‘Spring’. Who doesn’t love spring?

In the West, the common association is with rebirth, resurrection and renewal, a time that is youthful, innocent and beautiful. Spring is the story of beginnings.

In the Orient, the same ideas apply but there are also strong connotations with sexuality. In Japan, shunga woodblock prints – literally translated as ‘images of spring’ – refer to 17th-18th century erotic paintings and woodblock prints. These were originally inspired by Chinese prints called chun gong tu, which can be translated as ‘images to the spring palace’.

In China today, 'spring heart' and 'spring feelings' can refer to lust, love and passion, while the mention of 'spring pocket' (chun doi) in Cantonese refers to the male scrotum. In photography, many artists are passionate about nudes – for example, Nobuyoshi Araki and Robert Mapplethorpe are equally obsessed with photographing flowers (and often suggesting female and male reproductive organs).

In this exhibition at AO Vertical, seven different artists explore both the nude and suggestively erotic images of flowers, using their own personal and cultural perspectives.

Compulsive photographer Araki explores the notion of sexuality in its crudest form, stripped of romance or love, through his bondage images and wilting flowers.

Daido Moriyama portrays Tokyo’s underground subculture in his voyeuristic style of stark black-and-white imagery.

Marc Lagrange is interested in ‘innocence’, or more importantly, the loss of innocence and how much fun this can be. His works reminds us of Helmut Newton, but in comparison, Lagrange’s ravishing models placed in luscious settings have character, and are in charge, and obviously having fun exploring their sexual freedom.

Erwin Olaf brings in the cheekiness with a few works of his 'fashion victim series' where amazing naked aroused bodies are set in a luxury setting and 'beheaded' by a labelled fashion bag...

Brigitte Carnochan, the only female artist in this exhibition, takes a more poetic approach, with her focus on the woman as a fertile creature in both a physical and mental way.

Julian Lee explores the male nude. Inspired by artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Eadweard Muybridge he takes an actively gay view, and uses the male body as a sculptural object.

Hong Kong’s Almond Chu brings his erotic interpretation of the old Chinese tale of the white-haired lady; an old legend of lost and found love.

AO Vertical Art Space, through this unusual exhibition of six international photographers, is charting a daring path of erotic art through the juxtaposed representations of flowers and the nude figure. The symbolic images convey the vibrancy and eroticism inspired by this exhibition, ‘Spring’.

Image: © Almond Chu, AO Vertical