Naoshima ... the Art Island! (Part I)

Okie doke.. it's time for The "NAOSHIMA"! It has been taking me more than 2 weeks to get back writing about this place.

PREFACE

Naoshima: What and Where about?
Naoshima is a small island (about 8 square kilometers) situated in the Seto inland sea just right below Okayama Prefecture. The island belongs to Kagawa Prefecture of Shikoku Island, but much closer in distance to Okayama than Kagawa. The location was selected initially to be the international camp ground in 1989 with the aim to make it a place where children from all over the world can mingle and for that particular part of the island to be the center for pure and educational cultural area.

In 1992, Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum (now known as the Benesse Art Site) was built with exhibition space for contemporary art together with hotel guest rooms. Throughout 1992-1995, many artists were invited to display their artworks and with the idea of "the Out of Bounds exhibition" in 1994 where artist were asked to display their works outside the building, it began a crucial step for the island to be developed into an open art space. The concept is for the artist to display their works and for their works to last a lifetime on the exhibition spots. It's the place where contemporary art and architecture meets with Naoshima's natural beauty and distinctive culture.

Currently, the island is operated under the management of Benesse Corporation in Naoshima. Famous art sites on the island are as The Benesse House, Chichu Art Museum, Art House Project, Honmura Lounge and Archive, and when we went there were Naoshima Standard Project 2 and also Mandala Art Market. The art sites cover most parts of the entire island: Miyanoura Port, Honmura Port and Tsumuura areas.

How did we come about knowing this place?
Well, of course, Jill knew about it all along since she is in the art field. I, on the other hand, learned about it through a good friend of mine just only recently. One day, Jill and I talked about a new destination to visit and we both thought Naoshima would be our best choice.

Our trip to Naoshima
The trip was made on the weekend of March 31 - April 1, 2007. Trip members were Kee (our usual trip member), Pe (our newest trip member), Jill and I. The trip was solely to visit the art sites, so we took it slowly from place to place on the island.

The car for the trip was Toyota Vitz, total driving distance of about 500 k.m.


March 31, 2007
Pe and I left Kyoto late night of Friday, March 30, after I went to pick up the car, helped Pe moved her stuff to her new place and and had a quick dinner at N'Best's house. Both of us rested at Jill's place for the night to save at least an hour of driving time the following day. Kee, had to stay put in his lab to finish his writing assignment, so we picked him up early in the morning of Saturday at the train station near Jill's place. We left Osaka around 8.30 a.m., took the highway directly to Okayama and drove further on local roads to reach Uno Port and made it just right in time for the 12:15 p.m. ferry ride. Of course, we didn't have time to grab lunch, so we thought we would just cross over to the island and find something to eat there.
ferry ride
The ferry took us 20 minutes at the cost of 280 yen/person (one-way) or 540 yen/person (round-trip), and another 1,880 yen per vehicle less than 4 meters long + driver for a one-way trip. We were greeted with the Red Pumpkin 2006, an art exhibit by Japanese's famous artist, Yayoi Kusamaand the newly constructed contemporary designed "Marine Station NAOSHIMA", the plaza of Naoshima Town Ferry Terminal at Miyanoura Port.

the Red Pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama (credit: Pe)
We hopped on the car and drove directly to Chichu Art Museum to park our car and continue our journey on foot and provided shuttle bus. We first visitted Chichu Art Museum, then The Benesse Art Site. Ran out of time in the evening, left with nothing to eat ever since, we found a local sashimi place in Miyanoura Port area around 7 something p.m. and had both our lunch and dinner there. The island only has limited capacity of accommodation and we didn't beat other people in making reservation, so we had to transfer back to the mainland and spent a night at a huge onsen hotel called Diamond Setouchi Marine Hotel nearby in Tamano-yu area. It worked quite well since we had a room by the sea that we could enjoy a very fresh morning with birdy cries and sea waves morning call and that we could spent time relaxing at the onsen (hot-spring bath).


Chichu Art Museum
waiting for shuttle bus at the Benesse House


April 1 - Happy April's Fool Day!

fresh morning at the hotel
We planned to grab enough food to bring to the island on our second day since we starved ourselves too much the day before. I think we overpacked our food though 'cause we had too much to eat on this day. haha. Anyways, we came back to the island to go over the Art House Project and the Naoshima Standard 2 in which holds special art exhibition since October 2006, on and off for less than 5 months total time, and the Mandala Art Market.

small Mandala Art Market
After being through these projects, we made it back to the Yellow Pumpkin, one of the very eye-catching landmark of Naoshima in Benesse Art Site. If you recognized, it's by the same artist as the red pumpkin at the ferry terminal. The island definitely has by far a lot more spots to see than we originally thought. Eventhough we intended to spend our whole 2 days there chill chill through the art projects, when we were actually there, it was even more time consuming than we thought. I guess it's all because of Art and you need to take your time through it to be able to truly enjoy what you see.

yellow pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama

Naoshima is definitely a place to visit if you have an interest in art, photography, architecture and the likes. We wish we could have spent a night on the Benesse House though it's rather pricy if compared to other accommodation available. The Benesse House is considered one of the galleries with art exhibition as permanent interior decoration, and with the architecture designed by Tadao Ando,, the place should have brought us some special atmosphere. Maybe it means we have to make our trip back here again in the future?

I will get back to the details on each visitted places soon.