Hanako Murakami: Radiant Force

Exhibition

September 25, 2026 – February 27, 2027

Artist Hanako Murakami has long explored photography’s origins. Returning to its earliest experimental moments, she looks back to the period before photography was fully named or stabilised as a medium.

Murakami evokes a world of multiple possibilities for image-making through film, installation, olfactory works and unique photographic objects, drawing upon the chemical experiments of scientists working over 200 years ago and excavating forgotten photographic processes through rigorous research and experimentation.

The artist’s first exhibition in Australia, Hanako Murakami: Radiant Force presents recent and new works. These include new works in Murakami’s ongoing Thermography series, featuring glowing plants selected from the gardens of French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, and a perfume conjuring the sensory experience of making photographs in the 1820s. As we approach two centuries since the world’s oldest surviving photograph was made, Hanako Murakami: Radiant Force encourages us to revisit what we think we know about photography.

Curated by Antares Wells, Hanako Murakami: Radiant Force will be held at the Japan Foundation Gallery from September 25, 2026 to February 27, 2027.

Artist
Curator

Artist

Hanako Murakami

Hanako Murakami (b. 1984, Chiba) is a Paris-based artist whose work explores the origins of photography and the persistence of lost or invisible images. Moving between historical photographic processes, artificial intelligence, eye-tracking technologies, installation, and video, she investigates how acts of seeing give rise to images.

In recent years, her research has focused on Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and the invention of photography. Through archival research, the reconstruction of early photographic experiments, AI-generated imagery, and the visualisation of visual attention, she reconsiders the status of images before and after photography.

Murakami was nominated for the New Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2019. Recent exhibitions include the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Tokyo, 2026), Guangzhou Image Triennial (Guangzhou, 2025), and the 10th Daegu Photo Biennale (Daegu, 2024). In 2026, she was a fellow of Villa Albertine in New York, where she conducted research in major photographic archives and collections across the United States. Her works are held in the collections of the Centre national des arts plastiques – CNAP (France) and the J. Paul Getty Museum (United States).

Curator

Antares Wells

Antares Wells is a curator and writer with a specialisation in photography. Her curatorial and research interests span nineteenth-century photographic practices through to contemporary photography, film, and installation. She is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and has previously held curatorial positions at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and the University of St Andrews, where she worked with internationally significant photographic collections and leading contemporary artists. Antares has presented research in photography at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; University of California at Riverside; and Concordia University, Montréal; and serves on juries for photographic prizes in Australia and internationally.