WELCOME TO NEW MEXICO, WELCOME TO LAND/ART
Michael P. Berman's Rancho Uno Grasslands, installation view of Dispersal Return at the UNM Art Museum and Marc Schmitz’s Spaces for Open Minds
Over six months, 25 institutions and over 200 artists, writers and performers have come together in New Mexico to examine the current status of our relationship to the land under the rubric of the LAND/ART Project. Sculptures, photographs, paintings, prints, siteworks, installations, videos, films, performances, lectures and symposia have been presented in museums, galleries, alternative spaces, theatres, streets and fields as we trained the broadest possible lens on the relationship between nature and culture.
Since the term Land Art was coined in the late 1960s, much has happened in the arts to contribute to a change in its definition, including the advent of postmodernism and the emergence of Feminist, Environmental, and Eco Art. Yet the term persists, perhaps due to the openness of its original definition and its ability to expand and shift to incorporate new developments. Like Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, after years of lying somnolent and below the surface, Land Art has re-emerged with new significance within the larger culture.
New Mexico has proven to be an ideal place from which to look at the present state of Land Art, but also to look back as well as forward into both its history and future. Today Land Art is a genre which may include any constructed intervention in an urban or wilderness context, or even work constituted in cyber space with environmental content. Indeed, as in many things post-modern, “Land Art” may have expanded to the point that it is no longer meaningful as a term to describe a particular genre. In recognition of this possibility, “LAND/ART” was chosen as the title for this project to suggest both a disruption of the term and an expansion of its definition to incorporate the many varied relationships between land and art, or nature and culture, which are the project’s focus. Rather than attempt to redefine Land Art as a genre, the LAND/ART project provided a forum for a dialogue using New Mexico as a lens with which to frame an investigation of the relationships among art, nature, and community.
Over the course of the project we have found that although the current proliferation of perspectives, attitudes, and approaches may seem far removed from Land Art of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, its practitioners share a commitment to the fundamental significance of the land in our lives, to forging a relationship with their audience that sidesteps the focus on art as commodity, and to offering an opportunity for engagement with the world beyond the white cube of the gallery. The LAND/ART project, while inevitably omitting much that belongs within the expanded frame of contemporary Land Art, provides an opportunity to reflect upon the multitude of art practices—past and present--that address our ever-changing relationship to the land from the unique perspective of New Mexico’s place in that continuum.
- BIll Gilbert, Lannan Chair, Land Arts of the American West Program, University of New Mexico, November 2009
FROM THE UNM GALLERIES: PHYSIOCARTOGRAPHY
Bill Gilbert's Physiocartography at the UNM Art Museum
Bill Gilbert 's Physiocartography
"Bill Gilbert, Lannan Chair and Director of the UNM Land Arts of the American West program, calls his walking campaigns “physiocartography,” and has described them as addressing the “disjunction between the way we conceive of the land through abstractions such as maps and our haptic experience of the land through engagement with specific places.” With a compass and global positioning system, he walks each pre-determined site and charts the topography via text or voice descriptions and observations encountered along the way. What we then observe in the gallery are artifacts, or an archaeological record, of his conceptual-physical exercise.
Gilbert’s work establishes a tangible connection to the place where he lives and works: the American southwest. He cites the nineteenth-century geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell in each of the works exhibited here, who understood, as Gilbert does, the inconsistency between the intellectual perception of the land represented by maps versus the physical experience of being on the land. His walking campaigns recall the work of British conceptual artists Hamish Fulton and Richard Long from the 1960s, whose art consisted of simple acts of walking and recording those walks.
The traces of Gilbert’s journeys are the maps or chartings, and video/audio recordings brought back from each site. A more indelible trace however, endures in the work of his students whose field experiences and their art practices, remains the legacy of the UNM Land Arts of the American West program." - Michele M. Penhall, Curator, Prints and Photographs, UNM Art Museum
Watch the KNME's Artisode 2.2 on BIll Gilbert
Bill Gilbert's Matter of Fact: Walk to Work
FROM THE UNM GALLERIES: DISPERSAL/RETURN
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Dispersal/Return, by Jorie Emory
Dispersal/Return, a collection of works by former Land Arts of the American West participants demonstrates that recent MFA graduates are contributing to the international contemporary land arts discourse by drawing from skills acquired during the Land Arts program. Land Arts of the American West is designed to help students develop their communication and conceptual skills, improve the clarity of their ideas, and instill the confidence to act while working from a field-based curriculum. Read and see more by Jorie on Dispersal/Return >>>
Watch KNME's Artisode 2.3 on Nina Dubois and Jeannete Hart-Mann’s piece.
Nina Dubois and Jeannete Hart-Mann’s Culture Digeste(s)
Between Sept 25th and Oct 3rd 2009 collaborative artists Claire Long and Anna Keleher hosted five experimental live research events at Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Site in the Sandia Ranger District in Cibola National Forest, east of Albuquerque. Their film, “Approaching an Exchange: Dartmoor” played out in the University of New Mexico Art Museum, as part of the Dispersal/Return exhibition, linking this site-based project to its roots in England. The footage gathered at Tijeras Pueblo is part of a growing archive of Exchange, which will contribute to future Exchange exhibitions and events.
Read and see more by Claire and Anna >>>
Claire Long and Anna Keleher's Approaching an Exchange: Albuquerque
FROM 516 ARTS TO THE FIELD: A MESSAGE FROM SUZANNE SBARGE
LAND/ART was a whirlwind of activity in New Mexico for six months from June through November of 2009––with exhibitions, site-specific art projects, tours, excursions, lectures, performances and events––all exploring art that addresses the environment and our relationship with nature.
I got involved as the project coordinator in March of 2007, but ideas for a collaboration on the subject of land-based art had been discussed in this community for several years before. With 516 ARTS, a nonprofit, independent arts organization, as the coordinating organization, the project took on an incredible momentum and a life of its own, developing into far more activity and layers of collaboration than any of us imagined. What we created together drew attention to New Mexico from around the country and the globe. Part of this was due to the sheer quantity of programs, artists and organizations artists involved over the six-month period; but the subject of Land Art also proved to be hot topic on numerous levels. Environmental issues were a focus throughout LAND/ART, as artists brought awareness and creative thinking to issues of climate change, water shortage, endangered wildlife and more.
New Mexico’s land and cultures have loomed large in the art world for a long time, and the influences of the modernist era still define much of the state’s reputation. However, contemporary artists continue to take new approaches to engaging with the land, in contrast to traditional views of landscape as scenery. The Land Art movement emerged in the 1960s when some adventurous artists departed the New York gallery scene to make art in the “open” landscapes of the West. LAND/ART explored the evolution of this vast international genre of art, with a focus on its particular relevance to New Mexico and contemporary art practices.
The LAND/ART project posed the question: what is it about New Mexico that is such a lure for artists through many generations, including the modernist painters, the original Land Art artists and the current flourishing scene of contemporary artists, writers and performers working with land-based themes here?
Read and see more from Suzanne on LAND/ART >>>
ALBUQUERQUE MUSEUM PRESENTS EXPERIMENTAL GEOGRAPHY:
curated by Nato Thompson
Illana Halperin, Boiling Milk (Solfataras), 2000
Experimental Geography (June 28 – September 20, 2009) was a group exhibition exploring the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide and possibly make a new field altogether.
Curated by Nato Thompson the exhibition was based on the notions that geography benefits from the study of specific histories, sites and memories, and that every estuary, landfill and cul-de-sac has a story to tell.
Panel at The Albuquerque Museum. LEFT TO RIGHT: Katie Holten, Lea Rekow, Matthew Coolidge, Lize Mogel, Bill GIlbert
Over symposium weekend smudge provided a live-blog for the LAND/ART Panel at the Albuquerque Museum on June 28, 2009. Read the entire panel's summary here >>> Smudge also covered The Center for Land Use Interpretation's symposium weekend bus tour. Read and see more about the bus tour here >>> and watch The Center for Land Use Interpretation's Artisode 2.1 on KNME
SITE-SPECIFIC: NEW MEXICO
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Patrick Dougherty's Here's Looking at You, Stuart Frost's Portable Grove (1 of 6)
At the center of LAND/ART were the site-specific projects. Many of these temporary art works were outdoors and required a new kind of involvement from both artists and audience members. In some cases, artists worked together with one another and the public on interactive, process-oriented “happenings”. A sampling of the site projects created for LAND/ART were featured in an exhibition and reference site at 516 ARTS. Titled Second Site, this display included gallery installations, documentation and information referencing a cross-section of LAND/ART projects. It served as a visitor center for viewers to find out about the outdoor projects. It included the SiteWorks projects (organized by Kathleen Contemporary Art Projects, presented by 516 ARTS) and projects presented by Bosque School, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, the City of Albuquerque Open Space, the Harwood Art Center, Richard Levy Gallery, the University of New Mexico Art Museum and the Center for Contemporary Arts.
There were too many projects to describe them all, so I will just mention a few here. Read more on LAND/ART's site-specific works by Suzanne Sbarge >>>
Watch KMNE's Artisode 2.4 on Patrick Doughtery here >>>
Anne Cooper's Anitya in progress. Participants involved in site-specific project at Los Poblanos Open Space, Albuquerque
THE LAND/an art site
Most of the organizations involved in LAND/ART focused on the subject this year for the project. However, in addition to the Land Arts of the American West program at the University of New Mexico, THE LAND/an art site is committed to land-based art on an ongoing basis, A nonprofit arts and educational organization, THE LAND/an art site operates a gallery and environmental arts resource center in Downtown Albuquerque, and maintains a 40-acre work site and exhibition space in the Manzano Mountains of central New Mexico. The outdoor site is made available exclusively to artists working on environmentally low-impact, site-specific, land-based art. Read and see more about THE LAND/an art site >>>
Mayumi Nishida Introduction to Water (detail) 2009, mixed media, dimensions variable Mayumi Nishida’s installation is an experimental theater that investigates intentionality and rainmaking, illustrating a novel form of interaction between light and water through the use of viewer-activated LED lights, a ceramic vessel, and solar electric elements .
LAND/ART IN PRINT
The connections forged through LAND/ART crossed many lines and disciplines, beyond the original focus of the early Land Art artists, from sound art created from recordings with visual artists, poets and film makers, to contemporary photography that bridged art and preservation through environmental activism, to explorations of the common areas between art and science, to performances that blended the arts and new technologies to explore human relationships with nature and various environments.
The culminating book, titled LAND/ART New Mexico, is intended not only to document the many varied projects that took place, but to present a mosaic of New Mexico’s distinctive contribution to Land Art today.
Published by Radius Books, LAND/ART New Mexico includes essays by William L. Fox, Bill Gilbert, Lucy Lippard, Nancy Marie Mithlo and MaLin Wilson-Powell. Kathleen Shields was an editorial consultant on the project. It was published in partnership with 516 ARTS, The Albuquerque Museum of Art & History and the University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts. ($45, distributed by DAP, available from Radius Books, 516 ARTS, participating venues & select bookstores).
Read the complete list of essays and quotes from the press about LAND/ART New Mexico here >>>
In her essay for the book titled All Over the Map: The Land Art Field Guide, Malin Wilson-Powell writes, “What actually got built outside gallery and museum walls during LAND/ART’s bandwagon of exhibitions, installations, performances, lectures, music, readings, and film was perhaps the real core of this six-month collaborative project… Projects and site-specific artworks presented as part of LAND/ART ranged from mechanical to biological, dry to wet, formal objects to social programs, grand intentions to the most intimate gesture, built-to-last monumental to “here today, gone tomorrow… The biggest by-product of this huge, polymorphous project was a critical mass of words, both spoken and written, that explored, encouraged, and questioned the very premise of the project….”
Radius Books also published a beautiful catalog for Grasslands / Separating Species, an exhibition at 516 ARTS for LAND/ART curated by Mary Anne Redding, featuring the photographic work of Michael P. Berman, Krista Elrick, Dana Fritz, David Taylor and Jo Whaley. The catalog includes essays by William deBuys and Rebecca Solnit ($20, available from Radius Books, 516 ARTS and select bookstores).
In addition to this archive web exhibition, the LAND/ART project is archived at www.landartnm.org and there is a print archive at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art. A digital summary of LAND/ART events and projects has also been documented on the smudge studio blog.
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