Souzou - Exhibition at Wellcome Collection, London

Souzou refers to the practice of 46 self-taught artists living and working within social welfare facilities across Japan. 
The images speak for themselves... This exhibition of Japanese 'Outsider Art' was refreshing, surprising, intimate and communicative. The term ‘Outsider Art’ is an imperfect approximation of another term that does not translate comfortably into English. Coined by British academic Roger Cardinal in 1972, ‘Outsider Art’ follows French artist Jean Dubuffet’s theory of art brut, formulated in the mid-1940s, meaning a ‘raw art’, ‘uncooked’ or uncontaminated by culture. ‘Outsider Art’ has since become an internationally recognised term, commonly used to describe work made by artists who have received little or no tuition but produce work for the sake of creation alone, without an audience in mind, and who are perceived to inhabit the margins of mainstream society. A great show! Kim