It really should be us thanking the KCCUK, not the other way round. But on the occasion of its fifth birthday the KCCUK has been characteristically generous in its expressions of gratitude to its supporters. Last Saturday at Cadogan Hall saw a free concert with Pansori Master Song Soon-seop, plus Pansori singer Lee Jaram, pianist … [Read More]
Category: Event reports and reviews (page 30)
Exhibition visit: Disruptive Drinking and Creative Curating at the RCA
When you’re invited to a session of disruptive drinking, it’s hard to refuse. And that was what was promised in Sun Ae Kim’s invitation to her stall at the Royal College of Arts Biennial Research Exhibition. Disruptive? Well, there were certainly some surprises. First of all the exquisite ceramic vessels we were offered to drink … [Read More]
Exhibition Visit: Purdy Hicks previews new Bae Chan-hyo works; Hanmi focuses on media art – at London Art Fair
At the London Art Fair it was nice to see some new Korean work as well as re-enjoy some pieces which have already been seen in London exhibitions. At Purdy Hicks, Bae Chan-hyo was previewing a new chapter in his Existing in Costume series. His past work has him exploring male / female and east … [Read More]
A Review of the London Korean Year 2012
What a year it’s been. Even without any event organised by the KCC, there’s been more than enough to keep us all entertained and enriched. And when you add into the mix All Eyes on Korea, The Year of the 12 Directors and the London Korean Film Festival we’ve almost had a surfeit of K-Culture. … [Read More]
Exhibition visit: Now X Here — Korean art mixes and matches in London
Cultural fusion takes many forms. Exciting differences can complement and stimulate the senses. Think food, fashion or music. This week, young South Korean artists in London are also proving that Korean art and the British capital make for an intoxicating blend. A new exhibition, Now X Here, just opened at London’s Korean Cultural Centre (KCCUK), … [Read More]
High-rise Korean art at NEO Bankside from Choi and Lager
2012 has been a year when Korean art has emerged from the sterile white cube of the gallery to be displayed in real-life spaces. From working offices to inhabited domestic settings, it has been a good year for seeing art in places where you can live with and enjoy it on a daily basis rather … [Read More]
Tim Garland’s Korean collaboration: Sinawi and the Blues
The combination of Korean traditional instruments with modern western ones gives rise to complex performance issues. Incompatibilities of style, volume, timbre and tuning are challenges to be overcome, not always with success. With the improvisatory nature of jazz, where instruments get their chance for solos and where amplification is a customary feature of the mix, … [Read More]
BIGBANG at Wembley Arena: Fantastic, Baby
The thudding of the bass speakers was turning my inside to soup as the shrieks of the fangirls were searing laser-like into my brain. And the concert hadn’t even started yet. I had brought a stiffening drink into the arena with me, but there was no chance to down it. As soon as the band … [Read More]
O Bang Saek – Shouvik Datta visits the opening event of the KAA exhibition
The exhibition and performance by the Korean Artists Association at the Korean Cultural Centre (Strand, London) on November 28, featured painting and displays of visual art, traditional Korean instruments and a performance of highly modern dance. The association was originally founded in 1997 by a group of Korean artists and poets to promote Korean culture … [Read More]
Futurology in Korean Studies: hell in a handcart or hallyu heaven? LKL reports from the 2012 BAKS conference
The annual BAKS Conference on 17 November ambitiously attempted to look into the crystal ball to see what the Korean peninsula might look like in 20 years time. To help in that crystal ball gazing, the list of speakers included some non-Koreanists in a valuable initiative to introduce specialists to provide a different perspective. The … [Read More]
Moral didactic literature and diversity in 1950s North Korea
(A sketchy write-up of the talk How does the rise of moral didactic literature fit into narratives of North Korean history? given by Andre Schmid (University of Toronto) at SOAS on 16 November 2012) When we think of North Korea, we mostly look at it through a 21st Century lens, and are tempted to think … [Read More]
Festival Film Review: Masquerade deserved all the awards it got
It swept the board at the recent Grand Bell awards – best film, best director and best leading actor among them. And for all-round entertainment, the closing film of the London Korean Film Festival 2012 deserved all those awards. Was a uniquely reformist tax policy set by a pantomime performer who was pretending to be … [Read More]
Festival Film Review: Spring Snow — on the value of the priceless
Spring Snow, the final film of this year’s London Korean Film Festival, was shown at London’s ICA on November 11. The film falls into a Korean tradition of documentary drama films such as Lee Man-hee’s A Day Off. Kim Soon-ok, played very well by Yoon Suk Hwa (윤석화), is an aging mother and wife. She … [Read More]
K-film at the BFI London Film Fest: A Fish — mysterious, tantalising and rewarding
What a stunning first film. Park Hong-min is still a graduate student at Dongguk University, but this debut is amazingly confident. A truly mysterious creation which has you wondering throughout what is going on, and when it finishes you want to watch it again immediately to see if it makes more sense the second time … [Read More]
Exhibition visit: Korean Eye 2012 – the biggest Korean art show in London yet
With the high profile exhibition of Chinese art having just opened at the Hayward Gallery, let’s not forget that there was an equally significant exhibition of contemporary Korean art at the privately funded Saatchi Gallery earlier this summer. Like many exhibitions, Korean Eye 2012 was one which needed to be visited several times. It was … [Read More]
Aidan Foster-Carter on North Korea: Shouvik Datta reports from the recent LSE talk
Aidan Foster-Carter is an Honorary Research Fellow at Leeds University in Sociology and Social Policy, writes about Korea for the Economist Intelligence Unit and Oxford Analytica and contributed to ‘Exploring North Korean Arts’ (published 2011). I was therefore very interested when he came down from the major university in the North of England, to talk … [Read More]