Study template: Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Chriso & Jeanne-Claude, The Pont Neuf wrapped, Paris, 1975-85.
Vivid Festival Sydney 2012 – projected
Images onto MCA building. The festival
runs for 3 weeks annually.
Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped coast, one million square feet,
Australia 1968 - 69
Antony Gormley, Asian Field, Biennale of Sydney 2006
Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Valley Curtain, Colorado 1970-72
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Utah 1970
Walter de Maria, Lightning Field, New Mexico USA, 1977
JMW Turner, Snowstorm - steam boat off a harbour's mouth, 1842
POSTMODERN FORMS 3 – JANET LAURENCE
Janet Laurence, b. 1949 Aust. In the shadow, site specific installation Homebush Bay, 2000
Laurence is a contemporary artist who works across a wide range of media including
painting, photography and sculpture. She is probably best known for her site-specific
installations such as In the shadow, an installation involving a 100 metre length of a creek at
Homebush Bay in 2000. It was created especially for the Sydney Olympics. Unlike many
installations, this one is now a permanent part of the landscape.
Laurence has a specific message to convey. She is very concerned with
environmental issues, and all her work is involved with engaging an
audience and getting them to reflect upon this. Many of her works are
actually acting to rehabilitate an area or a group of plants, whilst being
artworks as well. So they have a double function: it’s not just
something for people to look at. It’s engaging with the world in a
particular way, a more politically active way than say, Christo & JeanneClaude or Goldsworthy.
In the shadow, 2000, details
Laurence is also interested in memories of places and
peoples, and the concept of change. We can see this in
another work of hers. Edge of the Trees is an installation in
collaboration with Australian artist Fiona Foley, in the
forecourt of the Museum of Sydney. This consists of column
structures of steel, sandstone, and timber.
The work lists names of
indigenous people from the Eora
tribe from the early days of
white settlement. They are
engraved on sandstone, upon
which the Sydney harbour area
is built, and which was the
material for the colonial
buildings.
Edge of the trees, 1995, sandstone, wood, steel, oxides, shells, honey, bones, zinc, glass,
sound, 29 pillars
Timbers which originally grew on the Museum site were used, in early days, to build
a foundry for the colony in Sydney. The timbers were salvaged from that building in
the 1990s and ‘re-planted’ back at the Museum site for this installation. They were
engraved with names of fruits and flowers from the Colonial Governor’s Garden, in
Latin and in indigenous language. Steel structures are also included, designed to
rust red into the sandy ground in which they are embedded. Names of First Fleet
passengers are also included, engraved on zinc panels and fastened to the poles.
Coming from within the
installation are a continuous
sound recording of voices. They
murmur quietly, you have to
struggle to catch them. They
are Koori names of places
which were colonised by the
British. The effect is that the
voices sound like ghosts.
Edge of the trees, detail.
There are steel and glass structures as well, which contain material such as rock
oxides, bone, shells and ash, which would have been from the indigenous campsites
around the area. The structure is reminiscent of burial poles, where the bones of a
deceased person are, after the flesh is gone, put into the pole as the final part of a
funeral ceremony.
“I’m interested in our interconnection and dependency on this environment
and our own implication in its despoliation and loss. My concern has been the loss of
habitat and resultant destruction of ecosystems and tragic decimation of species.” Janet
Laurence, 2010, MCA Website for ‘In the balance: art for changing world’ exhibition, 2010.
RESOURCES
‘A hospital for plants: the healing art of Janet Laurence’, in Art & Australia, Vol. 48 No. 1 2010, p.p. 64-67.
Janet Laurence’s website: http://www.janetlaurence.com/
Museum of Contemporary Art Education Kit:
http://www.mca.com.au/media/uploads/files/ITB_Education_Kit_v3.pdf
Sydney Olympic Park Public Art:
http://www.sopa.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/475309/fact_sheet_COMMU_Public_Art02.pdf