Colouring with kozyndan

Well, just Kozy, actually. The Yamanashi-born illustrator (real name: Kozue) is in town this weekend with her husband, Dan Kitchens, as part of their first solo UK show And Then There Were None at the tiny Nelly Duff gallery on Columbia Road.

Kozy is pictured above with The Best Sushi in Town, an all-new panoramic which debuted simultaneously at the show and at a group exhibition in New York. The 1.7-metre-long work is their 17th panoramic piece and shows seafood masquerading as sushi chefs serving humans to their unsuspecting customers while a giant octopus (squid?) traps divers for dinner, all in a sushi bar under the sea. The true beauty’s in the detail, such as a tiny bunny-faced fish on a sushi-train plate, the fact that one of the fish is dressed as a sumo wrestler or even the tanned gyaru (blonde Japanese surfer ‘gal’) dining on her own. All of which you see better here.

According to Kozyndan:

People don’t know what the secret ingredient is and they don’t really care. All they know is this is the best sushi in town!

It actually comes from a rather despairing feeling we have knowing that people are literally eating fish species to extinction, particularly blue fin tuna…because people have taken to consuming huge quantities of sushi.

And Then There Were One also includes two limited edition silkscreen prints, other prints including the brilliant Takadanobaba on Acid and a new selection of Kozy’s abstract kaleidoscopic paintings. These works mark quite a change in direction from their most famous prints, although similar themes still abound (are they sharks? and possibly amoeba?) and there’s still plenty of detail to get lost in. When I asked Kozy why the new paintings were so different, she explained that if you keep doing the same thing over and over, you just get bored.

There was also a dreamy and somewhat whimsical colouring book from 2004 called Lactaid Dreams (£8), which they had apparently wanted to make for some time. In response to people questioning the themes in their work, the book opens with a kind foreward: …This is a colouring book, damn it! It isn’t supposed to be analysed. It’s supposed to be coloured!

There’s lots of Japanese imagery (both modern and traditional), crazy animals,  and simple outlines just bursting with detail. Oh yes, and there’s plenty of bunnies:

As for Kozy, she was friendly, warm and keen to get started on signing all the prints for their London fans. She was very positive about the exhibition, although she did seem a little perplexed about London’s low-brow art culture:

The response to the brief exhibition has been great, but it’s different here. In the US, or even Australia, low-brow art is much more popular.

She also told me how Kozyndan produce their work. Generally, Kozy produces the initial outlines, which Dan then fills in with the smaller details and characters. The pair work in layers on Photoshop, rather than Illustrator which she said ‘many people use, but I find too difficult!’.

Each piece goes back and forth between the pair with both Kozy and Dan adding their own touches in a composite process to produce each Kozydan piece.

The only sad note of my visit was discovering one of my favourite works, the SARS-inspired Chinatown panoramic - where citizens of Chinatown fight an approaching virus with what looks like dumplings/steamed buns, while Peking ducks stroll casually away from a knife-wielding chef - is no longer available. Why didn’t I buy it at Melbourne’s Outre gallery, so many years ago? Here’s a taster of the full print:

After And Then There Were None finishes on Saturday, Kozyndan are off to Barcelona before heading home via a few other stops. You can find more of their work at their website or much of their back catalogue (and personal travel shots) at Flickr.

Read more on the UK exhibition here.

All pictures from Kozydan’s Flickr except the Lactaid Dreams photos from my copy, which I’m tempted to slice apart and frame. Thank you, Kozy-san!

The solitude of ravens

The British Journal of Photography has named Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase’s 1986 Karasu (Ravens) as the best photobook of the past 25 years*. According to the BJP:

The book is a mournful reflection on Fukase’s past relationship, but has also been interpreted as an allegorical critique of modern industrialised society.

Through dark, grainy images of karasu, Fukase chronicles a lonesome trip to his hometown in Hokkaido in the late 70s while deep in the throes of divorce from his wife/former muse.

Fukase is said to have first become engrossed by the brooding karasu as he sat aboard the train from Tokyo, not knowing his collection would one day be hailed an obscure masterpiece by British critics. Despite three sold-out editions and a revised, slightly more impressionistic name (The Solitude of Ravens), Fukase’s work has remained largely unknown until this recent accolade.

Karasu are plentiful in Japan, particularly in the cities where special anti-karasu nets are used to protect domestic rubbish from being strewn about the streets. In Japanese mythology, they are said to represent foreboding and dangerous times ahead. I had always translated the word karasu as simply crow, rather than the more mysterious raven, but the Japanese word can apparently mean both black birds. It will take someone far more ornithological than me to know which is actually represented in Fukase’s book.

On a melancholy note**, Fukase has remained in a coma since the early 1990s. He is said to have fallen down stairs while drunk, which merely adds another level of sadness and solitude to his work.

*The Guardian subeditors may have been skeptical about the BJP’s choice of Kurasu. Their article by Sean O’Hagan, Masahisa Fukase’s Raavens: the best photobook of the past 25 years? is a pretty clear example of poorly-chosen punctuation, considering the overall positive tone of the piece.

**On a totally geeky linguistic note, did you know the collective noun for ravens is an unkindness? I did not, until I heard The Unkindness of Ravens, a cool little London two-piece who tend to hang out in Camden.

Images from The Guardian and Mass Observer.

Japan’s town flag typography

Town flags L-R: Taketomi (in Okinawa) shows 竹 (take); Hachijō reflects the kanji for Hachijō 八丈, arranged in the shape of a bird.

Studying Japanese is tough. There’s three written languages, one of which, kanji (the complex ideograms) can be read using both Japanese and Chinese pronunciation. Every year, the government lists nearly 2,000 essential kanji characters for all high school students to learn, without which they cannot fully comprehend a national newspaper.

To make things interesting for those folks studying the many kanji (& to pay tribute to the graphic designers who come up with this stuff), I present an extract of Pink Tentacle’s collection of Japanese town flags that ingeniously incorporate kanji in their design.

L-R: Ibaraki: Note the pigeon resembles the character for 茨 (ibara); Ōme combines the kanji 青 (ao) and plum blossom 梅 (ume) to signify 青梅 (Ōme).

Scrolling through the collection, you’ll notice many resemble the traditional monotone mon symbols (similar to a coat of arms), where birds, flowers and other natural elements abound. Sometimes you need to squint to see what they’re getting at, but it’s fascinating to think that Japanese (along with Chinese, and any other ideogram-based language) has a whole extra element to its representation. For example, the ‘take’ from Taketomi (top left) means bamboo, yet the design focusses on the shape of the character 竹, rather than the literal meaning.

On second thoughts, that could kinda work in English too, couldn’t it? The difference is that a single letter doesn’t necessarily signify a whole concept or idea, like an ideogram does… Ok, now I’m getting confused. Let’s just enjoy them on a purely aesthetic level, shall we?

L-R: Shinagawa: Reflecting the kanji for 品 (shina) - looking slightly reminiscent of the Mitsubishi logo - and one of my favourite cities, Matsumoto, where pine (matsu) needles encircle the kanji 本 (moto).

There’s 42 more flags over at Pink Tentacle; or a list of 100 flags here at Web Designer Depot.

Go, citizen, go!

Citizen Japan has unveiled the Citizen i:Virt M, a new £200 wristwatch that recalls dear Penny’s telephone watch of old.

Thanks to Bluetooth, the i:Virt M connects wirelessly to the wearer’s mobile phone and flashes to alert of incoming calls or text messages. It can also display (but not send) text messages.

The i:Virt M was created for those times when you’re not comfortable whipping out your phone but still want to know what’s going on, such as during meetings or on the train. The problem here is that the wearer can’t really do much with what they see, save for pressing ‘reject’ when faced with an unwanted call. 

On the plus side, Citizen’s design team integrated a totally Inspector Gadget-style shutter release button, so you can take photos (using your phone) from afar. Sneaky, huh?

A cheaper alternative for Gadget fans may be designer Anti Christa’s iPad wallpaper (below). Anti Christa’s gone to excruciating detail to replicate Penny’s computer book - note the blue jack where Penny connected her book to her computer - and it’s available to download for free! (iPad not included).

If I had to choose my Penny-themed gizmo of choice, I’ll take the wallpaper. (With the iPad, of course).

Happy earth day

I’ve written before about the Environmental Justice Foundation, a small UK charity who campaign for victims of environmental abuse/climate change and fight pirate fishermen from robbing our oceans of marine life. They also campaign for sustainable/organic cotton, and are currently selling designer t-shirts to help fund their work around the world. A little refresher, for Earth Day 2010…

Through EJF’s efforts fighting child labour and unsustainable practices in the cotton fields, major retailers including Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Wal-Mart have all agreed to boycott cotton from Uzbekistan.

To support their campaigns, EJF has released a host of organic cotton t-shirts featuring prints from UK & international designers such as Giles Deacon, Christian Lacroix, Luella, Allegra Hicks, Alice Temperley and many more. The £30 shirts - for men and women - can be found at the Carnaby St pop-up shop, or online, with all proceeds going directly to the Foundation.

There’s also some wicked prints by Let Them Eat Cake for the little ‘uns available at ASOS:

Style, substance and sustainable cotton - not bad for thirty quid. Remember people, the power is yours!

Read more on the Environmental Justice Foundation or the Carnaby St popup shop.