Mitsukejima in the Starry Night by Testsuya TsurumiTypical landscape, gardens, trees and flowers promote the beauty of Japan in Malta in an ongoing exhibition of 138 colour and monochrome shots.
Chosen from hundreds of entries in a competition organised by the Takeshitaseikakojyo Museum in Shimane, Japan and the Cavalieri Hotel in St Julian’s, Malta, the exhibition presents exotic images of meticulous Japanese gardens and natural landscape.
Most of the work is a physical document, factual and natural without subjective interpretation but quite delicate and lyrical. In the second week of December a board of judges selected the 14 winners. The top placings were won by Kosuke Okuda in first place, Kei Yamane and Testsuya Tsurumi in shared second place and Kimio Okumura in third place.
Okuda captures a marine landscape with outcrops of rock bridged with rope against a dreamy skyline. Tsurumi presents a poetic star-studded sky. Yamane’s work is a paean to a delicate and elegant tree with branches reaching towards the sky, while Okumura abstracts a vast field with meticulously sown crops in colourful modules that resemble a carpet woven with multi-coloured thread.
■ The exhibition is running at the Cavalieri Art Hotel in St Julian’s until February 12.
Meoto-iwa by Kosuke Okuda