Site Specific Spurn Art

Whilst creating live art I hope to get a full sense of the space including: weather, sounds, time, changes, paths, colour, touch, scents and depict this through photography, film and 3D and 2D ‘drawings’. The project is about becoming familiar with the space while exploring its ever-changing personality.

Although my work will be site specific I may create pieces in the studio to then take back to spurn and alter them/document them in a new space. The majority of the art I create using plastic materials (size depending) I will recycle after documentation as to leave them there would be hazardous to the environment, however it will be interesting to see how the synthetic materials withstand the impact of nature overtime. Will all my temporary works be temporary? Will nature become a contributing artist?

My first trip was very insightful as I found large-scale objects that definitely do not belong on this site:

Thank you

https:www.instagram.com/p/BDIgFQAxt2V

https://vimeo.com/162994475

The images above show the changing nature of Spurn, to find previous works on later visits was like greeting a familiar face, it brought warmth to me to see the art I re-assembled, being re-assembled by nature, but more so it brought great sadness in the realisation of the unsustainable materials we rely on and their impact on the environment. Our environment.

“One is more aware than before that he himself is establishing relationships as he apprehends the object from various positions and under varying conditions of light and spatial context.” (Morris, cited in Situation Whitechapel, p25)

My first visit to spurn was dull and drizzly meaning I had to accept the environmental conditions in order to discover the art I could create. I needed to work with Spurn in order for it to work with me. The low light meant the synthetic plastics were easier to locate and colourful, yet toxic, sculptures were made as the clouds released the natural substance back into the sea. Looking back, it almost seems irrelevant to work with man-made objects when a more sublime cycle is happening as the water is being re-used and revitalising the space. On the other hand maybe my inserts of recycled objects and unnatural colours revitalised it visually, as harmful as it may be.

Space was so important as I tried to keep the sculptures close to their object place of origin on the beach. There needed to be a sense of, ‘how did this get here? it doesn’t belong here, where did it come from?’ I tried to use the plastic colours as alien objects within a foreign space, a bright green crate has no use being in that environment. The harsh difference between sublime seascapes and mass-produced objects played a huge part in this project. In a gallery, my sculptures would just be litter on a plinth. On the shore they become symbols of the consumerist, plastic dependent culture we are a part of and through use of colour and shape change the way we view what materials are worth keeping and what  is worth ruining the ecosystems for.

Doherty, C. (2009) Situation, Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel Gallery