Cass Matthews

24 August 2009

One of the many ways in which the Triennale engages local community members is through Onigiri events held in each village. At these events villagers make Onigiri from local ingredients to serve to Triennale visitors, creating an opportunity for people to learn about the local area. Yesterday Australia House hosted the Toyoda community's Onigiri event. Four local women spent the morning here cooking and then chatted with visitors for several hours while serving their delicious ume-boshi Onigiri and pickles.

Four lady chefs from Toyoda

Making of the Onigiris

Delicious Onigiris

Visitors enjoying the Onigiris at
the Australia House

Cass Matthews

14 August 2009

Mr Hosaka and family

Today the previous owner of the house, Hosaka-san, brought his daughters from Tokyo to see the Australia House. They recalled stories of visiting their grandfather and grandmother at the house many years ago when they were small girls. They were delighted to find some of their grandfather's objects still in the house and even forming part of the art works.

Miyoko Uchiyama, Joetsu Japan-Australia Society

1 August 2009

I attended Alex's luncheon at the Australia House with other members of the Japan-Australia Society.

From the outside, the house seemed to be quite old (sorry!), but once I set foot inside, I was truly impressed with the installations in each of the three rooms. The artworks were a revelation to me as they were a mix of cultures and showed Japanese culture as seen from the outside.

Richard's work was intriguing! Twenty long white wooden poles, representing smoke from cooking, extended from the roof down towards the illuminated hearth. Some of the poles actually passed through the walls to symbolise smoke escaping through gaps in the house. This work echoed the day-to-day life of villagers. Upstairs, there was a display of charcoal pieces attached to wooden chopsticks, hinting at the meaning behind the cooking that occurred in the house.

I also had the opportunity to talk to Alex. He spoke about his life and how he had emigrated to Australia. His story was very moving, especially because we are from the same generation.

Alex's luncheon with the community

Alex's luncheon

Lucy Bleach

31 July 2009

The lead up to the opening of Australia House has been an extraordinary time. In the midst of working intensively on my installation, 'oral fibre', I was lucky enough to organise interviews with Toyada community members, ably assisted by Cass Mathews and two interpreters, Miyoko san and Yoshi san.

These interviews became known as the 'Yosh dialogues' (yosh is a term uttered when you need to persist at the task at hand – it has been used a lot lately!)

Each member was asked simple questions about the basic jobs they do, how they start a veggie garden, what are some of the typical meals they eat/cook. The gems of information and pride that are revealed in their responses are moving.

The interviews have been edited together to become a sound component to the work.

Lucy interviewing children for a Yoshi
dialogue

Member of the community being interviewed

The work is a mixed media installation with a number of components.

The ears moulded from the community and cast in Tasmanian Leatherwood beeswax, encrust the ancestral cabinet in my room. They are paired up to resemble butterflies, and swarm around light bulbs that spell the kanji character KOE (voice). Like moths drawn to the light, like ears drawn to the voice.

The photographs taken during the casting sessions have been framed and are presented as multiple portraits of the community.

A false ceiling lined with shiki-butons is pierced by a ladder, which if you sit on top of, reveals a cloudscape made from kake-butons, with mirrors reflecting the outside world from the high windows.

Wall installation of the Yamakoshi
village Koi

Ear moulds installed with
community portraits

Ladder leading to the cloudscape

I am incredibly happy and satisfied with the work; it has been through much material and concept refinement. Most importantly I feel privileged to have worked so closely with such an open, good-willed and interested community.

I am now travelling around Japan, undergoing further research for future work, and enjoying some time out with my family, who managed to arrive for the opening of Australia House.

First public visitors to Australia House

Cass Matthews

28 July 2009

A film crew from Niigata Television visited Australia House to interview Lucy Bleach about her project. They also invited a number of the community members who participated in the creation of Lucy's work to speak about their involvement. A round table discussion ensued, which was a wonderful opportunity to hear the community members speak honestly about their initial hesitations regarding the project and how these were completely overcome through their involvement in the creative process.

The program will air on 16 August 2009.

Cass and Lucy with the community members

Lucy talking with the community members

After the round table discussion

Miyoko Shibata, Joetsu Japan Australia Society

25 July 2009

At 1pm on the 25th of July, I joined the opening bus tour of the Triennale that departed Tokamachi station. The waiting room and the area around the station were very cosmopolitan! I could hear conversations in English, French, Cantonese…. Twenty of us, including Embassy staff, got on the bus and the tour started! Most of the people were bilingual, so I did not need to speak in English.

We could only visit a small part of the Triennale (the whole site is as big as the entire Tokyo metro area), but I thoroughly enjoyed viewing the works that blended nature and houses in the villages (though some of the works were beyond my artistic understanding...).

Later that day, there was the official opening of the Australia House with guests from the community. A lot of people crowded into a small space of 12-13 tatami mats! The Australian artists prepared some lovely snacks. Everyone was happy and excited. It was so loud that we could not even hear each other unless we talked loud into each other's ears!!

Opening bus tour

The Australia House opening

Lucy, Richard and Alex's artworks were wonderful.

Richard's work was the first one we saw when we entered the House. He used some white pieces of wood which had been stored in the house for many years.

Alex's work was in the middle room where we had the opening. He also used some old craft materials, plates and utensils, dolls, etc, which had been in the house for many years too.

Lucy's work was in the back room. The work had a number of components - ear moulds taken from the village people, a moving image on the floor and a hole in the ceiling.

Richard's work

Alex's work

Lucy's work

The artists will stay in the Australia House until the first week of August. I hope that a lot of people will have the opportunity to visit the House!!

Richard Thomas

22 July 2009

A couple of nights ago the local "Toyoda" community hosted a gathering and barbeque. It was a fine evening with free flowing sake, plentiful speeches and a generally warm sense of bon homme. With the generous and capable skills of the Australia- Japan Society interpreters we were able to probe the history of the house and its inhabitants through the knowledge of the aged and esteemed long term Urada residents, especially 2 or 3 octogenarians who were forthcoming with their anecdotes.

It appears the house is approximately 150 years old and dates back to the end of the Tokugawa Era, and 4 generations including an earlier resident who went to Kyoto to become a monk, and a rice farmer and a carpenter... an interesting cross section of Japanese society perhaps. The present owner's father had sacrificed much to support his son in becoming a carpenter as he felt there was no future in rice farming; a wise decision perhaps as his son is now president of a construction company in Tokyo. The owner's brother and sister who also grew up in the house also now work for the company.

More than one of the older Toyoda residents asked if we had found any old parchments or manuscripts in the house as it appears the older resident was an accomplished Calligraphy master and Buddhist scholar.

They also informed us that a nearby shrine contains 3 important stones representing Shinto gods which had been bequeathed to the community by the house. These stone figures are very old and come from higher up in the mountains.

It has been a privilege to meet and work amongst these dignified, open-minded and wise people, who have lived most of their lives in these valleys and mountains and have worked so hard under often brutal economic and environmental conditions. They have been so welcoming to us.

Community barbecue

Dignified, open-minded and
wise community people

Richard with an esteemed
long term Urada resident

My project is now almost complete. The work was installed under difficult conditions including constant rain which prevented paint from drying, working high in the hot airless rafters up rickety ladders and getting drenched in soot, dust and sweat.

With much appreciated assistance I have produced a work which attempts to address the highly charged, heavily atmospheric space of the utilitarian loft like space of the house I am working in, in a simple and meaningful way. The work, as yet untitled, attempts an intervention which harmonises with the elemental material of the house and its skilled, archaic construction, and yet provides a counterpoint to its orthogonal, architectural structure.

Richard in progress

The piece is very simply constructed by taking the long, slender poles leaning up against the house (used in winter to deflect the crushing weight of the massive snowfalls) and installing them in a radial, vector like composition "exploding" outwards and upwards from the nexus of the disused hearth, the focal point for energy exchange, sustenance and heating of the dwelling in former times.

The poles would have been sourced from the immediate environment, and indeed the house is surrounded by the dark military green of the conifer forests from which these poles were borne of. Some of the poles in the installed composition transect the walls of the house and appear to be "spearing" the house, or perhaps returning to their source. There is a sense of connecting the outside and inside of the house.

The poles have been painted white to contrast with the soot covered, carbon dense and blackened space in which it is installed. The poles being white may variously also suggest in this context: floating weightlessness, spirit, bones, death, snow, resurrection and transcendence.

In addition to the pole-construction assistant Ayumi and I installed a miniature-mock "carbon forest" consisting of chop-stick "stems" and charcoal pieces found in the house (used as heating and cooking fuel when the house was inhabitated - and produced from Niigata wood)

The fundamental ecology of the house, the community and its surrounding area is largely centred on the metaphysics and energy exchanges of forest, plant growth and the element of wood. The work attempts to address the spatial, ecological and material complexity and ambience of the house and form a provisional "ecology of dwelling" referring to both the in-habitation of the house and the house's inhabitation of the forest environment. In a broader sense the piece continues a long term dialogue and visualisation of the carbon cycle, and its ubiquity and importance.

Yoshikazu Kondo, President, Joetsu Japan Australia Society

19 July 2009

Today, I did some weeding around the Australia House and attended a BBQ in the Urada area with two other members from our society and seven postgraduate students from the Joetsu University of Education. During the BBQ, Australian artist Richard listened to a knowledgeable elderly resident talk about the history of the region and the old houses in the area. It was exciting for me to be able to assist the local people, Australian artists, supporters and festival staff communicate and exchange their views with each other.

Weeding in the Urada area

Joetsu Australia Society member with the Urada friends

Richard Thomas

16 July 2009

My project is underway, using only materials found around the house. I am attempting a spatial intervention which would connect the outside and inside ecologies of the house by creating a series of vectors using the long wooden spars around the house. I am hanging these poles in a radial configuration centred on the fire- hearth set into the floor of the house. The spars would have been used to hold back the snow in winter. I have painted them white as a kind of an inversion of the space, which in itself holds a story, an atmosphere and a metaphysic which is intense and complete within itself, which my work will articulate and celebrate.

Alex Rizkalla

8 July 2009

The final clean up took place last weekend with our fantastic volunteers, Ms Watanabe and Philomena. The last of the excess was removed by Tetsuo-san the ever generous builder. Hopefully, this Friday the gas is turned on, the kitchen completed and the house renovations behind us. Lucy and Cass are living in the house acclimatising to the growing number of insects and reptiles around the place. Our resident snake has remained in hiding since its discovery on Sunday. Thanks to all the people who have helped to make Australia House a reality.

The final cleanup

Ms Watanabe, Philomena and Lucy

New resident

Removal of the last of the excess

Renovation nearly finished

Lucy Bleach

25 June 2009

Another casting session, this time using a silicon product which arrived from Australia this afternoon. It is less messy, quick, and importantly I can make multiples from one mould. I forgot to mention in my last update that I have been baking batches of Anzac biscuits to give as 'thank yous' for each resident. I think the sweetness and super crunchiness (getting used to a different oven) is going down well. The photos that have been taken to document the process are actually so compelling I think I will use them as part of the work... the work keeps evolving!

Second earcasting session

Silicon mould of an ear

Lucy Bleach

23 June 2009

We had our first casting session of the village residents' ears tonight! Was an amazing experience, because it is a process that requires a lot of trust from the participants. I had Artfront staff member Saori Arai with me, who effortlessly translated the intricate process, which was a huge help, as sometimes gestures can only go so far!! There was much good-will in the room, and everyone very patiently lay on the tatami mats while I poured dental alginate over their ears!!

I have brought Tasmanian Leatherwood (rare rainforest species) beeswax with me to cast the moulded ears.

The results are great. We have recorded each resident's set of ears so that when the exhibition is over, they can take a pair of Leatherwood beeswax ears home.

First earcasting session of the residents

Lucy Bleach

18 June 2009

Souhei Imamura-san (L)
Tetsuo Iizuka-san (R)

Met up with Souhei Imamura san, the architect in charge of the renovations of Australia House. It was great to have an in depth discussion about his ideas behind the potential uses of the space, opening areas up, and making others more private. We talked about how quickly the work has progressed, but also discussed the task of CLEANING UP after the building work is finished. Plenty of work ahead!

Lucy Bleach

17 June 2009

Best koi (carp) in the world

Drove to Yamakoshi today, just outside of Niigata. This area is famous for breeding THE best Koi in the world. and I visited Matsuda Koi Farm, who gave me a tour of their various breeding ponds. I filmed a range of fish. This may be a component of my installation.

Lucy Bleach

16 June 2009

Australia House is continuing to undergo it's transformation at a cracking pace. Now the builders are working in the kitchen and bathroom areas, which have undergone major reconstruction, including installing a besser brick foundation wall, laying new bearers and flooring joists, and constructing a new stud wall. It is going to be very sugoi. Also the area behind the house has been cleared to become a parking terrace, allowing for great access and parking for approximately 6-8 cars. It's hard to imagine that there was a massive pile of rubbish here 3 days ago.

I have been working with the builder and carpenter to tweak a few things for my installation... feels really exciting to get a sense of ideas starting to take shape. Testuo Iizuka-san has remarkably good communications skills, given my Japanese is still very much at a civilities level! He and the carpenter have totally understood my concepts.

Building the kitchen

Building the bathroom

Building the parking area

Lucy Bleach

14 June 2009

Today went to Toyoda River Park to help some of the local men weed a picnic area. The rainy season has begun, so we were all tucked into our various wet weather gear! This was fun, and a nice opportunity to help them, as they will be helping me. We will commence casting the ears the week after next.

Lucy Bleach

13 June 2009

I arrived in Echigo on 5 June and went straight to Australia House. Fantastic to see the old building before any renovations started. Stumbled around in the dark. The old farm house is imbued with layers of life (and full of possibilities). Kept returning during the week, to get a good sense of the place, measure up, sort through remaining artefacts, many being museum worthy.

Renovations started today, at subarashii speed! Unbelievable to see the transformation taking place so quickly... old floors gone, new ones put in, suddenly making dark spaces become light and bigger.

Renovation of the Australia House