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.