Umi Ishihara: Nocturnal Melody

22 Jan-26 Mar 2026

Umi Ishihara, Nocturnal Melody, production image

Overview

A moving image commission and the first solo exhibition in Europe by Umi Ishihara. Drawing from her own background as the daughter of parents working in nightclubs and the free-rave scene in Japan, Umi’s commission will follow women in Tokyo working in strip clubs whose lives have been shaped by music, nightlife, and drug-taking. Through their stories, she explores the blurred boundaries between pleasure and vulnerability in spaces that awaken after dark.

Umi Ishihara’s exhibition is supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, the Kumagai Masatoshi Culture Foundation and the Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation. Gasworks’ Exhibitions programme is supported by Catherine Petitgas, Gasworks Exhibitions Supporters and Arts Council England. Gasworks' 2025/26 programme is generously funded by Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a Donor Advised Fund held at The Prism Charitable Trust.

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Umi Ishihara (b. 1993, Tokyo, Japan) is based in London and Tokyo. She gained an MA in Artist’s Film & Moving Image from Goldsmiths, London in 2024, and a BA in Fine Arts (Inter Media Art) from Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan in 2018. Recent solo exhibitions include Thundergod, Gallery Restaurant Butaiura, Tokyo (2024); Gravity and Radiance, Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo (2021); Mire of Dickhead Demon, TAV Gallery, Tokyo (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Home Sweet Home, Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Kagawa; Struggle, Fukuoka Art Museum (both 2024); Home Sweet Home, The National Museum of Art, Osaka (2023); Coming of Age, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2022); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery (2019). Umi’s works have been screened in museums and film festivals worldwide including Centre Pompidou, ICA London, BFI Southbank, International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH:DOC. In 2024 she was awarded a GQ Global Creativity Award.