Manga Dreams: Anderson & Low
4th Feb 2012 - 2nd Sep 2012
Extended until Sunday 2 September
 Untitled (Eyes)Anderson and Low |
 Untitled (Aqua Boy)© Anderson & Low 2012 |
 Untitled (Kit the Swordsman)© Anderson & Low 2012 |
 Untitled (Ming with Sword)© Anderson & Low 2012 |
 |
|
Photographers Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low have collaborated since 1990, achieving consistent critical acclaim. Their extraordinary work blurs the distinction between photography and other forms of visual art, using old and new technologies to explore concepts of identity.
This exhibition features highlights of a recent Anderson & Low project, Manga Dreams, parts of which were featured in the 2011 Venice Biennale. Using subjects hand-picked by the artists over many months and years, the series combines photography and digital techniques to create a strikingly intense merging of the real and the fictional. The images use this hybrid reality to explore the impact of manga and anime on youth culture world-wide, the impact of which is noticeable globally in its adoption by individuals as diverse as Chinese businessmen and the singer Lady Gaga.
Manga Dreams was the first museum exhibition of this work in the UK and the first of a series of similar exhibitions worldwide: there are currently exhibitions of this work in Quebec City and Paris. A large print of Untitled (Kit the Swordsman) has just been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Anderson & Low are official artists for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in London, with a solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.
Manga Dreams accompanies the book of the same title, published in 2010, and available in the Sainsbury Centre shop.
Admission is free
