27 August – 27 November 2005
Admission free Gallery 14
This exhibition focuses on a pair of seventeenth-century Japanese screens by Unkoku Tōeki (1591–1644). It explores the iconographical meaning of the screens and examines the wider implications of their theme within the tumultuous socio-political context of late Momoyama and early Tokugawa Japan. It also provides a fascinating insight into the way in which the arts played an important role in validating political authority during the period.
In addition to the Tōeki screens, the display will include calligraphy and paintings on paper and silk; ceramics; and lacquerwares on loan from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, and Mr James Fairfax, AO. An accompanying publication, supported by the Gallery’s Australian Centre of Asia–Pacific Art, is available from the Gallery Store.
