[1] Noel Sheridan (ed.), The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, South Australia (Adelaide: EAF Press, 1979). Cited in Anne Marsh, Body and Self: Performance Art in Australia 1969–1992 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993) 62.

[2] Letter to author, May 2000.

[3] Even the most recent and comprehensive text regarding Allen and his work published in New Zealand—Wystan Curnow & Robert Leonard, “Contact” [Interview with Jim Allen], Art New Zealand 95 (Winter 2000) 48-55, 99—deals only with Allen’s life and work up until his departure for Australia. The key exception in New Zealand art history is Christina Barton’s detailing of Allen’s Australian work in her unpublished MA thesis, “Post-Object Art in New Zealand 1969–1979: Experiments in Art and Life” (University of Auckland, 1987). Furthermore, prior to the Action Replay Post Object Art exhibitions (Artspace, Auckland Art Gallery and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 1998) and the sets of projects occasioning this publication, post-object and performance art of the 1970s has been largely absent from recent survey exhibitions of New Zealand art such as Headlands: Thinking Through New Zealand Art (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1992). One of the few references on Allen’s work to be found in Australian art-historical writing appears in Marsh’s Body and Self but this merely takes the form of a cursory, slightly dismissive description of Allen’s [Poetry for] Chainsaws as “an angry and potentially violent work.” (66) Moreover this reference is unfortunately illustrated with an image of another Allen work undertaken at the EAF in 1976, On Planting a Native, mistakingly captioned as Chainsaws. Other references to Allen’s work in Australia at this time can be found in the EAF publications Stephanie Britton (ed.), A Decade at the EAF (1984) and Noel Sheridan and Ian de Gruchy (eds), EAF ‘76 (1976), as well as in Julie Ewington’s review of the EAF exhibition, “Post-Object Art – Australia and New Zealand – a Survey” in Arts Melbourne 1/2 (1976). Unfortunately no reference to Allen’s work appears in Nick Waterlow (ed.), 25 Years of Performance Art in Australia (exh. cat.) (Sydney: Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, 1994). An earlier work undertaken by Allen in Australia is detailed in Tom McCullough (ed.), Sculpturscape ‘73 (exh. cat.) (Mildura: Mildura Arts Centre, 1973), and New Zealand Environment #5 discussed in Graeme Sturgeon, Sculpture at Mildura: The Story of the Mildura Sculpture Triennial 1961-1982 (Mildura: Mildura City Council, 1985). The beginnings of a more comprehensive art-historical project regarding post-object art or conceptualism in both sites can be found in Terry Smith, “Peripheries in Motion: Conceptualism and Conceptual Art in Australia and New Zealand”, in Philomena Mariani (ed.), Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s (exh. cat.) (New York: The Queens Museum of Art, 1999).

[4] Of course this dynamic of cross-Tasman traffic or exchange runs right through the post-European contact histories of art in Australia and New Zealand, as most recently noted for example by William McAloon in Home and Away: Contemporary Australian and New Zealand Art from the Chartwell Collection (exh. cat.) (Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and David Bateman, 1999) as well as curators Christina Barton, Zara Stanhope and Clare Williamson in their introduction to the exhibition Close Quarters: Contemporary Art from Australia and New Zealand (exh. cat.) (Melbourne: Monash University Gallery and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 1999). Yet despite this acknowledgement there has been little critical attention paid to the generative, cogent functions of this dynamic in terms of the production and determination of work. Allen is a good place to start, given his own commitment to this relation not only in terms of educational and organisational activities (the latter subsequently pursued also by Ian Hunter and Nicholas Spill), but his own art practice, as well as the fact his involvment coincides with the beginning of the period (the late sixties/early seventies on) that has seen the most activity in this regard. (And however much this may be in part determined by general cultural, technological and economic globalisation key intellectual and discursive factors functioning in cycles of generation and consequence must be acknowledged.) Key instances of activity here include substantial involvement of New Zealand artists at the Mildura Sculpture Triennial, and to a lessor extent the Biennale of Sydney, and the first of the Biennial ANZART events held in Christchurch in 1981. See Wystan Curnow, “Art Spaces: The Sydney Biennale”, Art New Zealand 13 (1979); Nicholas Spill (ed.), The Mildura Experience (Wellington: QEII Arts Council of New Zealand, 1978); Spill (ed.), New Zealand Sculptors at Mildura (exh. cat.) (Wellington: QEII Arts Council of New Zealand, 1978); and Spill“Oz-Enz Connections: The Trans Tasman Circuit Rewired”, Action 12 (1979-80). New Zealand participation in large Australian events such as the Biennale of Sydney and the Asia Pacific Triennials of the 1990s has continued, but perhaps overshadowed in importance by the increasing number of projects undertaken by artists from each site in public and private spaces ‘over the water’ as well as the now common-place inclusion of work from both locations in numerous group and survey exhibitions.

[5] Some re-reading of Allen’s New Zealand work 1969-75 might in fact be undertaken through this subsequent EAF work. This would certainly supplement the existing material on Allen’s work of this period, with the exception of that undertaken by Christina Barton little of it undertaken retrospectively during the eighties and nineties. However, for reasons of space such a project is merely implied in my work here. In addition to the section on Contact in Jim Allen and Wystan Curnow (eds), New Art: Some Recent New Zealand Sculpture and Post-Object Art (Auckland: Heinemann Educational, 1976), the most useful material pertaining to Allen’s work of 1969-75 can be found in: Jim Allen, “Towards an Attitude”, in Five Sculptors (exh. cat.) (Wellington: New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, 1970); Christina Barton, “The Last Small World: Jim Allen’s New Zealand Environment no. 5”, Midwest 1 (1992), and “Post-Object Art in New Zealand 1969–1979”; Wystan Curnow, “Making it New”, New Zealand Listener (September 6, 1975), and “Project Programme 1975, Nos. 1–6”, Auckland Art Gallery Quarterly 62–63 (December 1976); Anthony Green “Aspects of New Zealand Sculpture 8: Recent Developments 1”, Education 26/8 (1977); and O-AR: Jim Allen–Recent Work (published transcript of gallery discussions) (1975).

[6] Interview with author, July 1999. For a more detailed discussion of aspects of (and background to) Allen’s teaching philosophy and approach see Curnow & Leonard, “Contact”.

[7] This sabbatical experience had a significant and lasting impact on Allen’s subsequent work as both educator and artist (although he himself would most likely be loath to separate out these roles, each involving similar multi-disciplinary approaches to propositional and explorative modes of activity.) For a more detailed discussion of Allen’s sabbatical activity and some of its ramifications on Allen’s subsequent work see Curnow & Leonard, “Contact”.

[8] We might note here Bruce Barber, Philip Dadson, Kimberley Gray, Maree Horner, John Lethbridge, Leon Narbey and Roger Peters amongst others.

[9] The former published in Allen and Curnow (eds), New Art, the latter as O-AR: Jim Allen–Recent Work.

[10] The invention of a critical project—a contemporary art criticism in New Zealand—whether perceived as supplementing or emerging from within post-object art at this time is another important history yet to be fully explicated. There is little doubt that if not post-object work itself then certainly the cultural and intellectual conditions from which it emerged also gave occasion for the beginnings of other various language-based critical projects, from art criticism to phenomenological texts to American language-poetry inflected writing of the early eighties. Significantly all appeared together under the same publishing banners in magazines such as And, Parallax, Splash, and Spleen.

[11] In general terms the same community of people provided participants and audience for each activity irrespective of locality. Hence the perceived need for the publication Allen and Wystan Curnow edited, Some Recent New Zealand Sculpture and Post-Object Art, which drew attention to experimental edges of sculptural activity, including performance. Some odd exceptions in terms of the included (and omitted) artists notwithstanding, it manifested an unswerving, almost belligerent commitment to the task of documenting the very specific actions, energies and ideals of a particular milieu (and moment) on terms laid out by the participants themselves. In keeping both with its subject and the motivating attitudes of its editors New Art was partial and selective—as passionate, rigorous or speculative as each of the documented works. It disavowed any claim to an encompassing historical or critical overview and contained little in the way of contextualising narrative. It was an ‘art’, rather than art-critical or historical project. It was, as Allen and Curnow stated in the introduction, “a report on current work.” Yet that which is current is merely history in the waiting, and so whilst plainly of its time New Art has also accrued the historical character of summation, of an inevitable (albeit unintentional) past-tense statement upon a first phase of post-object art in New Zealand (with the Elam sculpture department under Allen’s leadership as its central generating site).

[12] In Pauline Barber, “The Splinterview 4: Jim Allen”, Spleen 4 (1976), and Jim Allen, “Experimental Art in New Zealand” (audio recording of radio programme) (Adelaide: Radio 5UV, 1976) respectively.

[13] “I think the dialogue within this countryis of a minimal level, it exists between a few people but not much beyond that, and there are other communities and situations where the dialogue is much better, and I think that Australia has some possibility in this direction.” In Barber, “The Splinterview 4”.

[14] Allen himself alludes to this, with particular regard to his own working position, in Barber, “The Splinterview 4”.

[15] Marsh, Body and Self, 53.

[16] ibid.

[17] In this lecture Brook characterised post object art in general terms as physically tenuous or non-physical, as constituted in human activity, as contextually dependent rather than hermetic or autonomous, as non-hierachical, ephemeral, and dispersed. See Donald Brook, “Post Object Art in Australia and New Zealand”, in Britton (ed.), A Decade at the EAF. Key points are cited in Marsh, Body and Self, 58-59.

[18] In addition to that of Allen himself this exhibition included, partly thanks to Allen’s efforts, work by Bruce Barber/Billy Apple, Kimberley Gray—a performance undertaken by Allen from instructions sent over by Gray—John Lethbridge and David Mealing.

[19] Body art she claims focuses on the “body and psychological states experienced by the artist.” Ritual performance concentrates on the “relationship between the body and environment.” Both frequently draw on mythology and the former additionally upon modern psychological theory. Conceptual performance, she writes, “analyses what art is. It tends to be concerned primarily with intellectual ideas about art: art and its theories.” Marsh, Body and Self, 55.

[20] ibid., 56.

[21] ibid., 55.

[22] Barton, “The Last Small World”, 29.

[23] This describes its first showing at Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, July 1970. In subsequent outdoor showings at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 1970 and Mildura Sculpture Triennial, 1973 the wire was replaced by rope. Wystan Curnow wrote of this change: “He feared, perhaps, that its aggressiveness could be read too simply. There was, for example, this progression: he who braved the wire and reached the centre was the least threatened of participants, the most protected. Had he now fenced himself in against intruders?” Curnow, “Project Programme 1975”, 23.

[24] The context or moment of Curnow’s own writing needs to be noted in this. First, the text in question read back through these works from the occasion of the 1975 O-AR exhibitions—exhibitions, as noted, far more open in structure and inviting of speculative engagement as well as far less aggressive in material form and indeed far less apparently socially determined in terms of materiality. Second, it appears that Curnow’s project involved in part an attempt a break with, or at least complicate a culture of quite reductive thinking regarding art’s capacity for social criticism as being limited to directly representational and metaphoric references. See Curnow, “Project Programme 1975”, 23-25.

[25] ibid., 23.

[26 Barton, “Post-Object Art in New Zealand 1969–1979”, 92.

[27] ibid., 93.

[28] ibid., 99.

[29] The distinction (environment/installation) rarely holds in Allen’s work in any clear-cut manner. Even the self-contained structure of NZ Environment #5, for example, draws strongly upon the cultural allusion of its constituent materials. Is not Barton’s definition of ‘environments’ perhaps more accurately one of ‘enclosures’? And indeed, might not works such as NZ Environment #5 and Arena have been better described as such—so imparting a greater sense of reference to social context, or socialisation? Where Barton’s distinction may continue to prove of value is in terms of thinking of shifts in practice not within large all-encompassing categories but via very subtle moves back and forth from work to work. ‘Environment’ and ‘installation’ assist in identifying such moves. They also offer ciphers for general moves in Allen’s practice between investigations first of subject-object relations and second of the interplay of that relation with socio-spatial context and linguistic context. Allen’s practice moves about here in dynamic fashion (rather than simple progression) in that the former appears to be the key trajectory of a work such as a O-AR 1 (1975), four and a half years after Arena to which socio-spatial context is crucial (but exploration of subject-object relation at best cursory). It should also be noted that throughout this essay I use ‘installation’ in a more current manner as a somewhat generic term applied to all of Allen’s post-1968 sculptural or materially-based work signalling as it does very general conditions of site-specificity, temporality and contingent discursivity.

[30] A model of sorts, Allen has subsequently commented (only partially tongue-in-cheek), informing his instigation of new modes of teaching program at Sydney College of the Arts! Letter to the author, July 2000.

[31] See Barton, “Post-Object Art in New Zealand 1969–1979”, 169.

[32] This despite Allen’s concerns that the situation would spin out of control, particularly in terms of collapsing relations between audience and participants. See Curnow and Leonard, “Contact”, 54.

[33] This set of artist/participant/audience relations is crucial in elucidating speculative shifts in Allen’s practice. In Contact the audience viewed a space of activity from its edges, primarily by looking in through a gallery doorway. On one hand this placed them within similar floor-bound spatial coordinates to the participants. On the other, the particular room was set apart from their movement through the gallery building so marking it as a detached space of the spectacle. In each of Newspaper Piece, Poetry for Chainsaws, Sending/Receiving, and On Planting a Native Allen as performer was positioned before a seated audience in a more traditional theatrical delineation of viewed and viewer, but also in fact a more communally conscious sharing of a singular environment and occasion.

[34] The Elsatic-Sided Boot is a notable exception in this regard. Allen had performed within the work of others in New Zealand and had participated in the Pavilion K performance evenings at Epsom Showgrounds in December 1974, but his own prceding New Zealand work does not otherwise draw attention to the body of the artist as constituent element.

[35] It was performed again along with presentation of There are Always Elephants to be Made Drunk at the Sydney Biennale, 1976.

[36] The Elsatic-Sided Boot, artist invitation (1976).

[37] This establishing of the parameters for task actions of a group nature was also a common structural form or process in the work of Phil Dadson and Bruce Barber during the early seventies. Of course, the element of music within the work, whilst it may be traced back to Allen’s professed interest in music and movement as creative endeavour stemming from his experience teaching in schools during the fifties, must be considered also in light of Phil Dadson’s work and Allen’s participation in Scratch Orchestra (Antipodean Twig) events and performances of the early seventies.

[38] O-AR: Jim Allen–Recent Work.

[39] Interview with author, July 1999.

[40] On Planting a Native, artist invitation (1976).

[41] ibid