Steve Lawler, the main man behind creative outfit Mojoko, is one of the modern artists using digital art and painting to rework the historic images. Both the original photos and the new artwork can be viewed side-by-side making for a striking and often poignant exhibition. He took five with Zaki Jufri to describe his “ghostly” work.

In your piece “Tales From The Crypt” you take the traditional image of Japanese women and fuse it with ghostly animated characters, similar to manga. What inspired the title?
The original photos looked like they had been dug up, or unearthed, from a Japanese vault. I took something old and created a new visual story. This was the first time I’d used a photograph as the base image. The Japanese women in the old photo are obviously dead now and that’s how I got the idea of ghosts. The original picture looks ghostly as well.

Other than manga, what else inspired you?
Obviously there is a manga influence, but it’s not really a big inspiration. I was more inspired by the idea of all the ghosts and spirits that were released when these old photos were dug up. Like in Ghostbusters when they release the spirits from the safety vault.

What message are you trying to convey?
I wanted to make viewers consider the darker side of the exhibition, exposing the “hidden evils” of the photos.

What do you mean by “hidden evils?”
Instead of looking at pretty pictures, I want people to look at the other things beneath the surface, the darker and more ghostly things.

Technicolour Japan includes work by Steve Lawler, Justin Lee and Flee Circus, and runs through Jul 4 at Vue Privee, 20 Cairnhill Rd., 6339-6271. Free.