The second of 5 exhibitions opened tonight at Art Takahashi - a purpose built house/artist studio/gallery in the rural city of Hikone in Shiga Prefecture - a couple of hours drive north of Osaka.
Purposely chosen as the site for Ben Cove's "Look-See" for its architectural singularity, Art Takahashi proved a challenging but ultimately ideal space for Ben's work. The plasterboard dry walls struggled to hold some of Look-See's heavy individual components, but working well with Koh-san and Mio-san we worked around the few problems, finishing about 5 minutes before we opened.
This is a familiar right-to-the-wire experience at AirSpace, and from talking to others in the artist-led world, in lots of spaces. But I think we caused a little consternation for Takahashi's owners as we neared the 6 o'clock opening, and a bit of a(be)musement for some of those early visitors who got the bonus of watching us finish the install.
Once open, again, the night was great - really busy - over 40 guests in a small space - really engaging with the work - Koh and I did our now smooth double act, presenting AirSpace, the Indefinable Cities project and Ben's work - and we got a sense that the audience were fascinated with Ben's architectural, modernist-anti-modernist thing. Amazing food and drinks - including some Japanese red wine from the local area - really helped after a couple of full-on install days.
The two works had quite an odd relationship, almost sitting in opposition to each other, completely different in scope and form and material - a comment on the differing arts practices of two different arts cultures.
A late night drive back to Ashiya, via Kyoto to drop IC artist Ayaka off, and tomorrow onwards and westwards to coastal Uno, Okayama for Hirofumi Suzuki's Diary of a Stranger and Onomichi in Hiroshimaya Prefecture on Friday for Emily Speed's Garbuglio/Tangle.
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