“Port Journey Yokohama↔Melbourne”
Risa Sato, Utako Shindo, Zara Stanhope, Dan Rule, Yoshie Ota and Prue Crome
1 Feb → 29 June 2013

Port Journey Yokohama?Melbourne is the platform for launching a collaborative, cross-cultural international network that presents and promotes the work of contemporary Victorian artists during 2012-3.

It is comprised of the first stage in the creation of Port Journeys, a network of partners and events founded on the innovative concept of connecting contemporary art with the public in major port cities, and with a great interest in the idea of ‘creative cities’ and the potential for port districts. The first exchanges for Port Journeys began with a collaboration between Melbourne and Yokoahma, the contemporary art space West Space and the multifunctional space Zou-no-hana. This artistic exchange is the commencement of a proposed six members network:

Yokohama?Melbourne?San Diego?Hamburg?Basel

This network supports the international exchange of artistic and cultural dialogues, artists’ residencies and associated exhibition outcomes and other forms of collaborative programming such as talk events, performances, publications and workshops. Those participating are high calibre, professionals practitioners in contemporary art and cultural domain who have been mutually agreed by the network as bringing innovative perspectives from a different cultural context to their publics. Partner organisations were selected on the grounds of having the interest and capacity to organise and support residencies, manage the production and exhibition of artists, and promotion of projects to the public and media.

Yokohama?Melbourne

In 2011, as the kick start of the exchanges of journeys between Yokohama and Melbourne, Utako Shindo (artist) joined the journey as a coordinator and ZOU-NO-HANA invited Zara Stanhope (a curator and researcher) and Dan Rule (a writer & art critique) to Yokohama City, where they made visits to key cultural spots and met local artists, architect, designers and councilors. ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace hosted a series of Open Discussions where the invitees from Melbourne and guests speakers from Yokohama gave presentation and exchanges discussions on the topic such as ‘Art and Culture generated in public domain’ and ‘the effective use of local media for the Creative City’. After the discussion, Rule and Ren Fukuzumi (art writer) both contributed reports to the Yokohama’s Art Web Magazine.

Zara Stanhope came on board as a project curator and, together with the curator Yoshie Ota from Zou No HANA, brought together West Space and Zou-no-hana, and organised the selection of the Victorian artist, Pure Crome. As a multi-functional exhibition/performance space (with a café), Zou-no-hana’s objective is to introduce art to a broad public who may not engage with the art museum or contemporary spaces such as BANKART in Yokohama, as well as the art aware audience who attend art institutions and collect contemporary art. Crome took her research trip in February during which she investigated the site, met artists and suppliers, provided an artist-in-conversation and ran an impromptu workshop. Crome found that Zou-no-hana Terrace appears as a glass wedge inserted into a landscape that connects two sections of the historic Yokohama Port and it opens to public space and the entire port frontage offering an expansive sea view and site. The concept underlying her work for the project is water and light as the element that connects all ports. She returned to Yokohama for 3 weeks residency in July-August and created a dynamic and changing all-of-site immersive atmosphere that involves the participation of general publics to the series of workshops ‘Public Journey’, that of local artists, and collaboration with the dancer and musicians as an opening performance. Her work constantly shifted as an experiential installation accessible to a wide audience. Prue’s work also achieved to expose the conditions of a contemporary working port and the urban redevelopment of past harbour areas offers an engaging and innovative cultural and social subject that can be engaged with in creative and discursive forms as well as site in future network projects.

In May 2013, Yokohama based Artist, Risa Sato will bring her Spaceship project ‘Spaceship Kari-Nui’ to Melbourne. Further information can be found at the project page

For more information for Port Journeys Project, Please visit the project’s Facebook page.