THE URBAN BODEGÓN projectanywhere Conference 2014 (New York) ART AND RESEARCH AT THE OUTERMOST LIMITS OF LOCATION-SPECIFICITY Location: Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall. 55 West 13th Street, Room I202 (use stairs to the left of the security desk on entry), New York, NY 10011 Hosted by: Parsons Fine Arts, School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design, Division of The New School, New York NY. November 13, 2014                                              Thursday: 9.30am-6pm November 14, 2014                                              Friday: 9.30am-6pm This paper will address the following conference questions:- how should art and research that takes place outside traditional contexts and timeframes in the fields of the visual arts, design and performance be validated, experienced and disseminated? What alternatives exist to the traditional role of the curator? Is documentation necessarily a “second best” experience? The responses to these questions are derived from the research for my first PhD at Monash University, Light, Time and Space : Mimetic Painting and Drawing as Installation https://unimelb.academia.edu/JohnNeeson, research at the Royal College of Art and for the current second PhD at the University of Tasmania. Collectively this research contextualises my practice as a visual artist, curator and writer. Since 1993 my visual arts practice has taken place outside the usual system for the presentation of mimetic works and has been aided by collaborations with organizations each with differing agenda These include Conical and WestSpace Melbourne, blackartprojects, Melbourne & Milan, AC Institute & Point B, New York, and in 2015 The Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin...These collaborations have enabled and influenced the outcome of 36 site specific and referential projects that reference the space, architectural idiosyncrasies and transition of day light within each venue. In order for this to occur the works are made on site conflating the location of ‘studio’ and ‘gallery’. Conical Mirror (2003) was installed and referenced the interior of the ARI (Artist Run Initiative) Conical http://www.conical.org.au/program/, in its first manifestation. Half renovated as a white exhibition space and half untouched, the space was illuminated by natural light. I worked on site and painted representations of each section of the wall, including mirror images. The mirror and mirror imagery were regularly introduced into succeeding projects. Conical Mirror illustrates the position I took as a Painter after deducing that the form itself was restricted by the established conventions of the ‘white box’ gallery, completely detached from the outside world and the passage of time. These conventions also include the assumption that Paintings are introduced into the space as portable, tradeable commodities, Any paintings I make however are ephemeral and primarily exist only as elements of an experiential phenomena (in line with installation itself See, de Oliveira, Nicolas and Oxley, Nicola et al. Installation Art, London: Thames & Hudson and Smithsonian Institution,1994. ISBN 0-500-23672-0). The consequences of these assumptions was researched and discussed in the first PhD which was submitted for examination only as an illustrated text, including discussion of the inadequacies of photographic records of installation practice. VCA Mirror (2003) was included with seven installations by other artists that I curated as Projects One VCA Gallery. The works were all premised on referencing the venue and the collection included sound and light works, works derived from the original construction of the renovated space and the replication of an aspect of the interior architecture on the exterior of the building. VCA Mirror directly engaged the modernist derived large glass doors of the foyer of the renovated of the gallery and also extended into the exterior of the building. The evolution of these venue specific installations gradually included the introduction of actual mirrors and reductive ‘Platonic’ solids into the space. Shelf Life   (2011) was specific to and referenced the former function of an unoccupied retail space within a large central city shopping complex. This was a temporary annexe of WestSpace http://westspace.org.au/event/west-wing-light-shelf-life/, ARI, which facilitated the project. The direct association of the installation with retailing and display was an opportunity to extend my parallel engagement with the Still Life. To do this I incorporated discarded ‘found’ objects sourced from the tables in the food hall immediately adjacent to the site. These were painted as reflected in a mirror, which introduced a slight rupture into the observer’s perception, which was immediate, given that I painted while the public had access to the site. This introduced an observer engagement and performative aspect to the project which I found an extremely worthwhile experience, which continues to be an aspect of succeeding projects where appropriate. More recently I began taking Still Life objects out of the interior altogether, arranging and documenting them in the streets and lanes of inner Melbourne using window ledges and blind niches that read as Bodegóns. Bodegón is a Spanish word often used to classify Still Life painted in the country during the17th century. Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber painted by Juan Sánchez Cotán ca. 1602 San Diego Museum of Art. Oil on Canvas 27 1/8 in. x 33 1/4 in. (68.9 cm x 84.5 cm is a definitive example of the type. Bodegón is a derivative of Bodega (cellar), la Bodega meaning a grocery store (is well known to New Yorkers) In the increasingly gentrified neighbourhoods of Fitzroy and Collingwood (where I was located) some property owners commissioned street artists to work on the walls of buildings in order to avoid them being tagged or graffitied. I often utilised this painted architecture in the first series of Urban Bodegóns. Daily immersion in street art culture also influenced an extension of my thinking concerning the public accessibility to the activities of artists. I responded to the egalitarian (somewhat Marxists) motivation of street artists and their works http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Placestogo/PublicArt/Pages/StreetArt.aspx Melbourne has an international reputation as centre for street art which is promoted by the cultural arm of the City Council. It’s published material reads Melbourne is known as one of the world's great street art capitals for its unique ... paste-ups and murals and does not include graffiti or tagging which is illegal.. And in an attitude related to the dérive and the flȃneur, I ceased intervening into the street scape altogether and began to record only ‘found’ Still Life on my smart phone. There is also an affinity between my recording these chance anonymous random arrangements of objects (evidence of a consumer driven society) and the Nouveau Réalisme of 60’s Paris. What Pierre Restany referred to as a "poetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality" http://mediation.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-newrea-EN/ENS-newrea-EN.htm (60/90. Trente ans de Nouveau Réalisme, La Différence, 1990, p 76). in which things are selected for presentation by the Artist. In this case the creative act is choosing which tangible signifier of reality to remove from it’s original context, which has affinity with the role of ‘curator’. In the case of an Urban Bodegón ,the signifier remains, the choice involves what to archive as a photograph. I consider that my introduction of these found images, into the canon of the Still Life straddles my practices of Artist and Curator and the New York exhibition of these images at AC Institute more representative of an on-going collection of images of anonymous arrangements than a ‘one person show’. It takes it’s place in a succession of curatorial projects premised on ‘Still Life’ that began with a Museum show in 1993. Curated together, the Urban Bodegóns images demonstrate that while they are records of occurrences outside the usual studio/exhibition nexus, they provide further evidence of Still Life as social commentary. It is my intention to continue adding to the archive of Bodegón images from socio- political environments other than Melbourne. I have already done so in New York (occasionally on Manhattan, but more usually in Williamsburg/Brooklyn). Already differences between these and those retrieved from Collingwood is evident (even though the gentrification cited earlier is similar). For example it is apparent that Urban Bodegóns occur far less frequently in New York and when they do present a broader range of consumed products. This period of international research will also include cities in Italy as well as Berlin. I expect future curatorial projects enabled by this international collection will be premised on the similarities and differences of content revealed by the imagery of the documented Bodegóns.