Geoff Lucas -- Towards a Concrete
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University of Dundee DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Towards a Concrete Art A Practice-Led Investigation Lucas, Geoff Award date: 2015 Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 Towards a Concrete Art: A Practice-Led Investigation Geoff Lucas PhD Fine Art, (Full-time). Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design University of Dundee September 2010 - September 2015 Towards a Concrete Art: A Practice-Led Investigation Geoff Lucas Boyle Family: Loch Ruthven, 2010 Installation view 4 5 Contents 1.33 Can this dialogue operate without representational elements? 96 1.4 HICA Exhibition: Richard Couzins: Free Speech Bubble , 1 March–5 April 2009 98 List of Illustrations 10 1.41 Questioning the location of meaning 98 Abstract 15 1.42 Sign and signified; ‘outer’ and ‘inner’? 100 Foreword and note on the usage of terms in this thesis 16 1.43 Developing Symbolist strategies 102 1.44 Paintings as objects? 109 0.1 Introduction/Contextual review 24 1.5 HICA Exhibition: Alec Finlay and Alexander and Susan Maris: 0.11 Origins of the project 24 You’ll have had your tea? 3 May – 7 June 2009 113 0.12 Ideas forming from a reflection on the arrangement of allotment plots 26 1.51 Innovations through text and collage 113 0.13 A possible relation of the Intuitive and Rational 30 1.52 A new constructive sculptural tradition: real space and the temporal 119 0.14 A possible paradoxical relation between Art and Objecthood 33 1.53 Complexities of meaning: works located in the here and now 123 0.15 The beginnings of curatorial procedures as practice 37 1.6 HICA exhibition: David Bellingham: 40w 60w 100w, 28 June – 2 August 2009 125 0.16 Our move to the Highlands and the establishing of HICA 39 1.61 Encountering difficulties: representation, complexity: the high- to post- modern 125 0.17 The relation of HICA to other art activities in the Highlands 41 1.62 A point of resulting malaise? 127 0.18 The formulation of the experiment of HICA 47 1.63 Alternative ‘concrete’ developments: possible responses to the high- to post-modern 130 0.19 The initial devising of HICA’s programme 52 1.64 The role of irrationality in alternative concrete approaches 132 1.7 Point of Reflection: an observed continuing sense of malaise; its historic roots 135 0.2 A Note on the Name 54 0.21 First ideas: reasons for using the word ‘institute’ 54 2 The Nature Of Process 137 0.22 The impulse towards research: the project’s situating in relation to areas of concern 55 2.1 An introduction to the themes of this chapter: the potential for artworks to affect 0.23 Why ‘The Highland Institute for Contemporary Art’? 58 change; consideration of chance and the ‘irrational’ within processes of change; 0.24 HICA’s local political context, and our finding ways to proceed… 62 a further exploration of art’s relation to science. 137 2.2 HICA exhibition: Jeremy Millar 2 May – 6 June, 2010 139 1 Concrete Now! 67 2.21 Mystic or Rationalist? 139 1.1 HICA’s opening exhibition: Concrete Now! 24 August – 28 September, 2008 67 2.22 The irrational as part of the material? Interventions of consciousness 141 1.11 Exhibition texts 68 2.23 Chance within complexity, developing possibility 146 1.12 Note on the remainder of the text, and consideration of exhibitions 76 2.24 Arp, and a further conception of a ‘concrete’ art 147 1.2 Exchange of exhibitions between HICA and PS: 2.3 Consideration in relation to the work of Theo van Doesburg of exhibitions at Concrete Now! Introducing PS, 23 August – 27 September 2009 HICA by Thomson and Craighead (20 June – 25 July, 2010), Esther Polak HICA, as arranged, 17 January – 28 February, 2010 78 and Ivar van Bekkum (18 September – 10 October, 2010), and also 1.21 The relation of the HICA project to the tradition of Concrete Art 78 including The Great Glen Artists’ Airshow (18 and 19 September, 2010) 148 1.22 A brief sketch of an accepted history of Concrete Art 80 2.31 A Constructivist relation to science 148 1.23 Some current activity; possible positioning of artists shown by PS 86 2.32 Relevance of Plato or Hegel?; the ‘real’ and the development of ‘plastic means’ 149 1.3 HICA Exhibition: Peter Suchin: The Grey Planets, 26 October–30 November 2008 91 2.33 A questioning of the Rational and Intuitive 153 1.31 The origins of a modern approach to painting: Suchin’s relation to the ‘concrete’ 91 2.34 The concrete and non-transcendence: the implying of reasoned empirical knowledge 156 1.32 A dialogue with materials and form 94 2.35 A move toward Relational understandings 158 2.36 The Relational: necessarily, but materially, representational? 159 6 7 2.37 Reflection on works exhibited at HICA 161 3.36 The example of the works of Geraldo de Barros as a presentation of this dilemma 224 2.4 HICA exhibition: Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum, <AbstractView> 3.37 Nature as this struggle? 227 18 September – 10 October 2010 162 3.4 HICA and grey) (area exhibition: Concretely Immaterial, 2.41 empirical geometry 162 25 July – 11 September 2011 230 2.5 HICA exhibition: Thomson + Craighead, 20 June – 25 July 2010 165 3.41 The origins of the Concretely Immaterial project; considering the extent of the ‘concrete’ 230 2.51 A gaining of ‘real’ perspective? 165 3.42 The concrete and conceptual: moving from a rational ‘conceptual’, toward Nature 232 2.6 A reflection on the similarities and differences of approach between these 3.43 Examples of exhibited works; their ‘natural’ relation and engagement of constraints 235 artists’ works, and Van Doesburg’s: concrete rules, plastic means, ‘chance’ 3.44 The conceptual as material? Pursuing the logic of a more overt monist identification 240 and efforts toward a science of art-making 169 3.5 HICA exhibition: Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Janssen: Loss Becomes Object 2.7 Theo van Doesburg’s Manifesto for Concrete Art 172 24 September – 30 October 2011 244 2.71 A structure of oppositions; in works and methods; between Realism and Nominalism 175 3.51 Subjectivity: isolated and anthropocentric or ‘plural and polyphonic’? 244 2.72 Possible interpretations of LeWitt’s positioning 179 3.52 Intervening in the ‘discursive flow’ 247 2.73 Oppositions and a need for ‘activity’: works’ concrete effects as part of lived processes 180 3.53 Considering the employing of objects within the process of the ‘discursive flow’ 249 2.8 HICA exhibition: Boyle Family: Loch Ruthven, 24 October – 28 November 2010 183 3.54 Between the artist and artwork: a further structure of oppositions 253 2.81 A summary of points in relation to Boyle Family’s works 183 3.55 A consistent problem: the questioning of Spinoza’s Realist/Nominalist alignment 253 2.82 The concrete and Nature: the possibility of ‘chance’, and an acceptance of complexity 185 2.83 Engagement with given conditions: involvement in the zeitgeist 187 4 The Problem Of Form 258 2.84 A structure of oppositions as manifested in the presence of the author 188 4.1 Outline of the themes of this chapter: considering the limits of the concrete, and the 2.85 Boyle Family’s installation: the HICA space and view: a reflection on windows… 191 relation of consciousness to the concrete; reflecting on the differentiation of forms 2.86 …and our presence in the drama 193 within general aesthetic experience 258 2.87 A process of nature, and our active involvement; an ‘altering of life-space’ 195 4.2 HICA exhibition: Doug Fishbone: Neither Here nor There, 1 April – 6 May 2012 260 4.21 Questioning Conceptual Art’s definitions and ‘dematerialization’ 260 3 Concrete Vernacular 198 4.22 Fishbone’s alignment: degrees of conceptual content, and the means of its location 265 3.1 Reflection on the previous, and introduction to this chapter: reconsidering order and 4.23 Our unwitting involvements within a bigger picture 271 rationality; our subject/object relations 198 4.3 HICA exhibition: Eloi Puig: Simultaneous Translation/Traducció Simultània 3.2 HICA exhibition: Richard Roth: Vernacular Modernism 1 May – 5 June 2011 199 8 July – 12 August 2012 272 3.21 The development of Vernacular Modernism: dialogue between the local and universal 199 4.31 Concurrent relations, and forms of translation 272 3.22 Roth’s Minimalist positioning: Nominalist or Realist? 201 4.32 Understanding form as content: overlapping contents of ‘dispersed’ forms: composite 3.23 Things’ conformity with their place in nature: active forms within an active background 206 entities and environmental meanings 276 3.24 Spatial organisation 207 4.33 More closely identifying two observed processes here: 278 3.3 HICA exhibition: Grow Together: Concrete Poetry in Brazil and Scotland 4.331 The Phenotypical 278 3 July – 7 August 2011 209 4.332 The encountering of forms as totalities 280 3.31 Origins of a ‘concrete’ poetry 209 4.34 The aesthetic negotiation of the world, and a route to its understanding 281 3.32 Tension: