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The Photographic
Legacy of Post-Object Art...continued
Christina Barton
Captions to illustrations:
1. Bruce Barber,
Mount Eden Crater performance, 1973,
performance
documentation, published in Jim Allen and
Wystan Curnow, New Art: Some Recent Sculpture
and Post-Object Art, Heinemann, Auckland,
1976
[photo: Bryony Dalefield]
2. Bill Culbert,
Clay with watch, July 1975, black and
white photograph,
published in Bill Culbert 1973-1984,
Coracle Press, London, 1984
3. Bill Culbert,
Clay without watch, July 1975, black
and white photograph
published in Bill Culbert 1973-1984,
Coracle Press, London, 1984
4. Bruce Barber,
Kiss, 1974/1998, slide-tape performance
documentation piece,
artist's collection
5. Billy Apple,
8 x 8 A Subtraction, July 1975, Auckland
City Art Gallery [photo: John Daley]
6. Billy Apple,
8 x 8 A Subtraction, July 1975, documented
in Wystan Curnow,
'Billy Apple in New Zealand', Auckland
City Art Gallery Quarterly, no 61,
May 1976, p.18
7. Peter Roche
and Linda Buis, Continuance in Action:
Interferences, 18 June
1980, Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, performance
photo-documentation [photo: Ed Kulka]
8. Peter Roche
and Linda Buis, Continuance in Action:
Interferences, 18 June
1980, documented in Wystan Curnow, 'Peter
Roche/Linda Buis. A Gathering
Concerning Three Performances, Parallax,
vol 1, no 2, Summer 1983,
pp 168-169
9. Julian Dashper,
Motorway Schools, 1980, view of exhibition,
100m2, Federal
Street, Auckland [photo: Peter Hannken]
10. Julian Dashper,
Motorway Schools, 1980/1994, documentation
of original
exhibition presented in Julian Dashper:
Photography 1980-1994, Manawatu
Art Gallery, Palmerston North [photo: Julian
Dashper]
[1]
This essay was first presented as a paper at
Symposium 2000, Christchurch (13 November 2000).
It has been slightly edited and altered to suit
a published format, but the tone of an oral
presentation has been maintained.
[2]
Key references include: Jeff Wall, '''Marks
of Indifference": Aspects of Photography
in, or as, Conceptual Art', in Ann Goldstein
& Anne Rorimer (eds), Reconsidering the
Object of Art: 1965-1975, Museum of Contemporary
Art and MIT Press, Los Angeles and Cambridge,
Mass., pp 246-267; John Roberts, 'Photography,
Iconophobia and the Ruins of Conceptual Art',
in John Roberts (ed), The Impossible Document:
Photography and Conceptual Art in Britain 1966-1976,
Camerworks, London, 1997, pp 7-45; David Campany,
'Conceptual Art History or, a Home for Homes
for America', in Michael Newman and Jon
Bird (eds), Rewriting Conceptual Art,
Reaktion Books, London, 1999, pp 123-139.
[3]
The literature on photography and/in postmodernism
is extensive. Useful references for this essay
include: Abigail Solomon-Godeau, 'Photography
after Art Photography' [1984] in Photography
at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History,
Institutions, and Practices, University
of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1991, pp 103-123;
Douglas Crimp, 'The Photographic Activity of
Postmodernism', October, 15, Winter 1980,
pp 91-101; Rosalind Krauss, 'Notes on the Index
Parts I & II', in The Originality of
the Avant-garde and Other Modernist Myths,
MIT Press, Cambridge Mass., pp 196-220.
[4]
I would now argue that what is needed is a critical
history of contemporary art in New Zealand that
explicates the implicit and explicit use of
photography, employed as part of a critique
of representation, that can be identified in
the practices of artists as diverse as Peter
Peryer, Richard Killeen, Alexis Hunter and Merylyn
Tweedie, who might then be linked with post-object
artists such as Bruce Barber, Nick Spill, etc.
[6]
In response to comments made at the symposium,
I would suggest that it is the photo-document"s
liminal condition working between world and
text (or "inside the frame" as Wystan Curnow
described it) that allows Mike Parr's notion
of the 'generative function of live action'
to proceed.
[7]
Solomon-Godeau, p.104
[8]
Joseph Kosuth, 'On Photography', Artist and
Camera, 1979, p 37.
[9]
Dan Graham, Rock my Religion: Writings and
Art Projects 1965-1990, MIT Press, Cambridge
Mass., 1993, p xx.
[10]
Rosalind Krauss, 'The Photographic Activity
of Surrealism', in The Originality of the
Avant-garde and Other Modernist Myths, p
31.
[11]
See Christina Barton, 'Mon Soleil: Considering
Photography in the Work of Bill Culbert', Bill
Culbert: Light Works, City Gallery, Wellington,
1998, pp 14-23.
[12]
Bruce Barber, artist's statement, Young artists,
exhibition catalogue, New Zealand Academy of
Fine Arts, Wellington, 1974, not paginated.
[15]
Wystan Curnow, 'Billy Apple in New Zealand',
Auckland City Art Gallery Quarterly,
61, May 1976, pp 10-23.
[16]
See for example, Six Performances. Roche/Buis:
A Documentation of Six Performances by Roche/Buis,
Roche/Buis, Auckland, 1983.
[17]
Wystan Curnow, 'Peter Roche/Linda Buis. A Gathering
Concerning Three Performances', Parallax,
vol 1, no 2, Summer, pp 166-187.
[18]
It is perhaps a moment where we can witness
the way that post-object art operates amongst
the histories and across the boundaries of
the modern, the anti-modern and the post-modern,
as Blair French argues in his paper for this
symposium, which I take to be further evidence
of the slipperiness of post-object art when
it comes to its ultimate historical categorisation.
[19]
The polaroids are all of Westlake Girls High
School on Auckland"s North Shore, taken by the
artist from the playing field between the motorway
and the school.
[20]
Tim Walker, 'Motorway Schools at 100m 2',
Art New Zealand, 18, Summer 1980, pp
50-51.
[21]
See Elizabeth Leyland, 'Motorway Schools' and
Harry Osborne, 'Motorway Schools', Craccum,
October 1981, page number unknown (clipping
from Frank Stark's 100m 2 archive).
[22]
100m2: A 10 Year Survey, Artspace, Auckland,
1989; Julian Dashper Photography 1980-1994,
Manawatu Art Gallery, Palmerston North, 1994;
and most recently in Time, Death and Narrative,
an installation at the Auckland Art Gallery,
featuring a number of works by contemporary
artists to contextualise Colin McCahon's The
Way of the Cross, 1966, commissioned by
the Sisters of Our Lady of the Mission, on loan
to the gallery, 1999.
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