Tracing Water - museum

This was the museum component of the Tracing Water project I undertook with architect Iwaki Kazuya and the Aramachi Community in Japan. The exhibition in which this component appeared, Hojoki - Shiki: the universe of Ten Foot square spaces, was part of a proposal to revitalise the centre of Tokamachi City by embedding small functional spaces into the deserted shopping centre. It involved thirty groups of artists and architects. This exhibition was inspired by Hojoki, a book written in Japan in the middle ages, an account of a man sitting inside a simple ten foot square hut and contemplating troubled times.

Iwaki Kazuya and I designed and built a ten foot square space where farmers from the Aramachi Community came each weekend to sell their produce. Its external walls were constructed from a wooden shelving system. On some of the shelves we placed large river stones, in a reference to the water source that the farmers depended on. Inside we suspended a blue woven sphere, similar to the 100 spheres we installed in outdoor sites around the village of Aramachi. Using reflective mirror panels we transformed the woven sphere into a moving mirror ball.

Tracing Water was exhibited in the group exhibition Hojoki - Shiki: the universe of Ten Foot square spaces at the Echigo Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art at Kinare, in 2018.