Walking in Beppu Streets

Beppu Streets

Before I left for Kyoto, I spent the morning walking through Beppu’s inner city streets. I visited Platform 04 (Select Beppu) the Beppu Project shop.

Select Beppu – Platform 04

QAG Staff install Lin’s work

Upstairs was a permanent installation by the artist Michael Lin. It was the same floral pattern used for his installation that I had managed for  APT 2002 (the Asia Pacific Triennial of 2002) at the Queensland Art Gallery. He had completed this new work for the Beppu Project in 2010. An amazing coincidence!

I walked to Platform 07 and then to Platform 02 where I met Japanese artist in residence, Miyuki Kido.

Platform 02 with Miyuki Kido working

She was working on her project, Beppu Memorial Garden, that maps the pattern of Beppu through the food she enjoyed during her stay. She collects the seeds from the food she has eaten each day; then washes and prepares the seed for planting. The day I met Kido the seeds from the watermelon she had eaten a week before were just starting to germinate.

Kido and her seedlings

The germinating watermelon seeds

All of her plants were to be installed in the Platform 02 studio where she had been based during her residency. More time in Beppu would let the garden be more advanced and diverse. After the opening visitors would be able to take the plants home and so the garden would continue to grow.

“Her works are universal symbols and they function where language stops in communication. Ever so gently they exist as a tiny powerline between her heart and everyone else’s.” CAThornton at ctphonehome.blogspot.com

Her process and project Kido likens to mapping the ‘Synapses of Streets’. She photographs each stage; the food; the seed from the foods; the stages of growth of the plants; the presentation then dispersal to new owners. And so the garden will be a map of Kido’s time in Beppu; of the local limes and fruits and foods she has enjoyed. Her gift is to give back and nourish our minds and bodies with her beautiful Beppu garden.

View Kido’s earlier works including Paper Architecture series at Kido’s website.

• connecting
• contemporary art
• japan
• nature
• structure