John Rabling - 'The Source of the Sun'

Wednesday 21 August - Sunday 15 September 2019 

“Japan both mesmerises and bewilders me. Two visits later and I still haven’t made complete sense of a people’s unremitting thirst for progress and their reverence for history and tradition. It is a cliché, but contrast meets you at every corner – cutting edge next to ancient pile, sacred juxtaposed with saccharine cute. The Japanese worship nature, but nowhere seems safe from the builder’s crane. The Japanese prize the tradition of hand-crafted furniture, fabrics and ceramics but happily turn out tens of thousands of disposable hashi (chopsticks to you and I), apparently oblivious of the irony.

These works are my record of the people who mix the old and new, excruciating formality (try being the first customer in a department store at 10:00 AM in the morning) and downright wild (visit Yoyogi Park or Harajuku and marvel at the cosplayers).”

John Rabling, August 2019