Site Specific Sculpture

AVI4M

Terms and Ideas• Site-specific:

In 1966 Robert Barry said: “(site installation) is made to suit the place in which it was installed. They cannot be moved without being destroyed.”

In 1989 Richard Serra said:“The works become part of the site and restructure both conceptually and perceptually the organization of the site.”

When it was pioneered it started off as a de-contextualisation of the museum space.

• Context: the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs

• Public VS Private: Often site specific art work is public are work, in a park, outside of a building, or in another shared public space where many people will engage with it and react to the work.

Robert Smithson

• The Spiral Jetty, located in the Great Salt Lake in Utah, was a quarter of a mile long and formed out of bulldozed rock. Like many ancient shrines, it was inaccessible and required a virtual pilgrimage to view directly.

• The removal of art from the gallery into the open land was also a means of rejection of the gallery and museum system by the Earthworks artists. This established art as a non-commodity in the face of a consumer society and was a challenge to social orthodoxy

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Andy Goldsworthy

Barbara Kruger

Jenny Holzer

• Holzer is mostly known for her large-scale public displays that include billboard advertisements, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, as well as illuminated electronic displays. The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection

Christo

• View familiar landscapes in new ways

Betty Beaumont

Michael Heizer

Rebecca Horn

Rachel Whiteread• Rachel Whiteread’s Holocaust

Memorial in Vienna:• The monument is a concrete

cast of a library turned “inside out” so that entrance is impossible and the contents of the books are lost. The weight of the sculpture is austere, an abrupt interruption to a beautiful square, and if you walk around the library and look at the ground you see the names of all the camps where Austrian Jews were killed. Whiteread’s career is about casting “negative space,” and this is an aesthetically and conceptually interesting use of the concept

Your Project• You will make a sculpture. I suggest clay as a medium, but if you propose another

and can make it work I will be open. • You will need to install your sculpture somewhere (site) and document that piece in

that location. Digital images or video are acceptable. • Both the documentation and the work itself will be handed in to me (unless the work

is ephemeral, then we can discuss and you will need very careful documentation)• When choosing a site, you must consider that it needs to enhance the meaning of

your work of art. It needs to add to the reading of the work. Context matters!• Consider the history or meaning or function of the location. Who visits and why? What

goes on there, who is allowed or not allowed, and why? • Begin by brainstorming issues, politics, social movements or rules that interest you,

or think of a site that you find particularly evocative and think of how you might intervene on that space. Lists in sketchbook and thumbnail drawings are needed.

• You are NEVER to vandalize a space during this project. • Obviously your time and resources are more limited than the examples we have

seen. Consider a smaller example of building an obese figure in clay, then documenting it in a McDonalds. The site will add a layer of social criticism to the art work that may not have been there through the object alone.

Proposals

• You will make a formal proposal for this project on mayfair paper.

• It should include a detailed drawing of what you plan to build and install in your chosen site, with a list of materials required.

• Include photos, maps, or information about the site you choose on your proposal.

• Include a title and a paragraph or more explaining your project, meaning of the chosen site etc.

• I will approve these proposals before you begin work on your sculpture.

Other artists to check out…

• Richard SerraRobert SmithsonAndy GoldsworthyMel BochnerMark DionRebecca HornJoseph BeuysDan FlavinSol LeWittJames TurrellClaes Oldenburg + Coosje Van BruggenJoseph BeuysRachel WhitereadJenny Holzer