ANZAC
In January 2019 my attention was drawn to the changing landscape of what is known as the Domain road precinct which incorporates the shrine of Remembrance and surrounding parklands.
An area that is about to go through a rapid disruption and permanent shifting of the land and streetscape due to the massive Victorian Government Metro tunnel underground rail development.
As I investigate the site that will become my Habitat studio space, these gouache paintings are the initial sensory site-specific images.
Habitat
This research project Habitat commenced in December 2018 and the final Studio that was the artmaking finished in November 2019.
The research evolves from the continual searching and delving into the ongoing, implied ‘narratives’ that are forming within the constructed architecture of my studio at RMIT.
The studio begins as an open clear space with a lino floor and chrome medium weight shelves as the temporary walls,a window facing West to adjoining buildings provide limited daylight it formulates via my observation of the changing landscape within the place of my research. This process involves the portion of land within the site, as seen from the inside: “The resonance of a specific location that is known and familiar.” (Lippard, 1997, p.70). As Mallarme said: “Paint, not the object, but the effect it produces.” (Mallarme 2016, p.75). These words have always resonated with the way I conceive my work. Place has personal memory, “known or unknown histories, marks made in the land that provoke and evoke.” Place as described by Lippard (1997, p.7) is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a person’s life. It is temporal and spatial, both personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there. Under the surface, archaeology is about change. It explores the nature of, and relationships between, culture and environmental change, society and nature. “The notion of the local may sound geographically specific, but how we understand space is affected by how we understand time. What was here is inseparable from what is here: it must all be considered together, without recourse to nostalgia. Those cultures with ways to comprehend greater expanses of time also incorporate greater expanses of space.” (Lippard p.116)
This research project extracts elements which signify a related
juxtaposition, and it contains a felt sculptural manifestation - a spirit that is removed yet which still has presence within the sculptural objects that have been extracted from the site. The intrusion of change brought about by the Metro Tunnel project forms the base narrative.
Lippard, L., The Lure of the Local Senses of Place in a Multicultural Society, 1997, New Press, USA.
Goater, Thierry. "‘Paint, not the thing, but the effect it produces’: The Power of Impressions in Far from the Madding Crowd." FATHOM. a French e-journal of Thomas Hardy studies 3 (2016).
