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Art has moved on from the time where it was just a case of painting a picture then hanging it on a wall. Art today is very different in that the artwork very much relies on the space it is put in. Site specificity has shown that art does not only have to be restricted to art galleries but can be found anywhere we look. One of the first people whose site specific artwork caused outrage was Carl Andre. In 1966 he made Equivallent VIII which was bought by the Tate gallery in 1972. It consisted of 120 firebricks arranged in a triangle and was part of a series of minimalist sculptures all of the same height, mass and
volume. When it was first exhibited in 1976 it was not well received from the public and media because of the perception that taxpayer’s money had been spent on paying an inflated price for the collection of bricks. Andre was one of the first to remove the convention of a sculpture being placed on a pedestal. He wanted the viewer to be able to walk on the sculpture and therefore become part of it and experience the very essence of the materials. The work had to be on the floor in order for people to be able to interact with the piece. This was a big step at the time in site specific work however even though the piece has site specific elements it could be moved around and shown in different galleries therefore not making it specific to one area. I don’t think that it is site specific in the purest sense of the term.
When I think about site specific art I think of Richard Serra and Tilted arc. This piece is probably one of the most controversial site specific artworks made
to this day with a feud that lasted almost a decade. Tilted Arc was erected in 1981 in the Federal Plaza New York City, it was a curving wall of raw steel, 120 feet long and 12 feet high which split the plaza in two. People working near the plaza would be engulfed by this huge sculpture which was what Serra wanted, people to feel they had to move with it and see as its shape changed. There were many petitions and a public hearing held in order to dismantle the sculpture and move it some where else but Serra was adamant that the sculpture had been made for the plaza and to remove the work was to destroy it. Serra was so specific on where it was to be placed that if it was put anywhere else Serra would remove his name from it as he felt the sculpture could not exist without the area it was made for. After a long battle to save tilted arc it was taken down in the night in 1989 and lies in three pieces in a warehouse in Brooklyn. Tilted arc is an example of Site specific art at its most fundamental. Here there was no room for compromise it either went where it was meant for or it was destroyed.
When looking at Andy Goldsworthy his work is not only specific to where his art is found but also to the materials he uses. His art is very much land based
And he uses the materials that he finds on the site which includes twigs, leaves, mud, bricks and snow. The work he produces depends on the time of year and the materials that are available. Key concepts of his work are all to do with time and decay; he uses photography to document his work capturing key moments. In his midsummer snowballs exhibition he wanted to engage the public with what he was doing. He placed various snowballs around London each containing a different material- ash, beach, horse chestnut, barbed wire, metal chalk- . He knew that people would not go back to a gallery over a period of time so by placing the snowballs in the town people would see them at different points throughout the day as they went about their daily business. There was also certain vulnerability about them as he was leaving them unprotected and in the hands of the public. Goldsworthy’s work is specific in the sense that it is all about the piece at that precise moment as it will never be that same way again therefore making it impossible to move the work any where else.
When thinking about all these site-specific artists it is clear ther are different perceptions of what site specific art is. I think it is open to the persons own interpretation and what they get out of the work and why.
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Have to say I’m getting really frustrated with this project. I seem to be producing lots of visuals but don’t no why I’m doing them or what they mean. This is the total opposite from what usually happens to me, normally I no what I want my work to be about but lack in the visuals. Just hope I work it all out before I go away as I’m lossing about 2 weeks so starting to feel the pressure.
Go Figure our first serious brief, well that were getting assessed on which is kinda scary. I quite like it so far, in that it’s the first brief where I’ve had an idea fairly quickly, usually takes me a while to get the ideas rolling. At the moment I’m thinking that this project may be a kind of progression from the protection project I did last year.
The focus of the brief is to be on the figure and it has to be site specific/relevant. I’m going to focus on my figure and the way it relates to its surroundings. My aim at the moment is to concentrate on the way my body moves and the shapes that are therefore created. The way that I am going to tie in the site specificity is through the site I choose, the way my body moves will be directly specific to the area it is involved with. The site that I am thinking of working with is the Gully in Oxgangs. I’ve worked with this site before and it’s an area that I seem drawn to. Quite intrigued to see how my body would react to climbing up and down the Gully, just need to figure out why I want to do this.
The more I think about it my work being site specific seems to be the next logical step for this project. In the previous project I hadn’t really thought about where I was doing the movements and why, so in this project I hope to make this more relevant.
As I have been thinking about this project it occurred to me that the way I am going to start off investigating this work is quite similar to the Alex Hartley exhibition I saw at the Fruitmarket Gallery this summer. Some of his finished images were looking into how he approached various buildings and areas. He also mapped out the route in which he would travel across an area. I really liked his finished images just hope my images don’t look like I’ve just copied his. This has happened before where I get an idea then start to research it and come across someone that has done something similar to it already. However even though the approaches are similar I think my finished piece will be different from his and the idea and thought behind mines is different so hopefully it should all work out ok.
Was speaking to Alan about what I had done so far. Think the main thing he was trying to get across was to not worry too much about it being site specific, the main thing is to make the work visually interesting. Need to start making more visuals to help my ideas progress. Things that I am to ask myself are
-What is this work about?
-Why am I doing the climb?
-What is the experience?
If the work does not have to be directly placed in the Gully then where would it be best suited? Bruce McLean’s work ‘pose work for plinths’ is site specific in that the positioning of his body, the use of the plinths and where the performance took place. With this in mind could I make an art work where all the inspiration and thought has came from the Gully but then place it somewhere else and it still be site specific.
Been trying to work out what my work is about and why I’m doing the climb. At the beginning of working with a site I always want to make sure I understand the site so by doing the climb I feel I have been getting a better understanding of the gully and literally getting a feel for it. When I think about doing a climb I think the aim is to get from place to another but in the Gully I’m not really going from one place to another.
Maybe its not really about doing a climb but more about exploring the site.
When I was exploring the site the main thing that I was thinking about was the placement of my body. I had to very much think about where I positioned my body to get around the site so I may not have been thinking about the aesthetics of my body but I had to consider the practicality of where I positioned my body.
Finally feel I’ve got some where with what I’m going to do. Got myself away from thinking about sculpture. From the visuals that I had been creating Neil thought there was something in them to work with further. the images I had been creating were based on the negative space from my climb. They are elongated in the manner of the climb-going up & down-they even look like symbols of some sort. so with these images thinking of making bigger ones with every step from each climb as there is around 100 steps from each climb. then placing them where the climb took place as a way to show what i had done. Bruce McLean done something like this using paper and placing it amongst hills, what I liked about this work of his was he made a point of saying this was the work not the photographs of what he had done as these were documentation.
From the images I had created using the negative space I did the same thing but on a larger scale. I then placed the images where the climb took place but not sure if this is necessarily the right place to put them. After going to see the Richard Long exhibition it made me think about how the images were a kind of documentation of what I went through during the climb. They are my experience of the Gully.
Do the images have to be placed directly into the Gully?
If not then where and would it still be considered as site specific?
If the images are documentation of what I experienced in my site by separating them from my site does this help to engage the viewer as they would not be entirely sure as to what the experience was. In letting the images stand as they are by themselves, in say a gallery situation I would hope that the viewer would read them as is they were flowing into one another, just as each step was vital for the climb to happen.
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Exactly 7 days until I leave for Greece!
