CAMP features five artists participating in the ACAC Artist in Residence Program 2025. For ACAC, 2025 is a period of maintenance, a period of restoration and care meant to ensure the continued use of the facilities in the future. Because of renovation work going on at the ACAC facilities, we are exhibiting at the Aomori Citizens’ Art Gallery inside the JR Aomori Station East Exit Building adjacent to the Aomori Station, instead of ACAC’s exhibition Hall.
This year’s title, “CAMP,” is an English word which carries several meanings: a temporary place of shelter; a place for conducting training in specific skills; a group sharing a given sensibility or doctrine; and the name of a subversive aesthetic style historically shared by various minority groups. “CAMP” represents the nature of ACAC as a place for artists to gather, stay, and confront their own expression while isolated from the comforts of city life; at the same time, it is also a means for surviving states of emergency and exception.
Clark's large-scale durational and participatory drawing CONFLUENCE invites gallery visitors to join her in creating the flow of a river and waterfall through drawing hundreds of thousands of tiny 'bubbles'. This meditative activity is an embodied way to understand how small individual actions can, when repeated and shared, become significant and powerful, like drops of water eroding a mountain or a small stream cutting a deep gorge. CONFLUENCE began in Orkney in 2023 and is now inviting contributors in Aomori to continue the flow.