About the exhibition of AMABIKI 2008

The Surroundings of the Sculptures

The scenery of the village hillsides, which I have visited so often, is beautiful. It is good in different ways in each season. For artists of "Amabiki Village and Sculpture", the scenery is certainly the first thing that sustains their passion. As you walk through the woods, there are works that reveal themselves little by little. There are sculptures that are seen from afar on the paths between rice fields, and come gradually closer. Others appear suddenly round a bend in the road. Sculptures of various forms are dotted through the hillsides of the village.
The participating artists visited this area many times, starting over a year ago, looking for the right spots to place their works. It's a pleasure, but it's also difficult. The act of deciding where to put your sculpture amid the broad expanses of village hillsides is the same as starting to create the work. Besides the actual installation site, the journey to encounter the sculpture is also an epilogue to the space that surrounds it. Artists are, in a broad sense, required to have this kind of spatial perception and feel for the air of a place. Where many works are installed, the strong feeling that they exert a presence, rather than merely decorating the place, is an expression of the individual artists' deep concern for space.
The independent running of Amabiki Village and Sculpture is certainly one of its greatest characteristics. That independent operation is tough, and for the artists it is a harsh burden. But what we get in exchange for that toughness is huge. For the artists, staging an exhibition in which everything is determined by ourselves, either individually or collectively, is like stripping ourselves bare. There are few environments in which we can expose ourselves and express our thoughts in the shape of our works, and it is the search for such places that is really the "tough" thing for us.
One point in which this Amabiki Village and Sculpture is very different from those before is that it is a kind of participation in Ibaraki prefecture's national festival of culture. The artists were very worried that this exhibition, which has continued in the simple form of an independent operation, could lose some of that simplicity. Discussions over whether or not to join in went on for several months of discussions, once a month.
The book "Forgotten Japanese" by the folklore scholar MIYAMOTO Tsuneichi describes community gatherings in long-ago farming villages. We can't help noticing, with a wry smile, that the scene is very close to the way "Amabiki Village and Sculpture" works. In farming villages long past, the discussions continued endlessly for even trivial decisions, until all villagers agreed, sometimes going on around the clock for days.
"Amabiki Village and Sculpture" takes its time, like those villagers in "Forgotten Japanese", and in future it will go on with its leisurely progress.

YAMAZAKI Takashi, participating artist