To what extent are your research methods and art practice linked to other practices in a broader social context?

Over the years my work has ambiguously hovered between abstraction and perceived representation, taking the form of painting and installations. Throughout this period my underlying theoretical concerns have been initiated by the ambivalent relationship between geography and philosophy, the artificial and the natural, representation and perception. Whether it be painting or installation, I have often sought to set up incongruous relationships, to energise the work, ensuring it be continually changing and open to more than one reading.

  In an attempt to contextualise my current practice, I would refer to the recent discussions on Post colonialism, yet my research methods or preparation processes as Lyndal Jones would prefer, encompass a far broader range of ideas, both material and conceptual.

  From 1988-91 I lived in the U.K., during which time the Berlin wall came down and the Gulf war started. These experiences and many others prompted much thought concerning colonialism. Thinking about Australia from outside provided a detached, even dislocated, perspective on its cultural identity and living in Australia's derived culture enlightened my understanding of colonialism.

  The artwork I produced during this period, focused on found objects and photographic representations, these works singled out images and objects for recontextualising. One particular installation, exhibited in 1989, in London, incorporated the projected image of an actual dead fly with a star shaped, blue sky background. This piece referred to a cliched attitude toward an Australian identity and I have continued to work with this motif in a series of collaborative installations since.

  Even though the work I produced in London had no obvious references to landscape in the context of 'genre', there was an underlying conceptual association lurking somewhere in the back of my mind. These associations became more evident as time went by. During this period I stumbled across a small exhibition (curated by an expatriate Australian) titled simply Art and Nature   and within the brief catalogue essay was the assertion "that Nature is an artistic invention...that the natural world is within us and that looking for it beyond ourselves i s an absurdity." 1

" We might develop the metaphor whereby art history is a landscape through which the contemporary artist travels - ie. a world filled with constructed views and vantage points. In fact, art history could be described as a synthetic landscape, man-made and devoid of places where nobody has ever been before." 2

  Back in Australia I tried to analyse personal connections with place. I wanted to explore a subject which I knew, an image of familiarity. I wanted to pursue an iconic direction my work   had taken while in the U.K.

  From an early age, I can remember framed prints of Heidelberg School artists, hanging above the fireplace in the loungeroom of our suburban house. From what I know now there was probably the same print above every house in the street. As an art student I despised these pictures, little did I know that they would linger on to haunt me.

  Back in Australia, I re-viewed these pictures (helped by my job at the time at the N.G.V. Conservation dept. putting all paintings behind glass). After becoming more familiar with these paintings and early colonial works I reffered to Ian Burns writing on landscape and nationalism. Simultaneously, I had been inspired by the works in an exhibition titled Images of Power, Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley , curated by Judith Ryan.

  " Pictures of landscape became and have remained the most valued within a hierarchy of subject matter and provide the strongest threads of continuity in any history of Australian art. Consequently, shifts in the conception of the landscape are especially significant to an understanding of Australian art and its history." 3

It was at this stage that my work became more focused. I now wanted to explore issues relating to why landscape had played such a major role in Australian art, historical issues regarding colonisation and national identity. With a deeper understanding of my cultural heritage, I wanted to addresses the role and relevance of landscape as a subject in art and investigate future directions for landscape as a subject in contemporary art.

  From this stage onward, I have looked at the regional landscape tradition in Australian art, looking specifically at historical depictions of the eucalypt ( gum tree ). The changing, political and sociological structures that define our cultural identity through the representation of landscape in Australia, became pertinent issues within my practice. I wanted to question preconceived and stereotype notions relating to the representation of landscape, culturally and within art history.

  To most Australians, the gum tree is a distinct part of the landscape, historically inscribed on the Australian psyche as a nationalistically loaded symbol. 4 Depictions of eucalypts have featured in some of the most historically renowned paintings of landscape in Australian art.

  The earliest western depiction of eucalypts appeared during colonisation. Artists like Eugene Von Guerard, Nicholas Chevalier and later Louis Buvelot painted scenic works derived from a European Romantic tradition. Von Guerard accompanied expeditions, to paint the "wilderness" for scientific documentation of the unexplored "utopia".

  The period of Australian art, to follow, the Heidelberg School, became one of the most publicised eras in Australian art history, producing national "heroes" such as, Arthur Streeton, Tom Robert's and Fredrick McCubbin. Throughout this period, there was an underlying tension between the people and their newly acquired terrain. The fear of the unknown, experienced by the early settlers, created the notion of an ongoing battle between "man and the land". Fear of getting lost in the bush as depicted by McCubbin in the painting "Lost" 1886, was a common urban fear. Once "tamed", the landscape's purpose was for recreation and rejuvenation from the urban areas where most of the population lived. 5

  Today, it is recognised that this period encouraged a popularised perception of the landscape, defined by developing a national identity, promoting Australia as an agricultural force in harmony with "nature". 6 The paintings reflected a "land of opportunity" and the gum tree was perceived as unique to a colonised land, previously considered to be a "wilderness". These artists relied heavily on depicting gum trees and, in doing so, elevated the gumtree to the status of an icon.

  " The second period of pioneering, started about the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, is less romantic than the first was, since it involves factories and sub-divisions instead of sheep, gold and limitless acreages of the bush, but it is no less affecting to the participants." 7

  Today, household goods are mass produced and decorated by landscape motifs emphasising an artificial attempt to relate to landscape. The search for harmony between people and place, pictorially explored by the Heidelberg School artists, continues to be reinstated through western decor ; toilet paper with printed leaves and floral designs on curtains and carpet. Yet the selected motifs, re-introduced for domestic consumption, are censored elements, generalised symbols, to imply or suggest a connection. It is this connection I began to explore.

  While European representations of the landscape have been predominant in Australian art history, the recent escalation of Aboriginal art has provided another perception of landscape and land rights. Ironically, today Aboriginal Art is an international success story, promoted with the same political vigour as the Heidelberg School (Heidelberg School imagery printed on place matts, Aboriginal designs reproduced on tea towels)

  When dealing with landscape as a subject in Australian art, I believe it is impossible to ignore the history of white settlement and attitudes toward land ownership. Adrian Piper, speaking about the work of Ian Burn; refers to a passage by Kevin Gilbert acknowledged as the first Aboriginal playwright:

  "The traditional Aboriginal was drunk on religion, intoxicated by the metaphysics expressed through the physical features of his land."

  The impact of white settlement and "the loss of land meant the loss of metaphysics, too, because the two were inextricable." 8 It is in this context that Adrian Piper believes that the act of painting the landscape in Australia is a political act, already historically loaded. 9

  In my most recent series of works, titled "Enclosure", a geometric format, made up of rectangular forms, frames the central image. "Enclosure", historically means; the act of fencing common land in order to make it private property, widely practiced in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. This administered sense of order is juxtaposed with an implied symbol or iconic representation; a eucalypt. The private and domestic space inferred by the physicality of materials frames the central image and is forced to coexist in symbiosis with the representation of landscape. Similar to Ian Burns` description of John Bracks painting The Car, 1955, "You are both placed and displaced in the landscape." 10

  The rectangular forms used to frame the iconic representation of the tree, began as monochromatic structures that existed as real objects in opposition to modes of representation. As I explored the range of domestic meanings associated with fabric I decided to take the idea further. Maintaining that these objects remain "real" in the sense that they exist as fabricated objects in their own right, I wanted them to be "inside" objects as opposed to the landscape or outdoor representations . To the viewer, the materials used might invoke links to household furniture. In some instances these objects are made from actual domestic items, such as tea towels and curtains. These objects function in the same way as John Bracks "car", perceived by Ian Burn, where:

  "The landscape becomes an extension of our suburban loungeroom, offered to us by the car. The car fulfils a quite particular psychological need in this society, linking family and landscape. 11

  Likewise photography, allows us to retain a selected element of the landscape as a memorial feature within our domestic environment . In the late seventies Susan Sontag described our relationship with photographic representation and that:

"By furnishing this already crowded world with a duplicate one of images, photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is." 12

  As a formal device the format of these works reinforces the implied privatisation of space, as defined by the title; fencing is a prominent part of the Australian landscape and stakes out ownership. Yet the format also functions as a window with proposed voyeuristic associations, particularly when we think back to John Bracks "The Car" painting, or Alfred Hitchcock;, "Rear Window". As a window, the viewer is encouraged to look through the domestic interior to a transparent memory, a nostalgic form of ownership.

  Taking into consideration the associated meanings inherent within the physicality of the materials used and the suggested iconography, there is a point where my intention is to recontexualise or re-order these meanings and reject, or at least disrupt their social and cultural implications, "to make possible a critical intervention and re-negotiation of meaning" characterised by the process of bricolage: "The procedure of bricolage signals not only the creation of new signs, but the intervention and breaking open of already existing signs." 13

  The process of bricolage, "The activity of roaming in the ruins of culture, picking up useful bits and pieces to keep things going or even make them function better." 14 provides the platform from which to juggle meaning. While attempting to critique social and cultural narratives attributed to the representation of landscape in Australia; such as the historically heroic white, masculine associations, I can simultaneously suggest potentially new directions for landscape as a subject in art, unleashed from traditional modes of perception.

  But the bricoleur never exchanges one set of meanings completely for another. He or she leaves the two representations half complete...Bricolage, in any form, sets up a double vision, it forces a juxtaposition of forms, and new meanings must emerge." 15

1 Watkins, J., "Art and Nature" An exhibition of contemporary landscape painting. Curated by Johnathan Watkins, Flaxman Gallery, London, 1989. Catalogue essay.

2 Ibid

3 Burn, I., National Life and Landscapes: Australian Painting 1900-1940 , Sydney, Bay Books, 1991. Introduction, P.7.

4 Burn,I., Dialogue, Writings in Art History , Allen & Unwin, 1991. Beating about the Bush: The landscapes of the Heidelberg school. P. 32. (This essay was written in 1979 and published Australian Art and Architecture: Essays presented to Bernard Smith Sydney: Oxford University Press, 1980).

5 Ibid, P.27

6 Burn,I., Dialogue, Writings in Art History , Allen & Unwin, 1991. "Popular landscape painting between the wars." P. 38. This essay was written in 1982 as a catalogue introduction for the exhibition, Popular Melbourne landscape painting between the Wars, Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria, organised by Doug Hall.

7 Boyd, R., The Australian Ugliness, Pioneers and Arboraphobes, P.74

8 Gilbert, K., Living Black, Blacks talk to Kevin Gilbert, Penguin Books, 1978, P.2.

9 From a lecture given by Adrian Piper at Monash University, Ian Burn memorial lecture, 1996.

10   Burn, I., Is Art History Any Use To Artists? Art Network , No. 15 Autumn 1985, P. 11

11 Ibid, P.11

12 Sontag, S, On Photography , Penguin Books, 1977. P.24 .

13 Merewether, C., Fabricating Mythologies: The Art of Bricolage, Catalogue Essay, The Boundary Rider, 9th Biennale of Sydney, 1993. P.20.

14 Benterrek, K., Mueke, s., Roe, P., Reading the Country, Introduction to Nomadology . Fremantle Australia Centre Press, 1984. P.184.

15 Ibid, P.151.