In her first feature, Passerby #3 (2010), Shin Su-won looked at the life of a woman who left her job to try to become a film director. In her latest, she returns to a similar movie-making theme. Hommage is about a middle-aged movie director, Ji-wan, whose films have never been much of a success. She … [Read More]
Category: Event reports and reviews
Write-ups, reports and reviews of Korea-related events, exhibitions, shows etc in London and elsewhere
Edinburgh 2022: the first weekend of Korean performances
LKL has a packed agenda at the first weekend of the Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe. Edinburgh performers have to put up with all forms of distractions in pursuit of their art. At Dance Base, the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company, whose performance opened in quietness to the sounds of Lee Ilwoo’s solo piri, had … [Read More]
Gallery visit: Jukhee Kwon in Expanding Horizons
October Gallery has represented Korean artist Jukhee Kwon for almost ten years now, and it was natural that when planning an exhibition in memory of their trustee Pamela Kember they should include work by the Korean artist as she exhibited in Asia House when Kember was director of Arts and Learning there. Somehow, during the … [Read More]
Exhibition visit: Collect 2022 at Somerset House
After last year’s online-only edition of Collect it was good to get back to a physical show this year. It was also refreshing to see how many artists had taken advantage of the changed circumstances of lockdown to move their work in different directions; and galleries with an established roster of artists also tried to … [Read More]
Exhibition visit: LUX — New Wave of Contemporary Art
The current video art exhibition in what I assume is a large disused car park underneath 180 Strand comes to an end in a week’s time. It’s well work a visit. In a vast space and in the absence of natural light, the curators have been able to display a range of large-scale video pieces … [Read More]
Exhibition visit: Anicka Yi — In love with the world
I’m wondering how many visitors to Anicki Yi’s scene-stealing installation In Love with the World managed to engage with what was apparently one of the key elements in the work. According to the information provided in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall (quoted in the shaded box below), depending on what time of day you visited … [Read More]
Festival Film Review: Heaven – To the Land of Happiness
In recent years the LKFF programmers have been getting into a groove of scheduling indie, minority interest movies for the closing film of the festival. This year, they turned things upside down by programming the festival’s most appealing film (for me, at least,) to end the fortnight. Yes, the opening movie, Mogadishu, is the top … [Read More]
The Sound of Nature: Dal:um live at Southbank Centre
“Korean traditional instruments contain the sound of nature.” This is the opening line of Ha Suyean’s answer to my question regarding what Dal:um would like their international audience to know about ancient Korean instruments gayageum and geomungo. “For someone coming to these two ancient instruments for the first time, what will they discover?”, I had … [Read More]
Gallery: Chuseok celebrations at the British Museum
The early Autumn brought two simultaneous Chuseok celebrations in the London area on 18 September: the harvest fest in New Malden, organised by KBCE, and a special event at the British Museum. Over the past months we’ve been starved of live music, and it was great to be able to hear the Shilla Ensemble perform … [Read More]
Gallery: New Malden’s Chuseok Harvest Fest
The fickle Autumn weather smiled on New Malden’s Chuseok festivities last weekend. With pent-up demand resulting from lockdown and the lack of the usual independence day celebrations in mid-August, and the sunny weather beckoning people out onto the streets, the celebrations were almost too successful. LKL was there in time for the opening speeches and … [Read More]
Gallery: Yang Mi-young’s Royal Wedding Procession, at the KCC’s Royal Palaces exhibition
The KCCUK’s current Royal Palaces of Joseon exhibition contains three main elements: a large three-channel video work by Park Jong-woo focusing on the Jongmyo Shrine, installed in what was once the theatre area on the main floor; and some impressive still and video photographs of the main palaces by Seo Heun-kang. There’s a nice video … [Read More]
Exhibition visit: Swimming Backwards, at Sid Motion Gallery
Artist Sunyoung Hwang had her works on display at Sid Motion gallery, London, between 21 June and 16 July 2021 as part of the group show ‘Swimming Backwards’ with fellow artists Emily Stollery and Henry Ward. The exhibition title itself has been inspired by Hwang’s homonymous painting, also displayed at the exhibition. The London-based artist … [Read More]
When a PowerPoint presentation can hold your attention for almost two hours…
How long is it since the time when we could go in person to a talk given by a real person in an actual physical room? I reckon it’s around 15 months. Since the beginning of March last year, Zoom has been the norm. Online talks do have advantages over a traditional lecture theatre: you can … [Read More]
Gallery: Jewyo Rhii’s “Love Your Depot”
The 2020 KCC Artist of the Year exhibition featuring Jewyo Rhii was of course a victim of the intermittent Covid lockdown. Even though the exhibition was, at various times that I can no longer remember, theoretically open to the public, there wasn’t much public around in Central London to visit it. I managed to pay … [Read More]
Building bridges between North and South in New Malden
We do not need reminding that the Korean peninsula is divided. But the implications of that division for Koreans in Britain are not so obvious. I remember at a British Korean Society event ten years ago at which the North and South Korean Ambassadors were speaking, as audience and speakers mingled over drinks afterwards, one … [Read More]
A review of the Korean cultural year 2020
It would be an understatement to say that the cultural year 2020 has been markedly different from previous years. The pandemic has had a huge impact on the cultural scene, with most live events cancelled and event promoters falling back on the internet to provide us with our cultural fixes. Some of these attempts have … [Read More]