Islands awash with artistic inspiration

A PHILANTHROPIST reaches out to battered communities in the Seto Inland Sea.

Hiromi Tango

MOST people, if they set out to create a utopia, wouldn't choose to base it on a chain of islands where several have been poisoned previously by industrial waste. And they probably wouldn't choose art as the means of revival, or a path to creating a "paradise on earth".

By any measure, Japanese billionaire Soichiro Fukutake is an iconoclast and a free thinker. He has stuck to his vision and pumped vast sums of his own money into putting the islands of the Seto Inland Sea in a quiet corner of southwestern Japan on to the global contemporary art map.

Speaking with The Australian at the launch of the second Setouchi Triennale, he angrily points to Tokyo's indifference to the decline of regional Japan as his inspiration to act. "Because I can't use violence, I want to use contemporary art as a way to raise a revolution," he says.

Japan is not alone in suffering in rural depopulation as well as vast disparities in opportunities, education and incomes between its capital and the regions. Perhaps, though, the contrast is particularly stark in Japan, with its glittering neon-lit capital contrasting with rusting villages where the schools are empty.

With the financial backing of Fukutake, president of Japan's Benesse Corporation, 12 of the islands, accessible from the ports of Takamatsu and Uno, have been transformed into living exhibition spaces for a range of Japanese and international artists.

On the island of Ogijima, you can see the fruits of his labours in abandoned houses that are filled with absorbing and attractive works of art.

Haruki Takahashi's Sea Vine is one example: an ornate ceramic reconstruction of a local vine that grows by the ocean. Suspended at waist-level on fishing line, it fills almost all of the living area of the house. On one side of the main room, a tendril from a live specimen of the same vine encroaches into the room, giving a clue to the fate of similar homes that aren't part of the project.

Sitting in the darkness inside a nearby storage shed, Mayumi Kuri's beautiful Memory Bottle comprises almost 1000 hanging bottles, each lit by a small LED. Inside each bottle is an object from the island: a photo, toy or knick-knack, many of which have particular significance to residents. Kuri has arranged them in colour-coded clusters that hang from the roof. The nearby island of Teshima is also home to several works, inside disused houses and in a museum. This year, the Setouchi Triennale has featured two Australian artists, Craig Walsh and Hiromi Tango, a couple who have produced a collaborative sculpture and digital piece on Teshima called Traces - Blue in the tiny port of Kou.

The pair have done site-based community projects in Australia, as well as some projects in Japan, and were supported by the Australia-Japan Foundation in producing the three-part work. The centrepiece is two disused fishing boats that sit in their usual location in a corner of the island's harbour. One of the boats has been completely covered in acrylic mirrors, which take on the colours of the surrounding sea and sky, ranging from deep blues and greens in the day to golden orange hues at dusk and dawn.

"It reflects the community, but it also kind of disappears," Walsh says. "So it reflects the current state of the village - fishing is in decline and there is a change - in terms of art tourism and a new economy that is happening here."

Locals embraced the project, fashioning a traditional bamboo flagpole and contributing disused flags that were intended to celebrate the arrival of a new boat or a bumper catch. During Walsh and Tango's stint on the island, Tango, with locals, completed several sculptural works made from fabric, second-hand clothes, ropes, octopus traps and other locally sourced materials.

One of these works is entitled Ropes and anchors the mirrored boat to the shore. The other piece is more substantial: a large colourful tree-like sculpture that sits inside a disused house alongside three monitors showing interviews with locals.

The couple showed their work last month to Fukutake, who toured Teshima and Ogijima a few days before the opening of the Triennale with the Australian ambassador to Japan, Bruce Miller. Australian artists have contributed to the works on the islands and participated in the inaugural triennale in 2010, as well as the related Echigo Tsumari Triennale.

Fukutake says he has always been interested in art and returned to this area when he was 40 following the death of his father. "The first thing I did was establish a camping site on Naoshima Island, as that was what my father had wanted to do," he says. "That change of scene made me realise the magnificence of this area and how it compared to the craziness of Tokyo. As I visited the islands I came to realise how some of the most beautiful places in Japan - such as Teshima and Ogijima, for example - have suffered damage from depopulation and other causes. I wanted to do something about it, and that became my motivation for this project initially.

"The aim of the project is to present art that awakens the people and revitalises the region and helps locals."

It's a strategy that seems to be working. Teshima and Naoshima previously were best known in Japan for being at the centre of toxic-waste dumping scandals. Now Naoshima, the centrepiece of Fukutake's venture, has increased its population to 3000 and is visited by 400,000 visitors a year.

Naoshima is home to the Tadao Ando-designed Benesse House hotel and museum, as well as the Chichu Art Museum, where the well-heeled Fukutake keeps five works from Monet's Water Lilies series. Visitors also can see the Art House project - again, works inside disused houses - and a museum devoted to the work of Korean-born artist Lee U-fan.

Fukutake and artistic director Fram Kitagawa are also the driving force behind the sprawling Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, which has the same aim of revitalising a regional area, this time in the mountains in Niigata between the capital and the Sea of Japan. The Benesse chairman is convinced of the merits of regional revitalisation and believes Japan and other nations with dominant urban centres are making mistakes.

"That is one of the reasons Japan is in such a miserable situation today," he says. "Everything - politics, economy and culture - is concentrated in Tokyo. But that place is such an inhumane, sterile space without any evidence of nature. I think it is impossible to make decisions that are truly in the people's interests in such an environment. The government always gives the highest priority to what it calls the nation's interests, but they never talk about people's interests. Our country has achieved economic wealth but our debt levels are the world's highest. In that sense Japan is a rather pitiful country."

This year's triennale features 175 artists from 20 countries and will take place across three seasons, spring, summer and autumn. Fukutake says he wants to see artist collaboration continue strongly with Australian and Asian artists, as well as those from Europe and the US.

The Setouchi Triennale runs from March 20 to April 21, from July 20 to September 1 and from October 5 to November 4.