My time in Paris will be spent examining the dialogue between pre-Modern art and architecture in a number of key buildings, including churches and palaces, in order to expand my existing knowledge on contemporary site-specific art practice. My PhD thesis, which I submitted in late 2012, examined site-specific art in Australia’s public museums. One of the aspects of site-specificity that I have become interested in, but for many reasons was unable to pursue in my thesis, is the pre-twentieth century relationship between art and architecture, as well as other models of site-specificity such as Visionary Environments (large scale installations, often defined by the maker’s lack of formal art training, and are thus often associated with Outsider Art).
When theorists define or describe
site-specific art, they usually look at art from the 1960s onwards, viewing the
art form as a relatively recent trend that followed the art ideals of
Modernism. However, my belief is that we
can extend our knowledge on contemporary site-specific art by examining the way
in which pre-twentieth century art was usually made for a particular site,
purpose, and most importantly, made in dialogue with architecture. For instance, the altar pieces that we so
often see in museums, cut-off from their original environment, were not
designed as stand alone artworks, but as an integral part of the church and
site. My intention for Paris is to
examine the relationships between altarpiece and museum (such as the Louvre),
and in sites such as the Saint Chappelle, altarpiece and church.
The two other models of site-specificity
that sit outside the contemporary notion of the term are the before mentioned
Visionary Environments, and the studio as museum. For some reason France has many of the most famous Visionary Environments. A few of the sites are close to Paris, so I
will also do at least one day trip during the residency period. The ones high on my list Ferdinand Cheval's Palais Idéal (Ideal Palace) in
Hauterives, south of Lyon; Adolphe-Julien Fouré’s Les
Rochers Sculptés (Sculpted Rocks) in Saint Malo, Brittany; Raymond
Isidore’s la Maison de Picassiette in
Chartres (an easy day trip from Paris). These environments are built
around existing structures, often using local found materials, and while they
are not site-specific in the critical sense of the term, they have an interesting relationship to site.
Similarly, I am interested in examining the relationship between art and
environment in Paris’ studio museums, such as the “l’atelier Brancusi” outside
the Pompidou museum, which is an exact reproduction of Constantin Brancusi’s
studio as dictated by the artist in his will.
My other key aim is to not turn into a blimp thanks to a surplus of eclairs and cheese. Exciting times.
