Bartkira, the non-profit online community art project which is recreating each of the 2,000 plus pages of Katsushiro Otomo’s six-volume sci-fi manga story Akira, through characters from Matt Groening’s The Simpsons, has opened the first exhibition of related artwork in Japan, at Gallery Hakusen in Suginami-ku,Tokyo.
Initiated in 2013 by Ryan Humphrey and James Harvey the project, which anyone can contribute to, has snowballed with exhibtions of artwork already staged in the USA and UK to celebrate the online launches of volumes I and II of the work. The exhibition at Gallery Hakusen is the first exhibition of artwork from volume III.
Any donations and profits from the exhibition will go to a tsunami relief fund for Otomo’s home prefecture of Miyagi, and Save The Children.
Bartkira in Tokyo, through 21 March at Gallery Hakusen, Suginami-ku, Tokyo
For more on the project visit bartkira.com
Read Oliver Basciano on cartoon characters in contemporary art, from the January & February 2015 issue
9 March 2015
