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Dancing with Failure:

Accident and control in contemporary art practice

Michael Riddle BA (Honours) University of Plymouth

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts (Research)

Visual Arts Creative Industries Faculty

Queensland University of Technology 2019

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Statement of Originality The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet the requirements

for an award at this or any other higher educational institution. To the best of my knowledge

and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except

where due reference is made.

Signed. QUT Verified Signature Date. February 2019

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Key Words Sculpture, control, chance, metaphor, slippage, affect, heuristic, process, synectics, the

human condition, failure, interruptions, collapse, personal experience, material properties,

disorder, biography, Entropy, instability, forces, gravity.

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Abstract This practice-led research project examines how sculpture can act as a site or medium for

responding to slippages, interruptions and changes of state; and, in doing so explores the

subjective connotations of form and material. By undertaking intuitive studio experiments

informed by interwoven processes of chance and control and interpreting the outcomes

through the metaphoric connotations of form; I seek to harness a range of tensions and

contradictions inherent to the processes of making, and to realize a body of works that are

reflective of personal biography, memory and the human condition. This research has been

informed by the works of Michael Landy, Jimmie Durham and Robert Smithson as well as

theories that relate to Synectics and the writing of Susanne Langer. Regarded as a whole, this

project aims to identify and analyse the complex interactions of material and metaphor that

can occur in the making of contemporary art.

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Contents List of figures ......................................................................................................................... 6

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 8

Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 9

Methodology and Theoretical Framework ........................................................................... 10

Chapter 1: Contextual Frameworks ..................................................................................... 16

Michael Landy ......................................................................................................... 16 Jimmie Durham ........................................................................................................ 24 Robert Smithson ....................................................................................................... 32

Chapter 2: Creative outcomes .............................................................................................. 36

Key Ideas ................................................................................................................. 37 The Works ................................................................................................................ 41

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 64 References ............................................................................................................................ 65

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List of Figures 1 Lawrence Weiner, Removal to the lathing or support wall of plaster or wall board from a wall, 1968. 17 2 Edward Ruscha, Royal road test, 1967 artist’s book printed 1971. 18 3 Daniel Spoerri, Anecdoted Topography of Chance (Topographie anécdotée du hazard), 1962. 20 4 Michael Landy, Break Down, 2001. 21 5 Michael Landy, Semi-detached, 2004. 22 6 The Great Chain of Being from the Rhetorica Christiana by Fray Diego de Valades (1579). 26 7 Jimmie Durham, Still life with stone and car, 2004. 29 8 Jimmie Durham, A Meteoric Fall to Heaven, 2000. 29 9 Jimmie Durham, Stoning the Refrigerator, 1996. 30 10 Robert Smithson, Partially Buried Woodshed, 1970. 35 11 Michael Riddle, Parnell's dream, 2014. 42 12 Michael Riddle, Control, 2014. 44 13 Michael Riddle, “I'm not best pleased”, 2014. 45 14 Michael Riddle, That's how the light gets in, 2014. 45 15 Michael Riddle, “Why do you hate me so much?”, 2014. 47 16 Michael Riddle, Waiting for clarity, 2014. 49 17 Michael Riddle, Catastrophic failure, 2014. 51 18 Michael Riddle, Complete collapse, 2014. 52 19 Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 1, 2014. 52 20 Michael Riddle, Ruptures, 2015. 53 21 Michael Riddle, Crash, 2015. 54 22 Michael Riddle, diagram for Mud flap, 2015. 55 23 Michael Riddle, Mud flap, 2015. 55

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24 Benoit Aquin, photograph of a crumpled pylon caused by an ice storm in the Boucherville region east of Montreal, 1998. 56 25 Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 2 CAD elevation with cables, 2016. 57 26 Iconoclast 2 (in progress), 2017. 58 27 Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 2, 2017. 59 28 Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 2, 2017. 59 29 Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 2, 2017. 61

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Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my upmost gratitude to my friend and supervisor Charles Robb,

without his generous support, positive attitude and invaluable feedback, this project would

not have been possible.

I would also like to thank: Victoria Garnons-Williams as associate supervisor; Daniel Mafe

for his encouragement; Briony Law for her immeasurable help, kindness and support; Nelika

McDonald; Genine Larin; Lubi Thomas and Adrian Davis for their incredible work on the

McClelland Project. Lastly, I would like to give thanks to the wonderful Judith Wright, who

has been a great mentor and incredibly generous friend.

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Introduction

This practice-led research project examines the relationship between material, form and

metaphor in the studio, viewed through the interplay of the key studio processes of chance

and control.

The foundation for the project are material- and process-driven studio experiments coupled

with narratives and experiences drawn from my own biography. In my work, the two pillars

of materiality and memory combine in often dramatic and awkward ways and together

reference the human condition through metaphoric inference. The project explores a range of

composite materials such as bitumen, clay slip, acrylic resin, steel, pewter and rock, and the

formal structures that arise through a combination of neutral material experimentation and at

times highly-charged biographical reflection. Further, it describes how an adaption and

transition of these works from the studio to a site-specific location may be achieved through

the development of a monumental public artwork

The research process is principally informed by the theoretical framework of Synectics, the

fusing of disparities and the meshing of memory and object to form emotional analogues. It

further locates this research in relation to the writing of Susanne Langer on symbolic

transformation of experiences and affect and how metaphor can be utilised as a vehicle for

the transmission of emotion. The work is further informed by the artistic practices of Michael

Landy, Jimmie Durham and Robert Smithson specifically in relation to destruction, control

and chance reflected in these artists’ exploration of object, process and site.

My studio-based methodology employs a broad mode of research and follows an heuristic

approach to art-making where trial and error are encouraged and valued. Chance is

intentionally introduced throughout my process as a ‘circuit breaker’ to attempt to derail and

dodge conscious compositional formality. I seek to evaluate my relationship to failure where

pride, ego and the question of control are always just beneath the surface. Effectively, I

explore the expressive and compositional possibilities that arise from challenging my

assertion of power over matter.

Methodology and Theoretical Framework

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This project employs an approach that is exclusively practice-led, according to Gray and

Malins’ definition, practice-led research involves “practitioners researching through action

and reflecting in and on action. The researcher/practitioner is central to the inquiry as is the

context in which the research is taking place” (2004, p.3). As I shall elucidate below, using

my own subjective responses and biographical experiences as a form of research material is a

vital part of my studio practice. In his article Research Acts in Art Practice, Graeme Sullivan

proposes that the images and works created in the studio embody the ideas that are given

form through the making process, describing a method where creative practice “involves

giving form to thought in a purposeful way” (2006, p.29). In this way, he observes, the

artifacts themselves can be considered tangible forms of knowledge that can reveal insights

that are well-grounded and culturally relevant. My approach to practice is informed by a

similar belief in the broader cultural relevance of the often quite insular activities in the

studio—especially when the outcomes of this process become presented in public (as in the

case of a work of public art).

In addition to this cultural contribution, the studio is place for intuitive exploration of

materials. The concept of ‘thinking materially’ or processing ideas through the manipulation

of materials, is a strong feature of my practice. In the book, titled Material thinking: The

theory and practice or creative research, Paul Carter writes about the “intellectual adventure

peculiar to the making process” (2004, p.xi). Carter articulates a dynamic that resonates with

my practice, stating “a homology must exist between matter and mind, between the qualities

of the materials to be worked and the creative disposition of the artist who selects and works

it” (2004, p.186). My practice reflects this process, where activities in the studio involve both

making and reflecting but the initial force is always the practical making process. By that I

mean that discoveries unfold in an heuristic way from materials. My ideas develop through

the making process first and foremost; my work develops through the accidental or incidental

encounters in the studio between materials, objects and processes initiates new

understandings and ideas. Importantly however, this process is always informed by an

interpretative filter in which the interpretation of works via metaphor and analogy,

determines my acceptance or rejection of outcomes as a ‘work’. Accordingly, meaning-

making is a key element of my studio method.

In this chapter, I will elaborate on this making-reflecting process through a discussion of

Synectics—a key aspect of my research method—and the way in which analogy and

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metaphor are relevant to my research. Subsequently, I will reference the theories of the

philosopher, Susanne Langer, that relate to symbolism, metaphor and meaning in art, and

how this pairing can be harnessed as a method for my studio-based art practice.

Synectics is a creative problem-solving tool pioneered in the 1950s by George Prince and

William Gordon (Marquard, 2009). Derived from the Greek term synectikos “bringing forth

together” and “bringing different things into unified connection” (Roukes, 1982, p.5),

Synectics is “a form of creative thinking that combines imagination and analogical thinking

in order to transform commonplace, familiar elements into new and unusual structures”

(Roukes, 1982, p.5). Synectics may seem to be an odd point of reference for this project

owing to its strong association with pedagogy and corporate training (indeed it has been

trademarked as a corporate education brand: Synectics Inc.). Nonetheless, with its emphasis

on both synthesis (combining ingredients) and reflection (interpretation of outcomes) I have

found that Synectics can be used as a helpful studio research method.

According to Gordon’s theory, the underlying principles of Synectics are:

1) that there is a universal connectedness between all objects, events and spheres of

reality and that the integration of parts is greater than their sum (effectively a gestalt

theory);

2) that “making the familiar strange” or “making the strange familiar”, is to distort and

invert everyday ways of looking at ideas, feelings and things and can lead to new

ways of perceiving (1961, p.34); and

3) that synergy is a novelty-producing pattern that refers to the two interrelated processes

of differentiation and integration of parts (Markov, 2018).

Following these principles, we can assert that art-making can often use synectical principles.

In the studio, I observe that the making process is holistic—a work can arise unexpectedly

from any aspect of the making process. While the ‘strangeness’ that can be introduced by

accidents and failures can often set off new compositional and conceptual possibilities.

Finally, the work of art can be synectical in the way that it involves “the process of fusing

disparities” (Roukes, 1982, p.5).

Gordon’s theory of Synectics also relies on the interpretation of outcomes and emphasises the

use of analogy—the use of mental or visual associations—to disrupt the way we perceive.

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In Nicholas Roukes’ account of Gordon’s theory, analogy is refined into three types: 1) the

direct analogy, 2) compressed conflict, and 3) the personal analogy. A direct or logical

analogy “may suggest similarities of design, structure or function between diverse elements”

(Roukes, 1982, p.3). An example of a direct analogy could be the comparison of the human

nervous system to a computer circuit. Compressed conflict analogies, sometimes referred to

as paradoxical analogies, are specific to speech, examples include “living dead” or “a loud

silence”. Personal analogies, which Roukes describes also as affective analogies, are of most

relevance to this project.

Affective analogies are emotional resemblances where visual images can be

subjectified through empathic projection. When we empathise with someone or

something, a strong personal identification is established with the subject, whether the

subject be another person or living thing, or even an inanimate object such as a rock

(1982, p.7).

In the studio, an affective analogy might be to regard the inertia of a cement block as a

manifestation of stubbornness, and the ‘bloom’ on the block’s surface as an expression of the

upwelling of emotion. Thinking of materials and elements as affective analogies is an

intrinsic aspect of my studio method.

Just as analogy provides a way to interpret an object or work of art, visual metaphor can also

contribute to this process. As outlined above, where analogy is based on association between

different elements, metaphor is based on equivalence. A metaphor is a figure of language

where a word is applied to an object based on some degree of similarity, and has been used

by poets and artists at least since Antiquity. As Aristotle wrote, “a good metaphor implies an

intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars” (Harries, 1979, p.71). Metaphor, by

drawing connections between disparate elements can be regarded as “a bridge between two

worlds” (Shiff, 1979, p.105).

In my synectical approach to making, it is important that I start with radically disparate

elements with opposing qualities such as mass and negative space, fluid and solid, natural and

manufactured. But how might a bridge be formed between these two worlds? Roukes

suggests that affective analogies, and by extension emotional metaphors, can forge this

connection and be used to encourage empathy through personal identification even in an

inanimate object (1982, p.7). As Lakoff and Johnson observe:

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Just as the basic experiences of human spatial orientations give rise to orientational

metaphors, so our experiences with physical objects (especially our own bodies)

provide the basis for an extraordinarily wide variety of ontological metaphors, that is,

ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances.

(2003, p.25)

In order for an artwork referenced from an object to convey meaning, we must first accept

that an object can become a container for meaning through metaphor then a logical extension

of this is personification as Lakoff and Johnson continue:

We are physical beings, bounded and set off from the rest of the world by the surface

of our skins, and we experience the rest of the world as outside us. Each of us is a

container, with a bounding surface and an in-out orientation. We project our own in-

out orientation onto other physical objects that are bounded by surfaces. Thus we also

view them as containers with an inside and an outside. (2003, p.30)

Personification is a method of applying human attributes to inanimate objects, a way in which

something non-human can be instilled with a human identity. Modern western culture is so

replete with personification of objects in cartoons, literature and allegory that we hardly

notice. As the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin noted:

We judge every object by analogy with our own bodies. The object—even if

completely dissimilar to ourselves—will not only transform itself immediately into a

creature, with head and foot, back and front; and not only are we convinced that this

creature must feel ill at ease if it does not stand upright and seems about to fall over,

but we go so far as to experience, to a highly sensitive degree, the spiritual condition

and contentment or discontentment expressed by any configuration, however different

from ourselves. We can comprehend the dumb, imprisoned existence of a bulky

member-less, amorphous conglomeration, heavy and immovable, as easily as the fine

and clear disposition of something delicate and lightly articulated. (1966, p77)

Personification is a reflexive response that the viewer brings to the work of art—a mode of

response that always carries with it affective connotations.

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Such ideas can be found in the writings of American philosopher Susanne Langer. One of

Langer’s major propositions is that works of art are expressive forms, or ‘iconic symbols of

emotion’. Just as Gordon’s Synectics holds that “in creative process the emotional component

is more important than the intellectual, the irrational more important than the rational”

(Gordon, 1961, p.6), Langer emphasises the affective aspect of artmaking as its dominant

purpose. In line with this premise, she developed a theory of ‘presentational symbolism’

which proposed that human beings dealt with phenomena which were difficult to express

through language by using symbols such as music, art, and myth-making (Lachmann, 1998).

Consistent with her interest in communication, Langer wrote at length on metaphor and

believed that it allows us to convey experiential information and may act as a catalyst for the

construction of meaning (Flood, 2008). Her ideas are supported by Anthony Ortony who

states, “metaphor enables the prediction by transfer of characteristics that are unnamable”

(1975, p.49). Like Langer, Ortony suggests that there are thoughts and feelings that are

inexpressible through direct language, and that can only be inferred through indirect

expression: metaphor.

In Philosophy in a New Key (1941), Langer argued a process she called “symbolic

transformation of experiences” is an unconscious action of the brain where conceptual

structures are formed by means of abstraction from life experiences (p.12). Langer believed

there is a human capacity to “apprehend patterns or forms in experience” (Dryden, 2008,

p.28). Langer wrote that “by the recognition of forms, we find analogies and come to

understand one thing in terms of another” (1930, p.88). Langer argues that art is a method of

conveying subjective experience and writes that an artwork “sets some piece of inward life

objectively before us” (1957, p.24). While Langer’s theory tends to treat the art object as

purely communicative medium—ignoring its experiential, ontological and ‘untidy’ qualities

as a thing-in-itself—her theories have nonetheless been instrumental in opening up a way of

understanding the relations between my studio actions and the personal symbolic concerns

that inform my studio practice.

For my purposes, I see the overriding metaphor of my studio practice as the literal and

permanent collision of two disparate objects, whether willingly or by divisive means these

objects are encouraged to engage in a form of collusion, both by attraction through gravity

and repulsion due to visual disparities or ill-matched properties. Consequently, this

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interpretative system is synectical in as much as it is produced by the combination of

oppositional elements, materials and forms. By extension these material relationships infer—

through analogy and metaphor—human ones. The interaction between these material and

affective modes of exploration form the basis of my studio research methodology.

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Chapter 1: Contextual Frameworks.

In this literature review, I will discuss the work of artists Michael Landy, Jimmie Durham

and Robert Smithson. I will examine these artists with reference to my own work and artistic

practice, highlighting the material and processual parallels between their practice and my

own, particularly, their synthesis of destruction and control in the studio.

Michael Landy

Michael Landy’s art practice ranges across a spectrum of different mediums and forms but

his interest in the oppositional ideas of order and destruction makes his work highly relevant

to my studio practice. Landy executes a series of destabilising interventions, performative

happenings and installations which can be argued to build upon the Fluxist movement of the

1960s (Iverson, 2010, p.12). These works—in which choice of materials, themes and process

seem to be, in part influenced by his own biography—frame a socio-political and reflective

view of time and memory: a dismantling of the old order.

I have selected two works to discuss which are most relevant to my own practice: Break

Down (2001) and Semi-detached (2004). These works explore systems, failure and

autobiography.

The premise of Break Down [Fig 4.] was for Landy to first catalogue then destroy every

possession he owned within a two-week period. The methods of destruction, disassembly and

shredding or granulation were based upon existing material reclamation facilities where

materials can be separated and value extracted from the waste chain. Landy’s personal

possessions were separated into different categories such as leisure, clothing, reading and so

on, they were weighed, catalogued and numbered ready for disposal; ironically nothing was

either reclaimed or recycled.

Break Down can be read, in broad terms, as a critique of western consumerist culture,

modelled on a reverse Henry Ford assembly line. Jen Harvie, the Professor of Contemporary

Theatre and Performance at the Queen Mary University of London asserts that “Break Down

is critical of consumerism, but at the same time, doesn’t pretend to stand outside it” (Harvie,

2006, p. 65). Hence, the work forms a conscious acceptance and protest simultaneously.

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Break Down also suggests a rejection of the accepted natural order of things, a somewhat

entropic and anarchistic action that equally balances levels of order and chaos in one work,

harmonising creation and destruction through a calculated platform that is organized with an

almost machine-like detachment.

Precursors to Landy’s work include Lawrence Weiner’s Removal to the lathing or support

wall of plaster or wall board from a wall (1968) [Fig.1], a performance which involved

removing a section of wall and placing it in a box within the wall.

Figure 1. Lawrence Weiner, Removal to the lathing or support wall of plaster or wall board from a wall, 1968. (Museum of Modern Art, n.d.a).

Likewise Ed Ruscha’s Royal Road Test (1967) [Fig. 2] where a typewriter is thrown from a

car window and presented as a series of photographs, forming a document of the action.

Landy produces no physical artwork in Break Down, the process can be seen largely as

performance. The result is the ‘happening’, where the artistic process is emphasised over a

finished product, where the waste reclamation facility becomes a gallery for a voyeuristic

view of Landy’s possessions.

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Figure 2. Edward Ruscha, Royal road test, 1967 artist’s book printed 1971. (Art Gallery NSW, n.d.).

Break Down may be considered a study in entropy, the progressive loss of order that

underpins all natural systems, entropy can be described as:

a contradiction between the striving for order in nature and in man and the principle

of entropy implicit in the second law of thermodynamics—between the tendency

toward greater organization and the general trend of the material universe toward

death and disorder. (Arnheim, 1973, p.1)

A form of entropy that plays out within Break Down stands out to me and is relevant to my

own practice. Firstly, the level of control that was exerted over Landy’s process is something

that I also find pivotal in my practice. To shape and inform the execution of the work, Landy

had a series of instructional documents drawn up. He referred to these as the “procedural

guidelines” which outlined the rules of the process (Break Down Inventory, 2002) In these

guidelines, Landy calculated how many items were to be processed each day in order to keep

to the time frame. The guidelines also prevented the public from impeding the process.

Control and abandonment of objects here form a duality where the destruction ultimately

releases control to others and the machinery as I did with the construction of Iconoclast 2

(2017), both works have a commonality of a temporal nature where a great deal of planning

and organising was necessary, ultimately to release control.

The second aspect of Break Down that resonated with me as an artist was the embodiment of

memory and worth housed within the individual belongings. Break Down was not executed in

an arbitrary and randomly violent manner, instead it appears almost reverential, all the

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objects were meticulously recorded and some packaged demonstrating a level of respect and

appreciation down to a single sock and four half-eaten bottles of HP Sauce. This approach

correlates with my own practice, as I also follow an unwritten series of rules which are also

respectful in relation to the way the raw materials are handled by utilising chance to remain

detached and allow the materials to display their properties without interference.

The process of executing Break Down began with the compilation of an exhaustive catalogue

of all Landy’s 7,227 possessions (Break Down Inventory, 2002). This formed the record or

epitaph of Break Down, and was a critical component and documentation of the work. The

categories were:

A: Artworks. C: Clothes. E: Electrical K: Kitchen L: Leisure MV: Motor vehicle. P: Perishable R: Reading material. S: Studio Materials.

While Landy’s list is comprehensive, clinical and final, it is also somewhat austere in content.

It gives us little in the way of ontological detail. An example of a section of the Break Down

Inventory is as follows:

K: Kitchen. K1486 Orange rectangular kitchen sponge. K1540 Straight pint glass. K1581 Le Creuset medium size blue cast iron saucepan.

A thematic lineage can be drawn between Landy’s 300-page Inventory and Daniel Spoerri’s

Anecdoted Topography of Chance (1962-95) [Fig. 3.] in which he gave a diagrammatic

account of his possessions at a specific point from a more intimate perspective. Spoerri’s

work records the specific location of a series of objects in penciled outline, numbered and

annotated.

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In a sober, mock-encyclopedic style, Spoerri described one object after the other,

noting details such as visual appearance, text printed on packaging, and the cost of the

item.

A good deal of the notes were also furnished with additional anecdotal material, such

as the circumstance of the object’s acquisition, the purpose they had served, or why

they ended up on the table in the first place. Whenever he felt it necessary, Spoerri

added footnotes to the notes for further elaborations. (Horvei, 2006, p.5)

Figure 3. Daniel Spoerri, Anecdoted Topography of Chance (Topographie anécdotée du hazard), 1962 artist’s

book. (Museum of Modern Art, n.d.b).

Conversely, Landy’s items are catalogued with an ethnographic level of detachment,

collectively forming something of a self-portrait as evidenced in the original title of the work:

Michael Landy’s lifestyle. Although all items were to be destroyed, his inventory imposed a

value system upon the contents with reference to memory and biography, in which the tenure

of many of the more meaningful items was extended. Landy’s inventory included artworks by

fellow artists such as Tracy Emin and Chris Ofili, as well as personal and family items. He

states:

[Break Down] was anti-consumerist but it was almost as much to do with people’s

love of things and of different values and value systems. Because I was dealing with

love letters and family photos and personal material like that, and they are very

important to almost everyone. (Landy, M. Interview. 2002)

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Figure 4. Michael Landy, Break Down, 2001installation view, C&A building, Oxford Street, London. (Thomas

Dane Gallery, 2018). After the inventory was complete, the control that Landy asserted over the process continued,

with individual numbered items, in some cases bagged, and then circulated on conveyors

with operators progressively shredding and granulating them. The items weights were

recorded, totaling some 5.75 tons. A Buddhist mechanic was employed to disassemble

Landy’s Saab car so the procedure could be performed as respectfully as possible, preventing

any unnecessary damage (Harvie, 2006, p. 70). The last item to be destroyed was Landy’s

father’s sheepskin coat. The coat was of high sentimental value to Landy and purchased by

his mother shortly before his father suffered a debilitating accident (Harvie, 2006, p. 71).

Such paternal and poignant content also informed Landy’s later work, Semi-detached (2004)

[Fig. 5]. Semi-detached draws on the artist’s own memory and stands as a biographic

monument to his family. The installation, was exhibited in the Duveen gallery at the Tate

Britain, London, and comprised a full-size and meticulously detailed recreation of Landy’s

parent’s pebble-dashed home.

Landy’s life changed in 1977 when his father, John Landy, a tunnel digger, was buried alive

during a tunnel collapse. Following the accident, disabled and increasingly immobile, John

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Landy progressively withdrew from the world. His existence had become contained within

the walls of his house, which Landy viewed as the embodiment of his ageing father. As the

house degraded, so did Landy’s father’s health and mobility (Landy 2012). “Semi-detached

suggests an ironic exaltation of the everyday” (Perry, 2013, p.46). Semi-detached was

physically split into two parts and was accompanied by a two-channel video where the

interior of the home could be observed, accompanied by sounds of his father whistling

jovially while going about minor DIY projects. This renovation activity could be understood

as a means of John Landy negotiating or perhaps re-defining his relationship to the world

(Perry, 2013, p.48).

Figure 5. Michael Landy, Semi-detached, 2004 full-scale model of Michael Landy's family home in two parts,

Tate Britain, London. (Thomas Dane Gallery, 2018).

The idea of an architectural structure such as the recreation Landy commissioned in Semi-

detached, may be seen as a form of synectic coupling of audio recording and built structure.

It is both an abstract representation of the (absent) human body of John Landy and a

metaphor for decrepitude depicted by the ageing yet time-frozen building. Synectics has a

function to present visual analogues where mixing and matching of disparate elements and

forms become fused and can provide a metaphorical reading (Roukes, 1982, p.5).

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This description articulates how Landy’s Semi-detached may be seen to embody his father

and the aging process where the house becomes a record of time and brings emphasis to

entropic decline. This anthropomorphic analogy may also be seen to apply to my own work,

specifically my sculpture Iconoclast 2, where the tower is seen to be collapsing under the

weight of a large boulder.

Recurrent themes appear throughout Landy’s practice including loss, rejection and failure

where themes are framed through personal experience. As a result, there are parallels

between his practice and my own. Firstly, there is a similarity in our approach to planning

prior to the works being executed. The length of time that it took to prepare Break Down

could be compared to the two years it took for me to see Iconoclast 2 completed. In both

instances, the destruction is premeditated, but in my work failure and destruction halts at a

resolution and is indeed preserved. I have come to think of this stasis—similar to Semi-

detached—as reflective of my own biography and the memories attached to it: an object

remains, albeit in a liminal stasis between existence and destruction, life and death.

Conversely, in Break Down, works are simply destroyed. Both of our practices have a strong

biographical element, drawn from memory, lived experience and significant personal and

family events; personal biographical content that is countered by the hard machine-like

aesthetics of the production line and the transmission tower, respectively.

Landy’s works are purposeful where final outcomes and methodologies are fixed; however,

my practice unfolds more organically where materials and forms are subject to change and

sometimes development and revision. The rules themselves are subject to change when

chance comes into play. Landy’s practice is conceptually calculated and executed with a strict

adherence to concept and process allowing for little in the way of revision or change. In

Landy’s works, it is possible to detect an underlying contractual obligation to fulfil a

conceptual brief which acts out a lamination between destruction and control, concept and

fulfilment.

Jimmie Durham

Jimmie Durham is a native American artist who explores notions of chance and

transformation and questions the fraught relationship between nature and culture through a

practice powered by uncertainty and paradox. Boulders and stones appear as elements in his

work, often coupled with manufactured objects that reference western iconography. In his

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sculptures, drawings, texts, film and video works, Durham describes behaviors and norms of

co-existence in different social and cultural formations, and reminds us of the trampling and

marginalisation of indigenous culture through a dry and critical humor. Durham works with

both natural and artificial materials and is interested in the qualities of materials that have

been worked by indigenous culture to make tools; materials such as stone, wood and bone

(Foundation for Contemporary Arts).

Durham’s method of assembling objects demonstrates an intuitive reaction to materials. In

the case of boulders and stones, we can observe a strong reference to non-western identities.

The Native American culture held strong beliefs in animism and the understanding that spirits

and powers could be embodied in minerals, plants and animals, “the Indians believed that

some stones possessed the power of locomotion, or were moved by some supernatural power,

and some intelligent men affirmed that they had seen stones that had moved some distance on

level ground leaving tracks behind them” (Posthumus, 2018, p75). Durham writes:

The starting point of my work is almost always material. That can be an object,

bought, found, or given by somebody; material by itself such as wood, glass, stone,

plastic; or something else, even just a word. I am interested in it because of its

specificity and specific materiality. I enjoy playing with materials, bringing them

together so that they create something new. It very often is to celebrate the materials,

to make a (physical) poem in their honor, but often, dismantling the materials from

their normal use is also critical to the ideas that are imposed on them depending on the

specific societies. (Foundation of contemporary arts, 2017, para. 6)

In many of Durham’s works, boulders are used as projectiles in a protest against fabricated

western objects such as chairs and cars. The effect of the ambush is to convey the posture and

notion of nature crushing culture, where stones are used as a weapon to wound or disfigure.

In his essay The perception of the environment, Tim Ingold writes in relation to American

Indian animist belief that:

The liveliness of stones emerges in the context of their close involvement with certain

persons, and relatively powerful ones at that. Animacy, in other words, is a property

not of stones as such, but of their positioning within a relational field which includes

persons as foci of power, or to put in another way, the power concentrated in persons

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enlivens that which falls within its sphere of influence. Thus the animate stone is not

so much a living thing as a ‘being alive’. (Ingold, 2011, p.97)

Durham refers to western objects such as chairs and cars as “affordances” of modern society

(Gibson, 1977, pp.127-137), he sees the dissection of a tree for the materials to produce a

chair as an act of power, a way of elevating the human above the material world, the same

could be said for the construction of buildings, particularly churches, where the stone is

forced into a servitude.

Taxonomy (the categorization of elements into a hierarchy or system) is also an influence for

Durham. The notion of nature as a subject of scientific knowledge and categorization finds its

roots in 16th century naturalism. It was conceived as a strict hierarchical structure of all

matter and life and is described in the 1579 drawing of The Great Chain of Being [Fig.6.].

This hierarchy is derived from Plato's division of the world into the Forms. This dictation of

worth appears to bolster Durham’s Nature/Culture argument in that—“the chain starts with

God and progresses downward to angels, demons (fallen/renegade angels), stars, moon,

kings, princes, nobles, commoners, wild animals, domesticated animals, trees, other plants,

precious stones, precious metals and other minerals” (Lovejoy, 1964, p.54).

In the natural order, earth (rock) is at the bottom of the chain; this element possesses

only the attribute of existence. Each link succeeding upward contains the positive

attributes of the previous link and adds at least one other. Rocks possess only

existence. (Bunnin & Yu, 2004, p289)

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Figure 6. The Great Chain of Being from the Rhetorica Christiana by Fray Diego de Valades (1579) (Wikimedia Commons, 2014)

Durham rejects the way this hierarchy devalues unrefined matter as can be seen in his use of

rocks as performative ingredients, for example, Still Life with Stone and Car (2004), Stoning

the refrigerator (1996) and A meteoric fall to heaven (2000). In each work, a stone or boulder

strikes a product of ‘affordance’ either propelled by Durham to incapacitate it or render it

undesirable. In the case of Still life [Fig. 7.], a boulder is released high above from a crane,

converting the vehicle into a mangled wreck. The significance of these materials can be

understood with reference to a wider historical framework.

History and religion are littered with references to stone or stones, where they act as

facilitator of stories and meanings. Throughout history, allegory and legend, we find rune

stones, circles and megalithic monuments that have acquired cryptic, often spiritual cadence.

27

The fable of Sisyphus describes such an instance. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was

punished for disobeying the gods and condemned to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill that

would continually roll back down when it neared the top of the hill. This heuristic and

maddeningly repetitive activity was to be repeated for eternity. In this myth, the boulder acts

as repository of deceit, it is the object via which the presumptive behavior of trying to trick

the Gods is punished. The boulder thus carries associations with material punishment (tough,

relentless, work), the force of capricious will and an embodiment of futility.

As can be seen in Durham’s work, rocks and stones can be equally associated with the

mundane and the divine. Materially, stone may be seen as mute yet durable with great

longevity, but still subject to the weakness of slow disintegration. In his book, The Writing of

Stones (1985), Roger Caillois writes, “stones possess a kind of gravitas, something ultimate

and unchanging, something that will never perish or already has done so. They attract through

an intrinsic, infallible, immediate beauty, answerable to no one, necessarily perfect, yet

excluding the idea of perfection in order to exclude approximation, error and excess” (1985,

p.4). For Durham, a large stone is a judicious choice in that it is not ‘answerable’ to the world

in terms of criticism due to the ‘gravitas’ that Caillois talks about. In keeping with Caillois’

observations, in a physical sense, the weight and composition of a boulder (with no corners or

ready hand holds) combine to make it difficult to move. Both critically and physically the

rock is an object that is oblivious, unaccountable and possesses the ability to change through

shedding its skin.

In Still life with stone and car Durham prompts us to think about animism and personification

in a crude but purposeful way by painting comical eyes on the rock. In Michel Foucault’s

book The order of Things: An archeology of the human sciences (2004), he discusses a

system of taxonomy. This system is a way in which human beings can name, organise and

categorise things of the world. This ordering is based on likeness, matching like to like, and

the hypothesis that there is a human impulse to find everything in the world to be a mirror of

other things (Foucault, 1994, p. 31). This personification is commonly found in children’s

cartoons and I am reminded of Warner Brothers cartoons, where Coyote goes to great lengths

to catch the Road Runner, a ground dwelling bird. Coyote uses increasingly complicated

contraptions, often activated by boulders, to catch the bird. Nicholas Palmer, in The American

Dream And Ideology In The Road Runner Cartoon writes:

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The Road Runner cartoon criticizes America’s over-reliance on technology through a

retelling of the Myth of Sisyphus…Americans and the coyote are similarly

condemned to search for and develop ever-more grandiose mechanisms to fulfill basic

needs. This absurd condition is resolved by a return to the wild for the coyote, as…the

former ‘could catch his prey without assistance.’ For Americans, it would be to

abandon this quest to dominate nature through technological prowess. (Palmer, 2011,

para.4)

In Still life, the ambivalent boulder is released on command and gravity propels it toward the

car, permanently embedding it in the vehicle as it assumes the dominant outline. As if in a

chance encounter, this effectively reverses the conventional roles of movement and

dormancy. The performance results in a synectic symbiosis and static installation soon after

the boulder is released. A power struggle and analogy can be observed between old and new,

the organic and inorganic, rest and activity, and a larger battle between contemporary western

progress and natural forces or nature itself. The title of Durham’s work, Still Life with stone

and car, refers to the tradition of western painting where arrangements of fruit and flowers

are inactive and dormant, captured in a moment in time as symbols of wealth or signifiers of

the transience of existence. Conversely, Durham’s Still Life is time-based and liminal in the

sense of a performative gesture which feeds from apprehension and uncertainty amongst the

crowd. The destructive action effectively reverses the conventional roles of movement and

dormancy as the car is trapped and immobilized, denying it’s function. The same strategy is

employed in A meteoric fall to heaven [Fig. 8.].

The exercise of launching primordial material against western progress and privilege is a

methodical act of protest against objects that are seen as technological necessities to western

culture. Still Life with stone and car demonstrates, and is an acknowledgement of the human

negotiation between nature and culture.

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Figure 7. Jimmie Durham, Still life with stone and car, 2004. (Biennale of Sydney, 2018).

When selecting stones and boulders, Durham expresses a preference for “average or standard

stones” (Czacki, 2016, p.26). In Durham’s Nature in the City journal (2000), he writes “cities

are stony, for example, as are hills and plateaus, but the stones are usually ordered into

buildings, streets, curbs, monuments. They, like us must work” (p.1). We can surmise that, by

contrast, Durham is selecting stones that are unadulterated by western taxonomy and have no

desire to advance technologically, ones that have suffered no prior manipulation by human

hands and therefore possess integrity.

Figure 8. Jimmie Durham, A Meteoric Fall to Heaven, 2000 armchair and stone. (Christine Koenig Galerie, 2018).

A refrigerator, a steel and glass vitrine, a chair and car are all damaged or destroyed. In all of

these disparate pairings, we see function ultimately negated through an act of calculated

aggression. These actions are governed by chance. These works demonstrate a synectic

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approach in their pairing of opposites and disparities and the playing out of an unlikely

irrational combination that correlate in subject and action with my own public artwork:

Iconoclast 2.

In Stoning the refrigerator [Fig. 9.], performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art,

Antwerp, Durham again repeats his provocation with a subversive playfulness. The video

documentation records Durham’s week-long action of hurling cobblestones at a refrigerator,

once again ambushing a minimalist symbol of western modernity. The blunt energy of the

projectiles appears to sculpt the object over time, as the number of bruises increase and more

paint is removed. The act evokes connotations of the barricades with a riot ongoing where

protestors are using the cobblestones from the street as projectiles—an act of desperation.

Chance is ever present in Durham’s works with the stones picked up at random and their

particular impact hard to predict.

Figure 9. Jimmie Durham, Stoning the Refrigerator, 1996. Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp. Photo: Maria Thereza Alves. (Universes in Universe Magazine, 2018).

There is an obvious correlation between Durham’s choice of objects and my own. Boulders

and rocks are similar in the respect that they both appear visually to be somewhat

undifferentiated. Durham selects, as stated, ‘average’ rocks of the kind that were never ‘put

to work’. My selection of rocks in Waiting for clarity (2014) and Iconoclast 1 (2014) are

completely random; the origin of the rock is of little importance, in fact my ‘rocks’ are

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imposters, reproductions moulded from life and pigmented or constructed via computer aided

design,

I make no attempt to convince anyone otherwise, undermining any notion of provenance.

The correlation between Iconoclast 2, and the Durham works I have described is the use of

boulders and western iconography as a subject. The transmission tower, refrigerator and chair

can all be seen as symbols of western progress and affluence; however, Durham is utilising

found objects as his subjects, whereas for me, it was important for the artist’s hand to be

revealed —to an extent—in order to find a hybrid position between chance and control, to

seek authorship through making, finding a balance between intent and accident until personal

subjectivity and aesthetic decisions determine the outcome. On the one hand, this is a way of

retaining control over the ultimate form of the work, yet permitting a ‘menu’ of new

possibilities to present themselves—a way of ‘dancing’ with failure. In another sense, this

tension goes to the heart of my expressive interests, to use seemingly adhoc and chance-based

forms to express quite specific, and often painful, personal meanings. In this way, Durham’s

goals and my own overlap, if not the specifics of our making processes. Similarly, the

performance is important in Durham’s works, often recorded on video to capture the moment

of impact, where the perceived collision of elements in my works has to be imagined and the

illusion is staged covertly, for example the mechanical force I applied to crush Waiting for

clarity (2014).

There are further similarities in our respective processes that perform a material inversion,

where the passive element takes on the shape of the aggressor. Chance also plays a big part in

both practices. In the processual manipulation of Durham’s chair and car, the impact is

immediate and final, determined almost instantaneously. The opposite is true with the

refrigerator, Durham’s actions are more progressive and subject to time. Here, Durham is at a

distance to the subject of the projectile. This distance and chance methodology is also used in

many of my works through the effect of weight, impact and heat on steel and wax.

Conversely to Durham, my hands are in contact with the works from the beginning, with the

initial impacts and material failures produce a starting point for further manipulation and

development. Durham’s rocks pertain to animism and my own to personification, and

although we both imply a form of helplessness associated with the structures of power that

determine our environment, our works differ in their specific intentions; Durham explores

notions of culture, nature and time while I explore the empathic aspects of destruction.

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Robert Smithson

The final artist that I wish to discuss is Robert Smithson, who was one of the key artists in the

Land Art movement of the 1960s and 70s, best known for his iconic post-minimalist work

Spiral Jetty (1970). One of the driving concerns of minimalism—and post-minimalism by

extension— was to remove biography from the work. On the surface, this seems at odds with

the biographical emphasis of my own practice; however, like my own work, post-minimalists

made strategic use of aleatory processes. As Robert Morris described in his essay Anti Form

(1968, p.33), the inherent properties of flexible or impermanent materials were allowed to

determine the outcome of the work through chance. He writes:

The focus on matter and gravity as means results in forms that were not projected in

advance. Considerations of ordering are necessarily casual and imprecise and

unemphasised. Random piling, loose stacking, hanging, give passing form to the

material. Chance is accepted and indeterminacy is implied, as replacing will result in

another configuration. Disengagement with preconceived enduring forms is a positive

assertion. It is part of the work’s refusal to continue estheticizing the form by dealing

with it as a prescribed end. (1968, p.46)

Smithson has much to offer, not least his ability to conceptualise and articulate ideas through

his writing so brilliantly, defining him as the “mouthpiece of the movement” (Malpas, 2012,

p.108). Smithson’s work is relevant to my research for several reasons, the ‘Anti-form’

theory coupled with notions of entropy, collapse, chance and his use of aerial maps and

topography as subjects. These concepts were published in three essays: The crystal land

(1966), Entropy and the new monuments (1966) and A sedimentation of the mind: Earth

projects (1968).

Entropy sits squarely at the core of Smithson’s practice. In geological terms, he refers to this

simply as “where everything is wearing down” (Smithson, 1973). Smithson illustrated the

idea of entropy as a sandbox filled with black sand on one side and white sand on the other, a

boy begins to run around the enclosure, kicking the sand while circling and then changing

direction, mixing the coloured particles together, a process of mixing that becomes

irreversible and progresses until the sand is a uniform grey (Bois, 1996). Smithson came to

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explore this progression from order to disorder through a series of iconic works that made a

feature of decay and non-predetermined forms. As I will discuss, his works were less

concerned with creating monuments than they were with collaborating with natural forces

such as gravity and inexorable material breakdown.

Smithson utilised non-traditional materials such as mirrors, maps, soil, jumbled rocks and

bitumen and preferred outdoor locations to the gallery as sites for the construction of

earthworks; his dialectic thinking and abandonment of formalism led him to the understand

earth as an object. Aerial photography had made land art accessible to the public as both an

image and a terrain-based experience. Upon graduation in 1963, Smithson exchanged

sculpting tools for trucks and bulldozers, an extract from an interview between Paul

Cummings and Smithson gives an insight into this decision:

I wasn't that much interested in a sort of Bauhaus formalist view. I was interested in

this kind of archetypal gut situation that was based on primordial needs and the

unconscious depths […] I began to become more concerned with the structure of

matter itself, in crystalline structures. The crystalline structures gradually grew into

mapping structures. (1972, para. 45)

In the early sixties, Smithson’s interest in industrial spaces led him to Oberhausen in the Ruhr

district of Germany. During this time Smithson had begun exhibiting ‘non-sites’ or indoor

earthworks, which could be interpreted as a means of bringing attention to a specific location,

which by nature was geographically remote. In the exhibition Non-site in Oberhausen (1968),

he exhibited deposits of slag along with maps and photographs of the wasteland site and a

single lump of asphalt; “no bin contained the lump, it was framed only by a white rectangle

painted on the gallery floor. It just sits there, an absurd specimen of solidified formlessness,

the very embodiment of entropy—the state of inert equivalence” (Becher, B., Becher, H.,

Lingwood, Smithson, & Todoll, 2002, p.70).

Smithson (James Cohen Gallery, 2001) states, “the ‘non-site’ exists as a kind of deep three-

dimensional abstract map that points to a specific site on the surface of the earth. And that's

designated by a kind of mapping procedure […] these places are not destinations; they kind

of [are] backwaters or fringe areas” (para. 3). For Smithson, his sites were chosen according

to the un-remarkableness—just like the material that he drew from them. The

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undifferentiated quality of the sites and their material residues were counter posed by maps

and photographs—symbolic forms that seek to describe the particularity of the site, its

differentiated qualities. For Smithson, the tension between these two modes of understanding

a place conveyed the tensions in our relationship with the world.

In January of 1970, Smithson was invited by Kent State University to participate in a student

arts festival. This invitation saw the realisation of the work Partially Buried Woodshed

(1970) [Fig.10.]. Encountering a timber storage building on the grounds of the campus,

Smithson noted that the building possessed an intrinsic structural weakness through the main

roof beam. Subsequently, Smithson engaged a contractor to dump twenty loads of dirt around

and onto the roof of the building until the beam cracked, signaling the beginning of its

ultimate failure and a point of no return.

Figure 10. Robert Smithson, Partially Buried Woodshed, 1970 in Robert Smithson Entropy And The New Monuments, 1966 Essay Artforum (Museum of Post Digital Cultures, 2018).

There are commonalities also in Smithson’s use of aerial maps in conjunction with bitumen

and tar, and the aerial landscapes composed in road base and bitumen presented in my works

I’m not best pleased (2014) [Fig. 13.], Control (2014) [Fig.12.] and That’s how the light gets

in (2014) [Fig. 14.]. Both Smithson and myself pursue material and processual approaches

that are broadly similar, and exploit the interplay of chance and structure as compositional

tools.

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Regardless of geography, the idea that entropy has wider connotations can be detected both in

Smithson’s essays and the metaphorical inference behind Iconoclast 1 (2014). Smithson’s

brother had died from leukemia which caused his bodily systems to slowly deteriorate and

eventually fail. Smithson hinted at this proposition later saying “the word entropy […] is a

mask for a lot of other issues […] a mask that conceals a whole set of complete breakdowns

and fractures” (Brown & Heizer, 1984). This same observation is congruent with my

mother’s demise due to cancer, and the way in which this event and other personal narratives

are encoded within my work as material metaphors.

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Chapter 2: Creative outcomes

This chapter charts three milestones of my practice-led research, these are: an exhibition of

sculpture and wall works, Everything’s Broken (Jan Manton Art, 2014); Ruptures (H Block

gallery, QUT, 2015); and, a public artwork, Iconoclast 2 (Southern Way McClelland

Commission, 2017).

Over the course my research, I have identified a series of terms that are central to my

experiments in the studio and the works that derived from these experiments. These terms

are: biography (my personal biography and memory), metaphor, chance, control, function,

emotion and failure, terms that tend to operate as oppositions. What emerges through my

studio practice is an attempt to understand how such opposing forces can be reconciled; and,

how a metaphorical, material, and personal middle ground can be established. From a

material and making perspective, this concerns knowing where to stop when the materials

have revealed their potential or have become exhausted.

Destruction and creation must be balanced, works must not be destroyed with wanton

abandon but rather suspended and fixed at a point somewhere between the two. The personal

and impersonal must also be balanced: a metaphor may help describe an emotion but must be

tempered away from sentimentality. Chance creates a platform for slippages and interruptions

but is limited and preserved by control. Mundane unnoticed subjects such as road surfaces

and towers should be re-evaluated through the unexpected.

In this section, I shall first provide a glossary of these key ideas, before proceeding to discuss

specific works. Throughout, the guiding concern is elaborating on how I harness the

processes of chance and control as a fundamental mode of studio-based research.

Key Ideas

Destruction versus creation.

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‘Iconoclasm’ translates from the Greek as ‘image destroyer’ and the motivation for the action

can be divided roughly into two categories: religious or political. The effect of both is the

attempted erasure of the past, a rejection of a collective identity, fracturing of dogma and

questioning of identity propelled by distrust (Kelly, 2003). Iconoclasm is frequently directed

towards works of art and is premised on the notion that images or objects are material

encodings of power—to destroy the material expression of that power is, by extension, to

strike a blow to the power structure itself (Apostolos-Cappadona, 2005). Culturally, the

iconoclast represents the impulse of chaos and destruction against a hegemonic order in my

own whether the actions of the iconoclast are defensible or indefensible is largely a matter of

perspective. In my practice, like any iconoclast, I am interested in disrupting certain patterns

of order, while simultaneously seeking to propose new ones.

My own works, although often involving some level of destruction, are not conceived as truly

iconoclastic. They are not acts of aggression or an attack performed in haste, but managed

and controlled. Furthermore, conversely to conventional iconoclasm, they were initially a

means of memorialising the past rather than eradicating it; a method for capturing a

biographical event in time and making it visible. As I shall discuss further below, the tension

between material destruction and the recovery of a symbolic form from this process, is a key

aspect of my studio practice.

A strong lineage of destruction and creation exists in modern art, much of which I was

unable to touch on in the parameters of the main body of a contextual framework. In order to

expand on this, I would like to briefly mention several artists and works that are also relevant

to my research. It is thought that Picasso said “Every act of creation is first an act of

destruction” (May, 1975, p.34). Notably, in 1953, Robert Rauschenberg asked Willem De

Kooning for a drawing which he intended to erase. De Kooning accepted the request,

furnishing him with a complex drawing which proved difficult to erase, taking several weeks

resulting in a smudged blank piece of paper (Rauschenberg, 1999). In the 1960’s Gustav

Metzger, an artist and political activist was busy destroying red, white and black canvases

with acid in a concept he called Auto-destructive art, he also initiated the Destruction in art

symposium in 1966 (Wilson, 2008). While Yoko Ono encouraged the audience to cut her

clothing with scissors in the performance Cut Piece (1964). Ai Wei Wei’s photographic

triptych Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), captures the artist dropping a two-thousand-

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year old ceremonial urn—a critique of societal values (Yap, 2012). Through these works, the

artists demonstrate the idea that failure or destruction can be a creative act. While this

concept could be seen as symptomatic of the Modernist rejection of tradition, and its

revolutionary attitude; for me such works exemplify the poetic, affirmative qualities that acts

of destruction can give rise to.

Impersonal versus personal.

My action of documenting a memory by transference through metaphor into a physical object

is a mechanism to rationalise and exorcise a biographical ‘haunting’, in the same way we

might keep a diary. In searching for a connection between physical experience and emotion,

what transpires is a therapeutic act of taxidermy of a moment in time, personified in an object

to be placed in storage. The objects serve as a sharper and more angular deposit of biography,

whereas memories are rounded and can be bleached through a temporal erosion.

To select contemporary practitioners who use memory as a driver in a creative practice in

order to supplement this topic in relation to what has already been discussed in the contextual

review is a difficult task due to the breath of choices. To give a single example which has a

resonance to my own practice, I will briefly mention Louise Bourgeois.

Throughout her career, Bourgeois utilised making as a means of exorcising childhood

memory (Bal, 2002). The complex images and memories of her past are transferred into her

artworks traversing surrealism and minimalism over a long career (Leoni-Figini, 2008). In the

1990’s, she produced a series of cells or chambers in which she could gather objects that had

a biographic resonance to her, and possessed a strong emotional charge (Leoni-Figini, 2008).

Utilising a range of materials such as glass, marble, fabric and metal these chambers act as

voyeuristic cages for memory where reality and fantasy combine (Leoni-Figini, 2008). This

suggests that drawing on biography can act as a powerful mechanism to trigger new inquiry.

Bourgeois shows how the artworks themselves can bridge the personal and impersonal. Her

work is a precedent for my practice and demonstrates how the biographical and conceptual

may be combined in meaningful ways.

Chance versus control.

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My studio process exploits chance, and chance engages the disorder of entropy that we are

physically disposed to in the Universe. I want the materials I use to follow their disposition,

and show me their authentic weaknesses. I wish to try to channel this material weakness into

meaning, and find a way to appreciate, harness and respect failure. I want the steel to creak

and groan, yielding to pressure, the ceramic to fall and break, the wax to bend and collapse in

the heat, and the bitumen to rupture; but I want these processes to occur without my

intervention, as much as is possible. This poses a problem: how do I encourage a material to

display its inherent properties? This is where control enters the studio process, as I seek to

direct, manage and control these aleatory material processes. The mechanical and physical

controls that I impose on the materials help to counterbalance the notion of a complete

entropic failure through chance, seeking a natural position between order and disorder. I set

the conditions that the materials are subjected to and can stop the experimentation at will. In

my studio, chance has to be engineered and so the studio becomes a laboratory in which

robust mechanics combine with material vulnerability. As I shall discuss below, this carries

with it a range of personal symbolic associations.

Chance and control reoccur as a motif across 20th century art history, the Dadaists embraced

drawing and saw that the elements could form a composition of their own. Hans Arp ripped

up a failed drawing and saw that the pieces could form a composition of their own (JAMA,

2008), Marcel Duchamp fastened a bicycle wheel to a stool in a chance encounter: an

example of a ‘Readymade’, a non- conscious engagement with objects (Naumann, 1999).

Pollock practiced ‘action painting’ where a value was placed on a blend of the rational and

irrational and the paint was encouraged to live for itself in concert with the artist’s will

(Pollock, Küster & Beyeler, 2008). An important precursor for some of these artists was

Stéphane Mallarmé, the nineteenth century poet who investigated and experimented with the

role of chance in poetry, in his poem of 1897- Un coup de des n'abolira le hazard, (known as

a throw of the dice in English) the work challenges the viewer’s senses with the long poem

scattered across the pages, changing positions and fonts leaping across the pages as if a die

were rolling uncontrollably (Meillassoux, 2018). This act of disruption through chance was

further explored by Tristan Tzara whom in 1920, conceived a method of composing a poem

through chance where words were cut from a newspaper, placed in a bag and drawn at

random to form a new juxtaposition which negates a conscious engagement (Caws, 1970).

For modernists such as these, the use of chance processes prevented the work from

surrendering to the repressive rules that were associated with academic training.

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However, rules-based systems were not completely rejected by all Modernists—artists

frequently used constraints as a way of giving direction to a composition. Of particular

relevance to my project is John Cage, the American writer, composer and visual artist known

for approaches that exploit indeterminacy and chance; and musical compositional elements

that are decided through indeterminate methods (Brown, 2012). Cage devised instructions or

rules which often involved throwing dice to direct compositional factors and musicians

within a controlled system—effectively bypassing a reliance on aesthetic judgments (Brown,

2012). The philosophy behind Cage’s use of chance is expressed in a manifesto called The

future of music (1940) that proposes music is present and all around us in the same way

gravity, heat and material properties are inherent and may be harnessed to dictate new forms

(Brown, 2012). Cage’s work, like my own, reflects this interest in applying studio constraints

that nonetheless allow the incidental or accidental to present themselves.

The mundane versus the unexpected.

From my personal perspective, I would assert that the heroic object may be criticised due to

embellishment and an inherent projection of self importance that proposes a system of value.

In contrast, the commonplace, prosaic and banal is unimpeachable, trustworthy and

unquestioned; the unexceptional carries no baggage of beauty and worth, and sides with

contemplation rather than consumption. It is un-romanticised and oblivious, has nothing to

hide and comes at a discount. Inherent within the mundane is the presumption of an object or

action free from pretence or affectation, something genuine. As an artist I seek to remove the

sociological coating of my objects and reveal an instance of raw human experience.

Artist and photographer Richard Wentworth’s work—Making do and getting by (ongoing)

comprises a series of photographs where abnormalities and inconsistencies in the modern

landscape are portrayed as mundane fragments that demonstrate human resourcefulness

and improvisation, distinguishing potentially unnoticed oddities as subjects for intent

contemplation (Grasso, 2012). Ruptures appear between object and function which allows

a subsequent disconnect between function and meaning (Grasso, 2012). It is a practice

where seemingly banal subjects take on a stronger resonance and meaning through a

connection to distinct qualities of humanity in the same way that Iconoclast 2 draws on

personal biography to reflect frailty and failure.

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The Works

Parnell’s Dream (2014).

Parnell’s Dream was a leftover from an older series of works entitled Tools for Living (2011)

that explored the divide between function and emotion. The tools evolved as a series of long-

handled objects akin to gardening implements that had a ritual appearance through

encrustation of mud and pigment (These works may be viewed at –www. michaelriddle.net).

The small casing form hung around long enough to be reconsidered, I liked the seemingly

random composition, somewhat arbitrary and visually non-considered. The work was

originally modeled from wax and captured in pewter using the lost wax investment casting

process. The metal casting appeared to have a permanency about it and offered a narrative but

was lacking a second synectic component—a point of unexpected contrast. At this time, I was

experimenting with chance composition through burning voids in blocks of polystyrene,

either by heat or solvents, to hope to create some new form through chance. To capture the

complex shapes, I filled the moulds with pigmented concrete. The castings were revealed

when I stripped away the brittle polystyrene. One of these experiments became the second

component to the work, giving it a Yin Yang appearance of visual colour and textural

opposites that blended a complex constructed geometric network of negative spaces with

mass.

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Figure 11. Michael Riddle, Parnell's dream, 2014 cast pewter, acrylic resin, cast concrete, pigment. Photo Carl

Warner.

The work appears to suggest movement of the material either as a result of gravity, or as if

flesh had been removed from bone. The title refers to the ‘pitch drop’ scientific experiment

which has been running at the University of Queensland since 1927. Professor Thomas

Parnell conceived the experiment to demonstrate to students that some substances that appear

solid are in fact viscous fluids. The frequency of the drops falling is approximately once in

every ten years. (University of Queensland, 2018). In this work, movement between two

material and formal states is held in a state of indefinite suspension.

Control, “I’m not best pleased” and That’s how the light gets in (2014).

These works were born from my experimentation with various materials in the studio. I had

begun experimenting with steel armatures, concrete and hard, bagged bitumen that when

heated, transitioned to a very fluid, crumbly state. When the bag was opened after heating, it

would cascade with the energy of molten lava and the material seemed to have potential for

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describing new forms. Initially, I applied the material to various steel armatures with a

limited amount of success because gravity had intervened, preventing the material from

adhering. Despite repeated attempts and repairs, the material continued its fluidity through

gravity, gradually releasing itself from the mesh, forming crumbling heaps around the

armature.

I became interested in how bitumen’s restlessness could be encouraged, so I began building

boxes that could allow a negotiation between the bitumen and gravity. Road base and

bitumen were layered and compacted into these trays in a domestic version of building a

highway with the surface flattened using a domestic iron. I had secreted steel mechanisms

into the shallow trays, which could be activated and raised on threaded rods. These skeletons

lay dormant until the next day when the material had cooled and hardened. I then began to

raise the mechanisms to create a disruption or scar to the quieted surface.

It was important for me to detach myself from the result. The steel mechanism served as a

ventriloquist’s arm and operator behind the scenes to locate a halfway position between

intention and accident, where chance was given agency over the materials. The action and the

resulting fissures were not purely random, but were managed within parameters of time and

movement.

I became cognisant that the works were intrinsically unstable due to the fluid nature of the

materials I had selected and could thereby not be preserved or transported. The solution was

to prepare silicone moulds of the works and reproduce them in a lightweight acrylic resin and

fiberglass composite that was pigmented black. This action allowed the works to become

more versatile and negated the problem of gravity I had been experiencing. This allowed the

works to be placed vertically on the walls of a gallery, in further defiance of gravity.

I had material and form, and the ephemerality of the materials had been negated. An action

had been captured through balancing a proportion of control against chance. The form of the

work was determined by the degrees of manipulation I had allowed in the interruptive

mechanism, and the resulting fragile surface became permanently fixed through the casting

process.

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Figure 12. Michael Riddle, Control, 2014 acrylic resin, fibreglass, pigment. Photo Carl Warner.

The titles of the works help to place them in a moment in time and catalyse metaphor,

connecting biography, material, subject and form in a diagram of metaphorical connectivity

where the points are allowed to undertake a continuing conversation. The title of the first

work, “I’m not best pleased” is a reference to the words of my father, who had been killed in

a head-on car crash. A doctor was one of the first responders at the scene of the crash and

asked my father if he was alright, and he replied that “I’m not best pleased.” He died of

massive internal bleeding on the way to the hospital in the ambulance. The slightly

meandering fissures that are present and scribed into the surface by the mechanism in the

work are transcribed from an ordinance survey map of the T-intersection where the fatal

accident took place.

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Figure 13. Michael Riddle, “I'm not best pleased”, 2014 acrylic resin, pigment. Photo Carl Warner.

Having captured the moment, I didn’t feel it was necessary to repeat the sentiment any further

and the accompanying works Control (2014) [Fig. 12.] and That’s how the light gets in

(2014) [Fig. 14.] were closer to pure material experiments. These were focused on form,

terrain and describing a surface. The title Control simply refers to the relationship between

chance and control, both in materiality and everyday life, with the connotations of disruption,

temporality and place. That’s how the light gets in, is a reference to a Leonard Cohen song of

the same name that seems to suggest that something positive may be found in a damaged

object, person or situation, a theme that I explore in another work, “Why do you hate me so

much?” (2014).

Figure 14. Michael Riddle, That's how the light gets in, 2014 acrylic resin, pigment. Photo Carl Warner.

“Why do you hate me so much?” (2014).

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“Why do you hate me so much?” [Fig. 15.] is a response to the tradition of Kintsugi and

Wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is a concept in Japanese aesthetics centered on the acceptance of

transience and imperfection (Martin, 2007, pp. 1-5). The aesthetic is sometimes described as

one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” (Leonard, 1994, p. 4).

Kintsugi is an extension of this philosophy that relates to the repair of ceramics, as

a philosophy, “it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than

something to disguise” (My Modern Met, 2017). Kintsugi can relate to the Japanese

philosophy of “no mind” (mushin), which encompasses the concepts of non-attachment,

acceptance of change and fate as aspects of human life (Bartlett, Holland & Iten 2008. p. 9).

“Why do you hate me so much?” is a ceramic vessel broken and reconstructed which is

informed by Kintsugi and cast from my own variation on bone china slip. The clay slip was

blended and proportioned using my mother’s cremated ashes. She had passed away in 2004

from cancer that was thought to be related to smoking, obtaining the ashes proved to be

incredibly difficult, as they were misplaced by the funeral home. When they were eventually

found and shipped to me, they never arrived. After some detective work, I ascertained that

they had been intercepted by customs and held. Some time later, the ashes were returned to

the funeral home, and it was explained to me that as the ashes were considered to be a human,

they were therefore impossible to value and uninsurable. This raised some questions with me

about value and the absurdity of having no value while we are alive but becoming priceless

when we are dead. I eventually obtained the ashes through a specialist transport company.

The form of the ceramic vessel was modelled on an enlarged ashtray, I produced a series of

these ceramics from a slip casting mould I had fabricated from a clay pattern. Ironically, the

first mould fell off the table and smashed and could not be salvaged. After making a second

mould, my intention was to produce some flawless castings which I could then smash in

various ways and repair. After several attempts, I was unable to produce a single intact

casting, my proportioning of the materials proved to have thrown the chemistry out of

balance and the castings all cracked while drying. I accepted this problem as part of the

‘logic’ of the work and elected to persevere with what I had, before the materials ran out. I

selected one casting from a range of failures, fired it and repaired the damage using a

traditional technique of drilling and inserting staples fashioned from chemically patinated

sterling silver.

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“Why do you hate me so much?” presents as a shattered, yet intact white object that is non-

reflective. It lacks the delicacy and lightness normally associated with bone china, and is

extremely vulnerable to further damage. The esoteric nature of the object and instability

prompted me to encase the work in a frame. Staples are positioned where absolutely

necessary, but some of the cracks and shrinkage are excessive and will not allow the staples

to practically span the negative space, leaving enlarged fissures.

Figure 15. Michael Riddle, “Why do you hate me so much?”, 2014 Human Bone China, Sterling silver. Photo

Carl Warner.

The process of making this work was replete with problems and mistakes, which I tried to

embrace. There were several factors that slowed and resolved production: economy of

materials; time; the realisation that a superior failure could be an oxymoron; and, that further

iterations may not yield anything superior, further shrinkage in the kiln compounded the level

of damage. The hands-off philosophy of failure and art-making became self-fulfilling and

congruent to practice, even though my intentions of systematically shattering the objects in

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various ways, such as tumbling out of cupboards to the floor and elbowing off tables, became

unobtainable.

The crude references for the work were ash and ashes, in origin both cigarettes and human.

The underlying notions of this are human fragility, frailty and impermanence. It also serves as

a form of memorial, an attempt to posthumously repair a relationship that couldn’t previously

be achieved. The title is taken from amongst my mother’s last words to me.

Waiting for clarity (2014).

Waiting for clarity [Fig. 16.] is a work composed of two elements that are synectic in their

disparate visual and material pairings. The first element is fabricated from mild steel wire and

resembles a mesh lozenge. Suspended inside is a matching but smaller reproduction using

thinner gauge wire. The welded cages have similarities in configuration to Russian dolls.

The second element resting on the steel wireframe lozenge is a reproduction of a rock that is

cast in a pigmented acrylic resin.

The composition of the work evolved in a chance-driven intuitive pattern. The steel elements

were fabricated and welded. The work sat around and was abandoned in the studio for some

time. It appeared to me as a lonely item with no relevance to the other works. The nesting

wireframe forms seemed visually compliant, lifeless and dormant. I decided to attempt to

wake up the work by propelling a blunt steel instrument into it to see what would happen.

This procedure involved fabricating a hinged apparatus somewhere between an axe and a

sledge hammer. Disappointingly little damage was achieved with the first blow and I had to

repeat this action several times with larger weights, eventually increasing the impact

manually in desperation, willing it to change.

The form now had a noticeable concave bruise which I enhanced further by crushing it in the

vice. This seemed to be a corruption of the chance/control methodology, which became a

reoccurring issue. I felt I had succeeded in activating the object with the damage but it needed

a second contrasting element. I went outside and picked up the first interesting looking rock

from a garden bed. When I placed it on top of the mangled wireframe, it fitted perfectly,

resting and hugging the contours. I moulded the rock which I cast in white acrylic polymer

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(Forton). This was a means of visually removing the nuances and naturalistic colouring of the

original; and, a method of mild abstraction.

Figure 16. Michael Riddle, Waiting for clarity, 2014 mild steel wire, acrylic resin. Photo Carl Warner.

Waiting for clarity again follows themes of opposites. The rock is of indeterminate material,

possessing mass and solidity; whereas the wireframe is identifiable as steel and is skeletal,

sinewy, and permeated with negative space. The rock seems to be dominating the wireframe,

keeping it captive for an indeterminate length of time. The title suggests a metaphor of the

human condition, of the feeling of being weighed down upon and waiting for a relationship or

roles to be reversed or resolved. I explored such ideas of ‘assisted chance’ and mutual support

in Iconoclast 2, but on a larger scale (see below).

Synectically and metaphorically, there lies a parallel between Smithson’s woodshed and the

wireframe immobilized by the weight of a rock in the Waiting for clarity (2014) [Fig. 16.].

Smithson’s analytical approach differs from my own, which is more concerned with

personification and conveying empathic qualities. Both practices display a premeditated

quality in the use of external measures, in Smithson’s case, orchestrated by subcontractors

and equipment; in my own, mechanisms and heating equipment, although the practices are

differentiated by scale.

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Catastrophic failure, Complete collapse and Iconoclast 1 (2014).

These three works have a commonality of theme and material. They are cast in pewter and

reference a tower in various stages of collapse. Iconoclast 1 (2014) [Fig. 19.] is inverted and

has a black cast rock nestled in the frame. I had established an interest in the narrative,

symbolism and metaphor of towers and man-made structures falling over or becoming

weakened. I wanted to build some towers and experiment with encouraging them to collapse,

to find the ‘point of no return’ and observe how the composition could be visually disrupted

through chance.

In the studio, I began making small, crude wooden towers from balsa wood. Initially, I burnt

the towers using a blowtorch, attempting to preserve them slightly before collapse or soon

after by extinguishing them with water. I was only able to dismember them by applying heat

to specific points, seeking to capture the failure in a more fluid way, I turned to wax.

I had observed how candles may wilt when left in the sun on a hot day due to gravity and

surmised that I might be able to emulate this with wax towers that would behave in a more

materially elastic way. My first attempts to produce structures from square wax rods I had

prepared proved problematic and long-winded. I settled upon modelling the towers on the

structure of an electricity pylon. These pylons are intrinsically strong so I elected to simplify

the configuration to read as a fairly ordinary design as to detach it from a recognised reality

and assumption.

By fabricating a pattern, and compound silicone and fiberglass mould, I was able to produce

the towers with one pour, giving me the luxury of multiple towers to experiment with. As the

second stage (lost wax investment casting) was complex and expensive, I wanted to produce

a selection of collapsed towers to select the most interesting form prior to investment.

The next stage was to collapse the structures. They proved too strong to fail in the sun alone

and a hot bath only allowed the legs to bend and the structure to fall over intact. The solution

was to build an oven. The force of gravity was enhanced by my decision to attach steel plates

to the waxes at various points and I oriented them in different ways to try to vary the results.

By making incisions with a hot knife, I was able to sabotage the structures further, prior to

heating. All of these factors combined offered a starting point, but I found myself doctoring

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up the results manually to enhance the forms. This struck me as having a similarity to a

scientist falsifying experiments, with chance and control systems in place, I could only

manipulate the forms so far. However, the systems did offer a leading direction to follow.

Interestingly, there are no marks or clues evident in the works to signal the way the process

influenced the outcomes.

Once I had selected the three ‘optimum’ (possessing more life and movement) waxes from

many variations, I prepared the investment and cast them in pewter, which could be poured at

a much lower temperature than bronze and eliminated the need for a full foundry. I accepted

that I would live with any casting defects as part of the project in keeping with the natural

order of entropy.

Figure 17. Michael Riddle, Catastrophic failure, 2014 cast pewter, acrylic resin. Photo Carl Warner.

I prepared bases for two of the three casings that were reproduced from bitumen patterns in

order to add an earth-like context and counterpoint to the pewter surface, material and colour.

I added a rock to the inverted casting—produced initially for Waiting for clarity—because it

appeared incomplete and inadequate, as there had been a failure in the casting process—a

‘short pour’ which I interpreted as an unfair disablement. This ‘doctoring’ appeased the lack

of control presented in the final form.

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Figure 18. Michael Riddle, Complete collapse, 2014 cast pewter, acrylic resin, pigment. Photo Carl Warner.

Figure 19. Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 1, 2014 cast pewter, acrylic resin. Photo Carl Warner.

The three works have a complexity to their structures and roughly resemble the elastic

material behavior of steel when subjected to intense heat. I had studied pictures of steel

framed buildings that had been burnt to the ground; and, how the structural steel had become

warped and mangled but had remained complete in a new and unwanted configuration. One

image that was influential to my research was a photograph of the Odamasa store in

Hiroshima, which was subjected to the atomic bomb and subsequent fire.

The three reconfigurations I had selected chart various states of decline and illustrate entropy

caused by gravity. They reference the human body in collapse or bent and hunched over.

Complete collapse is the most advanced and terminal in this respect, while Iconoclast 1

survives, although under the pressure of a rock. Catastrophic failure remains standing and

appears to have been strengthened with rudimentary braces although it lurches over in

distress.

Ruptures installation, H Block Gallery, QUT (2015).

The works shown in this residency and exhibition were a further iteration of my ongoing

practice; and, a chance to explore time-based works and video in a more flexible space. The

installation [Fig. 20.] comprised broken concrete blocks, a pile of road base, bitumen time-

based work, rubber mud flap and single-channel video positioned in the adjoining darkened

room.

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The untitled bitumen work, which was placed to the middle of the gallery, was a larger

version of That’s how the light gets in, although more ephemeral as the materials were

disposed of at the end. A shallow tray measuring 3 m x 0.6 m was placed on trestles and

filled with road base and bitumen over the course of a day. I had positioned a flat hose under

the materials prior to compaction and finishing of the surface. Hoses, a pump, and buckets

were connected and formed part of the installation. On the second day, when the bitumen had

hardened, I began to pump water to inflate the hose. This was done incrementally and

documented to accompany the work as a time-based video. Once the hose was fully inflated

the rupture in the bitumen was complete. The broken blocks I had intended to repair lay

abandoned, as did the remaining road base.

Figure 20. Michael Riddle, Ruptures, 2015 installation view.

The single-channel video entitled Crash (2015) [Fig. 21.] has a duration of 27 seconds and is

looped to repeat. The video depicts two ambulances in the moment of impact in a head-on

road collision. The video shows the ambulances being damaged roughly to the same extent

and then reverses to see the damage undone in an endless loop. I had imagined a hypothetical

absurdly remote scenario where two ambulances were heading to or away from an emergency

road crash situation when they collided. During my research, I was unable to find a record of

this ever happening, although there were many single ambulance crashes. An event of this

nature would cause a complex chain reaction of chance where the already injured would not

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be attended to or possibly injured further, and the responders could also be unable to help

themselves or others. The work has a linkage to my own biographical experience explored in

“I’m not best pleased”, the structural failure of the material (the ambulance), and chance. The

metaphor explores the absurdity, helplessness, and accelerated entropy that can be generated

by chance. The work was prepared from found footage of ambulance crash tests, the videos

juxtaposed and meshed left and right. The original backgrounds were removed using

rotoscoping.

Figure 21. Michael Riddle, Crash, 2015 video still, single-channel video, 27 seconds, infinite loop.

The final work shown in the installation was a mud flap cast from black polyurethane rubber

where a diagrammatic illustration [Fig. 22.] is highlighted in white bas-relief. Mud flap

(2015) [Fig. 23.] was presented in a slumped configuration resting on a shelf. Mud flap

depicts a quickly sketched diagram I had drawn as an explanation of a problem I had been

experiencing that seemed representative of the human condition, in which one sees another

person’s actions has triggered instability within themselves, resulting in a transmission of

disharmony. The diagram represents two people, I saw the division as a respectful membrane

where emotion and feeling may pass moderately at times back and forth by osmosis but

ultimately balancing in a neutral position. Repeated or continual overextension of this

‘membrane’, I recognised as a dangerous corruption of balance.

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Figure 22. Michael Riddle, diagram for Mud flap, 2015.

Figure 23. Michael Riddle, Mud flap, 2015 installation view.

The diagram illustrates the opposite of this existential hypothesis, where the membrane

balloons and passes across, transferring instability and unhappiness to the other side so no

equilibrium can be restored. On a human condition level, this suggests how personal failure

of circumstances can cause damage to others through a passive aggressive butterfly effect.

The choice of the mud flap as subject and object related to entropy, movement and linked to

roads and bitumen. The metaphor in this work suggests a protective screen against the

sometimes unfortunate ‘mud’ of interactions that we can be conditioned to accept as the mud

flap of a vehicle protects its own skin from damage. In the presentation of the work, the mud

flap seems to be abandoned, having failed or become detached from purpose.

Iconoclast 2 (2017).

Produced for the 2017 Southern Way McClelland Commission, Iconoclast 2 [Fig. 26, 27.] is

a monumental public artwork that stands aside the Sky Road exit of the East link Highway in

Frankston, Victoria. The sculpture is constructed from galvanized steel and composite

cement. Standing at 12 metres in height and weighing 6.8 tons, it depicts a mangled

electricity pylon that has a massive boulder nestled in the framework.

The attraction of the commission was its open-ended brief with no specific criteria or theme,

which is highly unusual. This allowed me to draw directly on my previous research for the

submission. Conceptually, Iconoclast 2 (2017) is a composite of Iconoclast 1 and

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Catastrophic failure, both from 2014. As the location of the site is a busy three-lane highway

with an average speed of vehicles passing at 100 kilometres per hour, I felt it was important

for the proposal to have some visual presence, hence the 12 metre height of the structure.

As the proposal was drawn directly from my existing practice, it was a natural progression to

combine the two works to create a hybrid, following the same themes of synectics, chance

and failure. Electricity pylons form a pedestrian background element to the landscape. They

are economical in their construction in the way that their form is entirely determined by their

function with nothing superfluous added. I was aware that the pylons were not impervious to

collapse, as I had a collection of images illustrating many that had collapsed in Canada during

a particularly bad snow storm, falling under the massive weight of ice [Fig. 24.].

Figure 24. Benoit Aquin, photograph of a crumpled pylon caused by an ice storm in the Boucherville region east of Montreal, 1998. (Canadian Geographic, 2018).

In order to preserve the material and formal integrity of the final work, I made use of physical

models rather than digital design processes. After eliminating 3D printing as a process due to

complications, I produced steel scale models and a crude, undifferentiated polystyrene

boulder so I could destroy these models with heat as I had with the earlier work with wax

structures. This allowed me to retain the chance element and allow the material to be true to

itself in behaviour.

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Figure 25. Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 2 CAD elevation with cables, 2016. (courtesy of Adrian Davis of

davisthomas)

As the project proceeded, I was able to have one of the countless scale models transposed

into CAD. Subsequently, fabrication commenced with the material (angle iron) laser cut to

length and the hundreds of bolt holes machined in advance. The look of the finished work

was dependent on the authenticity of the ‘mangled’ appearance. This could be achieved in

two ways: through fabrication trickery or through heating, which was more true to the ethos

but also more unpredictable in a material sense. We elected heating.

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Figure 26. Iconoclast 2 (in progress). Mangled transition section of tower prior to galvanizing, 2017.

The structure was constructed on its side in three parts: the base tower (which had no

damage), the top mangled steel component, reflecting the cracked beam in Smithson’s

Partially Buried Woodshed (1970) and the boulder. We contorted the steel angle iron sections

using a tremendous amount of heat and chain blocks, drawing the composition in space,

joining end to end, trying to adhere to the measurements dictated in the CAD drawing. The

boulder was produced by applying fibrous cement material over a steel armature and using

rubber texture pads taken from actual rocks to create the surface. All elements were produced

separately and assembled on site in an intensive day of crane activity. After 19 months of

strenuous work, Iconoclast 2 was finally installed on site in August 2017.

Ironically, during the installation process, spooked by the precarious impression of the work,

the commercial partner Lend Lease insisted on a further engineering report detailing what

would happen in the event of ‘catastrophic failure’.

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Figure 27. Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 2, 2017 installation view. Photo Steve Brown.

Figure 28. Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 2, 2017 installation view. Photo Steve Brown.

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An analysis of the work.

Interpreting the work is complex in essence. The synectic combination of the tower and

boulder is absurd and poses a question: how did the boulder get there and why? Many

viewers interpreted it as a meteorite, which is a logical assumption. Chance plays a part, this

kind of pairing is unlikely, and it is even more fantastical that the boulder would remain

nestled in the mangled steel tower and not collapse. In this section, I will briefly draw out

some of the key interpretive aspects of the work with reference to the three artists introduced

above: Smithson, Durham and Landy.

There are some similarities between Smithson’s concerns and my own. The timber structure

of the Partially Buried Woodshed may be conceptually compared to the steel structure of

Iconoclast 1 (2014) [Fig. 19.]. Both works appear in a stasis—an accelerated entropy—where

the boulder and earth being of mineral composition offer a form of geological dominance

over a man-made structure. Both works also explore the relationship between destruction,

control and chance. Smithson had directorial control over how much material was heaped on

the wooden structure, the exact point of failure could not be predetermined, only revealed by

the process of progressively covering the form in earth. As described above, the production of

Iconoclast 2 similarly involved testing material limits using heuristic methods. The mangled

steel structure had to be intentionally weakened via an elaborate forging process. However,

like Smithson’s Woodshed, this pursuit of failure involved a highly coordinated series of

actions. The forging process was meticulous and required extensive material experimentation

to avoid a complete ‘blow out’ failure of the steel. Despite its fluid appearance, the softening

and mangling of the steel was actually extremely carefully choreographed.

However, Iconoclast 2 and Partially Buried Woodshed have very different durational aspects.

Smithson’s work was an exploration of material limits, but also one of entropy – his work

was intended to break down over time. For Smithson, failure was temporal and enduring. By

contrast, my exploration of failure in Iconoclast 2 needed to be regulated. The material

failure brought about by the forging process, had to also preserve the structural integrity of

the whole. It is essential that a monumental work in the public realm not endanger its

passersby or surroundings and so structural failure in this work needed to be contained.

Despite these constraints, the resulting work is not simply a depiction of a failed structure for

it did involve the intentional weakening of its steel members as part of the compositional

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process. This then is one of the key differences between Smithson’s and my approach to

material failure: where Smithson used an organized action that then gave way to organic

entropic forces, in my work these processes were folded together, the final structure being

preserved and enduring.

Despite such involved technical processes and its public location, the intent behind Iconoclast

2 was drawn from my personal biography. In this way the work reflects the philosophies of

Susanne Langer and her theories that artworks can become iconic symbols of emotion and

inward life through her ideas of representational symbolism. The tower represents both

human frailty and entropic collapse and at the same time resilience, the ability to function

under a heavy weight. Another interpretation concerns a dynamic flow of energy where

gravity is shown to be halted as the boulder is drawn to the earth, which is where we all end

up in an entropic sense. The cables evoke a memory of Gulliver from Gulliver’s travels a

fantastical novel by Johnathon Swift (1726) and how he was restrained by the Lilliputians,

while the steel structure draws an analogy to the Greek myth of Atlas, holding up the world

(Cartwright, 2017).

Figure 29. Michael Riddle, Iconoclast 2, 2017 installation view. Photo Steve Brown.

The despite its scale, the bound, flaccid form of Iconoclast 2 creates a paradoxical impression

of fragility. On the one hand this effect is equivalent to Jimmie Durham’s work in which

furniture and vehicles are devastated by the massive weight of dropped boulders. In these

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works, the land (represented by the rock) is turned against the consumer good, literally

crushing it into the earth. My work may not reflect Durham’s spiritual concerns, but it does

seek to generate an affective response in the viewer—a sense of vulnerability and pathos. The

skeletal quality of Iconoclast 2 creates a strong anthropomorphic impression and generates an

empathic response to the work. We observe that the devastation is entirely object-based, but

the impression of a human body under pressure is hard to overlook.

Additionally Durham’s materials are always authentic, while Iconoclast 2 is an entirely

fictional construction. As outlined above, the faithful exploration of the material effects of

heat and gravity in the studio informed the development of the composition, but the resulting

composition at scale is entirely choreographed. In this way, Iconoclast 2 acts as an

‘imposter’—an artificial work that reproduces the appearance of a catastrophic chance-based

collision between two monumental forms. Despite these material differences, both Durham

and I pair two incongruent objects to create an irrational, dystopian impression. Hence, the

‘random’ inference of the work is tempered—the works are highly purposeful in their

contrast of objects. Similarly, the works both perform an inversion upon the material order of

the work with the rock that normally provides the stable ground for architectural structures

becoming instead an ‘aggressor’.

Iconoclast 2 is informed by such iconographic interpretations but it also acts as a highly

personal statement whereby the assertive symbolism of the work meets a layer of content that

is far ‘quieter’ and affective. In this way, the work shares the same attitude as Michael

Landy’s

Break Down and Semi-Detached in which highly personal content is expressed through forms

and processes that are more technical and coordinated. In Break Down, as we have seen, the

entirety of the artist’s personal belongings were opened for public examination during their

systematic destruction. On the other hand, Semi-Detached references his father as subject—a

portrait expressed through the reconstruction of his childhood home. In these works, personal

objects become iconographic ones, synonymous with a life lived and ultimately given value

through personal memory and experience. Iconoclast 2 shares the sensibility of Semi-

Detached, in the respect that it is a form waiting to fail, whilst held in an absurd form of

suspended animation. In Landy’s work this failure is expressed through the blockage that the

house creates in the gallery—creating the sensation that it has been jammed into the white

cube space. In my work, this failure is similarly expressed through the siting of the work—as

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if the pylon had already strayed from its original location and was struck while wandering on

its own. Both works create a strong impression of displacement—disrupting the coherence of

their surroundings.

During the construction, friends sent me images of the 23 electricity pylons that had

collapsed or been damaged in South Australia due to a severe thunderstorm. This event

caused widespread blackouts and highlighted the need for an ongoing discussion regarding

energy and renewables. So, while the work may have emerged from my own studio-based

exploration of material and metaphor, chance and control, informed by the examples of

Smithson, Durham and Landy, Iconoclast 2 could also be read as a statement of about the

limits of grid-based energy in the present moment and way in which nature seems to

continually remind us about the limits of human systems and structures.

64

Conclusion

Fundamentally, my research is bound to the studio and relates to cause and effect, matching

like for like, metaphor with material, and biography with action. In my work and methods;

stability, uncertainty, and opposing forces engage with narrative drawn from my personal

biography. Slippages and mistakes are ‘baited’ and weaknesses celebrated. The working

system is one of chance, control and biography, the links between which are revealed through

the making process. The materials are encouraged to display their intrinsic properties but

preserved and frozen in particular states subject to my control according to their expressive

capacities. The culmination of the research, Iconoclast 2, explores these qualities on a

monumental scale.

In my practice, I am interested in choreographing the terms of failure and the way that this

occurs in the studio. Just like the dancing process, sometimes I lead the materials, at other

times the materials lead me. At all times, the work involves a conscious negotiation of give-

and-take with the materials, objects, and processes of the studio. The works that result from

this process can be seen as documentations of this negotiation—and how the (at times) brutal

physical forces of matter can be directed to more personal, quietly expressive ends.

65

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