Step inside the world of Japanese avant-garde artist Tetsumi Kudo (1935 – 1990) to explore film, collaboration and radical ideas.
Inspired by our exhibition, ‘Tetsumi Kudo. Microcosms,’ this study day examines the artist’s visionary practice spanning sculpture, performance and film, and its relevance to contemporary debates around humans, technology and ecology.
Led by artist and filmmaker Jess Dadds, the event combines an exhibition tour with discussion and hands-on experiments with 16mm film. Participants will use collaborative DIY approaches to imagine new ecologies between humans, technology and the natural world to co-create an abstract short film shaped by Kudo’s prophetic ideas, shared inquiry and hope.
This event is aimed at emerging artists, creatives and students aged 18 – 25 years, particularly those interested in expanding their practice or exploring film.
Tickets are free but advance booking is essential. All materials are provided, including light refreshments.
About ‘Tetsumi Kudo. Microcosms’
In a wide-ranging practice spanning four decades, Tetsumi Kudo explored the implications of what would later be termed the Anthropocene in prescient work that interrogated the proliferation of mass consumption, the rise of technology and environmental degradation. On view in the South Gallery through 18 April, this exhibition is Kudo’s first in London in over a decade, displaying a selection of works that include the artist’s signature cages, cubes and gardens. Using found materials, store-bought items and hand-sculpted body parts, they suggest a world in which nature, technology and humanity influence each other in a mutually reinforcing system he called the New Ecology. The varied environments he created are intended to encourage viewers to understand themselves as part of an integrated and intricate cosmos.
About Jess Dadds
Jess Dadds is an artist and filmmaker from South East England. His films have screened at various BAFTA and Academy Award qualifying festivals including Aesthetica, Oberhausen, Montreal Du Nouveau Cinéma FNC, Encounters, PÖFF and LSFF. Dadds’ short film, ‘I am good at karate,’ (2022) was awarded a Special Mention at Encounters Film Festival. He is currently developing his first feature project supported by the BFI. Dadds is represented as a Writer and Director for Film and TV by Gabriel Blair at Casarotto Ramsay and Associates.
—
Please be advised that photographs will be taken at this event for use on the Hauser & Wirth website, social media and in other marketing materials.
