A Familiar Dream - Gary Waldrom 'New Works' 2009

I drive away from the coast and into the heart of the Hawkes Bay in search of an isolated driveway amongst barren, dry hills, off a tree lined country road. I am by myself, in a car unfamiliar to me, driving through places I have never been, imagining how it will be meeting Gary Waldrom at his studio in Waipawa.

As I pass a number of wooden gates and flat fields of grass, I spot objects a little out of place in the distance; globes of orange and yellow that seem to be floating by the side of road. As I draw nearer, I notice the orbs are balloons, markers leading me into the hidden driveway to Waldrom’s studio.

I am greeted at the car by Waldrom and joined shortly after by his mum and with tea in hand I am lead into the studio space. Three young girls stand before me. They are looking directly at me and as the title ‘Three Girls Watching II (2007-2009)’ describes, they are observing me as much as I am them. They stand in front of some stairs, leading to a large wooden door. I remember a photo my mother took of me at two and a half, pigtails and blue dress, standing before the door of the villa I was born in. The painting also prompts me to reminisce about childhood days with my two female cousins, the three of us playing together after school in our school tunics, and posing for photos to put into the large photo-albums our mothers kept.

I continue to look at the girls for a while, what are they thinking? Who are they? They are not telling; they are not smiling, nor sad. They have an almost adult quality to them, a knowing. I can see myself in his characters but at the same time they have a strange and unfamiliar air to them. All of Waldrom’s figures have a common look about them, elfish bodies with unique faces consisting large, confronting eyes that seem to stare. I slowly feel uneasy; I no longer feel I am looking at them, but that they are looking at me. They are strangers, in a strange place and I have entered their world.

The sensation I get from this work, as with others’ of Gary Waldrom’s is an uncanny one:
“the particular kind of fear provoked ‘when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem once more confirmed.” 1

Characters and places in Waldrom’s work are familiar yet strange. They conjure memories and I feel nostalgic towards the works but I can’t quite put my finger on why or how they make me feel so uneasy.

Waldrom’ paintings not only blur the boundaries between the familiar and the unfamiliar, but between everyday reality and the imagined world within. Although they are mindscapes in that they are greatly constructed from Waldrom’s imagination, elements of the paintings are recognisably from the real world. In ‘Girl and Ceramic Pig (2008-2009)’ a girl stands holding flowers, and an orange air balloon floats through the air, over architecture that is specific to Waldrom’s Waipawa and palm trees that are distinctly New Zealand. I instantly look at my own situation, my recent encounter of the Waipawa buildings and my experience of finding the orange balloon. That uncanny feeling hits me again, as my world is reflected in the painting before me.

There is a very real experience to be had in engaging with the paintings as physical objects. Areas have layers of thick oil paint, others thin washes, leaving remnants of what has been painted before such as in ‘Bench Seat Conversation (2008-2009)’ where shadows of where the bench once finished are left visible. Some of Waldrom’s works are expressive; he applies the paint with movement and physical gesture. Other areas of his paintings are very tightly constructed, almost looking like they have been ‘stuck’ onto the surface of the canvas. 2 On close inspection brush-marks are apparent, forms of coloured paint slowly merge into an image, painted line takes shape and ones perception changes; from the paintings physical surface to the illusion of the painting space and into the imagery that unfolds itself in the work.

Before visiting Waldrom I stopped in at the Hastings Art Gallery to view an exhibition called ‘Mind Games- Surrealism in Aotearoa’. A work of Waldrom’s from 2000 appeared in this show and although Waldrom does not fit this label entirely (nor any label for that matter), there are some similarities. The imagined world and the physical world are always prevalent when viewing a painting. One can move from the illusion of space in the work, to the painting as an object constructed with paint and canvas. Both the Surrealists and Waldrom break down the separation between the real object and the illusionary space of the work. They blur the boundary between the physical world and the psychological world through their painting process:
“these artists move freely, boldly and confidently at the borderline between the inner and outer world, a borderline that is physically and psychologically entirely real (‘surreal’) even if it has not yet been adequately defined and determined, that they undertake to register precisely what they see and experience there, and that they intervene wherever their revolutionary instincts suggest they should.”3

Waldrom describes himself as a ‘mood’ painter and although he has an idea of he wants the painting to ‘feel’ intuition plays a large role on the decisions Waldrom makes within his work. Characters and places are manifested from his imagination or from snippets of images or ideas he then assimilates into the evolving painting composition. To take a photograph of Waldrom’s work each day would be to reveal a constantly changing imagined world.

In some case Waldrom uses found images to inspire or guide his ideas. He also revisits his own compositions, changing and re-evaluating aspects of the work. In the work ‘Blind Girl Dance (2008-2009)’ the motivation of other images can be found explicitly. The figures dancing in an arm linked circle has a direct connection to Matisses’s 1909 painting ‘Dance’ but also to one of Waldrom’s earlier works, ‘All Your Dancers and Twisters’ from 1995. For sometime Waldrom thought of reprising the work, “not because it is no longer extant, but I felt sure I could revamp the idea completely”. 4 Within Waldrom’s paintings, the initial images are taken into an entirely new situation where they become part of his alternate reality.

When given a first glimpse of Waldrom’s paintings in progress, a woman stands naked in the water, hands behind her back, pushing her pelvis forward, looking out at me with a sneer on her face. She looks as if she could be bathing in these dark murky waters. Now standing in front of the work ‘Swamp Wader (2008-2009)’, I recognise the same girl, she looks different though, now she is fully clothed, holding a fishing net, wading through the water. The sky has changed and the reeds are more recognisable. The moon looks different. The work looks different. The character in the world has lived a life through the painting and now stands transformed and evolved.

“Surrealists are widely described as painters of a constantly mutating dream-works.” 5 Waldrom’s works develop as he paints. He lets the works reveal themselves through the painting process in instinctual manner. Like dreaming, the works evolve in their own way, Waldrom letting his unconscious guide him along:
“at the outset it may be objected that dream-work is an unconscious process involving internal mental operations while artistic labour is a conscious mental process controlling manual manipulation of physical materials and implements. These differences exist but the unconscious also plays a role in art-work and… there are parallels between the unconscious operations of dream-work and the physical transformations typical of artistic production.” 6

This is not to say that Waldrom is unaware of painting conventions. Although he has no academic training, Waldrom speaks clearly about the formal aspects of how his painting operates. In notes on his painting ‘Reversal Rehearsal (Demo for a Lost Cause) (2008-2009)’, Waldrom uses compositional devices to guide the viewer through the work. He has purposefully shown the figure from the back view “using this ‘repeat pose’ aspects in a composition as a unifying /continuity device. The same applies to the magenta-coloured walk-ramp extending right across both panels, which is intended to double as an anchor for the composition as well.” 7 What it does however open up, is the idea that the unconscious or inner-world has as much part in creating a painting as the physical action:
“One of the most crucial revolutionary devices of surrealism was passionately to have attacked this myth (of divine creation) on well-considered grounds and thus to have dispatched it once and for all. It did so by insisting emphatically upon the purely passive role of the ‘author’ as far as the mechanism of poetic inspiration was concerned, by unmasking the notion of ‘active control’ through reason, morality and aesthetic deliberation as inimical to inspiration. As a viewer like anyone else, the ‘author’ can witness the emergence of the work can follow the unfolding phases of its development with indifference or passion. Just as a poet listens to the automatic processes of thought and jots down their results, so too the painter projects what his optical imagination suggests directly to him on paper or canvas.” 8

As I now stand before these works, I am left to interpret these paintings. I wonder what they mean. I wonder what these works reveal about Waldrom as a person, are they as much of his unconscious mind as his active mind? Waldrom gives me no help- the paintings have unravelled themselves before him as well. I’m looking into Waldrom’s dreamscape or mindscape. Each part of the work seems laden with meaning, both obvious and hidden. Not only does the work reveal things about Waldrom, I also know there is a story within the illusionary imagery and like a dream I’m left to interpret it:
“Already a parallel suggests itself between Freud’s view that dreams have double meanings (latent and manifest) and the way images function (signifiers and signifieds) and symbols work (literal and metaphorical levels of meaning). The correlation between art-work and dream-work is made quite explicit in Freud’s frequent references to the means of representation in works of art as examples of how dreams are formed. Furthermore, the task of the psychoanalysis in interpreting dreams appears to match that of the viewer or reader seeking to grasp the meaning of a work of art, a meaning which, like that of a dream, often stubbornly resists decoding.” 9

Like the empty Punch and Judy stage in ‘From Here to There (2006-2009)’, it seems there is a story waiting to be revealed. In fact when looking at Waldrom’s work I feel like I am in front of a stage, where the characters are the players. I look for clues as to what drama is unfolding. What secrets are there in this work to reveal? As my eye moves from one element of the painting to the next, I wonder what has happened or is soon to occur in the scene Waldrom has placed before me. An abandoned car situated in the long grass, below a wispy cloud (or possibly even smoke?) prompts me to think of gangsters and the suited character (with his shifty sideways glance) adds to the underbelly feeling of unease in the work.

I think about Waldrom, painting alone in his studio, amongst these Hawkes Bay hills, and how in a way he is like the man in front of the Punch and Judy show, inviting me to experience the situation. The more time I spend looking at the work, the greater the possibilities. I feel the need to decipher, to know what is going on, what it all means, and I am left with unanswered questions. The work retains its secrets- the characters look only to me for answers.

Another painting is displayed ‘Girl and Horse I (Second Series) (2008-2009)’ and through hazy orange, post-apocalyptic skies I sense a light I am all too familiar with, the light of mid-afternoon New Zealand sun. The light in the work shines upon the face of a stone building. I am instantly transported back to a time I spent in Oamaru at art school, living close to the ‘old town’ a restored area by the sea where old buildings remain. I know this place Waldrom presents before me; I can almost walk around the side of the building and know what will be there.

Again a girl stands in the foreground of the work, her head tilted slightly left and her eyes closed as if day dreaming. In front of her a very still orb is placed, (a ball?) and beside her stands a large white horse. I wonder if it is a figment of the girl’s imagination (don’t most young girls dream of ponies, and older ones dream of knights on white horses?). I begin to realise that these paintings are just as much about my world as they are Waldrom’s. All of a sudden I see myself in the girl with the ball, dreaming of that white horse; maybe my knight is just around the corner.

I begin to see a Waldrom painting in my own experience of this journey to his studio; a girl, in new and unfamiliar surroundings (however the New Zealand landscape and light is unmistakably familiar), guided by balloons 10 , standing, looking out into an alternate reality; Waldrom’s world.

As the afternoon wears on I move from one painting to the next, exploring Waldrom’s constructed worlds, their stories, landscapes, painterly qualities and my own feelings about myself and my experiences of this alternate reality which is strangely close to home.

Before saying my final goodbyes to travel back to the big smoke of Auckland, I revisit “Three Girls Watching II (2007-2009)” and find something intriguing. The work has changed. Light that earlier seemed to signify early morning, now appears as an afternoon haze. The girls look at me in a different way; it has been a long day for all of us, they are in front of a closed door, wishing me well. As we stand face-to-face they look at me as if they know what I’m thinking and what I’ve been through here in Waldrom’s studio. I wonder what they’ll get up to when I leave? Will they wait until I see them again? I feel a little melancholy knowing that the works will remain locked away in solitude until the day that they travel away from the studio but I am already looking forward to experiencing their ever-changing presence when they arrive again in my world.

Vanessa Eve Cook, 2009


1. Lydenberg p. 1073
2. Area’s of Waldrom’s paintings have been worked and re-worked, meaning that areas of the work look more built up than others.
3. Harrison & Wood p. 493
4. Waldrom
5. Harrison & Wood p. 492
6. Walker p. 109
7. Waldrom
8. Harrison & Wood p. 492
9. Walker p. 109
10. Waldrom


References:

Harrison, Charles. And Paul Wood (Eds). ‘Max Ernst (1891-1976) ‘What is Surrealism?’. Art in theory, 1900-2000 : an anthology of changing ideas. Blackwell Publishers: Malden, MA, 2003 pp 491 – 493

Harrison, Charles. And Paul Wood (Eds). ‘Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) from ‘On Dreams’’. Art in theory, 1900-2000 : an anthology of changing ideas. Blackwell Publishers: Malden, MA, 2003 pp 21- 28

Lydenberg, Robin ‘Freuds Uncanny Narratives’. PLMA Modern Language Association. vol. 112, No. 5, Oct., 1997 pp1072-1086

Waldrom, Gary. ‘New Paintings’. Artists Notes on Works. 2009

Walker, John A. ‘Dream-Work and Art-Work’. Leonardo. Vol. 16, No. 2, 1983 pp 109 – 114.

Written as a catalogue essay for Gary Waldrom's 'New Works', 2009. Please see exhibition details @ Milford Galleries Website www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

A Transformation of Space

At times I find myself somewhat disconnected from my surroundings, and turn to walking and drawing to explore the physical city I live and operate within. I use aesthetic practices to explore the spaces in my everyday urban environment.

Firstly I hope to lay the foundation of my theoretical research, based in capitalist and spatial discourse. I then will elaborate on my practice as well as the art practice of others’ who I fell critique and explore some of the issues raised in my research and offer an alternative to an alienated subject; a subject with the power to transform how they experience space.

I have a particular interest in the everyday urban environment. And put forth that it is a space produced by economic, geographical and social circumstances. I explore urban space as a self-generating environment that reflects a dominant culture and has the power to influence and effect individuals. I found in my research and theoretical explorations that modern reality can be seen to alienate the subject to ideals and values that reflect a society driven by capital.

Maybe the best place to begin my exploration of urban space is to start with the quote from the curatorial statement from the Christchurch Biennale SCAPE. This quote makes me think of the shifting values of the city, and of public space, from that of social interaction, to that of consumption.

"A city is a dynamic system constantly in flux that reflects the shifting values of society, where social and political representations, cultural production and consumption, tourism and leisure play out. Globalization has led to greater mobility and increasing migration, transforming cities at an increasingly rapid pace. Culturally, this shift has seen shopping malls become surrogate social spaces, and urban centers designed to capture the tourist dollar over the need for public space that appeals to local inhabitants." (Erdemci & Mosman 2008: 5)

Urban spaces seem to be growing, and once rural areas on the outskirts of cities are making way for shopping centers, business parks, motorways and suburban housing areas. Bethlehem town centre on the outskirts of Tauranga (the shopping centre from this area features continually in the subject matter of my artwork) is an example of this, the once one lane road with a dairy and postbox now boast traffic lights, a sprawling supermarket, a shopping center and shops from the popular chain stores ‘Video Ezy’ and ‘Hells Pizza’.

"In this case, capitalist industrialization has destroyed nature and is replacing it with a “second nature.” The balance between the organic and the human environment is disappearing across the globe because of the production and extension of a second nature- the concrete, material world of organized society (1991, pp. 343-45)." (Gottdiener 1993: 133)

The concrete material world of organized society seems to be a self-perpetuating one. The more we produce, the more we consume, the greater need for access to those products and so on. Modern society is literally organizing the fabric of the city around production and consumption.

M Gottinger writes
"Every mode of social organization produces an environment that is a consequence of the social relations it possesses. In addition, by producing space according to its own nature, a society not only materializes into distinctive built forms, but also reproduces itself. The concept “the production of space” means what Giddens calls the “duality of structure.” That is, space is both a medium of social relations and a material product that can effect social relations." (Gottinger 1993: 132)

The cities’ systems of mobility and production have become signifiers of a capitalist culture. Debord writes in Capitalism: A Society Without a Culture,
"Having from the workshop to the laboratory emptied productive activity of all meaning for itself, capitalism strives to place the meaning of life in leisure activities and to reorient productive activity on that basis. Since production is hell in the prevailing moral schema, real life must be found in consumption, in the use of goods. (… ) The world of consumption is in reality the world of mutual spectacularization of everyone, the worlds of everyone’s separation, estrangement and nonparticipation." (Harrison & Wood 2003: 706))

Subjects of the city seem alienated to their cars, work, production and mobility and what once was public space for social interaction has become a fluid and transient space, in which the subject moves and operates. In Vito Acconci’s writing Public Space Private Time, he offers a description of public space. He describes the city as being a public space, one where there is little social interaction.

"Public space is not space in the city but the city itself. Not nodes but circulation routes; not buildings and plazas but roads and bridges. Public space is leaving home and giving up all the comforts of the cluster-places that substitute for the home. Space on the run is life on the loose. There’s no time to talk; there’s no need for talk, since you have all the information you need on the radio you carry with you. There’s no need for person-to-person relationship, since you already have multiple relationships with voices on your radio, with images of persons in store windows and on billboards. There’s no time to stop and have a relationship, which would be a denial of all those bodies you’re side by side with on the street, one different body after another, one body replacing another." (Acconci 1990: 911)

Martha Rosler makes visible the changing face of public spaces in our everyday capitalist society. A space that is no longer experienced as a space of social interactions but a place people pass through and are alienated to capitalist values. To be a subject in urban space is to be subject to its ideals and values, one that seems to be moving from social interaction with people to a systemized and controlled interaction with the city space.

Vidler writes on Rosler’s work,
"Rosler’s photographs take on the air of pictorial revelations of the underbelly of capitalism, its spaces manifested as empty, sterile non-places, determined more by mathematical calculation of times of arrival and departure than by any regard for the human subjects subjected to this control and surveillance." (Vidler 2001: 180)


Martha Rosler,
CEPA Public Art Installation- Bus Show
“In the place of the Public: airport series”,
1999
http://courses.washington.edu/hypertxt/cgi-bin/12.228.185.206/html/wordsinimages/mrairport/roslerview.html

He explains that the absence of people in Rosler’s photographs, are not for aesthetic reasons but to “mark their real nonexistence for space occupied by their transient bodies, moved through as quickly as possible.” (Vidler 2001: 180) These areas are not truly public places; they are spaces of estrangement.

In Vidler’s writing Spaces of Passage The Architecture of Estrangement: Simmel, Kracauer, Benjamin, he explores the spatial and architectural writings of Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin who develop the concept of estrangement as a modern social condition. He exposes a common theme, that the physical fabric of the city (the environment of consumption) “was identified as the instrument of a systemized and enforced alienation.” (Vidler 2001: 65). The physical make up of the city has a psychological effect on the subject.

The idea that environment affects the subject is one Beate Gütschow has made explicit in her work.
"The S series makes reference to more recent media—black-and-white architectural and documentary photography of the 1950s and ’60s….the S series is post-apocalyptic, revealing failed social ideals through alienating architecture. Photographing in Berlin, Chicago, Kyoto, Los Angeles, New York, and Sarajevo, Gütschow appropriates buildings, parking lots, stairways, and people. Reconfiguring these elements of architecture from different areas of the world, she synthesizes a disorienting cosmopolitan space with a confused temporality…. Gütschow’s S series reveals something about the cities in which they were photographed. Despite the utopian ideals behind the modern architecture, cities are less hospitable than we idealize them to be."
(MOCP 2008)

Gütschow reveals the alienating nature of modern architecture, by displaying spaces devoid of human interaction. The spaces are merely there to experience, not to be filled with social interventions.














Beate Gütschow:
S #22
2007
photographic print, 149 x 237 cm http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425363197/483/beate-gutschow-s-22.html

The environment or space produced around us seems to reflect and perpetuate, feelings of alienation. As I have mentioned above, the actual spaces of the city and how they are inhabited appear to encourage estrangement. Rosler’s airport, which has no ‘place’ for people and Gutschow’s vast, empty, bleak environments seem to highlight these spaces as concrete and unquestionable.

I have explained above that urban spaces have largely been built to reflect the values and ideals of capitalism and that occupants are somewhat trapped within the systems and structures it has put in place to encourage consumption, the city dweller is subject to ‘enforced alienation’. However to me it seems that the issue of estrangement is not entirely situated in the physical space, but how the inhabitant addresses it.

Fiona Amundsen plays with the idea of space being culturally constructed. Space is product of culture, or dominant value systems, it is then represented and its meaning is evaluated by the subject. Amundsen’s work illustrates that the subject articulates her reality, or meaning of space.

Garden Place references theory concerned with the actual medium of photography, instead of its representational qualities. My interest here is twofold: by engaging with how photography socially gathers meaning, Garden Place picks apart how space itself is culturally constructed. These photographs act as both a typology of space, and of the camera at work. Each photographed site highlights how photography operates as a "distinctive temporal articulation of what is, and therefore we, see." (Conland 2006: 1)

It is easy to assume that a photograph is a ‘snapshot’ of reality without question however the meaning and significance of that reality lies in the viewer or the subject’s interpretation of the representation. Amundsen reveals is that space is “projection of the subject” (Vidler 2001: vii).

I propose that the subject has the power to change her position towards spatial systems, opening up new possibilities of interacting and experiencing space, thus having the power to transform urban space from one that is alienating, to one that doesn’t have to be. Someone can either chose to be alienated to her car or make the choice to go against the ‘norm’ and walk.

This is where I see art practice coming into play. In my particular practice, and that of artists featured in the latter part of this essay, I focus on artistic interventions and representations that challenge ones perception of space.

The SCAPE biennale in Christchurch in September this year, focused on placing works of art in the city, hoping to offer people in the city new ways of addressing their environment. In the curatorial statement Fulya Erdemci and Dane Mossman write about the concept behind the title of the show,

"The title Wandering Lines is drawn from the notion that ‘indirect or errant trajectories obeying their own logic’ can provide new understandings of space. Making seemingly invisible contingencies visible, artistic interventions can propose a different experience of locale and situation, or suggest opportunties for more relevant public space, to counter the effects of privatization and neo-liberal economic policies on social space." (Erdemic & Mossman 2008)

I felt that many of the artworks didn’t achieve this goal. Some works simply existed in the city space, sharing ground with the buildings and other city structures. The work that I felt was very successful was the work of Spanish artist Maider Lopez.

Her work addressed the very systems that are in place in the urban environment that we take for granted; systems that control and condition us to act or behave in a certain way. Maider Lopez interrupts the subjects’ assumptions and everyday experience of space by creating interventions in public space, architecture and situations.

"Signs denoting the location of ‘functional’ aspects of the Christchurch Art Gallery are scattered throughout the entire Gallery building, as López puts the microscope to these seemingly insignificant features. From visitor number counters to switch locks, environmental condition monitors to power plugs, the minor details of the pure gallery spaces are suddenly brought to the fore, drawing our attention to the way these aspects disappear and become invisible visual noise as they quietly maintain the processes necessarily for the buildings’ operation." (Erdemic & Mossman 2008)

In the Christchurch Art Gallery Lopez highlights how systems and can become almost invisible to us. I felt this work was successful because Lopez used artistic intervention to challenge the systems of control. Placing the viewer or participant in the work in a position where they are aware of the controlling factors in the environment. This then offered a space for the viewer to question other controlling systems in their everyday environment.

I feel this work was able to change subject’s perception of the environment because it ‘warped’ the view of the architectural space. Through the intervention of the artwork, the architecture does not function or appear as it originally seemed. At the same time the artwork cannot operate without the architecture, they are dependent upon each other.

Vidler writes that a
"kind of warping is that produced by the forced intersection of different media- film, photography, art, architecture- in a way that breaks the boundaries of genre and the separate arts in response to the need to depict space in new and unparralled ways. Artists, rather than simply extending their terms of reference to the three-dimensional, take on the questions of architecture as an integral and critical part of their work in installations that seek to criticize the traditional terms of art….. This intersection has engendered a type of “intermediary art”, comprised of objects that, while situated ostensibly in one practice require the interpretive terms of another for their explication.” (Vidler 2001: viii)



When Rochelle Steiner, the director of the Public Art Fund in New York spoke as the keynote speaker at SCAPE, she mentioned the work of Sarah Morris who had painted on and in a courtyard in New York. Steiner spoke of the space as being a dark and dingy space where few people gathered and with the addition of the artwork, the space was readdressed and people reacted with it in a different way; they went from being mere passers-by to stopping for lunch and socially gathering under the work.

"Morris executes her city-based paintings in household gloss on square canvases, employing rigorous, all-over grids in vivid colours that reference architectural motifs, signs or urban vistas. Morris associates these colours and geometries with a city’s unique vocabulary and palette, and, most importantly, its dynamic." (Cube 2008)

Morris here has used painting to open up and change the architectural space. In a similar way the architecture informs the work, she is using architectural forms and structures to motivate her painting. The viewer can then experience the space as a space to question the tradition of painting and the function of architecture. The artistic interventions within the actual urban space, creates a ‘warping’ of the space in the way that the original (architectural) space can be readdressed and negotiated by the viewer.

The combination of architecture and painting could be looked upon as what Homi Bhabha refers to as a hybrid.
"The… hybrid is not only double voiced and double-accented… but is also double-language; for in it there are not only (and not even so much) two individual consciousnesses, two voices, two accents, as there are [doublings of] socio-linguistic consciousnesses, two epochs… that come together and consciously fight it out on the territory of utterance… It is the collision between differing points of view on the world that are embedded in these forms… such unconscious hybrids have been at the same time profoundly productive historically; they are pregnant with potential for new world vies, with new “internal forms” for perceiving the world in words." (Bhabha 1996: 3)

The painting and the architecture come together in a space of negotiation. The original architectural structure now can be experienced in a different way. The position of the viewer is no longer that of one simply reacting to their environment but as a subject in the position to interpret or negotiate the very environment itself.
Bhabha suggests that the hybrid strategy or discourse “opens up a space of negotiation where power is unequal but its articulation may be equivocal.” (Bhabha 1996: 3).

Both Morris and Lopez work challenges ones perception of space literally by using architectural elements. Architecture as a signifier of the capitalist environment now has the possibility of becoming a space of artistic intervention, questioning and negotiation.

In my own work I use different modes of representation to challenge how representation can be questioned and transformed. I combine elements of traditional perspective drawing as well as photography (in a black and white documentary style) to open up critique of both of these practices.



Rosler’s work The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (1974/75) as another example of a work that explores the space between two modes of representation. Von Bismark writes on this work
"She is making a space between the descriptive systems of writing and picture making. She makes us aware that there is a space in between different representational forms (i.e. photos, texts, performances, videos etc). “She uses the uncertainties that crop up here to make elements and processes of semantic assignment and transformation visible. In a political sense, she reopens our eyes to the fact that “even one and the same sign can be re-occupied, translated, re-historicized, and read in a new way,” a task that Homi K. Bhabha assigns to the “Third Space.” (von Bismark 2002: 264)


The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems 1974-75
A series of 45 gelatin silver prints of text and images on 24 backing boards, each backing board: 11 13/16 x 23 5/8 in. (30 x 60 cm)
http://artg33k.vox.com/library/photo/6a00c2252bb78a8fdb00d09e449db9be2b.html

Through her artwork Rosler reveals that the signifiers of dominant structures and systems, can be negotiated. In relation to alienation, this opens up the possibility that the very structures and signifiers that alienate the subject are at question. The structures thus become open for interpretation and transformation. Once able to be reinterpreted systems and signifiers can now be looked systems other than as alienating.

The subject now has the choice to become a liminal subject “neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony” (1969: 95) (Shure 2008: 2). A city dweller can exist fully in the capitalist system (and conform to the ideas and values of society) or live in a capitalist environment, and choose not to conform to systems, transforming the very nature of those systems.
"For Turner, liminality is one of the three cultural manifestations of communitas—it is one of the most visible expressions of anti-structure in society. Yet even as it is the antithesis of structure, dissolving structure and being perceived as dangerous by those in charge of maintaining structure, it is also the source of structure. Just as chaos is the source of order, liminality represents the unlimited possibilities from which social structure emerges. While in the liminal state, human beings are stripped of anything that might differentiate them from their fellow human beings—they are in between the social structure, temporarily fallen through the cracks, so to speak, and it is in these cracks, in the interstices of social structure, that they are most aware of themselves. Yet liminality is a midpoint between a starting point and an ending point, a temporary state that ends when the initiate is reincorporated into the social structure." (Shure 2008: 2).

An individual with the choice of maintaining the structures that alienate, or ‘going against the grain’ for example one can pass through public spaces or see that it can be used as a socially interactive space, changing the nature of the space from alienating to interactive, and thus dissolving the capitalist system that keeps the individual alienated.

In this writing I have attempted to explain how my practice and other artist’s practices open up a space of negotiation where there is potential for change and transformation. I propose that through the experience and interpretation of art, one is given the opportunity to fill space with meaning, as well as think about and change their position towards environment they operate within, an environment that sees the subject alienated to hegemonic ideals or values.

Footnotes
1. Artist Vito Acconci “sees the architectural monument as a literal crystallization of power and cultural accretion; as an almost geological phenomenon.” (Vidler 2001: 140) In this sense the actual architecture is a signifier of the dominant culture. The constructed environment seems to perpetuate and produce the social values and ideals, set up by modern consumer culture.
2. Vider explains that estrangement has been a common theme in writings relation to the big cities of the nineteenth century. He describes this estrangements as “the estrangement of the inhabitant of a too rapidly changing and enlarging to comprehend in traditional terms; the estrangement of classes from each other, of individual from individual, of individual from self, of workers from work.” (Vidler 2001: 65)
3. I play with the literal idea of perception in my work. I use the system of perspectival drawing alongside photography to literally change and warp the perception of space within the subject matter of the photograph. To look at the work is to question one’s perception and ask, is that ‘really’ part of the structure of the represented image (the shopping mall) or is it part of the drawing that sits on top of the structure.

Bibliography

Acconci, Vito. “Public Space in a Private Time” Critical inquiry The University of Chicago Press Chicago, 1999: 900 - 918. Jstor. University of Auckland. 7 Sep. 2008.

Barnett, Cassandra. “Stranger Than Kindness: New Works from Garden Place by Fiona Amundsen” 9 Aug. 2008

“Beate Gütschow: LS/S October 25, 2007 – January 10, 2008”. Museum of Contemporary Photography. 2005 – 2008. Columbia College. 25 Sept. 2008.

Bhabha, Homi. “Culture’s in Between- Concept of Culture”. Questions of Cultural Identity. Sage: London, 1996

Conland, Natasha “Fiona Amundsen: Recent Acquisition June 2006”. 3 Feb. 2008.

Cook, Vanessa “Research Seminar: An Exploration of Space” June 2008

Erdemci, Fulya and Dane Mossman. “Wandering Lines: Towards a New Culture of Space”. SCAPE 2008 Christchurch Biennial of Art in Public Space Media Christchurch Art Gallery: Christchurch 2008. Sep 18. 2008

Gottinger, M. “A Marx for Our Time: Heni Lefebvre and the Production of Space”. Sociology Theory , 1993: 129-134. Jstor. University of Auckland. 25 April. 2008

Harrison, Charles. And Paul Wood. Art in Theory 1900 – 2000 An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Blackwell Publishing: Malden, Oxford, Victoria, 2003.

La Shure. C. “About: What is Liminality?”. Liminality… the space in between. 1 – 9. Oct 10. 2008


“Sarah Morris: Robert Towne”. Public Art Fund Projects. Public Art Fund 2002- 2008: New York. Sept 18. 2008

“Sarah Morris”. White Cube. 28 Sept. 2008.


Smith, Catherine. “Looking for Liminality in Architectural Space” http://limen.mi2.hr Oct 1. 2008.
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/Architec/ArchitecturalStructure/LookingforLiminality/LookingforLiminality.htm

Vidler, Anthony Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture The MIT Press: Cambridge, London, 2001

Von Bismark, B. “Generating Space: Martha Rosler’s Representational Process”. Martha Rosler: Passionate Signals. I. Schube. Hannover, Sprengel Museum Hannover, 2005: 252 – 283

Adapted from my MFA essay 2008, University of Auckland, Elam School of Fine Arts

Kirstin Carlin and Krystie Wade @ Physics Room- February 2009

“One of the possible definitions of ‘realism’: a naïve belief that, behind the curtain of representation, some full, substantial reality actually exists... ‘Postrealism’ begins with a doubt as to the existence of this reality... i.e., with the foreboding that the very gesture of concealment creates what it pretends to conceal.” (Zizek, 1993: 103)

Speaking in Ramas brings the outdoors inside, transforming the gallery into an urban park, creating a space that confronts and immerses the viewer in a very real panoramic experience.

In an age where public spaces such as urban parks and gardens are often uninhabited, nomadic spaces passed through or looked at from a distance, Kirstin Carlin and Krystie Wade give us an opportunity to readdress how we experience our everyday landscapes.

Both Carlin and Wade create landscapes and environments that one can only explore through interaction with their painting. To experience their work is to be engulfed in an alternate reality. Their paintings do not reflect or represent a real place; they are a space in themselves. These works are far from ‘snapshots’ of reality, as they do not conceal or represent any reality beyond themselves, rather the meaning and significance of their reality lies in the viewer’s interpretation of that representation.

Carlin’s environments seem familiar yet are constructed from a variety of sources. When looking at her work one feels a slight disorientation. Perspective is a little warped, colours rather dream-like, and her all-too-familiar rivers, trees and mountains are merely on close inspection expressionistic brush strokes of opaque pastel colour or semi transparent washes.

Wade’s abstracted and fragmented works create a space for the viewer to imagine and construct one’s own landscape. One is challenged to negotiate the space of the painting by moving from the surface into the subtle depths and skewed perspectives of the forms within the work.

Shown together the artists’ works play off each other. The viewer’s perception of each work changes as the common symbols of the landscape are readdressed. When looking at the works alongside each other as panoramas, Carlin’s expressive grass areas give way to Wade’s painted forms that come to signify one and the same space. One interprets and transforms images as they read from painting to painting and a new and strange landscape is imagined in the viewer’s mind.

Together these painters challenge us to think about how we alone experience, construct and interpret space. What we once experienced as a very real tree in a park is now a very real tree in a painting. Through showing that every element of the landscape is transformed by interpretation, these artists open our eyes to the idea that “even one and the same sign can be re-occupied, translated, re-historicized and read in a new way” (von Bismark 2002: 264).

Devoid of human life, the only participants in the paintings are standing in front of them, making the whole experience a personal one. The viewer is placed within the panoramic space, turning the gallery into a landscape where exploration, interaction and meaning is made real.

Vanessa Eve Cook, 2009




Zizek, S. (1993). “On Radical Evil and Related Matters”. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 1996: 83-124.

Von Bismark, B. “Generating Space: Martha Rosler’s Representational Process”. Martha Rosler: Passionate Signals. I. Schube. Hannover, Sprengel Museum Hannover, 2005: 252 – 283.

Written as exhibition text/ catalogue writing for exhibition 'Speaking In Ramas' at the Physics Room in Christchurch, 2008. http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/gallery/2009/carlinwade/