Sapporo Art Park - What Better Place to Park Your Art?

18th May, 2008 - After going to Takino Reien (cemetery), we stopped off at the Sapporo Art Park. This is a park dedicated...well... you know what it's dedicated to. Art. The park was opened in 1986, and whilst most of the park's 40 hectares is free, the 7.5 hectare Sculpture Garden requires a ticket (around 600-700 yen per adult).

Below shows the road from (A) Takino Reien to (B) Sapporo Art Park, and finally to (C) Sapporo Station.

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The Art Park has a number of features, but the Sculpture Garden is perhaps the one most widely enjoyed. The garden is an open art-space in which is placed 74 separate art-works . The sculptures in the permanent exhibition are scattered throughout the park which is accessed via walkways that meander through the grassed hillsides and forests.

The sculptures are largely abstract in nature, and sometimes they appear as somewhat bizarre additions to the scenery. 

Other times they seem to hark back to ancient times... Stonehenge apparently a common motif in and around Takino (or more specifically Minami Ku)

A haircut anyone?

There was also more traditional forms of sculpture...

And in places, why you just didn't know where to look.... ?;-)

Er... L-kun... wait till you get a little bit older... then Mummy and Daddy can explain it all... though I'm not entirely sure I can explain the bizzaro triangular Ménage à trois. Mummy... can you help?

Not all of the sculpture is that serious either... some of it is quite whimsical.

Of course, it's not all about the exploits of human-kind... the Art Park is at the end of the day, also a park by itself. And whilst it may not have breath-taking scenery per se, it's nonetheless a really scenic way to spend an afternoon.

Anyway - now for my slight diversion into the wonders of leaves... I love em, and love photographing the interplay of light and leaf.

...Leaf interlude is over...

Aat the end of the day, however, this park is about art most of all... and some of the artworks are truly substantial.

One of the more interesting, and possibly disturbing art-pieces is a giant hollow cone... a pyramid placed at the end of a row of fountains... and on the inside of the pyramid, deep down behind a thick glass plate is a huge piece of ice. Permanently frozen in place. If that were not strange enough, the geometry of the sculpture is such that when you go in there.... well.... I'll leave that to your imagination.

Of course for L-kun, the most fun can be had by just getting out of the stroller and going for a crawl in the grass. And you never know what you might find there....

I'm not sure if L-kun was having some kind of womb-flashback when we saw this... but the temptation of seeing L-kun reaching the summit was almost too much to resist. Luckily for everyone... we did resist however.

It was a good afternoon walking through the Sapporo Art Park, and whilst we didn't get to go through any where near the whole park, we know that there's plenty more to see. They often run art classes here (perhaps not the typical touristy thing to do), and there's also the Museum of Contemporary Art on the grounds. Either way - if you get a chance, and you want to have a break from a hectic trip... then it's a definitely an easy-going relaxing option or a diversion if you're particularly inspired by novel art galleries (but be prepared for a small commute if you don't have access to a car).