Japan Study Tour - Photography and Visual Arts Practice

About the 2011 Photography Study Tour:

The Photography Study Tour to Tokyo, Japan is open to second and third year undergraduate students completing the Bachelor of Arts, Major in Photography and Bachelor of Film and Digital Media.

Tokyo, one of the safest and yet most exotic city in the world is a place of startling contrasts: 260km/h bullet trains, perfectionist drivers in white gloves, shops that sell used manga and anime (Japanese comic books and animation, respectively) stacked to the ceilings, the towering skyscrapers of Shinjuku or the green oasis of Hibiya park in the business district of Tokyo.

The Study Tour will encompass some of the capital’s major galleries and institutions, art collections, boutique galleries and temporary art spaces. Galleries and museums are spread out all over the city and hidden in the unlikeliest of places, such as a gallery housed in an ancient bathhouse or a 1930’s block of flats, home to a range of smaller commercial and artist run spaces.

The district of Roppongi for example, has exploded into a cultural hub, with four new major museums and commercial galleries in and around this one area. With three blockbuster galleries - Mori Art Museum on the Mori Tower's 53rd floor, the space age National Art Centre and the Suntory Museum of Art - sponsored by the company sardonically plugged by Bill Murray in Lost in Translation - this is the Hollywood of Tokyo art. In Ginza we will visit the Internationally renowned, Gallery Koyanagi   one of the leading lights of the Tokyo contemporary art world since 1995. Its discreetly lit space is home to regular exhibitions by some of the world's top artists: Sophie Calle, Marlene Dumas, Olafur Eliasson, Mariko Mori, Hiroshi Sugimoto, to name but a few.

Academic credit
Students will enrol in either:

• ACM337 Creative Arts International Project or Study Tour X-OS
• ACM737 Creative Arts International Project or Study Tour X-OS

which are both credit-bearing and involve assessment.