Presentation of the Art Work

 

 

Due to financial limitations, I could not a afford to get the prints done proffesionally, so i took the opportunity of using the Uni large format printer which worked OK but the colours and contrast where not to a high enough standard for an exhibition. I also sourced my adhesive foamcore at 'Hang It' picture framing who i have got lot of work done in the past. They showed me the technique of mounting photo's onto foamcore and i gave it a go. Although time consuming, it worked out well.

 

 A lot of thought went into how i was going to present the work, i didn't want to do a typical gallery instalation of all the photos hanging at eye level. So i played around with presenting them in a circle which ties in with the actual artwork itself. So i used a plate on a overhead projector to get the outline of a circle. This took about 3 hours working out the configeration of the photos and still at the end of the 3 hours i still wasn't totally happy with the presentation. I planned on using double sided tape to install the photos but it didn't stick. I then used blue tac but i was nervous that all the photos would fall down over night.

 

 

 

 

 

When i came back the next day and looked at the photos still hanging there and seeing the presentation with new eyes i was happy with the visual representation of the Land art project. 

 

 

The feedback from others in the class was very positive and encouraging, there was a sense of people wanting to keep looking at the work. I really want to keep developing Land art and relational aesthetics in my art practice. 

 

 

How the artwork relates to the changing environment

 

 

 

This photo was takent he following afternoon. I was plesently surprised to discover that the sculpture hadn't been trashed. As the position of the work was deliberately put in a place that everyone walks.

This Photo was taken sunrise 2 days later at sunrise. I took a large step ladder to get a higher persective. I was excited to get some clouds that morning to give the artwork a different context givein texture and colour in the sky.

This was teh same morning.

 

 

This photo was taken 3 days after on high tide, again i was surprise to see that no one had trashed the work. When i was photgraphing the work the following days i asked the general public what they thought of it and acted ingnorant of who did it. the response was really positive and people where intersted in who had created the work.

 

This photo was taken in the afternoon 5 days after the work was created, this was after a cycle of king tides and i was not expecting to see any reminence of the work.

 

The final work

 

 

 Land art is all about going into nature and responding to and exploring what is already there. I planned the day around the tide cycle, during spring tides the beach is covered in water at sunrise and sunset which is the best light for protographing the work. So i picked a day coming off the neap tides as this is when the sand is exposed at sunrise and sunset. It also gave me a couple of days to photgraph the peice as it interacts with the environment and the general public.  So i went out the night before planned the location. I also invited some friends to come and be a part of the creating of the sculpture.  



 

 

.    So early the next morning i went out to start digging. It took 8 hours to dig which was absolutely grueling. Digging 8 hrs in the hot build up sun, i went through 15litres of water. I really enjoyed working with the different colours and textures. I also took down a couple of shovels to provide an opportunity for anyone who may have been interested to help out with the work. As i was building the work lots of people came and talked about it and engaeed with the work.    

After going hard digging all day, more people arrived to help out. This turned into a really fun afternoon with everyone helping to get it finished before sunset in order to photograph it in the ideal light. I really enjoyed that aspect of the work incorporating principles of relational aesthetics. It was a lot more enjoyable working along side others and the feedback i got from all those who where involved was really positive.

  

We got the sculpture finished by the low rich afternoon light which casts shadows over the ripples in the sand. It was a really great feeling for everyone to step back and watch how the peice interacted witht he beutiful afternoon light.

 

 

 

 I used photographed the work with a Canon 50d using a 24-105mm L series lense. To get a perfect panorama i used a Realloy right stuff panoramic head for my tripod. This allows me to shoot multiple photos with very little distortion rotating the lense around the nodal point. I used a Cokin neutral density gradiant filters over the front of my lense which allowed me to get the detail in the foregraound and a balanced exposure for the sky. This created a really interesting affect.





 After the sun had gone down and the beutiful pastel colours of the sunset came out, it created the low light conditions to shoot some slow exposure shots. So i got everyone to run around the sculpture and i photraphed a stitched panorama using a very low shutter speed. In shooting a long exposure panorama in low light, i had to get the ballens right. If you expose the photo too long, the light changes by the time you get around the the final frame in the panorama and it doesn't stitch properly. This photo encapsulates the sense of fun and enjoyment that was had in everyone being a part of the artwork.

Relational Aesthetics

Nicolas Bourriaud

It’s a prologue, in a way. Ten years ago, it would have been completely impossible to consider a DJ as an artist for example. Now, it’s normal. Nobody would even think of saying "you’re already playing pre-existing records, so you’re not an artist." That’s vanished. The idea of the artist as a kind of demi-god creating the world from a blank sheet of paper is something that has just vanished from our every day culture. The fact that the DJ or programmer or artist uses already existing forms in order to say what they want to say is something that is certainly the most important thing at the moment because it totally goes beyond the art world.

I think the most important thing is you don’t have to be intimidated by knowledge and by history. Most people’s relation to history can be summed up by this image of somebody trying to walk into a room with a lot of porcelain and fragile things and not wanting to break any of them. It’s super-precious and it has to be kept exactly like it is. I think all these artists do exactly the opposite. Which is they don’t care about any historical object, they just use it and try to understand what’s in it. And these are two different ways of seeing history — first as a commodified history, doing nothing to change it - or revisiting it all the time and feeling totally free.



For Bourriaud, 1990s art is:
. relational art, whereby
. ‘meaning’ is interpreted collectively, socially, rather than intimately or individually…
. entirely beholden to environment and audience…
. the viewer not simply addressed, but allowed/encouraged to be or start a community or take an action…
. thus “relational aesthetics’…
. this relational art is a direct response to shift to service-based economy, virtual relationships and the web, and globalization …
. and ushers in a shift in attitude toward art for social change: “Instead of trying to change their environment, artists today are simply learning to inhabit the world in a better way.”
. such works insist upon use, as opposed to contemplation, in viewing art
. artist as DJ or programmer, rather than creator/initiator
. relational art is a direct outgrowth of installation art
http://eightysevenflorida.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/antagonism-and-relational-aesthetics-by-claire-bishop/

Nicolas Bourriaud

Excerpts from Relational Aesthetics, 1998
Their works bring into play modes of social exchange, interaction with the viewer
inside the aesthetic experience he or she is offered, and processes of communication in their
concrete dimensions as tools that can to be used to bring together individuals and human groups.
They therefore all work within what we might call the relational sphere, which is to today’s art
what mass production was to Pop and Minimalism.


In looking at relational art and the philosophy behind it, there is a lot i like about it. As a youth and family worker and outdoor educator i have always looked at creative ways to bring people together and share positive experiences. So discovering the comtempory art practice of Relational Asthetics that uses art to bring people together for a time is very exciting. The focus is about the  the interrelationships that develop in the process, not on the final product.
For me this is exciting to consider as a practice together with land art, where the artwork is all about it's relationship with it's natural environment. Adding the relational dimension to landart is very exciting.
I want to incorporat this relational asthet practice into my land art project at lee point.  

Idea 2

Re-interpret Andy Goldsworthy's work 

Cracked earth removed

St Louis, Missouri

9th October 1986

I also thought of re-interpreting this work changing the environmental context from St Louis, Missouri to the back of the Leanyer water park on the dried mudflats in Darwin. 

Mt Idea for Project Two

Sylvain Meyer

Ondulation de terre, Col de de la terrasse (2700m) Face au Mont blanc. 20 mètres de diamètre.

Emosson 2009

Mont Blanc  meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps, Western Europe, and the European Union. It rises 4,810.45 m (15,782 ft)^[2] above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence. It is also sometimes known as La Dame blanche(French for "the White Lady") or Il Bianco (Italian for "the White One").

Sylvain Meyer is a Swiss contemporary artist who is influenced by Land Art. Land art is all about how the created elements relate to it's environment, the work almost seem to belong to the landscape.This work was done in isolation and solitude only to be captured in time through photography, it was not an interactive piece.The context for this work is in Mt Blanc in the European Alps.

I would like to explore the re-interpretion of this work by re-creating this work on Lea Point beach that the general public can interact with and participate in. This is a completely different artistic context as the tropical build up top end environment is a starc contrast to that of the European Alps. The original work that was done in isolation and solitude will be replaced by the work being a public piece where people can interact and participate in. 

I then intend to photograph it and document how the piece interacts with the Darwin landscape, light and the general public.

 

 

Sylvain Meyer

 

 

 

 

 

Swiss artist Sylvain Meyer creates incredible works of temporary land art using only found materials in nature. From fallen bark, to acorns, leaves and decaying wood, Meyer immortalizes his work though photography.

Sylvain creates both patterns and creatures in his artwork, even delving into anamorphic art using Ying & Yang symbols. The ‘canvas’ for some of his pieces can also be quite breathtaking, especially his pieces with dramatic landscapes like Mont Blanc in the background, or the one on the edge of a cliff.

Meyer takes soil, bed rock, boulders, stones, flowers and leaves and uses them as building blocks for innovative and ephemeral installations. Swirls of yellow leaves contrast a bed of fallen red leaves, creating an interplay between the two colors. The roots of trees are juxtaposed into Surrealist sculptures, with discarded branches built up to create tentacle like arms which radiate from the tree trunk.

Meyer infuses green stream banks with a pop of color, by weaving a blanket of red flowers that rests on a moss-covered boulder. Moss is then used as a medium, covering spider sculptures that the artist has created, a sort of nature taking over art. Meyer’s works can even be as simple as a geometric arrangement of flowers, which are at the mercy of the elements and forest life.

These art installations are particularly spectacular, as Meyer uses elements of nature to draw attention to their natural beauty and arguably making them even more beautiful. Each piece is non-invasive, combining organic and mineral elements already found at each sculptural and installation site, keeping nature in harmony.