Ever blossoming

For hundreds of years, painters in Japan have celebrated seasonal changes in flora and fauna, along with their symbolic meaning, particularly on screens and hanging scrolls.

Ever blossoming includes historical screens that evoke these themes, selected from the Gallery's collection, presented alongside digital works that re-envisage this tradition, created by the Japanese collective teamLab.

On display for the first time is Ever Blossoming Life || - A Whole Year per Hour: Gold, created by teamLab this year: It features myriad brilliantly coloured flowers that emerge, grow and blossom, wither and then fade away in a profusion of scattered petals, all set against a gold background. The work progresses through a calendar year as it portrays the life cycle of flowers that bloom during each month.

Ever Blossoming Life || is not a prerecorded loop but is instead programmed to create new images in real time. This means that no image is ever seen twice - a tender reminder of the endless cycle of life.

Tokyo-based teamLab is a collective of self proclaimed 'ultra-technologists', which was founded in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko (b. 1977) after he had graduated from the Department of Mathematical Engineering and Information of Physics at Tokyo University. It is composed of specialists and professionals from various fields, including artists, programmers, engineers, computer graphics animators, mathematicians, architects and web designers, who seek to 'achieve a balance between art, science, technology and creativity'. The collective has developed an international reputation for creating large-scale digital works and interactive immersive environments that push boundaries of technology. Its works, which have featured in exhibitions and expositions around the world and iconography from Japanese historical art.

The display is presented in conjunction with the OzAsia Festival, which runs from 17 September to 2 October.