Melody House of Food & Music plays host to a celebration of art, music and mixology in collaboration with WKM Gallery and Organikka, a multidisciplinary collective from Brazil and Argentina, bringing their exotic identity to Melody for one evening only.

On 26 March, Melody welcomes guests to experience an exclusive preview of “City Drifter”, a solo exhibition of selected works by renowned Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, one of the most important contemporary Japanese art photographers of all time. A selection of Moriyama’s iconic black and white stills have been especially curated for display throughout Melody’s hallway and serve as a sneak peek of WKM’s Art Week exhibition.

Differing with his predecessors, Moriyama shifted the re-examination of Japanese identity from a post-war context to the city’s popular entertainment instead. Tokyo was under tremendous change before the economic boom, entertainment business and marginal underground cultures became a stimulus to city drifters. By using a candid point and shoot camera, Moriyama produced grainy, shaking, blurred and even distorted images of people, objects and urban environments in the Shinjuku district. These ambiguous images disconnect time and de-symbolise the subject, relocating meaning from surface significance and driving it towards the photographer’s stream of consciousness instead. To him, photographs are fragments of reality and not a source of straight information; it should be something vague that transcends the traditional documentary function of journalism. Shinjuku was an urban stadium of human desires, and he turned his predatory and voyeuristic photographic style into terribly vulgar emotional scars.

In 1983, Moriyama was awarded the photographer of the year by Photography Society (Shashin Kyokai); his subjective black and white photography can be considered a humanised form of photography which mined the deep consciousness of urban masses. Moriyama is coined one of the most important contemporary Japan art photographers; his influential monochromatic visual style rose to a global phenomenon afterwards.

An opening reception in the Melody Bar Lounge will take place at 6.00pm on 26 March, set to Brazilian beats courtesy of Organikka’s Jaayology as well as Japanese vinyl, spanning city pop, tropical, bossa, the seventies and eighties spun by Melody’s own legendary Music Director, Johnny Hiller.

As the evening evolves, guests will move into the state-of-the-art Music Room for a more intimate cocktail experience, also soundscaped by Hiller. Limited edition cocktails (all priced at HK$100), conceptualised by Organikka include the Ethiopian KARKADE SPRITZ, a vodka-based floral concoction made with clarified milk punch, a Turkish tahini fat washed bourbon T FASHIONED with notes of coffee, cognac and cardamon, as well as a DOPPIO MARTINI from Italy featuring rich spike, dark rum and doppio ristretto.

The opening reception in the Melody Bar Lounge will take place at 6.00pm on 26th March 2024. Melody House of Music is located at 100 Third Street, Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong. More information available here