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INTERVIEW
WITH JANET LAURENCE
Denise Salvestro
- Sydney
artist, Janet Laurence, is today best known for her site-specific
installations. Often referred to as the "architects' artist",
Davina Jackson, editor of Architecture Australia has suggested she
is "a serious candidate for the title of Australia's leading
public artist".
Her works are amongst the most accessible and public of any artist
in Australia.
Laurence reveals "From as early as the '70s, I was always interested
in the idea of how art worked in a space – how art could contribute
to the definition of a space and make the viewer participate holistically
within that space."
At art school (University of Sydney and Alexander Mackie College,
now College of Fine Arts, UNSW), Laurence was made aware of the limitations
associated with making that sort of work and the difficulties in exhibiting
such works in a gallery space. "Then in the 80s, I had a Postgraduate
[study grant] in New York where there was a lot of installation work
going on, and I realised where I wanted my work to fit."
While away from Australia in the USA and Italy, Laurence often thought
about what it was that we had here in Australia that was different
to anywhere else – "I realised we still have a life that
is strongly entwined with our natural environment. I wanted to bring
that out in my work, so I made a conscious decision to make work which
was about relating to our environment."
Her interest in the natural and built environments, and how people
react with them, led Laurence to explore the idea of space and of
the "experiential language" of art: "...experiencing
the space by involving the viewer, not just optically, but how our
whole body experiences a space." In 1981 in her first solo exhibition,
Notes from the Shore, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Sydney;
Laurence used a collection of "natural things" such as sand,
earth and casuarina needles, to map out a space. She then included
a sound element, Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, to create a
total installation piece. "I believe a turning point in the acceptance
of this kind of artwork was the 1991 commission I won from the Federal
Government to do a very public piece, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
in Canberra", done in collaboration with the firm of architects,
Tonkin Zulaikha. The piece consists of four pillars in different natural
and man-made materials: glass, marble, wood and metal, soaring toward
the golden dome of the Hall of Memory. Its purpose is to invoke memories,
both private and public – something that Laurence aspires to
do through most of her works. The meeting of public and private domains
is to her "metaphors for the world out there meeting our personal
inner world of experience. Site specific art can act as a trigger
for memories which then affect the viewers' experience of that space."
Laurence came to appreciate the infinite possibilities of exhibiting
outside the gallery space, and started to do more installation work
in spaces that were not commercial galleries. At the same time she
became increasingly involved in collaborative work, including organising
an exhibition, Synthesis (Bond Stores, Sydney 1992) which was "about
artists and architects working together." Traditionally, architects
have "tended to work with spatial theories without really considering
the aesthetic theories to go with them." Synthesis was about
collaboration, and made known the possibilities that this collaboration
could produce. The architects involved found "what a terrific
push it also was for [their] sense of design and space", and
realised that "the artist's voice is very important in the dialogue
about space and urban design, free from the constraints placed upon
them [the architects], by the demands of clients and of function."
Companies and organisations today are more aware that art is not just
a decorative medium used to fill an empty space on a wall or in a
foyer. "But," says Laurence, "that art is a way to
create meaning or memory in a space, and, if it is decoration, it
can have [even] more power about it". This theory of Laurence's
is evidenced in her commissioned work, Chronicle I-V (1995) in the
Herald and Weekly Times Building, in Southbank, Melbourne which consists
of a series of metal panels onto which are etched historical events
from the newspapers. Due to the reflective nature of the metal, the
images appear and disappear depending on the weather and direction
of the sunlight. There and yet not there...fleeting, as with the passing
of time...
Edge of the Trees (with Fiona Foley) 1994
The brief for the Museum of Sydney project, located on the site of
the original Government House, was "to create a sense of place."
The result was the highly acclaimed sculptural installation Edge of
the Trees (1994), created jointly by Laurence and Aboriginal artist
Fiona Foley, in consultation with the architects of the site, Denton
Corker Marshall. It consists of 29 wood, sandstone, and rusting steel
columns that relate to both the Indigenous and European history of
the site. The 29 columns represent the 29 Aboriginal clans who originally
inhabited the area, symbolic of burial poles and rock carvings. They
also act as metaphors for the impact of European culture, in relating
to the materials of the built environment around them. The relationship
between nature and culture is also alluded to through the use of materials
that map the separate and shared memory of the place. There are samples
of seeds and resins to remind the viewer of the original flora and
fauna. Bone, shell, hair and other organic materials remind us of
the human presence throughout the history of the site; and the recorded
sound of Koori voices provide a narrative thread listing the original
names for the areas around Sydney. Cutouts in the poles are receptacles
for archaeological fragments from the old Government House, while
names of First Fleeters are engraved in zinc plaques. Lists of original
local plants are carved or burnt into the wooden columns in both their
Aboriginal and Latin names. The overall result is a successful linking
of the work with its site and surroundings, with its present and its
past.
In awarding the Edge of the Trees project the Lloyd Rees Award for
Civic Design, in 1995, the judges at the Royal Australian Institute
of Architects, commented that it "supplied a model for the commissioning
and achievement of important public art and its design integration
into the urban environment."
The Olympic Project involving Boundary Creek at Homebush Bay was for
Laurence an intense experience involving an extreme amount of reseach
in that "I am working with the water chemistry and the monitoring
of it. My whole piece is about exposing the remediation program that
is going on." The results of all the experiments being carried
out at the site will be used in the piece In the Shadow, on which
she is again working with architects Denton Corker Marshall. Set in
the water will be several large glass columns representative of the
chemical flasks used in the water studies. They will be inscribed
with texts relating to the remediation process that was carried out
on the site. Falling and spurting water, mists and fog will simulate
the cleaning process that the water has gone through. The installation
is designed to be informative with regard to the environmental history
of the site, but also to be "a quiet place, a place of contemplation."
Involvement in research and scientific investigations is to Laurence
one of the most fascinating aspects of working with companies on a
brief. The Department of Environment project, Picture of the Dark
Face of the River (1999), for the John Gorton Building, Canberra,
was especially rewarding as the research involved spending time with
the experts in all departments: meteorology, oceanography, the Antarctic
department, satellite imaging, and the herbarium. This interaction
provided such an incredible vocabulary of imagery, that Laurence will
be able to use the surplus in other work.
Natural processes – how things change – led to Laurence's
interest in alchemy as an holistic science "which gives a reason
for this transformation...because artwork is always transforming things...its
good to have a philosophical explanation for these changes."
The alchemy led her to look more into science and chemistry: "In
a way I've become more interested in all that, especially as I am
now involved in doing more environmental work...but really I am more
interested in playing with the polemic of it."
Originally, the materials Laurence worked with were all quite organic.
She then started to play these materials against their opposites –
architectural materials such as stainless steel and aluminum, and
finally glass, through which she explored the idea of "the play
between matter and non matter, or matter and spirit, absence and presence...all
those metaphors..."
"The more I started playing with glass, the more it started to
interest me as a material that would reflect you the viewer into it
and the environment in which it was; The fact that it could be translucent,
transparent, reflective,... could represent water, solids, liquid.
It is also a material that so much of our world has been built in
today - an architectural material. I use it as a medium... I can pour
substances over it and you can see their passage, their dispersal,
their action..."
Laurence uses glass to create highly emotive works. Unfold (1997),
a project for the Art Gallery of NSW, comprises of photographs of
animals superimposed on glass panels to create a sense of the entrapment
of what were once roaming free. The Veil of Trees installation at
Mrs Macquarie's Chair, part of the Sydney Sculpture Walk, made in
collaboration with designer Jisuk Han, has seeds imbedded in glass
panels on which are inscribed text relating to the particular native
flora growing beside the panels.
The commission, again with Jusik Han, to do the windows of the Central
Synagogue in Sydney (1997/98) provided an ideal opportunity for Laurence
to explore the versatility and expressiveness of glass as a medium.
The result, 49 Veils, is a spectacularly beautiful installation of
four windows consisting of 49 layers of coloured glass panels, providing
an abstract interpretation of the traditional religious and mystical
themes of the Kabala, the Jewish sacred text dating from the twelfth
century. The Kabala is composed of four worlds: unity, knowledge,
love and manifestation, each of which is associated with a colour,
and each represented here, by a "veiled" window. The swirling
nature of the colours in the transparent glass and the layering of
the glass, reinforces the idea of veils. The manner in which Laurence
has applied the colours to the glass creates an illusion of depth
within each layer, enhancing the overall three dimensional effect
of the windows, which is in turn, accentuated by the reflective nature
of the complex polished aluminum frames. The layered effect of the
windows also relates to the architecture of the building, mimicking
the layering in the ceiling and the tiered seating.
Laurence believes that today "there is a re-awakening in the
whole area of artistic expression and experience", manifest most
strongly through site-specific installation works. "A lot of
old art language is about elitism in art which has alienated people
in the past, but I think the language of contemporary art is bringing
it back to people's art." The forthcoming Sydney Biennale, she
sees as a vehicle which will "break down many of the barriers
surrounding contemporary art, as so much of the art involved is very
accessible and quite fun."
Janet Laurence's work is accessible and thought provoking. "I
am into creating meaning and experience...and a re-experience of aesthetics."
Taking her vast body of public work as an example she has surely succeeded
in this, while at the same time bringing art back to the people, in
their spaces. |
