Japanese tradition behind sculpture’s ‘fractured’ look

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Mt Somers Stone Carving Symposium which was held in South Canterbury in February 1990. Thirteen sculptors from across Aotearoa, Zimbabwe and Japan were invited to the symposium and each produced an artwork using limestone.

The resulting sculptures were gifted to New Zealand upon completion and have since been on permanent display in the Aigantighe Art Gallery’s surrounding gardens.

The enormous cherry tree at the bottom of the garden makes a fitting backdrop to a sculpture (pictured) by the Japanese sculptor, Atsuo Okamoto. Atsuo was born in Hiroshima in 1951 and gained a Master’s degree in sculpture from Tokyo’s Tama Art University in 1977.

His practice includes both gallerybased installation and public artworks which engage with their natural environments.

Whether in a contemporary gallery in London or a rugged forest at the foot of Mt Tsukuba, Atsuo’s work employs traditional Japanese carving methods – such as wari modoshi, which translates approximately as ‘‘splitting and returning’’. It denotes a process in which stone is worked and smoothed, only to be broken into un-even segments and then reassembled with the fractures remaining visible.

The process of splitting the stone in wari modoshi requires the artist to abandon control and submit to an element of the unknown. In Mystery of the Unknown – the work Atsuo produced for the symposium – the artist embraces the spontaneous cracks but carves further lines into the stone’s surface, highlighting the interplay between the accidental and deliberate which underpins the act of creating.

With its strong references to Japanese culture and philosophy, Atsuo’s sculpture represents the objectives of the symposium as a whole, which sought to provide a cultural exchange between artists – their various techniques and traditions.