Communities of Practice

Genealogy

Designing a genealogy of my artistic practice was very revealing! Participatory art stems from a wild ride of reactionary and rebellious theatrical, musical and artistic histories, experiments, manifestos and ideas. My own early practice of creating pop up play spaces is so non-polarising and genteel, fit as it is, for the general public to encounter on a lazy sunny Sunday! What a disappointment to my creative forefathers and mothers! The art that made space for participatory practices today literally ram-road their way into existence, challenging accepted norms and artistic form unapologetically. With roots in Vaudeville, through to Dada and to Alan Kaprow’s Happenings, participatory art came of age guided by older siblings of civil unrest, social injustice, feminism and the environmental movement.

It arrived in the wake of 1960’s conceptual art, land art and performance art. All precursors that turned the elitism of art on its head, challenging notions of materiality, form and function and mashing up high ideals with community arts seeking to unite, inspire, educate and politicise entire communities of non-artists. With an emphasis on process and artistic democracy a practice of participation was born.

Exploring participatory art practices that align with my own allows me to contextualise my practice. It helps to know where influences have come from and how they developed. It gives permission in the creative process. It reveals how wide the range of external factors that shape art making processes. An examination of the material histories of my aesthetic interests, and precursors of thought and ideas helps to see my practice in a critical way. This genealogy reflects aesthetic influences which range from land art, textile art and installation art to conceptual influences of social practice, working with children. art in public space, and human/non-human themes.

In order to truly capture the spirit of anti-establishment that this genealogy reflects I decided to present not only a participatory work of my own but kind of hoped to hark back to the theatrical origins from where it began. As such the presentation embodies my practice of the art of doing, I hope in a fun, performative and playful way!

Communities of Practice.

Amy Spiers, a Melbourne based inter-disciplinary artist has described upon reflection of her practice how “At the heart of these activities is a belief that art can serve an emancipatory social function that re-humanizes and re-connects a society rendered atomized and alienated by the forces of capitalism. Such art projects act as humble social gestures or services intended to strengthen social cohesion and promote dialogue between disparate people and communities. Spiers has said that she had become increasingly dissatisfied making art that provided social connections. She believes a better use of art is in antagonism. “Conflict, division and instability do not ruin the democratic public sphere- they are the conditions of it’s existence”

I feel like my own art has taken this turn also and whilst earlier influences might be artists activating urban spaces with surprise play experiences, such as Troy Innocent/Playable Cities and Task Party, Polyglot Theatre/Tangled, Briony Barr/Tape It- Collaborative drawing, Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphries/Pivot, Roman Ondak/Measuring the Universe, Paola Ibarra/Tape Mosiac, Evelyn Roth/Nylon Zoo, Alex Desebrock/The Future Postal Service and Emiliano Matesanz/LILA (Juegos Reciclados), somewhere in the cold dark lockdown of 2020 my work did take a ‘dark’ turn! Current works seek to provoke public spaces such as those of Olafur Eliasson- especially Green River and Ice Watch. Bontia Ely ‘The Murray River River Project. Artist as Eye Witness” and ‘Meninde Fish Kill 2019’. Ely has worked on the site and subject of the Murray River for decades and one of her most recent works responded directly and urgently to the Menindee fish Kill in a powerful and performative way.

I can also see a correlation in the work of Kate Newby and her entangled geologic/anthropomorpic sculptures, and Lita Albuquerque ‘Southern Cross from Stellar Axis-Antartica Ross Ice Shelf (2006) with the use of that incredible chroma-key blue in the landscape!

And of course one cannot simply waltz around the countryside dragging huge swaths of fabric along for the ride, without a nod to Christo and Jean Claude!

Francis Alÿs The Green Line was made between 2004-2005 and recorded on video. Alÿs walked along the armistice border, known as ‘the green line’, pencilled on a map by Moshe Dayan at the end of the war between Israel and Jordan in 1948 dribbling a can of green paint along on the ground as he went. He wanted to raise memory of the green line in the public’s mind. He also sought to ask what the role of poetic acts could be in highly charged political situations, while acknowledging that the relation of poetics to politics is always contingent. (https://www.antiatlas.net/francis-alys-the-green-line-en/)

Clare McCracken inspires with her mobilities works, travelling on container ships in honour of her Grandmother’s long ago journey to China, which serves as an embodied remembering and reconstructing. and travelling across Australia by car to visit kitsch roadside monuments to question their validity, inspired my protest work Closed Studios.

Amy Spiers work ‘Closed to the Public (protecting spaces)’ bring to mind similar questions of public space and who can access it, as my Member of Public Space investigation. I also admire ‘Miranda must go’ and ‘Nothing to see here’ which both seek to question socally accepted and preconceived ways we view aspects of Australian landscape.