More nudes! These were interesting, and left me wrestling with a few different responses - which I think is a good sign.
On the one hand, the female models are very conventionally very attractive - uniformly slim, pale skinned, large breasted, big eyed etc - and definitely sexualised (in nearly all of the photos, they're completely naked apart from being in stilettos - and make up, if that counts). There are ten of them and they're the vast majority of the show - there's only one male subject, who appears only in I think seven or eight photos in a discrete room. Which is a bit 'hmm'-inducing.
On the other hand, the concept of the show is that they're all photographed in and around the gallery itself (in some cases slightly furnished), and that works extremely well, with Shinoyama taking full advantage of the interesting spaces within and outside the building (a 1930s western modernist style building) and its permanent installations.
So in the end I liked it more than I found it 'problematic' - I liked its spirit.
The gallery itself is also an attraction, including in the way that it and this particular exhibition are integrated. Sculptures arranged in the gardens outside, and a handful of pieces integrated into various nooks of the three-floor building, including one by Yoshihiro Suda, who I only came across for the first time just last week, "This water unfit for drinking" (2001) - two of his wooden flowers 'growing' in an alcove of exposed pipes, peeled-away tiling and general disrepair.
Very good.
On the one hand, the female models are very conventionally very attractive - uniformly slim, pale skinned, large breasted, big eyed etc - and definitely sexualised (in nearly all of the photos, they're completely naked apart from being in stilettos - and make up, if that counts). There are ten of them and they're the vast majority of the show - there's only one male subject, who appears only in I think seven or eight photos in a discrete room. Which is a bit 'hmm'-inducing.
On the other hand, the concept of the show is that they're all photographed in and around the gallery itself (in some cases slightly furnished), and that works extremely well, with Shinoyama taking full advantage of the interesting spaces within and outside the building (a 1930s western modernist style building) and its permanent installations.
So in the end I liked it more than I found it 'problematic' - I liked its spirit.
The gallery itself is also an attraction, including in the way that it and this particular exhibition are integrated. Sculptures arranged in the gardens outside, and a handful of pieces integrated into various nooks of the three-floor building, including one by Yoshihiro Suda, who I only came across for the first time just last week, "This water unfit for drinking" (2001) - two of his wooden flowers 'growing' in an alcove of exposed pipes, peeled-away tiling and general disrepair.
Very good.
