Todays The Meg's Kitchen Catering Service was for my host mother served in Muswell Hill where I use to live. Special offer: vegetarian Japanese meal. Looks very organicky.
私にとて一番印象的だったのは２００５年のDeep Endという作品。 ロンドン一の繁華街SOHOに１８５０年からあるMarshall Street Bathsというスイミングプールが舞台です。その今は廃墟となったプールですが足繁く通われた過去の栄光を、息をのむような霊的なインスタレーションで表現した作品です。
Mika Ninagawa is a Japanese female photographer, film director, and as well as a production designer. She is best known of using vivid colour and fancily elements to create a unique and dream-like scene in her works including photographs, advertisings and films. Her design is has a great mixture of Japanese traditional culture and Western style, which depicted in her works as a photographer, film director, and as a production designer.
Ninagawa was born in a creative family. Her father is Yukio Ninagawa who is a film director and theatre director and her mother Tomoko Mayama is a retired actress and writer. Influenced by her parent, she has an acute sense of colour and be trained to use images to tell the story when she was young. As many Japanese artist, anime was inspired Ninagawa a lot, such as works from Hideaki Anno and Hayao Miyazaki. But she admitted that there was more influence from her father’s stage productions.
Ninagawa with her father Yukio.
She went to Tama Art University where is the best art school in Japan and studied Graphic Design. After graduated in 1997, Ninagawa started her own brand and hold her own exhibition in Tokyo. In later years, as part of the “girl photography” movement in Japan, she won several awards and had significant commercial success in fashion photography. Apart from photography, Ninagawa also tried her hand at being a novice director. Through Ninagawa's lens, a lush, colour explosion and truly bombastic world is presented to us.
Poster of her exhibition (2013)
In her exhibition
Different from fashion jobs, when worked for a film, she was "chose an outfit for each scene, empowering it with its beauty”. In her opinion, sets, makeup and costume are all essential in her picture. To maintain artistic consistency, she always makes the setting by herself. Golden fish, flower, butterfly, and feathers are the most favorite subjects she loved to use in her set. With their vivid saturated colours and stylized compositions, it is easy to get lost between reality and illusions.
Gold Fish (2013)
Flowers (2013)
These years, Ninagawa became a cultural icon and one of the most popular artists who wanted to collaborate with in Asian and around the globe as well. Besides photograph and film, she also works as album cover designer, video jockey, app creator, chief editor of fashion magazine and interior designer. It is excited to see that more Ninagawa’s unmistakable “pop-and-sweet wonderland” style will be expressed to us in future.
iPhone app of Ninagawa Style Camera(2012)
Due to directing her first film "Sakuran" (2007, Tokyo), she also took a part as a production designer. The actual set designer in the credit was Namiko Iwaki, however it was obvious that the design in Sakuran has strong essence of her self. Sakuran was a great hit throughout Japanese teenager as it was not typical Japanese film that is artistic and fanciful, also voluptuous. Sakuran was influential in Japanese teenager to change their negative impression of 'Yosiwara Yukaku' the largest red light distract in Edo period, Japan. Japanese girls were obsessed to wear Oiran style who is a high class prostitute, which is not only the costume designer but this could be influenced by Ninagawa's set design such as the Japanese wall painting covered with gold and colourful flowers and strong dragon, a beautiful red futon and room decorations, and even the traditional Japanese garden has a erotic colours on the maple tree.
Film set in “Sakuran” (2007)
Her second directed film "Helter Skelter" (2012, Tokyo) was scandal for the press due to it themed by plastic surgery and drug addict, which made curiosity throughout Japanese teenager. In Helter Skelter, there were three designers in the art department, Enzo, Hiroyasu Koizumi, and Ninagawa her self. Most props and furniture in the sets were decorated with her own belongings from her house, which shows her strong originality that has fascinating atmosphere of girl's secret world. People are often forces on the colour of her work, however, in my opinion, it is more important to forces on the contrast in her design. For instance, the set of Brothel in Sakuran used various colours to express the gorgeous looking of women. On the other hand, the set of the childhood using dark colours to shows the loneliness of the childhood. As well as in Helter Skelter, the main set of Lyrico's room were decorated all over the room, while the set of hospital were simple and bleak.
Film set in “Helter Skelter”(2012)
To sum up, she is one of the Japanese young artist in art industry and film industry who works across the world, and still creating great works. She will inspire people over the world, and able to introduce a beautiful Japanese culture to the world. We are looking forward to meet her new works in the future.
(770 words)
Bibliography:
Andrey,B (2012) ‘INTERVIEW: MIKA NINAGAWA ‘. GADABOUT http://www.gadabout.jp/interview-mika-ninagawa/ (accessed 02.10.2013)
Edmund,L (2011) ‘Mika Ninagawa ‘. Time Out Hong Kong http://www.timeout.com.hk/art/features/46848/mika-ninagawa.html (accessed 02.10.2013)
Hannah,L (2012) ‘MIKA NINAGAWA ‘. Dazed Digital http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/15164/1/mika-ninagawa (accessed 02.10.2013)
Sam,W (2012) ‘In focus: Mika Ninagawa on Helter Skelter ‘.British Film Institute http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/in-focus-mika-ninagawa-helter-skelter (accessed 02.10.2013)
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