Research - Site specificity

The term site-specific refers to a work of art that has been tailored specifically for a particular location and that has an interrelationship with the location, and said works are not always permanent. They are temporary as well as not damaging to the environment. Site-specific art is produced by commercial artists, and independently, and can include some instances of work such as sculpture, stencil, graffiti and other art forms. Installations can be in urban or remote natural settings, and potentially underwater.

As a site-specific work of art is designed for a specific location, but if it is removed from that location it will lose all or a substantial part of its meaning. The term site-specific is often used in relation to installation art, as in site-specific installation; and land art is site-specific almost by definition.

The term "site-specific art" was promoted and refined by Californian artist Robert Irwin. Still, it was first used in the mid-1970s by younger sculptors, such as Dennis Oppenheim, who had started working on public commissions for large urban sites. Modernist art objects were transportable, nomadic, could only exist in the museum space and were the objects of the market and commodification. Since 1960 the artists were trying to find a way out of this situation and thus drew attention to the site and the context around this site.

Dennis Oppenheimer (1938 - 2011) was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. His early artistic practice is a questioning about the nature of art, the making of art and the definition of art: a meta-art that arose when strategies of the Minimalists were expanded to focus on site and context. This work, for example, is tailored for this area as this area is big enough for the circles to branch out and it would not go well in places without snow.

This image is called 'Annual Rings,' taken by Oppenheimer in 1968. This a prototype of his land work, consisting of shovelled pathways the snow, on either side of a frozen waterway dividing the United States and Canada and their own time zones. The feeling of this image, to me, feels liminal. Because of how simple the way this piece of work is made, as well as that it doesn't look like it belongs to someone on Earth. A small aperture was used to capture the basic details, to the point we know how deep the snow is, and a low sensitivity level was used to keep the image bright so that we can continue to see the details like this. There is a circular pattern throughout this piece of work, and a circle is a universal symbol with extensive meaning. It represents the notions of totality, wholeness, original perfection, the Self, the infinite, eternity and timelessness. Even though this cannot be touched as it would potentially ruin it, but by the looking of it, the image looks soft and smooth, despite the snow being cold and crunchy, not smooth at times. And the continued use of white can work with the circles' symbolism, as the colour white can mean purity and goodness. I like this image because of how candid (not posed) this image looks even if the camera angle is positioned on purpose.

Another artist that works with the environment in a harmless way is Andy Goldsworthy (born 26Th July 1956). From the age of 13, he worked on farms as a labourer. He has likened the repetitive quality of farm tasks to the routine of making sculpture: "A lot of my work is like picking potatoes; you have to get into the rhythm of it." - The Guardian.

The materials used in Goldsworthy's art often include brightly coloured flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns. He has been quoted as saying, "I think it's incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole." - The Daily Telegraph.

This artwork was completed in 2013 somewhere in the woods of England's Hampshire County, and is a part of Goldsworthy's book, 'Ephemeral Works.' The use of the golden to darker brown colours in this image help carry out the feeling of etherealness, magic, and warmth, as it is not normal to see a tree with such an appearance. Goldsworthy has used a medium sensitivity, small aperture and fast shutter speed to capture the detail and glowing effect from the leaf positioning. The main colours of these images are all dark, like black, brown and grey, which contrasts with the lighter shades and lighting positioning.

If one was to touch this, they would feel a rough feeling from the leaves and bark on the tree, despite the softness coming from the looks of it up-close and from afar. The use of low light sensitivity helps this. I would say that this photograph is very successful with the way it looks and conveys opinions on it, and the posed position of the camera shows the viewer just how much work has gone into this to look the way it is. This photograph is good in terms of site specificity because there has not been any major disruption to the foundations of the ground, and I like this image just because the positioning of the leaves in the area surrounding the tree makes this effective. So that this is environmentally good with no excess pollution being created in the process that would potentially harm the surrounding environment.

Module pieces - Structure

While following up to our visit to the Erewash Museum, we began to create our own works for an exhibition that will be taking place there with inspiration from the architecture in the area of Ilkeston that the museum is in. 

(St. Mary's church that I had based my works from)

For me, my inspiration for this project was the St. Mary's church just down the road from the museum, as the structure and architecture of the churches had fascinated me of how they looked, thus I would be using the shapes from this building in my own pieces of work, making it the centre piece.

The person that had inspired me to work on building/shapes like this is Thomas Telford (1757 - 1834), who was Telford's most famous canal works include the 60-mile Caledonian Canal (1804-1822) and Ellesmere Canal. In the Highlands of Scotland, Telford was responsible or about 1,200 miles of new or improved roads. The architecture of these structures, even though it looks simple, has inspired me with my own, but yet it has many details and structures. Whereas my inspiration on the church also matches this, as its textures and patterns interest me.

I had also been inspired by a work that was already in the room that our exhibition would be set up in, it consisted a silhouette of small branches of a tree and a top of a hill in front of a sunset, where my first piece of work would be based from this.

But after finishing this piece I came to the conclusion that I would use this shape of the church for my works through out this part of the project, but if I was to re-make this piece, I would experiment with other type of materials, bigger or smaller sizes and colours of paint to get a different effect of the sky. But seeing as my previous project consisted of me using paints a lot, I considered using different materials. such as card and chalk.

I had used the acrylic paint's piece left over piece of card I had cut out to use as a stencil for this piece which I had used white chalk to create this over blue card. I had used blue card to give the feeling of looking up at the church to see the blue sky, yet this is a different technique to all of my previous works, as I hadn't used chalk in my art works.

After creating this chalk piece, I created another just like this, only with a different coloured piece of paper. I decided to replicate the acrylic piece but with different materials.

Throughout this project, I am progressing the amount is being put into my work. Such as the acrylic piece is a basic shaped piece, where as my Lino piece, I would be adding more parts from the image that I am basing this from, such as trees. I would be printing this image onto different coloured materials, such as card and tracing paper, with different coloured inks so that this will vary different technique I had done before. I have created more than a few so that I can easily determine which is better and how I could improve those that have not worked up to what I thought.

(The Lino base)

Whilst making these Lino pieces, there have been two other pieces that I have further worked on or had second thoughts, to make the one I am Okay with stand out more, I have used a black acrylic paint pen to further enhance the bold lines. Because seeing as I had printed the white ink onto a lighter coloured piece of card, I didn’t think that it would look too light, so it would blend into the paper, so I used the pen to go over it so that it also looked layered and textured.

However, if I was to work on the other piece again, I would experiment on the colour matching first because I soon found out that the pink card did not work with the orange that I had mixed, I would have chosen a darker piece of card or make the orange lighter or darker so that it is easier on the eye.

But while working on these, I decided to try out two colours of ink on one piece, I tried purple and yellow, thinking that it would create a marble effect with the colours, but as I was rolling the ink on the piece of plexiglass they both mixed, thus creating a brown/bronze colour, and knowing that I had to scale my works bigger, I decided to use a piece of A3 black card for this. And looking at it from a distance gives it a window effect.

Experimenting with the ink for the Lino, I used the stencil of the church for the outline and then used a paint roller to roll the ink over the top of the stencil to create the white silhouette on the background, but the ink didn’t manage to get to certain areas at the top of the church as they were smaller and more defined.

Staying with this size of material, I used other materials such as chalk, pencil, watercolour and acrylic pens to create different textures, looks and styles. In some of the pieces, such as these;

For this piece with the bright colours, I tried using them to make the outlines standout, as well as hope that it gives the image of the church a retrospective feel and look.

The chalk at the top of the image and around the silhouette of the church represents light and how people believe in God and see the church as a holy place to go and pray. These two works are still based from the silhouetted image referenced towards the start.

Using pencil, I tried to recreate my silhouette of the church in front of a sunset piece but in black and white, using the array of pencil shades and widths. And I believe that the use of the pencil gives it a more traditional effect as pencil is an easy material to get ahold of and use.

Throughout creating all of these works, on the side of these, I had been creating a ceramic version of the silhouette of the church out of clay before is is blazed for the first time so that it doesn't break, then glazed. I chose a grey-ish colour so that it would still keep the colour of the church itself. I wanted to keep some textures on it, so I used point objects to make lines all across the ceramic so that it isn't just a flat shape. But if I was to do this work again and make it better than this first attempt, I would experiment with the colours first so that I know how it could potentially work out, and I would also mould it bigger so that I can get more details in and, potentially, engrave the markings and windows of the original image of the church so that it would look like the actual church, but just down-sized in scale.

And upon first feeling when picking the final product up after being fired the second time in the kiln, it had a rough feeling from the clay, yet smooth from the coloured finish. It reminds me of the stone textures from the actual church itself, it is as if a part of the structure has been cut out, reshaped and recoloured.