Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
25.11.2017 - 11.03.2018

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller—first large-scale solo exhibition in Asia

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s works display a command of sophisticated sound and video technology, and striking sculptural creations. The viewer undergoes a complex perceptual experience of “hearing and seeing” and enters their imaginative world in a spell of enchantment. When experiencing a Cardiff and Bures Miller work, unseen things become visible, soundless things are heard, and we suddenly step beyond reality into their story with our senses and values in disarray. The pair has previously exhibited works in Japan, including The 40 Part Motet at Maison Hermes, and participated in such art festivals as the Yokohama Triennale, Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, and Setouchi International Art Festival. Cardiff and Bures Miller’s exhibition this time features such recent large-scale works as The Carnie (2010), The Marionette Maker (2014), and Conversation with Antonello (2015) along with new works and eight installations being shown in Japan for the first time. Installed in the spatially autonomous galleries of this museum, the pieces will tell their stories in synchronicity. A precious opportunity to experience the work of a groundbreaking international artist team.

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Janet Cardiff
Born: 1957, Brussels, Ontario, Canada

George Bures Miller
Born: 1960, Vegreville, Alberta, Canada

Began collaborating around 1995. Currently live and in Grindrod, British Columbia (Canada) and Berlin. Since the 1990s, Cardiff and Bures Miller have created sound installations and “Walks” commanding high-level sound technologies. The latter works—in which viewers walk around a park, art museum, or city district guided by Janet’s voice on headphones—rouse the walker’s senses using images and stories created in response to places seen and sounds heard. In Forest (for a thousand years . . . ) (2012) for Documenta 13, they placed more than 30 speakers in a Kassel forest to manifest a grand soundscape embodying a thousand years of forest time, while in Alter Bahnhof Video Walk (2012), viewers explored the Kassel station guided by iPod images and Janet’s voice through earphones. Representing Canada at the 49th Venice Biennale, the artists won the La Biennale di Venezia Special Award and Benesse Prize. They have also participated in Documenta 13 (2012) and numerous international art festivals. In Japan, they have participated in the Okayama City Arts Festival LOVE PLANET program (2003), Yokohama Triennale (2005), 1st Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions (2009), Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial (2009), Setouchi International Art Festival (2010), and Aichi Triennale 2013. They have also held a solo exhibition, “Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller” (2009), at Maison Hermes.