Art Without Heroes

Art Without Heroes

Mingei

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Saturday 23 March - Sunday 22 September 2024

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The most wide-ranging exhibition in the UK dedicated to Japanese folk-craft.

Art Without Heroes: Mingei is the most wide-ranging exhibition in the UK dedicated to Mingei, the influential folk-craft movement that developed in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. With works including ceramics, woodwork, paper, toys, textiles, photography and film, the exhibition incorporates unseen pieces from significant private collections in the UK and Japan, along with museum loans and historic footage from the Mingei Film Archive.

Mingei is a term coined by the Japanese philosopher and critic Yanagi Sōetsu (1889-1961) to mean ‘the art of the people’ and ascribes cultural value and aesthetic purity to traditional craft objects, unnamed makers and a simpler way of life. The exhibition considers Mingei both as a historical moment and as a set of principles that remain relevant to contemporary craft, manufacturing and material consumerism worldwide.

Like the British Arts and Crafts movement, Mingei was a response to rapid industrialisation. Mingei developed in dialogue with the work of William Morris and his contemporaries, within a specifically Japanese context that included the strong influence of Pure Land Buddhism. The exhibition also introduces the significance of Korean, Okinawan and Ainu objects to the Mingei movement, showing how these independent cultures contributed to what tends to be seen as a quintessentially Japanese aesthetic.

Divided into three parts, the exhibition starts with the 19th-century craft objects the Mingei movement looked to for inspiration. The second part of the exhibition focuses on the origin and evolution of the Mingei movement during the 20th century. Spearheaded by Yanagi, Japanese studio potter Hamada Shōji (1894-1978) and British studio potter Bernard Leach (1887-1979), it proposed an alternative to the rise of industrialism that accompanied the modernisation of Japanese society. Together Yanagi, Hamada and Leach, who described themselves as the ‘three musketeers’, championed the Mingei ideals of ‘art without heroes’, true beauty and traditional craft skills, leading a revival of interest in folk crafts.

The final section of the exhibition considers 21st-century iterations of the Mingei movement and modern re-interpretations of its core values. It shows how the term ‘Mingei’ has been reinterpreted and reclaimed by contemporary artists, including work by Theaster Gates which explores the spiritual and artistic dialogue between Black and Japanese craft traditions, a key concern of his practice.

Designed by Hayatsu Architects and graphic design studio Stinsensqueeze, the exhibition is accompanied by a major new publication by Yale University Press, edited by curator Roisin Inglesby.

Art Without Heroes: Mingei is produced in collaboration with the Japan Foundation and is supported by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and Maak Foundation.

Image: Hamada demonstrating in California 1953. From the collections of the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

Read the full press release here.

Supporters and partners

Highlights from the Mingei Film Archive

Making Objects for Daily Use (Mingei Film Archive)

Exhibition highlights

Bowl, Kawai Kanjiro. Image © National Museums Scotland

Photograph of Yanagi as a young man. From the collections of the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

Ikupasuy (Ainu language, prayer stick). Image © National Museums Scotland

Storage jar (kame), stoneware. Image © National Museums Scotland

Six-fold screen, stencilled and resist-dyed silk on a wooden frame showing a map of Okinawa, by Serizawa Keisuke (1895-1984), Japan, ca.1940. © Serizawa Keiko. Victoria and Albert Museum

“Shigoto-gi” Work Clothes. Late Edo to early Showa period, 1800s-1950s. Collection of Chuzaburo Tanaka.

Bowl, Raku type earthenware with clear glaze over decoration painted in enamel colours, Japan, Tokyo, by Tomimoto Kenkichi, 1912. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Bowl, Kawai Kanjiro. Image © National Museums Scotland

Photograph of Yanagi as a young man. From the collections of the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

Ikupasuy (Ainu language, prayer stick). Image © National Museums Scotland

Storage jar (kame), stoneware. Image © National Museums Scotland

Six-fold screen, stencilled and resist-dyed silk on a wooden frame showing a map of Okinawa, by Serizawa Keisuke (1895-1984), Japan, ca.1940. © Serizawa Keiko. Victoria and Albert Museum

“Shigoto-gi” Work Clothes. Late Edo to early Showa period, 1800s-1950s. Collection of Chuzaburo Tanaka.

Bowl, Raku type earthenware with clear glaze over decoration painted in enamel colours, Japan, Tokyo, by Tomimoto Kenkichi, 1912. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Epping Forest Visitor Centre Chingford

Radical Landscapes: London's Epping Forest

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Saturday 21 October 2023 - Sunday 31 March 2024

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Through 200 years of popular prints and images, explore the shifting balance of power and control over the land now known as Epping Forest.

In the summer of 1871, thousands of ordinary Londoners gathered on Wanstead Flats to hear speeches against ‘enclosure’ and to protest the loss of common land. They stayed to tear down and destroy fences erected by would-be property developers. This campaign in the 1860s and 1870s – a radical coalition across social divides – led to the preservation of Epping Forest as a public green space under the protection of the City of London Corporation as its conservators.

Through 200 years of popular prints and images, this exhibition explores the shifting balance of power and control over the land now known as Epping Forest. From royal hunting ground to quiet paradise of green space for recreation and wildlife, the survival of its ancient pollarded trees appears to confirm continuity. But what’s a Forest for? And who determines who has access to its resources? Such questions have inspired lawyers and artists, protestors and philanthropists and prompted new and radical thinking about what is to be valued in a shared landscape.

An exhibition organised and curated by Epping Forest Visitor Centre. Part of the Radical Landscapes events and activities programme.

Image: The Gardener’s Magazine, 19 December 1874 © City of London Corporation.

Unfinished design for Mermaid by William Morris

Works in Progress

Design drawings from the William Morris Gallery collection

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Wednesday 11 August - Friday 15 January 2021

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Design drawings from the Gallery’s collection, featuring examples of Morris’s pioneering approach to design, alongside work by colleagues including Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Works in Progress is an exhibition of design drawings taken from the Gallery’s collection. Featuring objects that are not usually on display—some of which have never been seen by the public before—the exhibition focusses on the process of design from work on paper to finished object.

Morris created over 600 designs for textiles, ceramics, wallpaper, books, and stained glass. The exhibition features examples of Morris’s pioneering approach to design, centred on layers of flat, abstracted pattern, alongside work by his colleagues including Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Better known as painters, design drawings by Burne-Jones and Rossetti raise questions about the line between so-called ‘fine’ art and the craft skills that Morris championed.

The exhibition shows how design drawings are instrumental in the process of making a wide range of objects. Designs will be shown alongside the products they were used to create, charting the transition from 2D drawing to 3D object.

The title Works in Progress is a reference to the idea that design is a continual process of change and improvement. The exhibition itself will also be a collaborative work in progress, with the objects on display changing to include work chosen by members of our community.

Radical Landscapes

Art inspired by the land

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Saturday 21 October 2023 - Sunday 18 February 2024

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Radical Landscapes is a major exhibition showing over a century of art inspired by the land.

Radical Landscapes is an exhibition that explores the natural world as a space for artistic inspiration, social connection, and political and cultural protest through the lens of William Morris, one of Britain’s earliest and most influential environmental thinkers. Organised in collaboration with Tate Liverpool, the exhibition displays work spanning two centuries and features more than 60 works by artists including JMW Turner, Claude Cahun, Hurvin Anderson, Derek Jarman, Jeremy Deller and Veronica Ryan.

Delving into ideas of freedom, exploitation and trespass, the exhibition reflects on how British landscapes have been read, accessed and used across social, class and racial lines, as well as the current global climate emergency, starting from Morris’ own relationship to and love for the land. Through the works on display and an expansive public programme, visitors are encouraged to engage with the Gallery’s surrounding borough of Waltham Forest, once a rural outpost and now an urban London borough, where Morris was born and which shaped his environmental and political views.

Organised in collaboration with local artists, campaigners, foodbanks and allotments, the public programme will run alongside the exhibition, and expand beyond the Gallery’s walls into the wetlands, forests and green spaces of Waltham Forest. The programme will invite participants to reassess their relationship with local landscapes and respond to the climate crisis. Read more about the programme.

Radical Landscapes is organised in collaboration with Tate Liverpool, where a first version of the exhibition was shown from 5 May to 4 September 2022.

The exhibition is curated by Darren Pih, Chief Curator and Artistic Director, Harewood House; Laura Bruni, Curator of Exhibitions, Henry Moore Foundation; Matthew Watts, Assistant Curator, Tate; Hadrian Garrard, Director, William Morris Gallery; and Rowan Bain, Principal Curator, William Morris Gallery.

Image: Helen and her Hula-hoop, Seacoal Camp, Lynemouth, Northumberland 1984 © Chris Killip Photography Trust/Magnum Photos. Courtesy Martin Parr Foundation.

Read the full press release here.

Radical Landscapes: Sonic Documentation

Based on ideas of creative accessibility, our online sonic documentation is a way for people to access a sample of our wider programming online, for anyone who was not able to attend. Focused on themes of connection to nature, biodiversity, and the importance of learning through trying new things.

Created by Sarah Brundson & Eric King. With special thanks to: Jan Ackenhausen, Area Regeneration Project Manager for Waltham Forest Council, Michaela Davis and her cyanotype animation film ‘Great Sale Wood’, Kelly Frank and her Mindful Mapping art, OrganicLea and their ESOL courses, and Stories and Supper, our community residency group.

Radical Landscapes: Soundscape

Visitors to Radical Landscapes can experience an ambient soundscape recorded and produced by Eric King to accompany the News From Nowhere installation, which forms part of the exhibition.

The field recording was made at noon, on the summer solstice in 2023 at the nearest part of Epping Forest to Morris’s childhood home, Woodford Hall.

Hear the soundscape here:

Radical Landscapes playlist

A ramble through music and the British countryside to enjoy at home, at the Gallery or in the great outdoors. Curated by Eric King as part of the Radical Landscapes exhibition.

Listen on Spotify Or scan the code below using the Spotify app: