In 2006 it was the Australia-Japan Year of Exchange. This year, it would seem, is the Australia-Roppongi Year of Exchange. Not only is a huge exhibition of the late Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye being held in Roppongi at the National Art Center until July 28, but Gallery Ma, the specialist architecture forum run by bathroom- fixtures-maker Toto, is hosting an exhibition of Australia's most famous living architect, Glenn Murcutt.
Superficially, Murcutt and Emily (who is generally known by her first name) could hardly be more different. She was an Aboriginal who lived most of her years in a remote central Australian settlement, and he is a white Australian who grew up, with servants, in New Guinea (now Papua New Guinea) in the 1930s. And yet, the sheer coincidence that now sees them both exhibiting in Tokyo belies a deep-lying similarity: both draw deeply for their work on their continent's unique natural environment.
Murcutt makes houses, most of them tucked almost imperceptibly into natural environments: retreats in the bush, beach houses on secluded cliffs, full-time residences on tropical monsoon floodplains. With deep awnings keeping out the sun in summer or huge sliding windows opening to turn entire residences into open-air pavilionlike spaces, Murcutt's architecture is so integrated with its environment that it is as if it evolved over centuries, as part of nature itself.