four galleries.
Exhibiting in the London Art Fair are Albemarle Gallery (Lee Jaehyo and Park Seungmo). Lee currently has a solo show at the gallery, but a number of the Albemarle's artists are represented in Islington:
Lee Jae-hyo's work involves cut and planed wook, exposing the age of the natural object by the rings of time that are a part of every tree. The sculptures are refreshingly unvarnished. From afar they look like a single homogeneous shape, but in fact they are ...
Guerrilla artists take on the establishment
30-Jun-09