Tag: Helen McCarthy

April 26, 2022 · 0 comments

By Helen McCarthy. A book can be a ground-breaking work of scholarship and still accessible to any intelligent reader. Language capable of being understood by the average well-read media fan is also capable of carrying the most challenging ideas. So, I’m always delighted to read new work that takes its subject and its readers more […]

April 14, 2022 · 0 comments

By Helen McCarthy. Japan: Courts and Culture was originally scheduled to open in 2020. Like so many of that year’s best-laid plans, it had to be shelved. But the wait has been worth it. The exhibition is a refined, elegant and entrancing look at a centuries-long relationship between two island empires separated by “ten thousand […]

March 7, 2022 · 0 comments

By Helen McCarthy. There are many ways to explore and interrogate an artist’s work. One is through experiencing and analysing the work itself. Another is through contact with the artist, through their recorded or published words or in a face to face interview. One can also look at what others – friends, enemies, competitors, critics, […]

February 24, 2022 · 0 comments

By Helen McCarthy. From the first episodes of the Revolutionary Girl Utena anime series, director Kunihiko Ikuhara delivers a format packed with new ideas and a number of classic riffs. As a girl, we are told, Utena lost her parents, but remembers being comforted by a gallant prince on a white horse. The impressionable child […]

July 23, 2021 · 1 comment

By Helen McCarthy. The mascot characters of the Tokyo Olympics are Miraitowa and Someity, selected from over 2000 entries in an open competition over four years ago, and spattered over every conceivable surface, screen and item of merchandise. They even had an animated appearance, showing up in two online shorts, participating in every planned Olympic […]