Coming up for Air is the result of a long-term photographic body of work made in Japan between 2008 & 2009 over the course of three visits to the country.

"Though the images were made in Japan they are not essentially about Japan and are more of a reaction to my life in London at the time. Unlike the other more descriptive photographic series I had made, this time the information in the images has been starved or almost in some cases completely denied, like muffled sounds when swimming beneath water. A fictional aquatic world as if viewed from the other side of an aquarium looking outwards. The series is more of a reaction to the modern world rather than an attempted description of it. " - Stephen Gill