All Living Things are
Breathing Now
Current Exhibition
Kyunchome
All Living Things are Breathing Now is the first solo exhibition in the British Isles by Japanese artist duo Kyunchome, Nabuchi (b. 1984, Mito) and Honma Eri (b. 1987, Yokohama). Curated by Keith Whittle the focus of the exhibition is a new series of work by Kyunchome that highlights the seas and it’s coastal ecosystems as dynamic ecotones and contact zones where humans and multiple species interact with intertidal rhythms.
Please click here to read more.
All Living Things are Breathing Now
A BBC Radio broadcast featuring artist unit Kyunchome and curator Keith Whittle discussing their exhibition, All Living Things Are Breathing Now. This exhibition showcases work produced during Kyunchome’s year-long residency in the Philippines from 2022 to 2023, which was supported by Japan’s Ministry of Culture Program for Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists. This experience marked a significant shift in their artistic practice.
Please click here listen to the broadcast.
Previous Exhibitions
Chikako Yamashiro
Shapeshifter, the first UK solo exhibition at White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London by acclaimed performance and video artist Chikako Yamashiro.
Yamashiro, winner of the Asian Art Award 2017, dramatises the lesser-known aspects of Okinawa’s contemporary reality, while questioning dominant historical accounts of Japanese and American occupation of the islands.
Please click here to read more.
Aki Sasamoto
Clothes Line, a solo exhibition of drawings and films of performances at White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London by Aki Sasamoto. The artist’s first presentation at a UK gallery.
Based in New York, Sasamoto works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever other media required to get her ideas across. Sasamoto’s performance/installation works revolve around gestures on everything and nothing.
Please click here to read more.
![Moré Moré [Leaky]: The Falling Water Given #4-6, Installation view at White Rainbow, London, 2017 Wood Frames, found objects, water pump system](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/f77de345378d4bbd8727a6ed36e9635a/YukoMohri.07.jpg)
![Moré Moré [Leaky], Installation view at White Rainbow, London 2017](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/bab59ac4056eb3deee19e32a594e468f/YukoMohri.06.jpg)
![Moré Moré [Leaky]: The Falling Water Given #4-6, Installation view at White Rainbow, London, 2017 Wood Frames, found objects, water pump system](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/bae9d65d007c516d2f63c20110c997f0/YukoMohri.01.jpg)
![Moré Moré [Leaky]: The Falling Water Given #5 (detail), 2017 Wood Frame, found objects, water pump system](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/b9a24c0997a6b4f529fac3afb4893af7/YukoMohri.04.jpg)
![Moré Moré [Leaky], Installation view at White Rainbow, London 2017](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/b4fbd58f87ba7f1036fc7cf5715793aa/YukoMohri.03.jpg)
![Moré Moré [Leaky], Installation view at White Rainbow, London 2017](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/b66be9c8b48126ca0707045b331bea59/YukoMohri.05.jpg)
![Moré Moré [Leaky]: The Falling Water Given #4-6, Installation view at White Rainbow, London, 2017 Wood Frames, found objects, water pump system](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/c1467de7a3ecda9045ddfef0cb201453/YukoMohri.09.jpg)
Yuko Mohri
Moré Moré [Leaky] an exhibition at White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London by Yuko Mohri. The artist’s first presentation at a UK gallery.
The solo exhibition by Mohri, who recently represented Japan at the 60th Venice Biennale, showcased her installation titled Moré Moré [Leaky]. This work is part of her long-term research project focusing on the Tokyo metro. Mohri first presented this project at the prestigious Nissan Art Award in 2015, where she won the award. Responsive to the built environment, her kinetic installation at White Rainbow is in the form of a circuit, with found materials ‘wired’ together to contain flowing water, mimicking makeshift water repairs she noticed in the Tokyo metro.
Please click here to read more.
![Chim↑Pom, Archival installation from '道 [Street]' (2017), installation view at White Rainbow, London, UK, 2018 © Chim↑Pom, Image: Damian Griffiths](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/7673f292ed0a1d094f0f6b6fdf86d70d/Chim-Pom.05.jpg)
![Chim↑Pom, Archival installation from '道 [Street]' (2017), installation view at White Rainbow, London, UK, 2018 © Chim↑Pom, Image: Damian Griffiths](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/2620e6b60e25f8548e3096972dd2d345/Chim-Pom.04.jpg)
![Chim↑Pom, Archival installation from '道 [Street]' (2017), installation view at White Rainbow, London, UK, 2018 © Chim↑Pom, Image: Damian Griffiths](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/4de224ea3bc12e9494b8fbb6f9f41e77/Chim-Pom.02.jpg)
![Chim↑Pom, Archival installation from '道 [Street]' (2017), installation view at White Rainbow, London, UK, 2018 © Chim↑Pom, Image: Damian Griffiths](http://keithwhittle.org/wp-content/uploads/slider/cache/561cff7844e2b304be71941b384d7d59/Chim-Pom.06.png)
Chim↑Pom
Why Open? – a solo exhibition at White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London by the renowned artist collective Chim↑Pom.
Comprising Ryuta Ushiro, Yasutaka Hayashi, Ellie, Masataka Okada, Motomu Inaoka, and Toshinori Mizuno, Chim↑Pom’s work includes interventions through performance, video, painting, installation, curating and organising events. Sharp social critique underpins the group’s work, and the collective is unafraid to cause controversy in the service of their message. As Christopher Y. Lew, Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum, New York, has stated: ‘the group negotiates a difficult line – they do not make the direct assertions of activists but rather offer an ambiguous voice that is both complicit and critical.
Please click here to read more.
Taro Izumi
My eyes are not in the centre, an expansive installation at White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London by Taro Izumi. The artist’s first UK solo exhibition.
Comprised entirely of new work, Izumi’s exhibition constructs a complex web of interactions mediated through technology, evoking digital and new media’s dissociative effects on the senses. How does perceptible reality change when first hand experience is outsourced to a lens?
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John Akomfrah
The Call of Mist by John Akomfrah is a work by the Ghanaian-born British artist and filmmaker, known for his exploration of themes such as memory, post-colonialism, temporality, and aesthetics. Filmed in various locations on the Isle of Skye and serves as a poignant reflection on loss, memory, and media.
In 2024, Akomfrah presented a new body of work titled Listening All Night to the Rain at the British Pavilion in Venice – La Biennale di Venezia.
Please click here to read more.
Acquisitions
Mari Katayama
Further her first UK solo exhibition at White Rainbow curated by Keith Whittle, artist Mari Katayama talks about her work recently acquired by and on display at Tate Modern. Katayama uses her body and the materials she finds around her to make self-portraits, embroidered objects and living sculptures.
Please click here to view or here to read about her White Rainbow exhibition.
Publication Essays
Daisuke Ida
Publication essay by Keith Whittle for the National Arts Centre Tokyo exhibition, For Whom the Bell Tolls? by Japanese artist Daisuke Ida that delves into and explores perceptions of reality, physicality, changes in perspective, and our understanding of the world – historic, personal, economic, and technologically, reflecting on a global reality, in the post-coronavirus world and surveillance society.
Publication date 2025
Satoru Aoyama
Essay by Keith Whittle for Division of Labour, a solo exhibition at White Rainbow, Fitzrovia, London by Satoru Aoyama (b. 1973). The focus of the exhibition was a new series of work: ‘Map of the World (Dedicated to unknown embroiderers)’ (2012-). The works reference the Afghan craftswomen who assisted in the making of Alighiero Boetti’s ‘Mappa’ series (1971-1989).
Please click here to read the essay or here to read about his White Rainbow exhibition.
Published 2017
Talks
Keith Whittle
The first in a series of five talks, Keith Whittle gave a keynote on the concept of Bienalisation and related developments in the art world. These developments include the rise of global curatorial discourse, the diminishing boundaries between art and non-art categories, and the increasing prominence of contemporary art from non-Western countries such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Fram Kitagawa
Fram Kitagawa, the director of the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, is a visionary art producer and curator who discussed the groundbreaking festival that has become central to the unique social art movement in Japan over the past 20 years. The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, one of the largest art festivals in the world, is held once every three years in the expansive rural area of Satoyama, located in the Niigata Prefecture.
Please click here to read more.
Leah Gordon
In 2023, the Atis Rezistans | Ghetto Biennale exhibition at Documenta Fifteen was awarded the Exhibition of the Year by AICA Germany. Leah Gordon, an artist, curator, writer, and co-founder of the Ghetto Biennale in Haiti, discussed the biennale, which was originally designed to highlight issues of social, racial, class, and geographical immobility.
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Shubigi Rao
Shubigi Rao discussed her diverse artistic practice and her experiences as the curator of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which ran from December 2022 to April 2023. Her work encompasses various disciplines, including archaeology, neuroscience, libraries, archives, histories, literature, violence, ecology, and natural history.
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Lewis Biggs
Former Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the Liverpool Biennial, Lewis Biggs, discussed how the Liverpool Biennial emerged as a latecomer among the growing number of international biennials that began to proliferate in the late 1980s. He outlined the challenges faced by earlier biennials and described the creation of a model that holds significant importance for the city, its citizens, its artistic community, and the international art scene.
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Keith Whittle
One Place After Another: What can periodical International Contemporary Art Projects share?
This talk at The Japan Foundation, London, Keith Whittle examined the rise of large-scale international recurrent exhibitions of contemporary art around the world. Following the presentation a discussion was held to further examine issues related to these projects. The panel included Keith Whittle, along with two internationally recognised curators: Yuko Hasegawa, who has curated several major exhibitions in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, and Lewis Biggs, former director of the Liverpool Biennial. Also participating was Koki Tanaka, the representative artist for the Japan Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition in the Venice Biennale, and Mark Rappolt, Editor of Art Review.
Watch
Mari Katayama
White Rainbow and Japan Foundation presented an artist talk by Mari Katayama, to coincide with her solo show Broken Heart curated by Keith Whittle at White Rainbow Gallery, London. Katayama discussed her artistic process, touching on how her physical difficulty has informed her work and influenced her body image. The talk was followed by a conversation with Simon Baker, director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris.
Please click here to view.
Residencies
Sutapa Biswas
Mata Ne, (See you Soon), a solo exhibition of video and mixed media at Fujiya Gallery, Beppu Japan by British Indian artist Sutapa Biswas (b. 1962, Shantiniketan, West Bengal,). The artist’s first presentation at a Japanese gallery.
Curated by Keith Whittle during a two-month residency in Japan, Mata Ne, (See you Soon), is inspired by the oral histories of women of Oita, Japan, who recount important moments in their lives. A method of recovering neglected histories, through a methodology exploring autobiographical practice centred on the subjectivity of the narrator. Oral histories focused on women’s experiences that demand revision of the historical.
Please click here to read more.
Erika Tan
A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, is a two-person international residency and touring exhibition first staged at the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, including London-based Singaporean artist Erika Tan (b. 1965, Singapore). Curated and produced by Keith Whittle and Alistair Robinson as part of The British Councils major festival UK-Japan 2008. The artists each spent the summer of 2008 in the others country of residence. The research and resulting commissioned film, video and photographic installations toured to BankArt, Japan.
Erika Tan’s works are presented under the collective heading ‘Made in Japan’. The works explore the expectations that travellers bring; the iconic images associated with Japan; the different assumptions that Japanese culture is based upon; and the physical and psychological mechanisms that allow it to function.
Please click here to read more.
Yuko Mohri
Brairdcast Media: A History of Machine Translation is an exhibition by Yuko Mohri (b. 1980, Tokyo), who won the Asian Art Award in 2016 and represented Japan at the Japan Pavilion during the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Mohri’s first residency and solo show in the UK, produced and curated by Keith Whittle. The exhibition explores the early history of broadcast media in the United Kingdom, with a focus on the work of John Logie Baird, a pioneering inventor of early television. It highlights his invention, the “Televisor,” which was a semi-mechanical analogue television system that utilized a patented mechanical scanning method.
This project led to further collaborations with Mohri, including a residency at the Victoria and Albert Museum and a solo exhibition in 2017 at White Rainbow Gallery in London.
Please click here to read more.
Commissions
Sonia Boyce
Phil Lynott Rocks is a work by Sonia Boyce (b. 1962) a British Afro-Caribbean artist and educator, living and working in London. She is a Professor of Black Art and Design at the University of the Arts London.
Boyce’s work explores art as a social practice and the critical and contextual debates that arise from this area of study. Boyce has been closely collaborating with other artists since 1990 with a focus on collaborative work, frequently involving improvisation and unplanned performative actions on the part of her collaborators.
Please click here to read more.
Isaac Julien
One of today’s most prominent and influential figures in media art and film, Isaac Julien is an award winning British installation artist, filmmaker and Distinguished Professor of the Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His multi-channel installations, documentaries, and photographs explore Black and queer histories and identities. Julien gained international attention for his iconic film Looking for Langston (1989), a montage that reimagines the life of poet, novelist, and playwright Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance. Julien’s works emerge from in-depth investigations of history, blurring the barriers between film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting, and sculpture.
Julien’s Vagabondia (2000), commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, where Keith Whittle worked from 1994-2005, is a two channel installation exploring how structures of power and domination impact historical narratives in museums.
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Mark Leckey
Parade, by Mark Leckey (b. 1964, Birkenhead, UK) a video installation with an unnerving sound: a parade of consuming pleasures in psychedelic decadence.
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella in association with the Brighton Photo Biennial for the Brighton Photo Biennial, and to accompany its major group exhibition Make Life Beautiful! The Dandy in Photography at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. Mark Leckey’s Parade, a sound and video installation at Fabrica, continues the artist’s ongoing exploration of style subcultures and other contemporary icons.
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Conversations
Yuko Hasegawa
Yuko Hasegawa, Director, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan in conversation with Keith Whittle.
Please click here to listen to an audio sample.
Andrea Schlieker
Andrea Schlieker, Director of Exhibitions and Displays, Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom interviewed by Keith Whittle.
Please click here to listen to an audio sample.
Jonathan Watkins
Jonathan Watkins, former Director, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom in conversation with Keith Whittle.
Please click here to listen to an audio sample, or here to read a transcript of the interview.
Mami Kataoka
Mami Kataoka, Director of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan in conversation with Keith Whittle.
Please click here to listen to an audio sample, or here to read a transcript of the interview.