Supper Club at the KURA with Duncan Swann
by
Duncan Swann
A night of unforgettable flavours and inspiring conversation with chef Masha and artist Duncan Swann.
Duncan Swann
Duncan Swann (b. 1969, Sheffield, UK) is a British/German painter and sculptor based in Tokyo. He studied Fine Art at the Royal College of Art in London (MA, 2004) and has exhibited extensively across Europe, the UK and Japan in both commercial galleries and museum shows. His work has been shortlisted for the prestigious Jerwood Painting Prize and the John Moores Painting Prize in the UK. Swann’s practice bridges Western abstraction and Eastern aesthetics, exploring rhythm, natural form, and the layered relationship between structure and spontaneity.
Working primarily in oil, Swann constructs surfaces that evoke both organic growth and architectural order. His compositions often draw inspiration from natural processes - branches entwined on supports, water tracing stone -and the subtle interplay between control and chance. In a recent series, Forbidden Colours (OAG Tokyo, 2025), he reinterprets the Edo-period palette of kinjiki - colours that were historically restricted in their use to a specific social class - to question hierarchy, cultural translation, and perception.
Swann’s earlier works explored masking, concealment, and identity through fragmented imagery and complex spatial arrangements. His paintings carry traces of time and memory, balancing tension and harmony in visual form.
He currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan, where his ongoing practice reflects a dialogue between European training and Japanese environment - between nature’s quiet persistence and the structures that seek to contain it.
His new work re-embraces the figure, setting people within abstracted space in a reimagined reality that seeks to evoke the essence of what it means to be human.
