About the 5th Exhibition of Amabiki Village and Sculpture

The land spreads out, sloping gently to the mountain behind the village. Yamato village, venue for the Exhibition of Amabiki Village and Sculpture, is also the beginning of the Kanto plain where the Tokyo metropolitan area resides to the south. A river flows through the village, which is dotted with homes and stone mills where the land is flat. The figures of people working the broad fields and rice paddies appear tiny in the distance. Occasionally, trucks drive past, laden with pure-white granite. Against the sky, the running clouds and Mt. Tsukuba change their appearance from moment to moment. Mt. Amabiki, thickly forested, rises at the edge of the village.
For a long time, art has developed far away from village life. Sculpture soon came to demand "a white cube" as its surroundings. Autonomous works became divorced from any specific location. The Exhibition of Amabiki Village and Sculpture brings together a diverse group of artists, who collaborate with the villagers to imprint their individual ideas and expressions on soil that is at once old and new, through their works of art and sculpture.
Preparations for the exhibition began over a year before it was due to open. If anyone noticed a problem, they shared it with everyone, and the group spent the time to solve every problem carefully. Everybody knew that however good the exhibition was, its success would depend on the quality of the exhibits. Nevertheless, we kept on discussing everything, sometimes heatedly, looking for any improvements we could make to the exhibition. This year, once again, the time we spent together in this simple but arduous work supported the special character of the Exhibition of Amabiki Village and Sculpture, which is more than a jumble of private outdoor exhibits.
With each successive exhibition, our relationship with the local people gets a little better. By the end of the Fifth Exhibition, many of us, not just the exhibiting artists, were already looking forward to the next time. But we are about to lose our common land, our Yamato village, to the Heisei-era drive for municipal mergers. What will happen next? It is too soon to answer that question. All the artists gathered here are keeping calm, continuing to discuss. This year, the Exhibition of Amabiki Village and Sculpture reached the age of eight, and the future still holds many good things. The most important thing is to keep going forward, unhurriedly, one step at a time.
I have just finished clearing away my work, and now, as evening draws in, I am standing on a path in the village, looking round, a little bemused, at the place where my work stood until so recently. As I look back on the days I spent visiting this site, through the seasons for over a year, my mind is already leaping forward to next time. In the pale twilight, tranquility is returning to the mountainside scenery after an interlude of two months, but it looks just a little broader and more noble than it did before.

5th November 2003
Participating Artist, Sculptor
TODA Yusuke