At The Heights:
Responding to the elemental and ephemeral in site-specific art work
{Master of Creative Arts Examination: Deakin University}
Abstract
Throughout 2021, I have been creating site-specific artwork at The Heights, Newtown, a National Trust of Victoria property in the city of Geelong. This practice-led research was conducted in the gardens of the property each Thursday, the day on which a group of volunteers routinely meet to maintain the property. During a series of lockdowns I continued investigations from home and around the perimeter of The Heights, which is within five kilometres of my home.
Accepting the changing restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic in regional Victoria as a given, like the weather, I ask, what constitutes a site-specific art practice under these constraints? The three ephemeral installation projects made during this investigation, Dovecote, Five Stumps, and Bluestone, respond specifically to the garden, its outbuildings and the weather. These projects utilise a set range of materials: paper, string and clay. To document this work I ultimately used technological devices I had at hand: smartphones, a nano projector and Zoom communications.
The artwork was made through a process which responds to site while contemplating perception, as discussed by anthropologist Tim Ingold and ecologist David Abram as they reflect on the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The work also responds to artists Eva Hesse and Marisa Merz’s material sensibilities and strategies such as repetition; the art movements of Arte Povera and Land Art as an approach to site, materials and ephemeral art.
The processes of the material investigations between site, home and digital presentation, speculate upon a reciprocal exchange between the body, architectural and organic forms and the tensions experienced in the difficulties of this exchange during the current pandemic.
Covid Statement
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on my project, but it has also opened up new possibilities for my creative arts practice. Adapting my site-specific artwork for viewing online, rather than at the site it responds to, opened up a number of novel learning experiences. For example, negotiating the tensions between site and home by documenting my work through moving images. This has been an exciting expansion of my art practice that I intend to continue in relation to site-specific art.
Nonetheless, these new directions are tempered by the loss of a physical presence and experiencing of the artwork on site. In person, the work is perceived in three-dimensional space with a host of sensory information that online interactions lack. To present the work online, I am mediating what the viewer sees through framing devices and corresponding text on a flat surface, while the viewer chooses how to navigate through the digital site.
Background image: Goh, D. S & Davis, D, (draftsperson.) The Heights, 140 Aphrasia Street, Newtown. , 1979. http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/143960
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my gratitude to the National Trust (VIC) volunteers at The Heights for their welcoming and sharing spirit, and their wealth of historical knowledge; and to the staff of the National Trust (VIC), particularly Claudette Brennan for encouraging artistic involvement at the site. I am also deeply grateful to my supervisor, Dr Sean Loughrey for his guidance and encouragement; and also to the 2021 cohort of Creative Arts supervisors and students at Deakin University, for their time and care, which was instrumental in the development of my project.
And thank you, dearly, to Peter Blackert, Kendall, Leilani and Miles.