2023 Collection Exhibition ４
Special Section:YOKOSUKA ART VALLEY HIRAKU
ōkoraikon：They wander and search for the invisible spring in TAURA

The Yokosuka Museum of Art holds four exhibitions each year of works from our collection. The works being shown in this exhibition include modern and contemporary Japanese art, together with works by artists with special connections to Yokosuka.

This exhibition, the fourth this year, displays, in Hall 4 (the Asai Kan’emon Hall), antiques and curios that Asai Kan’emon collected and used as motifs in his works. Hall 5 presents depictions of the sea, one of the museum’s collecting policies, while Hall 6 and Hall 7 display the work of Shimada Shozo.

The North Gallery and Hall 8, we are holding Special Collection: YOKOSUKA ART VALLEY HIRAKU—Wandering in Search of an Invisible Spring.
 If you walk along a narrow, twisting road from National Highway 16 towards the forest, you will arrive at the rich natural environment of the yato, narrow valleys surrounded on three sides by steep hills. The name of this district, Tauraizumi-cho, means “Taura’s spring.” As that name suggests, a mineral-water hot spring used to bubble up there, and many visitors came to enjoy bathing in the hot spring. During World War II, however, many navy-related technicians and other workers moved there. After the war, row-house-type public housing was built there. More recently, however, the area’s population has been shrinking as well as aging. Yokosuka Art Valley Hiraku, a project inviting artists to that declining area, was established there in 2018 as part of Yokosuka’s measures to revitalize the city’s neighborhoods and help them develop distinctive characters. At present, four artists are in residence in Tauraizumi; Yakuoji Taichi, Yamamoto Aiko, Orihara Mito, and Mitobe Haruna. Through their interactions with the local people, their expereince of the natural environment of the yato, and the work they create there, they are renewing their styles, day by day.
This special collection introduces where those artists are now positioned, creating as they ponder Tauraizumi-cho’s past, present, and future. It invites new thinking about revitalizing and distinguishing towns through art.

Where is gaze of the artists who have gathered in Taura’s yato directed?