PRUE CROME

Upon discussion with directors and curators of arts, city officers, government staff and others in Yokohama and Melbourne, “PORT JOURNEY Yokohama ⇄ Melbourne” formed a partnership with West Space, Melbourne’s leading artist-run organization in December 2011. In support of Melbourne-based curator, Zara Stanhope, we invited Melbourne artist Prue Crome to participate in the Yokohama end of this exchange program with West Space.

Crome exhibits her dynamic site specific installation works which often transform not only the space but the function of the space, by using readily available materials in her work such as artificial light, natural light, color, lines, along with physical materials.

Prior to her exhibition planned for ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace in July 2012, Crome visited Yokohama in February 2012 for research. She also conducted an artist talk, in which she introduced her art practice and shared about her research in Yokohama, where she investigated various materials and approaches to compose her new site-specific installation work in the unique space which ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace offers. She held pre-installation workshops and had good communication with citizens of Yokohama.

Crome came again to ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace for her first exhibit in Japan, which featured a three-week on-site work. She explains that art can be an accumulation of individual experiences and activities that take place in day-to-day life. She attracted people by visually transforming the terrace through color and light that conjure the feeling of the very sea that connects port cities.

A number of performing arts and workshop programs took place during the exhibit. The transformation of the space by Crome was documented as the overlapping creativity and experience of visitors and artist alike.

DIRECTORS NOTE

In 2009, ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace was set up as a base to promote “Creative City Yokohama;” from the outset operating under the concept of “cultural commerce” as a way of presenting the artists’ creativity and apply it directly for the benefit of the citizens and city of Yokohama, and to contribute to the city’s community concept itself.

The “PORT JOURNEYS” project, first conceived in 2011, was to be an extension of this concept: a program involving port cities abroad which also promote creative community, and for ongoing mutual cultural exchange among us. This would involve not only the exchange of the artists themselves, but exchange at the administrative level and among the frontline staff at the bases of cultural exchange as well.

In 2012, thanks to the good services of the Australian Embassy’s Culture Centre in Tokyo, actual discussion commenced with Melbourne curator Zara Stanhope regarding the revitalization of Melbourne’s harbor area and other related creative activity, in addition to potential art centers to partner with ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace in the endeavor. Eventually, we were able to put on an exhibit for the work of Melbourne artist Prue Crome at ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace in July of that year.

During her month-long stay, Crome produced her “site-specific” installation with the collaboration of local citizens who attended her workshops and events. Making use of the abundant light at Yokohama harbor in the summer season, she and her helpers found transparent color sheets and balloons to be excellent material for projecting her image in our Terrace.

Transforming daily, the month-long project marched toward its finale and in the meantime revealed the appeal, the issues, and the differences of the two cities. And if the installation project had not been limited to a schedule, there is no telling how long it may have gone on in perpetual metamorphosis.

Finally in May 2013, a Yokohama-based artist Risa Sato was sent to Melbourne where she also carried out her very unique activities. 

With this, we finalized one complete cycle, serving now as a basic model for our project. However, with this we have merely gotten our “foot in the door.”

As we continue our efforts in promoting and sustaining this project, we believe it is also vital that partner cities apart from Yokohama also form unique relations and carry on active exchange with one another as well, and that in the near future other port cities will join and connect through a new expanding and organic network. This project is to be a journey, without a central focal point, for the free and fair development of progressive cities such as our own.

Tsutomu Okada
Art Director of ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace

REFLECTION
Ways of Seeing and Being 

The month I spent at ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace enabled me to share with the public my interest in the phenomenological consideration of being in time and space, and also to share my way of being and seeing and how I use light as an ephemeral material to change the perception of an everyday space.

Aside from the casual daily interactions, there were organized events for the people to interact with the work. An improvisational dance and sound performance explored the reflectivity and colour forms in the work at that point in its evolution. I employ both mathematical and intuitive decision-making for placement of interventions, using all my senses and movement to unravel the relational characteristics of the space. The exciting improvisational performance by Mineko Saito and Kunikazu Tanaka brought more awareness of the impact of my own and others’ energy flow within space.

There were also two workshops where the public’s input informed the eventual outcome of the work and I came to appreciate people’s willingness to engage on a conceptual level, using only abstract forms. I found the exchange very powerful as we shared our sensitivity to the space and each other. The outcome became secondary to the cultural exchange that ensued, as we were all immersed in the universal phenomena of light and colour as a way to enrich the experience of every day.

Prue Crome

Organized by ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace
Supported by Arts Victoria, West Space
In association with Australian Embassy Tokyo
Exhibit materials supplied by Nakagawa Chemical Inc.
Planned and Produced by Spiral/Wacoal Art Center
Exhibit Assisted by Zara Stanhope (Independent Curator)
Coordinator: Utako Shindo (Artist)

RELATED PROGRAMS
WORKSHOP ON MARINE DAY / July 16 13:30–5:00

PUBLIC JOURNEY “IMMERSION in COLOUR”
July 22 11:00–3:00 and July 29 16:00–8:00

RECEPTION PROGRAM, July 23
MINEKO SAITO x KUNIKAZU TANAKA PERFORMANCE
“REFLECTION !” 
ARTIST TALK BY PRUE CROME  

PORT JOURNEYS DIRECTORS TALK
July 31, 19:00 –1:00
Speakers: Zara Stanhope, James A. Enos, Tsutomu Okada
Special Grants by Embassy of the United States of America
Cooperation: West Space, The Periscope Project 
In association with Australian Embassy Tokyo

GOOD MORNING, EARLY BIRDS!
August 4 7:00
Yoga Instructor: Yukari Ota (Dancer, Choreographer) 


Breakfast menu by Haruna Nakayama
(NEXT KITCHEN, food designer)

DANCE WORKSHOP “ADVENTUROUS JOURNEY IN AN OCEAN OF LIGHT”
August 22 and 23 10:30–2:30
Instructor: Mineko Saito (Dancer, Choreographer)