TRACE  a  Conference paper for CAIR
By Anthony Bond

TRACE is the theme for the International exhibition of the inaugural Liverpool Biennial.   The Biennial Board made the important decision to invite a curator to develop a theme exhibition rather than having a jury select a survey show.

I believe that this is the right decision, primarily as a question of methodology.  In the field of contemporary art it is not possible to appeal to an established body of knowledge or an independent authority to verify the relevance of the selection.  A well-constructed theme is a transparent statement of intent that can be elaborated and defended or criticised and it provides a context for the selection process that is more interesting than some competitive notion of relative quality.  The theme is also an aide to audience participation and interpretation that is denied in a cultural Olympics of taste.  In a juried exhibition it is hard to avoid the suggestion of competitive placement.

While some themes could be restrictive, imposing a theoretical model over the practice of artists, I believe it is possible to devise a theme that arises out of careful consideration of current artistic concerns and activities.  In effect any theory that does not arise directly out of such observation is doomed to fester in the archives.

It was my view that TRACE not only engages a very strong art historical tendency but captures a very particular concern for many of the artists who are currently making the most compelling work.  I have narrowed the broad possible interpretation of the theme by defining specific artistic strategies in twentieth-century art that exploit this interpretation of TRACE.  These are strategies that allow conceptual artists to embrace the sensory properties of materials as appropriate means to convey their ideas.  While it is clear that most contemporary art in the late 1990s is somehow derived from conceptual art there may on the surface appear to be a contradiction between much new work and a view of conceptual art as denying material presence in any form.  In the catalogue I try to reframe this understanding of Conceptual art to show how a diversity of means have been exploited to a conceptual end.  It is a theme that also lends itself to site-specific work and to the discovery of Liverpool as a particular place with a history and character that has proved stimulating to creative artists from around the world. 

This theme constitutes a version of realism in twentieth-century art.  I have used the term the real in this talk rather than reality to distinguish between our experience of the world and some objective world separate from the experiencing subject.  The distinction may, however, provoke an interesting vision of a membrane or veil that separates the consciousness from its objects, a veil that is sometimes a metaphor for the role of art itself.  In very practical terms it may appear in the wrapping of Christo where the veil both conceals and reveals the object.  This use of the veil that conceals while drawing attention to the presence of the object can also be thought of as a metaphor for representations that purport to reveal the object but in fact come between us and the object by substituting for it.  Artists that employ Trace as a strategy alter the nature of representations to include aspects of the real and allow the veil to become permeable.  Many artists have played with this image, offering imaginative penetration of the surface of representation as in Courbet�s Source of the Loue or literal slashing of the veil by Lucio Fontana.  In this paper I will focus on manifestations of the trace in the twentieth-century and in particular in contemporary art.

I will attempt to summarise the theme as it appears in the catalogue, concentrating on the historical context and allowing the work in the exhibition to speak for it.  I begin with the suggestion that in 1912 Picasso and Duchamp shared the insight that prior to the ascendancy of mimetic values in representation most art had in fact been conceptual.  Tribal art in Africa for example expressed complex abstractions about the hidden forces of nature rather than attempting to recreate the �natural� appearance of objects.

They also participated in a return of the material index to the icon.  For example the piece of the saint�s shin bone in an icon or a drop of the virgin�s milk make the icon an object that connects the viewer physically to the subject of the icon while also allowing for the intellectual and visual reading of their presence.  Picasso�s Still life with chair caning May 1912 is an outstanding example where Picasso employed found objects to function as the medium for production of a pictorial narrative but also to open the boundary (or rend the veil) between art and life.  The rope frame is acting as the boundary between art and life in the conventional way that frames do while treacherously retaining its own identity and associations in the real world.

The photographic rendering of chair caning on oilcloth plays multiple roles as representation through icon and index.  It is employed as a pictorial representation of chair caning but it is also an indexical reference to tablecloths and the modernity of the reproductive process.  This work lends itself to multiple convoluted readings in this trajectory.  The critical factor for this interpretation of TRACE is the opening of this boundary between representation and the real.   Rending the veil or just ruffling it.

Marcel Duchamp employed the Readymade as a means of disrupting this boundary and added dada nonsense to defer closure on interpretation of the objects.  His major work, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors even was subsequently subtitled A delay in glass.  This idea of delayed closure is central to TRACE.  Works that employ real objects and materials that retain their worldly connotations are necessarily re-interpreted at each viewing depending on the experiential matrix of the viewer at the time. 

The subjective force of such interpretation does not diminish the communicative role of the art object.  Multiple viewpoints are not incompatible with common understanding instead they identify communication as a process rather than a static and closed symbolic system.  Dr Best discusses the possibility of commonality in bodily and affective experience in her essay in the catalogue of the exhibition .

Duchamp�s strategy of opening the text included the invitation of nature to intervene in human intentionality.   The dust collected as a means of colouring the sieves in The large glass, the lingering veils of the brides blossoming that are literally given their form by the breeze and the bachelor�s capillaries that were designed by falling lengths of thread.

The horizon in Duchamp�s Large glass irrevocably separates the bride from her bachelors; it is her guarantee of chastity, the gilled cooler that subdues the suitor�s ardour and her bridal veil.  It is also a metaphorical boundary between earth and heaven, material and immaterial.  In Etant donn�s this horizon is converted into the vertical boundary of the door that is equally impenetrable except by distant vision and that is firmly prescribed by parallax.  The object of desire may only be known by ocular means.  The viewer, compelled to bend down and peer through a peephole becomes the spectacle for other viewers.  The voyeur is converted into the object of contemplation.

Continuing the theme of delay, Duchamp followed the �definitively unfinished� Large Glass with Etant Donn�s that was also secretly unfinished.  20 years after his death the manual for Etant Donn�s was published according to the artist�s instructions.  Since no previous piece of paper or instruction was ever separated from interpretation of the work itself, we were compelled to rethink this work after twenty years of convoluted scholarship .    At the very least we have to acknowledge that our understanding of the work has been significantly changed by the view of the dismembered body that Duchamp deliberately hid from us for twenty years.  The interpretation we may put on this is still open to debate.

Following from these initiatives by Picasso and Duchamp there were many artists who used materials and objects to create an effect of the real and to open the art/life boundary.  It was not till the 1950s however that the full realisation of the affective properties of substances was harnessed.  Joseph Beuys articulated the power of materials to stimulate bodily responses and liberate bodily memories in his early vitrines and his performances. Beuys Also made his life synonymous with his art in a way that even Duchamp had not completely achieved.  In the post war period there were several artists whose work has to be understood as a body of work within the cultural environment or mythology they created for themselves.  Andy Warhol and Yves Klein are two other outstanding examples of this integration of art and artist�s life. 

Beuys� work is undeniably autobiographical.  His mature practice may be seen as a continuation of infantile play into adult life.  It could be that art is always something like this but with Beuys it is quite specific.  He grew up in the marshy country near Cleves on the German Dutch border.  It is the meeting place of the great Eurasian Steppes and the North Sea where East meets West.  Living at the meeting point of East and West gives rise to a recurring metaphor in his work where the East which is identified with intuition/nature, meets the West identified with reason/culture.

The juvenile Beuys roamed this �in between� country inventing games such as the Stag Leader that was later to become the title of a major installation now permanently housed at Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt.  Wandering about in the marshes Beuys, like many children, became a great collector of strange and marvellous objects.  His descriptions of this time give a clear insight into his later methodology as an artist.

�Then came the interest in plants and botany which has stayed with me all my life.  It started as a kind of cataloguing of everything that grew in that area, all noted in exercise books.  Our games became more elaborate.  We would go off hunting for anything we could find, and then build tents from rags and bits of material so we could show our collections.  There was everything from beetles, mice, rats, frogs, fish and flies to old farmyard machines or anything technical we could get our hands on.  Then we had our underground spaces too: dens and caves in a labyrinth we tunnelled under the earth.�

Beuys subsequently studied science formally but found the intellectual sterility of the courses disappointing. However his interest in natural processes translated into a theory of sculpture when he turned to art after the war.  His work also retained a strong environmental concern that dominated his activity towards the end of his life.  His Student Party and the Free International University were both political entities and art.

In the 1930s Beuys� adolescent life was swept up in the trauma of the Second World War that was to deeply affect his later art. With the emergence of the Nazi Party even Catholic Cleves was swept up in the turmoil.  Beuys reported that:

�Everyone went to church and everyone went to the Hitler youth.� 

Beuys himself felt the energy and excitement of the new order and went on the infamous Sternmarsch to Nuremberg. There was a book burning at his school where Beuys rescued some listed books from the fire.  By a curious coincidence one of these was the classical biological text Systema naturae by Linnaeus.

In 1940 he was called up and served in the Luftwaffe.  His war was shattering and complex.  He was injured five times and ended the war in a British prison camp but his most extreme experience was the celebrated crash in the Crimean winter.

Much of his subsequent work as an artist is informed by the idea of trauma that in his case can be identified as having occurred in three stages.  Firstly there was the universal trauma of birth with separation from the womb and by extension from the totality of nature.  Secondly near death in the Crimea and his resuscitation by Tartar nomads using fat and felt -(animal materials providing heat and insulation)�This is the story that gives rise to him claiming the role of Shaman.   Finally there is the political and historical trauma of the Holocaust.  On his return from the war he realises the horrors perpetrated by the German people and faces up to his personal part in it.

Between 1949 and 1958 Beuys experienced serious mental illness.  This time was like a descent into the abyss where he struggled with himself and his demons.  During this illness he evolved a theory of sculpture as an extension of bodily processes and warmth.  Art became for him a matter of healing.  Not only of the individual body but also of society.

He described his visits to a farmyard during his convalescence when he had sheltered in a cow barn.  The smell of straw, manure, milk, cow�s breath and the animals� body warmth gave him back a sense of connection with nature.   It was during this time that he began to associate the disasters of modern society with a rupture between nature and culture and to identify this with an antediluvian harmony between prehistoric man and nature presided over by the Goddess.  His enactments of childhood games can be seen as a part of his deeper concern to build a bridge between culture and the maternal earth from which it evolves.

His theory of sculpture involved a use of material based not on rational materialism but going back to the root of Material in �mater� the mother.  This is the substance of evolution where form arises from the earth through biological processes.  His drawings in the late 40s and early fifties reflect this obsession with animals and with the Earth Mother.  Some of his earliest sculptures were also made during this period.  In particular Queen Bee 1952, a group of wax sculptures that make the connection between Venus, bees, wax and healing.  The queen bee not only symbolises Venus and the earlier cult of Astarte but also holds more mundane evidence of the body as a productive site.  Out of their bodies the bees create materials, wax and honey and fabricate immaculate architecture.  Nature in this case produces culture, thereby epitomising Beuys� sculptural theory
 
His vitrines assembled for Hessisches Landesmuseum include several examples of these materials.  In one, dated 1963, bees wax, bees bodies, sail cloth, neon, and fat filters are accompanied by a broken neon tube wrapped in sail cloth soaked in hare�s fat and anointed with mercuric oxide which he described as an energy tool.  Being bent back on itself the bundle also echoes the Eurasian staff that symbolised the flow of ideas from the East into the West and then returning having reversed the polarity of intuition to that of logic.

These objects and materials are deliberately used to provoke strong physiological responses.  The body retains learned associations with materials particularly biological residues and materials in states of change, melting, burning or solidifying.  It is this sensory amplification of ideas that allows Beuys� objects to bind matter with consciousness.  Body memory is a critical aspect of TRACE and can be found throughout the exhibition.  This is not to replace conceptual art with sensation for its own sake but to harness the whole person in an empathetic response to the experiences the artist wishes to communicate. 

Doris Salcedo at Liverpool�s Anglican Cathedral invokes the absent body through the presences of discarded furniture. These objects serve as memorials to the many individuals who have been sacrificed to the political and economic terrorism in Colombia where drug barons and their political associates have silenced the community by �disappearing� members of rural communities.  These sculptures are made from pieces of furniture that are normally used to house the most personal traces of our individuality.  Beds, chairs and wardrobes for example are intimately involved with the relationships we evolve with our loved ones.  Imagine the wardrobe full of clothes belonging to a loved one who has mysteriously disappeared.  We cannot know they are dead and we fear that if we speak out they will certainly be destroyed.  Their remaining attributes are therefore transformed from comforting keepsakes to terrible and necessarily silent reminders of terror.

It is appropriate that these memorials to those who can never have a marked grave are both beautiful and terrible.  It is also possible to think of them as representing a strange distortion of time and space.  When people disappear they can not be laid to rest and become a part of the treasured past, they must remain part of the terrifying present, their very survival itself being a cause for both hope and dread.  These objects include pieces of furniture that seem to be floating through time so that material objects pass simultaneously through the same point in space.  Two wardrobes may be thought of as two individuals merging in love and yet their active love is rendered inexpressible by the white cement that seals every orifice every possible breath of life. 

The violence has been perpetrated to ensure silence yet our moment of empathy with their loss makes a small dent in this evil.  It is precisely this empathy that TRACE seeks to engender.  It brings the internal and subjective world of the viewer into contact with other lives and other places bridging private and political space.

Anthony Bond

TRACE a theme
Paper by Anthony Bond for COFA seminar series

There is a growing consensus in Australia that the Curatorial Theme is an alienating strategy coming between the artist and their public.  This has recently been raised in discussions about the Sydney Biennale but has been a cornerstone of populist criticism of museum exhibitions of contemporary art for 15 years or so.  This was invariably John McDonalds first line of attack.  He and others sharing his view have had a cumulative effect on popular wisdom.

The reality however is that when artists work with a single curator (or curatorial collaboration) on a theme of common interest it can be a very productive situation for everyone.   An artist is not simply asked to lend works or agree to have works borrowed from collections on the recommendation of an expert panel.  The curator acts as an intermediary to negotiate space and context to facilitate new and relevant work in the right space and at the right time and in collaboration with fellow artists with common interests. 

In this way the exhibition is constructed as a social exchange not as a competition.  Common artistic goals bring additional energy to the exhibition.  Further more by clearly stating the theme and presenting it in public the curator provides a context for transparency and accountability.  For the artist it is clear from the outset how their work is to be presented and selection of work can be negotiated in relation to sites and context.   I must make the point that a theme is not the same as subject eg landscape but reflects something intrinsic to the art making process.

To ensure that a theme is not an impediment to reception the Curator must evolve it in response to the interests of the artists.  The curator's responsibility to the artists and the public is to ensure that the context for presentation and the thematic discussion of the work accurately represents their concerns.  Perhaps we should not call this a theme but a conceptual framework that characterises a significant aspect of the Zeitgeist.  It is important to make a clear distinction between legitimate interpretation in collaboration with artists and (re)presentation in which works are used to illustrate a theory or a story that may not arise directly from the work (the topic of a paper I presented at the AAANZ conference in NZ in December 1999). 

It is certainly true that some curators have adopted themes that are idiotic concoctions that bring little conceptual clarity to assist our enjoyment of the work and may even undermine the seriousness of the artist's project.   It is also possible to try to do too much with an ostensibly productive theme and lose the plot.  However I am going to argue strongly for the virtue of a well conceived curatorial theme and to make my point I will discuss a particular project where I believe the theme provided an invaluable context for the production of new work that was specific to the location and the audience.

Slides 1-3 L&R  cityscapes of Liverpool

In 1999 I was invited to curate the first Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary International Art.  I was excited by the opportunity because Liverpool is a relatively small city but densely packed with history and richly endowed architecturally.

The foundation of Liverpool's wealth in the nineteenth century was based on the slave trade in the eighteenth century.  Manufactured goods were sent from Liverpool to Africa and traded for slaves who were shipped to The Americas where in turn they were traded for sugar, tobacco, rum and cotton for the mills in Manchester. Each leg of this triangle would render the Liverpool ship owners substantial profits. 

The history of the port was also implicated in the export of orphans and children of unsuitable parents a trade that continued up to the 1950s.  So in addition to tracing the city I also wanted to trace the resulting Diasporas.  I invited a significant number of Artists from Latin America and several African American artists.

The people of Liverpool are also very special. This seafaring community characteristically displays tough intellectual independence and fierce solidarity - they would be profoundly sceptical of the Biennial but if they could be won over they would defend it to the death. 

This gritty environment seemed ideal for an exhibition that would extend beyond the museum.  The old city can be traversed in a comfortable 20-minute walk and provided many potential sites.  I chose the theme TRACE because of my continuing research into artists who employ objects and materials as triggers for memory in contemporary practice.  To help anchor the exhibition in the community and take advantage of the physical space of the city I selected artists who would also be interested in tracing its history. The current renaissance in public art and the engagement of artists in specific sites and communities made this an ideal opportunity.  Most of the artists came to Liverpool twice, for an initial research trip to negotiate sites and later to install their work.  Nearly all of them came for the installation and typically spent two weeks in Liverpool.

I used TRACE rather than traces because it allows an ambiguity between noun and verb.  In other words it would trace a path or search for clues and present material evidence.  The evidence of materials and objects has a strong affective component.  Implicit or bodily memory is triggered in the individual through sensory responses to objects and places.  This exhibition would therefore privilege Affect however its objectivity was to be secured by its specificity to site and history.

Squaring Affect in art with realist objectivity is to be the subject of an AAANZ conference in Sydney in July 2001

There were 60 artists in the exhibition showing at a dozen locations and a number of billboard projects, but I will just show a few examples to demonstrate how the theme worked in practice. 

At the end if there is time I will run through a medly of other images from the exhibition to give a better sense of its overall aesthetic .  I have also deposited a copy of the catalogue essay and individual artists texts with cofa in case anyone wants to follow up any of these artists.

The first group of the selected artists demonstrate how Material traces evoke bodily memory.  They are physically site specific to Liverpool even though they do not refer directly to the history of the place.

Slides 4-5 L&R  Salcedo installation in the Cathedral

The Cathedral was a demanding site because of its monstrous scale and its spiritual purpose.  In my judgement Doris was one of the few artists capable of holding the space and making a work that was also an appropriate memorial for the building.  Although the 14 individual sculptures already existed their selection for this installation was based on her prior study of the space.  Their placement took 4 days to refine making the installation exquisitely site specific.

Doris Salcedo traces the distortion of reality that occurs when power and violence are used as means of social control.  What comfort resides in the bed you once shared with a missing lover?  What pleasure can one take in the intimate possessions of one�s spouse or child when they have been dragged away with no explanation?  Objects retain traces of those who have used them.  It is difficult to throw away such traces of an absent loved one, and yet it is equally difficult to continue using them as though nothing had happened. 

Here at the Cathedral wardrobes and beds are rendered monstrous by their merger.  All the holes, gaps and cracks in the wood have been meticulously sealed with white cement.  It is as if they have been rendered blind and mute, just like those whose silence is ensured by the threat of further violence.  This careful sealing of the cracks is also read as an attempt to keep something out or in.  But in this case the �something� is elusive, like the nebulous fear of some unforeseen tragedy.  Salcedo�s fusion of inanimate matter and human remains provokes a sense of abomination.

Slide 6 L&R
Juan Munoz specifically designed these new works for the old Oratory.   The tragi-comic acrobats are even patinated to match the formal Victorian bronzes.

Slides 7-8 L&R  Balka installation

Miroslaw Balka�s installations have autobiographical origins reflecting the proportions of the artist�s body and the spaces of his childhood.  Balka spent many hours in his grandmother's house as a child.  He recalls playing under the furniture and has a vivid memory of the textures and topography of the various rooms.  The house is now his studio, and in many of his sculptures the artist re-works the dimensions and spaces between objects that are so deeply ingrained in his psyche.  He later became aware that a Nazi death camp had been located nearby.  This knowledge has subsequently infected his benign personal recollection.

At the Tate Balka installed a soap platform.  Over the window of the exhibition space he placed a metal grid with lumps of soap wedged into it that had been used by staff at the museum.   The worn soap indicates intimate contact and the residue of hair is a literal trace of the body. 

Drawings burnt in a studio disaster hang on the walls surrounding the platform.  This work is both visual and olfactory.  From a distance the soap platform looks like a slab of marble, but on closer inspection its softness and soapy aroma reveal its true origins.  The bodily associations of soap demonstrate Balka's preoccupation with the body and memory while the drawings imply the sinister aroma of trauma. 

Slide 9-10 L&R Costantino installation at littlewoods

Nicola Costantino made her installation in a prominent Liverpool shop window.  The window display includes an array of stylish garments presented on mannequins.  Seen from a distance, the costumes could be made from suede, with a fur trim and a subtle pattern of flowers or some other simple motif.  The garments are sufficiently intriguing to attract closer inspection but, as one approaches, the whole ensemble is radically transformed.  The suede turns out to be latex and now seems more like human skin than leather.  Worse still, the motifs that relieve the surface turn out to be directly moulded from the human body.  Far from being florets they are revealed as direct body casts of navels, nipples and arseholes. 

Slide 11. L&R Neto installation Tate

Ernesto Neto has created a world between body and architecture.  His sculptures articulate the spaces of buildings while simulating bodily membranes.  His basic forms are constructed from Lycra and filled with massive quantities of Turmeric, Cumin and cloves.  This site-specific installation at the Tate exemplifies another feature of Trace that is the prominence of non-visual stimuli in this case olfactory.

Slide 12. Reinhard Mucha  Eller bahnhof
Reinhard M�cha uses objects and furnishings to evoke specific memories, and to reflect on the nature of memory itself.  Sometimes he places these objects in boxes lined with dark felt, which are reminiscent of jewellery cases, or cabinets for cutlery or valuable scientific instruments.  Seen through glass against the dark interior, the objects become difficult to decipher.  A clear view is prevented by our own reflection, and the fact that M�cha defines the surface of the glass by adding metallic strips that suggest an elaborate security device.  The works are therefore layered with different views.  We look at the surface of the glass.  We look through the glass.  We look at what lies behind the glass.  And while trying to overlook the glass and its effects, we also look at ourselves and others reflected in the glass.  This Duchampian strategy complicates � if not frustrates � the physical experience of looking.  It can also be seen as a commentary on the processes and structure of memory.

M�cha�s work often concerns (and is literally gathered from) sites of passage or transit.  For TRACE he has relocated the installation Eller Bahnhof to the Tate Gallery.  Originally constructed in D�sseldorf, the work was subsequently installed in Stockholm, where it was set into the newly built walls of the renovated museum.  Mucha was so surprised by the hasty carpentry of the walls that he decided to work with this exposed structure in subsequent manifestations.  He did this by cutting around the segments of wall, removing them from the gallery, and then displaying them in glass cases on the wall of the new space: first at Luhring Augustine Gallery in New York, and now (in their fourth manifestation) in Liverpool.  In this way, each successive installation contains physical traces and memories of the others.
 
Slides 13. L&R MacLennan performance at Liverpool

Alasdair MacLennan installed trestle tables running the entire length of his space and set them for absent guests at a wake.  Their uneaten feast includes pigs� heads, fish and other items symbolic in the Irish Catholic tradition.  The table is strewn with ticker tape listing the names of those who have died in the conflict in Northern Ireland.  MacLennan�s performance took place, on alternate days, and consisted of his sitting next to the table dressed in black holding a branch and reciting the names of the dead.  The length of the list was intellectually disturbing but the powerful sensation of mortality conveyed by the smell of the pigs heads made the experience literally gut wrenching.

Slide 14 L&R Domnenico de Clario performance

De Clario performed on 14 nights centred on the opening of the Biennial.  (By chance, the opening night coincided with the equinox and was also, unusually, a night of the full moon.)  Each night at a new site he played the piano accompanied by a saxophonist.  The duration set by the interval between moonrise and sun set.  The sites were illuminated with a different colour for each of the first seven nights on the outward journey repeating on the return.  These colours were associated with the seven energy centres of the body (chakras).  The audience were led to unusual and often very beautiful sites such as the crypt of a Cathedral, the roof of an old building and an abandoned church.  A video of the journey was installed in the exhibition.

The next artists made works that responded directly to the city or the history of the site. 

Slides 15 L&R Campos Pons Seven Powers and Unfolding desires

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pon's Yoruba grandfather was transported from Nigeria to Cuba to work on the Vega sugar plantation where her family still lives and works.  With an oral tradition that kept their connection to Africa very much alive, the artist�s friends and family were a living testament to a history of displacement.

The Seven Powers are based on templates for the stowing of slaves on the transport ships that once sailed from West Africa to the Caribbean after trading manufactured goods brought from Liverpool.  The layout of the bodies on the slave boards is a powerful image of the conjunction of mathematical efficiency and brutality.

Unfolding desires refers to the labour of her people at the same time as it suggests a fleet of slave ships at sea.

Slide 16 L&R Freeway to China (Version Two: for Liverpool) 1998-99

Allan Sekula continued his conversations with dockworkers that started in Los Angeles and included Australian and European ports.  In Liverpool he documented the lives of workers who lost their jobs when the port collapsed including some poignant images of workers gazing through wire at the machines they used to operate. 

One of the most interesting by-products of his involvement was a conference with a group of ex-Dockers who have set up an Internet system to monitor the operations of shipping companies.   Seamen on vessels around the world email them with details of improper working conditions and unseaworthiness and this information is immediately sent to the authorities at the next port of call where the ship is impounded.  

Slide 17 L&R Ghost Ship Liverpool

Dorothy Cross made this work as an extension of a recent installation, Ghost Ship, realised near Dublin in 1999.  For the original work Cross painted a retired light ship with many layers of phosphorescent paint and moored it out at sea within sight of the esplanade of Dublin Bay.  In years past Irish boats depended on this light ship for their safe passage to Liverpool.  Every evening just before dusk the boat�s sides were flooded with light.  As the sun faded the lights were turned off leaving the image of a luminous, ghostly presence between the shore and the horizon. 

A video of this installation was projected over the Mersey each night from a jetty where boats from Dublin used to dock.  In a dark room within the exhibition we installed a phosphorescent model of the ship, made in preparation for the original project. 

Slides 18 L&R Fischer & el Sani Berlin sites

Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani have been photographing the entrances to illegal nightclubs in Berlin.  These venues are often only occupied for one night, and the signs of the event are ephemeral graffiti and posters.  The artists were invited to seek out and document similar events in Liverpool, a city famous for its club life.  As it turned out, Liverpool did have such clubs 10 or 15 years ago, but these have now become established venues.  The artists decided not to show the entrances of these more established spaces, but instead to find obscure sites where a club could have been (or might one day be held).  They brought with them posters made from their Berlin photographs, which they put up near the entrances of these phantom sites.  They then re-photographed the posters in situ.  The resulting photographs were run off as a poster series and pasted around Liverpool, suggesting potential or fictitious club sites.  Posters of photos of these phantoms then appeared back in the exhibition.

Slide 19 L&R   Steven Willats 
Steven Willats devised a collaborative activity for 32 local people.  They were invited to spend a day working on his project.  He showed them photographs of details from a walk round Liverpool.   Then each person was given a small square of paper with a black margin.   In this they were asked to describe a journey in images words or maps or a combination of all three.

After a period of time he blew a whistle and made them stop.   They discussed the images then Steve formed them into pairs selected at random the 16 couples now repeated the process collaboratively.   After the allocated time he stopped them again and formed them into 8 groups of 4.   Now there was a bit more discussion but consensus was reached. When it became 4 groups of 8 it was harder still to get agreement but they worked hard at it and succeeded. 

Two groups of 16 were very difficult!  Much argument was taken to arrive at strategies all 16 could work with.  The two groups had adopted opposite positions one was very organised each had a given task to perform within an overall structure, they were dominated by control freaks.  The other group opted for a "go for it" anarchy.   Both worked up to a point but were very different.

The final step of forming one group was now doomed to disaster the control freaks and the anarchists became very cross with eachother some stormed out some became abusive.  It took a great deal of negotiation to get the survivors to cooperate.

Basically Steven had demonstrated the structural limits of consensual society.

Slides 20 L&R Gough at Bluecoat

Julie Gough came to Liverpool to research local histories.  Her work was displayed at Bluecoat Art Centre that had been an orphanage in the eighteenth century connected to the continuing deportation of children from Britain to work in the colonies through to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The children were employed making pins and sewing. At the cathedral cemetery she discovered a whole wall of memorials to children who had died at the orphanage.  The palettes in this installation replicate the children's beds and the mattress carry the text frottaged from their memorials and then rendered in pins.

This work has been retained in Liverpool.

Slides 21-22 L&R Anne No�l  in the shopping centre

Ann No�l set up a stall in the shopping centre and engaged passers by in conversation.   She asked them to give her some object from their bag or pocket that held some significance for them.  For example you may find that you have kept a bus ticket for years without consciously acknowledging the reason.  Its significance may be recalled as a result of No�l's invitation often unleashing a flood of memories.  No�l would then sew these fragments into her quilt of memories while writing down your story in her book.  The book was indexed to the quilt.  These quilted local stories have been retained in Liverpool.

A Medly of other artists not discussed above
23. Montien Boonma and Cael Floyer
24. Roslynd Piggott x 2
25. Rivane Neuenschwander x 2
26. Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky x 2
27. Kumi Yamashita
28. Conrad Atkinson
29. Peter Zimmerman and Pierre Huyge
30. Romuald Hazoume
31. Sutee Kunavishayanont
32. Pierick Sorrin
33. Liu Shih-Fen
34. Carsten Nicolai
35. Vic Muniz
36. Mike Parr
37. Adriana Varejao and Sophie Ristelheuber
38. Pascale Marthine-Tayou
39. Susan Norrie and Jane and Louise Wilson
40. Igor Kopystianski
41. Amanda Ralph and Gary Perkins
42. Luis Camnitzer
43. Claude leveque and Melanie Counsell
44. Eva Koch and alex Rizkalla
45. Fred Wilson
46. Roslynd Piggott
47. Cael Floyer and Montien Boonma

Slides 48 and 49  L&R Erwin Wurm performance and billboards Liverpool

Erwin Wurm�s performance sculptures arise from simple daily actions: trying on new clothing, driving by a billboard, or opening a box.  At the Exchange Flags in Liverpool, Wurm displayed drawings as instructions for one-minute performances.  Each performance entailed everyday objects being used to complete an action, based solely on the criterion that the action was possible.  The audience was encouraged to participate by following the instructions rigorously.  A billboard was created in Liverpool displaying examples of these performances.

TRACE, memories and things

In this talk I will be looking at the work of artists who use materials and objects to communicate something about the world is a way that allows the viewer to experience memories as an amalgam of their personal experiences.

First however we need to address the issue of whether it is the job of visual art to convey significant content about real life.  Oddly enough this is still a fiercely contested proposition in Australian discourse.  There are those who firmly believe art can only be nice to look at even great to look at but can never aspire to serious reflection on the world. 

There is a long and complex history behind this which combines the highly conservative views of critics like John McDonald who look back nostalgically to a nineteenth century that never existed with the radical views of Clement Greenberg and other left wing American critics.   The latter view was that by eliminating everything extrinsic from art i.e. making it completely abstract and self referential they could eliminate the dominance of an educated elite - art would be for everyone and required only the senses to be appreciated. 

Without going into this debate at length I should declare my position.   I believe that prior to late modernism in America no one ever questioned the complexity of art and its narrative potential.  Art arose from humanity's profound need to record and explain the world.  Like Language it began with magic and may still evoke the marvellous.   In effect Abstraction proved to be even more Mandarin than the historical, allegorical and spiritual paintings that preceded them. 

Placing the emphasis on a physiological response to an object however paradoxically created a situation where the world could be reintroduced, the 'presence' of art objects could now be transferred to any object.  Duchamp's readymades before the first war and Minimalism in the sixties literalised this idea while Arte Povera orchestrated the poetic and historical potential of found materials. 

Beuys
In the post war period one of the most influential artists to emerge was Joseph Beuys.  He showed how found objects and everyday materials could be given voices and could regain magical properties because they speak through the body and the emotions rather than being literal texts.

Sometimes today art is asked to carry too specific and inappropriate content and then it collapses into the banal.  The trick is to find what the sensation of objects can actually induce in genuine recognition and legitimate personal trains of association.
Overly didactic messages that line up objects like words in a text actually fail to utilise the perceptual mechanisms and the relationship between perception, memory and affective response

In the examples I am going to show now you will see that the content may be quite specific in terms of the artist's experience but it relates to a general human condition.  While the meaning of the works is realised in the matrix of the viewer's own experience and therefore more deeply felt and owned the subject matter is of public concern and the context is the world of real politics.

Take for example these artists whose work may be considered as memorials:

Memorials/mortality

Doris Salcedo.
Miroslaw Balka
Alisdair MacLennan
Julie Gough
Christian Boltanski
Alex Rizkalla
Ana Mendietta
Dieter Roth
Damien Hirst
Reinhard Mucha
Rachel Whitrerad
Anselm Kiefer
Dorothy Cross

Other associations with objects

Rebecca Horn and Anish Kapoor
Haim Steinbach and Steven Willats
Narelle Jubelin
Anne Noel
Tony Cragg
Robert MacPherson and Simon Mangos
Ernesto Neto
Nicola Costantino

Other Traces

DeKooning and Baselitz
Dubuffet and Rainer
Mike Parr