The Development of Alternative and Site-specific Art in Australia

Site-specific art in Australia emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of the first major site-specific art projects undertaken in Australia was French artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s above-mentioned Wrapped Coast, a massive installation in which a section of Sydney’s cliff face was wrapped in rope and fabric. A number of the young local artists who assisted with this project acknowledge its lasting influence, such as installation artist Joan Grounds,136 and the painter Imants Tillers, who was at the time an architecture student.137 In an Art and Australia review, critic Donald Brook declared it ‘the most important event in Australian art in years,’138 raising questions about the meaning of art and the relationship between ‘aesthetics, politics and economics.’139 Brook’s comments were perhaps an understatement, because the project remains one of the most well-known and influential installations in Australian art history.

134 _{The original Sydney Biennale was held in the Sydney Opera House.}

135 _{Dennis Colsey, Hand and Eye: A Survey of Artists Materials and Techniques. Sydney: Art Gallery of} New South Wales, 1970, n.p.

136 _{Julie Ewington, ‘In the Wild: Nature, Culture, Gender in Installation Art,’ in What Is Installation? An} Anthology of Writings on Australian Installation Art, ed. Adam Geczy and Benjamin Genocchio (Sydney: Power Publications, 2001), 37.

137 _{Daniel Thomas, ‘The Artists and their Australian Context’ in}

An Australian Accent: Three Artists, Mike Parr, Imants Tillers, Ken Unsworth, ed. John Kaldor (Sydney: John Kaldor, 1984), 13.

138 _{Donald Brook, ‘The Little Bay Affair,’ Art and Australia 7, no.3 (1969): 230.} 139 _{Ibid., 232.}

The Wrapped Coast project was made possible by Australian art collector and patron, John Kaldor, and was the first of many influential art projects. Unlike many local art benefactors who sponsor scholarships for Australian artists to travel overseas, Kaldor’s approach has predominantly emphasised bringing influential overseas artists to Australia to make art, which are almost always sited in public spaces.140 Daniel Thomas saw this approach as ‘a way of sharing [Kaldor’s] delight in the stimulus of difficult new art with the art world of Australia, an art world which he knew in the 1960s to be short of

stimulus.’141 Kaldor also initiated and financially backed curated exhibitions of

Australian artists both locally, such as the early I Want to Leave a Nice Well-done Child Here (1971) curated by the internationally renowned Harald Szeemann, and overseas, such as An Australian Accent (1984). The Kaldor Art Projects have tended to include artists working with experimental art forms, many of the projects being site-specific and usually independent of traditional gallery spaces. While the extent of influence that the visiting overseas artists had on the local community can never really be measured, Australian critics such as Elwyn Lynn142 and Charles Green143 have acknowledged these artists’ influence as role models to young Australian artists.

While the Little Bay project might be the most famous of Kaldor’s public art projects, subsequent site-specific projects include Christo and Jeanne- Claude’s lesser known Wool Works at the NGV, and on a later visit, their Wrapped Vestibule at the AGNSW; Sol Le Witt’s 1977 Wall Drawings at the NGV and AGNSW; Richard Long’s A Straight Hundred Mile Walk in Australia: A walk along a line, returning to the same campsite each night (1977) and respective site-

140 _{One of Kaldor’s projects took place overseas. An Australian Accent: Mike Parr, Imants Tillers, Ken}

Unsworth (1984) was his eighth project, and played an important role in promoting Australian art to an American Audience. Sophie Forbat, ed. 40 Years: Kaldor Public Art Projects. (Botany, NSW: Kaldor Public Art Projects, 2009), 146.

141 _{Daniel Thomas, ‘The Artists and their Australian Context,’ 13.}

142 _{Elwyn Lynn remarks on the dangers of trying to judge the exact influence of visiting artists in his article} ‘The Power Gallery of Contemporary Art: Acquisitions 1980-81,’ Art and Australia 20, no.3 (1983): 365. 143 _{Charles Green, Peripheral Vision: Contemporary Australian Art 1970-1994, (Sydney: Craftsman} House, 1995), 13.

specific works at the AGNSW and the NGV; Ugo Rondinone’s Our Magic Hour (2004) at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and Clockwork for Oracle at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA); Urs Fischer’s work at Cockatoo Island in 2007; Gregor Schneider’s dystopian work on Bondi Beach in 2007; and Bill Viola’s The Tristan Project (2008) in St Saviour’s Church, Redfern. Tatzu Nishi’s War and Peace and In Between (2009), which was built around the iconic equestrian statues that flank the AGNSW’s entrance, will be discussed in detail in chapter two in relation to the semiotics of the art museum.

Further influential international artists started to visit Australia with the introduction of the Biennale of Sydney. While the first Biennale in 1973 was a fairly small and domestic affair, later exhibitions throughout that decade attracted internationally renowned figures such as Buren, Marcel Broodthaers, Mario Merz, and performance artists Ulrike

Rosenbach, and Marina Abramovi! and Ulay. The Sydney Biennale continues today to attract major artists and curators from around the globe and actively encourages site- specific artworks. In fact, the press release for the 2008 Biennale particularly singles out the site-specific activities on Cockatoo Island for promotion, signalling the art form’s more mainstream, or at least fashionable, position in the art world.144