Sculpture as Artifice: Mimetic Form in the Environment
Mark Booth
A thesis in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts (Research)
The University of New South Wales
Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture
May 2021
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT ii
Table of Contents Page
Acknowledgements vi
List of Figures vii
Chapter One. Introduction
1.1 Sculpture and Site 1
1.2 Conundrum 2
1.3 List of components 2
1.4 Camouflage 3
1.5 Theory 4
1.6 Artists 5
1.7 Site/Non-site 5
Chapter Two. Camouflage: A brief history
2.1 Natural camouflage 8
2.2 Charles Darwin 8
2.3 Abbott Thayer 9
2.4 Biomimetics 11
2.5 Artificial camouflage 12
2.6 Camouflage in the military 12
2.7 Dazzle 13
2.8 Jellybean 15
2.9 United States Army field manuals 15
2.10 Ames Room 17
2.11 Ganzfeld effect 18
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT iii
2.12 Voronoi diagrams 19
2.13 Military biotechnology 20
Chapter Three. Unorthodox art practices
3.1 Monochromatic colour 22
3.2 Optics 24
3.3 Algorithms 25
3.4 Displacement 26
3.5 Photosynthesis 30
Chapter Four. Retrospective art practice
4.1 Pixelation 33
4.2 UCP 34
4.3 Tessellation 36
4.4 Background blending 36
4.5 Illusion and Scale 38
4.6 Assimilation 40
4.7 Conundrum 41
4.8 Parasitism 42
Chapter Five. Site/Non-site
5.1 Site 43
5.2 Site centricity 43
5.3 Situationism 45
5.4 Nature’s materials 47
5.5 Gwion Gwion 48
5.6 Non-site 49
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT iv
5.7 Wasteland 51
Chapter Six. Methodologies
6.1 Material and Scale 55
6.2 Casting 57
6.3 Mould-making 59
6.4 Biomatter 59
6.5 Terrapods 60
6.6 Dam 61
6.7 Slurries 62
Chapter Seven. Results
7.1 Disposition 64
7.2 Biotopes 65
7.3 Symbiosis 65
7.4 Ready-mades 66
7.5 Tetrapods 67
7.6 Repetition 68
7.7 Visibility 68
7.8 Dam as site 69
7.9 Scale 69
7.10 Light/colour/tone 69
7.11 Orientation 71
7.12 Material 72
Chapter Eight. Conclusion
8.1 Duration 74
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT v
8.2 Documentation 75
8.3 Drones 76
8.4 Bio-art 77
8.5 Entropy 78
8.6 Phenology 80
8.7 Drought/Flood 81
8.8 Bushfires 81
8.9 Future directions 82
8.10 Tumuli 83
References 85
Bibliography 91
Appendix 108
Image links 108
Drone links 108
Social media links 108
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT vi
Acknowledgements
I would like to begin by acknowledging the Wonnarua people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which this venture was undertaken and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I sincerely thank the University of New South Wales for giving me the opportunity to embark on this research project, and my supervisors Allan Giddy and Peter Sharp for their knowledge, support and guidance during this endeavour. I also greatly appreciate the many galleries, curators, installers and artists that I have worked with over the years—their inspiration has been instrumental in the development of my art practice and ensured its continuation. Finally, I reserve the most love and gratitude to my parents, who never questioned my decision to embark on the unpredictable path of an artist. This work is dedicated to my father, who sadly was unable to see it taken to completion.
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT vii
List of Figures Page
Figure 1: Mud Dispositions. (Booth, 2018-21). [Biomatter]. 7
Installation view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 2: Gould, J. (1838). Illustration of finch beak-types 9
(discovered by Charles Darwin). Source: https://en.wikipedia .
org/wiki/Darwin%27s_finches. ©Wikipedia
Figure 3: (l) Thayer, A. (1908). A photograph demonstrating Thayer’s 10
countershading theory (left duck model is background blended, right
duck model is countershaded). Source: https://www.semanticscholar
.org/paper/Revisiting-Abbott-Thayer%3A-non-scientific-about-in-
Behrens/36f111b3404cdf073d020 d046a6a0eac 6d3838d3. ©Abbott
Thayer; (r) Thayer, G. (1907-08). Example of background blending.
Male Ruffed Grouse in the Forest. [Watercolour on paper]. Collection of
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Source: https://www.metmuseum.org
/art/collection/search/480641. ©MMA
Figure 4: Example of skin colouration on a chameleon. 12
Source: https://www.inavateonthenet.net/news/article/nanolaser-
copies- chameleon-ability-to-change-colour. ©InAVateonthenet.net
Figure 5: Thayer, A. (ca. 1914-15). Diorama for Military Camouflage with 13
Text Panels. (Detail). [Mixed media on plywood]. Collection of
Richard Meryman. Source: https://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire
/release/593-newly-discovered-works-by abbott-handerson-thayer-in-
williams-coll. ©Richard Meryman
Figure 6: Example of World War 1 dazzle ship patterns. 14
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT viii
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/how-did-an-artist-help-britain-
fight-the-war-at-sea/zmkx8xs. ©IWM
Figure 7: Example of an Austrian roadway speed radar. 15
Artist: Michael Schuster. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Dazzle_camouflage. ©Leo Sauermann
Figure 8: Illustration depicting the effects of shadow on the battlefield. 17
Source: United States Army FM 90-3. ©U.S. Government Printing
Office
Figure 9: Example of an Ames Room. Source: https://edinburghcamera 18
obscurawordpress.com/2015/02/20/the-mystery-of-the ames-room-
at-camera-obscura/. ©Tony Marsh
Figure 10: Example of a subject in a Ganzfeld experiment. Source: 19
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment. ©Wikipedia
Figure 11. Example of a Voronoi diagram. Source: https://commons. 20
wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1970392. ©Wikipedia
Figure 12: (l) Example of a MultiCam camouflage pattern. 21
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiCam. ©Wikipedia;
(r) Example of a MAPA camouflage pattern. Source: https://pl.pinterest.
com/pin/ 484066659940049746/. ©MAPA Camouflage
Figure 13: (l) Eliasson, O. (1997). Room for one colour. [Monofrequency 23
lamps]. Installation view. Your emotional future, Pinchuk Art Centre,
Kiev (21/05/11-02/10/11). Image: Dimitry Baranov. Source:
https://olafureliasson.net/archive /artwork/ WEK101676/room-for-one-
colour. ©Olafur Eliasson; (r) Turrell, J. (2018). Ganzfeld Aural.
[Monochrome lighting]. Installation view. Ganzfeld Aural, Jewish
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT ix
Museum Berlin (12/04/18-06/10/19). Gift of Dieter and Si Rozenkrantz.
Image: Florian Holzherr. Source: http://www.chromart.org/james-turrell-
ganzfeld-aural-at-berlin-jewish-museum/. ©Jewish Museum Berlin
Figure 14: Booth, M. (2011). 11+UPVC9.323745.006474. [PVC pipe, 23
paint, fluorescent light]. Installation view. 11+UPVC9.323745.006474,
MOP Projects, Sydney (2011). ©Mark Booth
Figure 15: Riley, B. (1973). Paean (detail). [Acrylic on canvas]. 24
Collection of National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Source:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/bridget-riley-review-
royal-scottish- academy-edinburgh-eye-scrambling/. ©Bridget Riley
Figure 16: (l) Bulloch, A. (2017). Heavy Metal Body. [Mixed media]. 26
Installation view. Heavy Metal Body, Esther Schipper, Berlin
(28/04/17-17/06/17). Source: https://www.estherschipper.com/
exhibitions/142-heavy-metal-body-angela-bulloch/. ©Andrea Rossetti;
(r) Booth, M. (2019). Holding Pattern. (Detail). [PVC pipe, vinyl wrap].
©Mark Booth
Figure 17: Booth, M. (2013). colour[kələr]
Installation view. colour[kələr]
©Mark Booth
Figure 18: Denes, A. (1982). Wheatfield: a confrontation. [Mixed media]. 27
Installation view. Battery Park, Manhattan, NY (05-08/82). Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/t-magazine/agnes-denes-art.html.
©Agnes Denes
Figure 19: Eliasson, O. (2014). Riverbed. [Mixed media]. Installation view. 28
Riverbed, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (20/08/14-04/01/15).
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT x
Source: https://www.archdaily.com/540338/olafur-eliasson-creates-an-
indoor-riverbed-at-danish-museum. ©MMA
Figure 20: Fischer, U. (2007). You. [Excavation, gallery space]. Installation 29
view. You, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (25/10/07-22/12/07).
Source: https://publicdelivery.org/urs-fischer-you/. ©Ellen Page
Wilson for Urs Fischer
Figure 21: Fischer, U. (2007). Untitled: Hole. [Bronze]. Installation view. 30
Uh..., Sadie Coles HQ, London (11/10/07-17/11/07). Source:
http://www.ursfischer.com/images/188637. ©Urs Fischer
Figure 22: Ackroyd, H., & Harvey, D. (2007). Myles, Basia, Nath and Alesha. 31
[Grass]. Installation view. The Big Chill Festival, Eastnor Castle, UK
(03-05/08/07). Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/heather-
ackroyd-and-dan harvey_n_1586650?guccounter=1&slideshow=true
#gallery/5bb229cce4b0171db69df9c4/1. ©Ackroyd & Harvey
Figure 23: Petrič, S. (2017). Confronting Vegetal Otherness. Skotopoiesis. 32
[Cress]. Performance. Click Festival, Helsingor, Denmark
(20-21/05/17). Source: https://we-make-money-not-art.com/trust-me-im-
an-artist-ethics-surrounding art-science-collaborations-part-2/.
©Miha Turšič
Figure 24: (l) Booth, M. (2017). Graffiti Studies: Berlin. (Detail). 34
[Inkjet print on paper]. ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2017). Woodland
1-4. (Detail). [Plastic, enamel paint, aluminium]. Installation view.
Mining Pyrite, The Armory, Sydney (17/06/17-20/08/17). ©Mark Booth
Figure 25: (l) Booth, M. (2013). colour[kələr]
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT xi
acrylic paint]. ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2016). 28.300-90°. [PVC
pipe, vinyl wrap]. Installation view. War: A Playground Perspective,
The Armory, Sydney (14/05/16-14/08/16). ©Mark Booth
Figure 26: Booth, M. (2017). Munitions. (Detail). [Plastic, enamel paint]. 35
©Mark Booth
Figure 27: (l) Booth, M. (2019). Schema:Yellow. (Detail). [Enamel paint, 36
acrylic, aluminium]. ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2020). Concrete
Dispositions No.1. [Enamel paint, concrete]. ©Mark Booth
Figure 28: Booth, M. (2016). Tigrit. (Detail). [PVC pipe, vinyl wrap]. 37
Installation view. TARNUNG, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney
(03/09/16-21/10/16). ©Mark Booth
Figure 29: (l) Booth, M. (2016). Kokoda. [PVC pipe, vinyl wrap]. 38
Installation view. Future/Public:Artlands, Dubbo, NSW (27-30/10/16).
©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2017). Jellybean. [PVC pipe, nylon
netting]. Installation views. Sculpture at Scenic World, Katoomba,
NSW (07/04/17-07/05/17). ©Mark Booth
Figure 30: (l) Booth, M. (2013). Yellow:23.300-90°. [PVC pipe, enamel paint]. 39
©Mark Booth; (c) Booth, M. (2014). 22.300-90°. [PVC pipe, enamel
paint]. Installation view. Plastic Action, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery,
NSW (06/02/15-22/03/15). ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2015).
Cold Steel. [PVC pipe, enamel paint]. Installation view. Cementa15,
Kandos, NSW (09-12/04/15). ©Mark Booth
Figure 31: Booth, M. (2011). 11+UPVC9.323745.006474. [PVC pipe, enamel 40
paint, fluorescent light]. Installation view. 11+UPVC9.323745.006474,
MOP Projects, Sydney (2011). ©Mark Booth
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT xii
Figure 32: (l) Booth, M. (2015). 22.150-88°. (Detail). [PVC pipe, aluminium 41
tables]. Installation view. Plastic Action, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery,
NSW (06/02/15-22/03/15). ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2019).
Holding Pattern. (Detail). [PVC pipe, vinyl wrap, table]. Installation
view. Holding Pattern, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, ACT
(17-27/10/19). ©Brenton McKeachie
Figure 33: Booth, M. (2018). Tunable Colouration No.1. [PVC pipe, 42
nylon netting]. Installation views. Contour 556, Canberra, ACT
(05-18/10/18). ©Mark Booth
Figure 34: Turrell, J. (1977-). The Roden Crater. [Excavated earth]. 44
Painted Desert, Northern Arizona, USA. Source: https://www.
widewalls.ch/ magazine/james-turrell-roden-crater. ©James Turrell
Figure 35: Long, R. (1967). A Line Made by Walking. [Photograph, 45
gelatin silver print on paper]. Source: https://publicdelivery.org/richard-
long-line-made-by-walking/. ©Richard Long
Figure 36: Booth, M. (2017). 30.300-88/90°. [PVC pipe, vinyl wrap]. 46
Installation view. Sculpture on the Wharf, Sydney
(01/11/17-16/03/18). ©Mark Booth
Figure 37: Miss, M. (1977). Perimeters/Pavilions/Decoys. (detail). 47
[Excavated hole]. Installation view. Nassau County Museum, Roslyn,
NY (1977-78). Source: http://marymiss.com/projects/perimeters
pavilionsdecoys/. ©Mary Miss
Figure 38: Goldsworthy, A. (1987). Sticks. [Wood]. Source: 48
https://www.fasinfrank vintage.com/blogs/blog/17952092-andy-
goldsworthy sticks-and-stones. ©Andy Goldsworthy
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT xiii
Figure 39: Gwion Gwion cave paintings. (detail). Kimberley, Western 49
Australia. Source: https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/
2012/11/4-million-endowment-for-rock-art-research/. ©Peter Eve
Figure 40: (l) Smithson, R. (1970). Spiral Jetty. [Mud, basalt rock]. 50
Installation view. Great Salt Lake, Utah. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/ Robert_Smithson. ©Estate of Robert Smithson; (r) Smithson, R.
(1968). Non-site (Palisades-Edgewater, N.J.). [Enamel on aluminium
with stones, and ink on paper drawing]. Purchased with funds from the
Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Whitney Museum of American
Art. Source: https://whitney.org/collection /works /5560.
©Estate of Robert Smithson
Figure 41: Goodwin, R. Deepdene Penthouse Parasite. (2010). 51
Source: https://richard-goodwin.com/deepdene-penthouse-parasite/.
©Richard Goodwin
Figure 42: Verdonck, K. EXOTE. (2011). [Various animal and plant species]. 53
Installation view. EXOTE, Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design &
Architecture, Hasselt, Belgium (30/04/11-21/08/11). Source: https://
www.flickr. com/photos/z33be/5693389664. ©Kristof Vrancken/Z33
Figure 43: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 54
Panoramic view (post drought, April 2020). ©Mark Booth
Figure 44: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Concrete]. 56
Prototype concrete module. ©Mark Booth
Figure 45: Armanious, H. (2012). Limerick. [Polyurethane, foam, resin]. 58
Installation view. Hany Armanious: The Golden Thread, Monash
University Museum of Art, Melbourne (1/2-7/4/2012).
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT xiv
Source: http://www.galerieallen.com /en/artistes/ oeuvres/4/hany-
armanious. ©MUM
Figure 46: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. (Detail). 58
[Biomatter]. ©Mark Booth
Figure 47: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 59
Making of plaster cast. ©Mark Booth
Figure 48: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 60
Earth brick composition. ©Mark Booth
Figure 49: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 60
Casting and drying of mud bricks. ©Mark Booth
Figure 50: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 61
Core construction and brick attachment. ©Mark Booth
Figure 51: (l) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 62
Satellite location of the dam. Source: https://www.google.com.au
/maps/place/Mount+Narran,+196+Tunbridge+Rd,+Merriwa+NSW+
2329/@32.245419,150.3013395,1278a,35y,347.5h,36.12t/data =!3m1
!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x6b0c74201316b4c5:0xbcf988e9b49393a7!8m2!3d-
32.2371579!4d150.302851?hl=en-GB. ©Google Maps; (r) Booth, M.
(2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. The dam. ©Mark Booth
Figure 52: (l) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 63
Slurry mix. ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions.
[Biomatter]. Slurry application. ©Mark Booth
Figure 53: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions (detail). 65
[Biomatter]. ©Mark Booth
Figure 54: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions (details). 66
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT xv
[Biomatter]. ©Mark Booth
Figure 55: (l) Example of coastal tetrapods. Source: https://namrataa. 67
fm.alibaba.com/product/101648456100653148/TETRAPODS_
rocks.html. ©Alibaba.com; (r) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions.
(Detail). [Biomatter]. ©Mark Booth
Figure 56: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 68
Panoramic view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 57: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 70
Aerial view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 58: Sols 1196-1197: Aeolian paradise. [Photograph]. Example of the 71
Martian landscape taken by the Curiosity rover (December 19, 2015).
Mars Science Laboratory mission (NASA’s Mars Exploration Program).
Source: https://www.360cities.net/sets/curiosity-mars/page/2.
©NASA/JPLCaltech /MSSS/Andrew Bodrov
Figure 59: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 71
Panoramic view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 60: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 73
Aerial view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 61: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 74
Aerial view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 62: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 76
Stitched photographic view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 63: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 77
Aerial view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 64: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 78
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT xvi
Installation view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 65: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 79
Panoramic view. ©Mark Booth
Figure 66: (l) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 80
Installation view during the drought (January 2020). ©Mark Booth;
(r) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. Installation view
after the rains and artwork relocation (April 2020). ©Mark Booth
Figure 67: (l) Example of extreme temperature. Merriwa, NSW 81
(January 2020). ©Mark Booth; (r) Example of severe thunderstorms
and rainfall. Merriwa, NSW (April 2020). Source: https://weather.bom.
gov.au/location/r66cjmj-merriwa. ©BOM
Figure 68: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 81
Panoramic view showing rising water level in the dam (March 2021).
©Mark Booth
Figure 69: (l) Example of satellite image of bushfire footprint. Upper Hunter 82
Valley, NSW (February 2020). Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/
2020-02-19/australia-bushfires-how-heat-and-drought-created-a tinderbox
/11976134?nw=0. ©ABC News; (r) Example of bushfires. Goulburn
River National Park, NSW (December 2019).
Source: https://hotspots.dea.ga.gov.au. ©DEA Hotspots
Figure 70: Booth, M. (2021). Tumuli. [Biomatter]. Installation views. 83
©Mark Booth
Figure 71: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. 84
Satellite location. Source:https://www.google.com.au/maps/place
/Mount+Narran,+196+Tunbridge+Rd,+Merriwa+NSW+2329/@32.
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT xvii
2371579, 150.3006623,771m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x6b0c
74201316b4c5:0xbcf988e9b49393a7!8m2!3d32.2371579!4d150
.302851?hl=en-GB. ©Google Maps
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 1
Chapter One. Introduction
Sculpture as Artifice: Mimetic Form in the Environment
Can natural and artificial patterning (camouflage) intersect with organic systems and entropic forces in nature to symbiotically link a sculpture to its environment?
To date, extensive use of camouflage as a means of surface decoration has symbolically grounded my work in the military [see Chapter Four: Retrospective art practice, p. 33]. The camouflaged appearance of many sculptures culturally and historically associates them with warfare, weaponary and surveillance. However, the work I propose to make for this project aims to use camouflage in a less obvious way— rather than creating objects that deliberately set out to confront the viewer or reference all things militaristic, it will utilise camouflage to subtly manipulate and conjoin body
(form) with situation (environment).
Sculpture and Site
Through practice led, theory-based research, studio investigation and field study,
I determined to undertake a set of experiments that eventually led to a sculptural earthwork called Mud Dispositions [Figure 1]. I commenced thinking that in nature the integration of a form with its immediate locality created a spatial negotiation between environment and form, and that this correlation could provide a dynamic alternative to the presentation of a sculpture in a mediated ‘white cube’ or prepared plinth-type community setting. My aim was to first test if an object, unrelated to a site, could be given a patina that related it to that site and then to scrutinise to what extent this form of deception created a holistic partnership between the artwork and its surroundings. I aimed to demonstrate how deleterious environmental factors, such as rainfall and extreme variations in heat and cold, combined with wildlife activity and microbial dissolution, could break down the soluble composition of the artwork in a ‘hostile’
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 2
process of decomposition and repatriation that would define it as an impermanent imposition on site to best illustrate dynamic forces present.
Conundrum
In my opinion, when characteristics of a specific terrain (such as the colours of flora and soils) are locally extracted and applied to a foreign entity (in this case a sculpture) an intimate connection is forged between the object and the site. I argue, however, that while a sculpture can relate directly to a site, it is concurrently ‘other’ or alien to that site—the camouflaged artefact, despite its apparent embeddedness and modification to match and relate to its situation, remains a disembodiment due to its artificiality. I postulate that this manipulation of matter to achieve deception is a simultaneous subversion and mimicry of the sculpture’s environment—it is both autonomous and responsive to its new site. Relocation of the sculpture from studio to site would, I posit, lead to a heightened sense of falsification and evocation of the synthetic nature of the installation—the artwork could thus become a mediation between the studio and its new placement in the landscape. My aim was to explore and document this paradox in relation to Mud Dispositions’ association with site/non-site.
List of components
I am of the opinion that the mutability and visibility of a form in a particular environment is determined by a set of natural phenomena and sensory stimuli specific to that place. I intend to use these components as a framework for a working methodology to assist in gathering visual information in the field that will aid in the development and placement of Mud Dispositions in a determined site. This list will take into consideration the local patternations, colours and tones of vegetation and soil, geological formations and climatic conditions.
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 3
Data collated from a number of potential sites (with reference to the list of components) will assist in the selection of a final location for the artwork. I will then produce a series of modules (terrapods) constructed from locally sourced malleable materials such as soil, ash, sand, animal scat and plant material. These forms will be mass produced, accumulated and arranged over time to constitute the site specific installation.
The adoption of colour schemes and patterns (camouflage) to mask the sculpture’s surface will be collected from naturally occurring biomatter (for example, ochres from charcoal, iron, mud and foliage). Casting and mould making techniques, environmentally friendly substances for construction (for example, biodegradable glue and sealer) and scale-matching with neighbouring objects will also be considered in consultation with the list of components. I anticipate that all of these determinants and modifications when applied to Mud Dispositions will assist in the earthwork’s successful mimicking of its ‘host’ site, increasing its visual integration and, conversely, physical disintegration with its surroundings by linking the material and the ephemeral.
Camouflage
I will contextualise my own art practice in terms of various camouflage techniques. In my opinion it is important to understand the basic theories and concepts of camouflage from its origins in nature and biology, its militaristic uses (concealment and obfuscation of an object, whether it be animal, human or inanimate) and its role in the visual arts. I will examine camouflage from two viewpoints: natural camouflage (the biological adaptation of animal and plant species to blend with their surroundings for protection, concealment and survival); and artificial camouflage (the manipulation of matter and materials to achieve deception in war, architecture and surveillance). These topics will include reference to the following proponents:
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 4
• Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection (the generational
manifestation of animal and plant species in order to survive through processes
of biological adaptation, modification and assimilation).
• Abbott Thayer’s theories on camouflage, in which he discussed countershading
(the concealment of an object by using inverse/negative shading); background
blending (where an object has different colouration when viewed from below or
above); and disruptive patterning (the arbitrary colouration that conceals an
object by destroying the continuity of its surface).
• ‘Camoufleurs’ assigned to develop disruptive patterns for all aspects of the
battlefield during World War 2.
• Norman Wilkinson’s dazzle patterns (geometric shapes with contrasting colours
that break down the outline of an object).
• United States Army field manuals for practical responses to issues of
concealment on the battlefield.
In conjunction with these traditional (natural) camouflage theories and techniques I will research alternative (artificial) and innovative adaptations of camouflage. These will include psychological deception used in the Ganzfeld effect (a form of sensory and optical deprivation obtained through the use of minimised stimuli which leads to disorientation and visual confusion), and innovative pattern generation systems used in Voronoi diagrams (systematic digital and mathematical data based on biological forms found in nature).
Theory
I will examine theoretical texts and journals on camouflage, concealment, surveillance and communication in nature including reference to the following:
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• Roy R. Behrens’ and his comments on the distractive markings that provide animals and plants with protective colouration in nature and their influence on contemporary camouflage patterns in the military.
• Ann Elias’ research on visual representations of camouflage in nature and art.
Artists
My research will focus on a selection of artists whose oeuvre is contextually similar to my practice. These practitioners work in unconventional optical and sensory fields, use unorthodox methods of production, and scrutinise the physicality of an object in space. They will include:
• Andy Goldsworthy’s ephemeral land art constituted from natural materials.
• Olafur Eliasson, who creates large-scale installations that question the
relationship between form and environment.
• Agnes Denes’ conceptually site specific and ecologically charged works.
• Angela Bulloch’s multi-disciplinary art practice that revolves around
mathematical systems, patterns and rules.
• Bridget Riley’s optically destabilising paintings that disorient the viewer.
Site/Non-site
I will discuss the relationship an object has once it is introduced into (or removed from) an environment. I posit that the displacement, rehousing and repurposing of an object from its original setting to a new location necessitates a renegotiation of the correlation between an object and its site. I will discuss this statement in relation to ideas from the following theorists and artists:
• Rosalind Krauss and her theories on the conceptual boundaries between sculpture and site.
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• Prudence Gibson’s essays on plant art, eco-aesthetics and urban/peri-urban environments.
• Robert Smithson’s land art and its relationship to site/non-site.
• Richard Goodwin’s use of sculptural carbuncles, extensions and interventions on architectural frameworks.
In summation, I have confidence this research project will demonstrate that it is possible to appropriate a set of variables (or masking techniques, including decay of form itself) from the list of components and apply them to a sculptural installation in order to influence its visual apprehension, tangibility, spatiality and ephemerality in the environment, and to raise issues of permanence/impermanence, materiality/immateriality and presence/non-presence in relation to a sculpture and its site, challenging the more orthodox, traditional relationships that can exist between an object and its site.
I am of the opinion that over time Mud Disposition’s integration with site will demonstrate an authentic and holistic rendering of its relation to site. Drawn directly from the land, its malleability will interconnect it with local habitat—a commonality of materials will create a language and bond that anchors form to site. When observed together as a whole (not as individual entities), mediation between sculpture and site will be possible—the artwork will become an intimate part of its surroundings, rather than merely a form deposited in an unrelated space.
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Figure 1: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Installation view. ©Mark Booth
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Chapter Two. Camouflage: A brief history
I attest that it is necessary to look at biotic (natural) camouflage, and alternative, innovative synthetic (artificial) camouflage in order to place Mud Dispositions in context within the broad framework of object/site/camouflage.
The process of camouflage “adopts the abstract artistic, the cellular world of biology, the architectural world of engineering, patterns of mathematics and the survival techniques of the military” (Morris, 2015, p. 65). Such diverse systems of concealment need further inquiry. Camouflage “encourages the misapprehension of something perceptible” (Gibson, 2015, p. 202)—it has the ability to obscure an object, whether it be inanimate, animal or human. I will consider camouflage from two viewpoints: natural camouflage and artificial camouflage.
Natural camouflage
Natural camouflage can be defined as the customary generational and biological adaptation of animal and plant species to blend and integrate with their surroundings for protection, concealment and survival.
Charles Darwin. The zoologist and naturalist Charles Darwin’s seminal book
On the Origin of Species (1859) discussed the evolutionary adaptation of animals, and how over generations specific species assimilated with their environments in order to survive. He called this process ‘natural selection’ and defined it as a progressive evolution relating to mimesis, biological alteration and physical modification (Bowler,
2009, p. 223). The biologist David Haskell (2012) writes that, paradoxically, “from death comes life’s increasing perfection” (p. 20). He continues: “[N]atural selection works by continually throwing out new ideas, then weeding out the ineffective in favour of the fecund” (p. 129). Thus, “through organic processes of mate-selection, desirable
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traits will persist down the line, while undesirable ones will phase out with time”
(Clemens, 2019, para. 3).
Darwin determined that geographical barriers and isolationism compounded these changes. For example, he noticed that the beaks of finches on the remote
Galapagos Islands had changed over generations—new modified beaks were more adept at eating specific food sources [Figure 2]. Darwin found, however, that diversity did not just occur in inaccessible areas: “Large regions with intense competition, and with ample variation spread by blending, would facilitate speciation” (Oldroyd, 1986, pp. 133-168). This enabled greater occupation of a region by a specific species.
Figure 2: Gould, J. (1838). Illustration of finch beak-types (discovered by Charles
Darwin). Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_finches. ©Wikipedia
Abbott Thayer. David Haskell (2012) believes a camouflaged animal that best matches the hue and tone of its immediate environment must also texturally mimic the rhythm and scale of its background—any deviation from the visual properties of its surroundings produces visual dissonance and a potential failure of disguise (p. 203).
These observations also concerned the naturalist and artist Abbott Thayer, whose theories on camouflage were known as Thayer’s law. Thayer determined three main fields in camouflaging: countershading (an effective method of concealing an object by
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using inverse/negative shading); background blending (an object has different colouration when viewed from below or above); and disruptive patternation (arbitrary colouration conceals an object by destroying the continuity of its surface to break up outline and fragment form). Thayer (1896) noted: “Animals are painted by nature, darkest on those parts that tend to be the most lighted by the sky’s light, and vice versa”
(p. 125). This, he said, flattened an animal against its background and rendered it invisible. In order to demonstrate his theories Thayer made templates to aid accurate background matching. He argued, for example, that if the cut-out of a duck were placed in a specific setting then the background visible through the silhouette would provide the appropriate camouflage design for the duck itself [Figure 3 (l)]. Thayer further expounded that animal patterns were a “generalization or distillation of the features of those physical settings in which the animal was commonly found” (Anderson, 1982, p.
116) [Figure 3 (r)].
Figure 3: (l) Thayer, A. (1908). A photograph demonstrating Thayer’s countershading
theory (left duck model is background blended, right duck model is countershaded).
Source: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Revisiting-AbbottThayer%3A non-
scientific-about-in-Behrens/ 36f111b3404cdf073d020d04a6a0eac6d383d3. ©Abbott
Thayer; (r) Thayer, G. (1907-08). Example of backround blending. Male Ruffed Grouse
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in the Forest. [Watercolour on paper]. Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/480641. ©MMA
According to Haskell (2012) the adaptation of an animal to a specific environment has its problems:
The evolution of camouflage is a finicky process in which the particularities of
place matter a great deal. Therefore, animal species whose lives are played
against just one visual backdrop . . . are more likely to evolve camouflage than
species that move among backdrops . . . concealment within a particular micro-
habitat is a great short-term adaptation. In the longer term, such specialization
can be a trap; the fate of the camouflaged species is tied to the background on
which it rests (p. 203).
Biomimetics. In nature some animals have the ability to chemically change colour to blend in with their background and so increase their chances of survival.
“[C]amouflage is a response to risk, and its function is preservation of the self” (Elias et al., 2015, p. 87). When threatened with detection these creatures have the capacity to alter their colouration in a process known as biomimetics. This is a type of ‘tunable’ camouflage used by animals to “utilise space, colour and light to make themselves invisible” (Elias et al., 2015, p. 36)—it falsifies their presence and confuses their predators. For example, squid, octopus and cuttlefish (cephalopods) have pigment and light-reflecting cells in their skin that can be made to change colour according to their surroundings. Chameleons can modify the structural arrangement of their skin cells by relaxing or exciting nanocrystals within them [Figure 4]. This reflects different wavelengths of light leading to changes in skin colouration (Geggel, 2015, para. 1).
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Figure 4: Example of skin colouration on a chameleon.
Source: https:// www.inavateonthenet.net/news/article/nanolaser-copies-
chameleon-ability-to-change-colour. ©InAVateonthenet.net
Artificial camouflage
Alternative, auxiliary methods of deception provide a counterbalance to naturally occurring camouflage. Artificial camouflage manipulates synthetic matter and materials to covertly deceive in warfare, hunting, surveillance, architecture and engineering. Some examples of its use are discussed below.
Camouflage in the military. Military camouflage is a “practice intended to alter the specificity of an object in relation to its surrounding area” (Elias and Behrens,
2011, p. 191). During World War 1 the military adopted Thayer’s observations to create imitative camouflage that hindered the rapid identification of soldiers, vessels and aircraft in the field. Thayer, along with teams of researchers and other artists known as
‘camoufleurs’, designed multi-coloured disruptive patterns to replace existing monochromatic colourations on field uniforms [Figure 5]. Their aim was to “protect troops and deceive the enemy by using their intimate knowledge of perspective, illusion, shadow and movement” (Deception by Design, n.d.).
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Figure 5: Thayer, A. (ca. 1914-15). Diorama for Military Camouflage with Text Panels.
(Detail). [Mixed media on plywood]. Collection of Richard Meryman.
Source: https://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/593-newly-discovered-works-by-
abbott-handerson-thayer-in-williams-coll. ©Richard Meryman
Dazzle. The artist Norman Wilkinson adopted a conceptual approach to form and space to devise a system of mark-making he called dazzle patterns. These were inspired to a great extent by Cubist paintings and consisted of irregular, straight-edged patterns. Geometric shapes and contrasting colours intersected each other and helped to break up form. These designs were used mainly on warships and merchant shipping
(dazzle ships) [Figure 6] for protection against attacks by German submarines. The aim was to not only conceal, but to make it more difficult for the enemy to identify a target’s range, speed and direction. “[These] abstractions . . . cloak the activities of movement by seemingly creating more movement” (Goddard, 2012, para. 5).
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Figure 6: Example of World War 1 dazzle ship patterns. Source: https://www.
bbc.co.uk/teach/how-did-an-artist-help-britain-fight-the-war-at-sea/zmkx8xs. ©IWM
In my opinion, the following observation by Haskell (although relating to biology) can be applied to dazzle: “[The] decoying of pattern recognition systems . . . shows that disruptive patterns, even when the patterns are formed by conspicuous colours, can match or beat the performance of simple colour-matching camouflage”
(2012, p. 204). So, rather than trying to subtly hide an object using the natural camouflage of nature, dazzle obfuscated a ship with harsh patterns and colours, effectively hiding it in plain sight and creating an ambiguity that helped to confuse the combatant’s ability to judge scale and distance when targeting an object. Such patterns are still deployed today on contemporary warships and military vehicles. A more obscure civilian use of dazzle can be seen on Austrian roadside speed traps where patterns on camera casings help to confuse drivers as to which way the radar is pointing
[Figure 7].
I have adopted these hard-edged abstractions on many surfaces of my sculptural works—examination of a selection are discussed in ‘Tessellation’ [see Chapter Four, p.
36].
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Figure 7: Example of an Austrian roadway speed radar. Artist: Michael Schuster.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage. ©Leo Sauermann
Jellybean. Reflecting on Thayer, the scholar and graphic designer Roy R.
Behrens has written about the effects of ‘high difference disruption’ and ‘high similarity blending’ in the distractive markings on animals and plants for protective colouration in nature (Elias et al., 2015, p. 2). These observations can be applied directly to the designs on uniforms and vehicles in the military today. Organic, free-flowing patterns with natural earthy colours are called the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), a five-colour scheme that can be modified and adapted to specific terrains. The Australian armed forces refer to the UCP as ‘jellybean’ camouflage. For a more in depth look at UCP’s in relation to sculptures that I have created, refer to ‘UCP’ [see Chapter Four, p. 34].
United States Army field manuals. United States Army field manuals provide practical responses to issues of concealment on the battlefield. According to the manuals camouflage can be utilised in combat situations for “concealment and disguise to minimize the detection and identification of an object . . . [It] degrades the effectiveness of enemy reconnaissance and improves deception capabilities” (United
States Army, 1990, p. 1-1). The manuals argue that by taking advantage of the immediate environment and natural conditions, camouflage can change the perception
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of form—shape, shadow, colour, texture, pattern, movement and temperature are all factors that can make an object contrast with its background. The field reference books speculate that distance also plays a part in object obfuscation, particularly in homogeneous background environments such as snow or desert terrain—the further an object is from its viewer, the less important colour becomes. At very long ranges all colours tend to merge into a uniform tone. In poor light too, the human eye cannot discriminate colour (United States Army, 1990, pp. 1-1 – 3-5). Shadows are highly visible in desert regions due to a lack of vegetation. By adopting a technique called
‘terrain masking’, shadows can be disrupted by siting equipment near rocks to brake up shadow outline or by using netting to alter shapes and cast additional shadow formations (United States Army, 1977, p. F-2) [Figure 8]. The manuals continue: “One of the fundamentals of camouflage in any environment . . . is to fit into the existing ground pattern with minimum of change to the terrain” (United States Army, 1977, p.
E-4).
These handbooks are an invaluable source of information in the continuing development of Mud Dispositions—they provide hands-on, fundamental observations on natural phenomena and pragmatic solutions to camouflage in a multitude of habitats and climatic conditions.
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Figure 8: Illustration depicting the effects of shadow on the battlefield.
Source: United States Army FM 90-3. ©U.S. Government Printing Office
Ames Room. “Perspective gathers the visual facts and stabilizes them; it makes of them a unified field” (Hughes, 2015, p. 13). In other words, perspective creates a fixed viewpoint based on a set of rules. The Ames Room [Figure 9] however, un-fixes conventional perspectival frames of reference to create an optical illusion. Named after the American scientist Adelbert Ames Jr., the room is a construct for achieving visual disorientation (Ames room, n.d.). When viewed through a peephole in one of its walls people of similar size within the room appear to be dramatically different heights. Their disparity in size is achieved by manipulation of the room’s parameters—they all appear to be standing in the same depth of field when in fact some are closer to the viewer than others. I discuss this form of misconception (particularly the scale of an object in relation to its surroundings) in ‘Illusion and Scale’ [see Chapter Four, p. 38].
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Figure 9: Example of an Ames Room. Source: https://edinburghcameraobscura.-
wordpress.com/2015/02/20/the-mystery-of-the-ames-room-at-camera-obscura/.
©Tony Marsh
Ganzfeld effect. The Ganzfeld effect (or complete field) is a term conceived by the psychologist Wolfgang Metzger. He found that a “homogenous visual field” (Tyson,
Elcock and Jones, 2011, pp. 199-200) such as the use of sensory and optical deprivation
(or minimised stimuli) led to disorientation and visual confusion. Multiple effects could be induced to cause sensations of distortion and illusion. Constant uniform stimuli such as extremely bright, singularly-coloured light, absolute darkness, noise (high levels, white noise and binaural beats) or total silence, as well as the natural reduction of environmental stimuli (for example, physical isolation or loss of eyesight) led to cognitive, perceptual and behavioural changes such as disorientation, delusion, panic, hallucination and altered states of consciousness (Ganzfeld effect, n.d.).
Ganzfeld has many uses. For example, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and waterboarding are all Ganzfeld-based methods used in combat situations to torture and interrogate. By blocking all external sensory inputs with the use of a mask and noise-cancelling headphones, a Ganzfeld experiment [Figure 10] is used in neuroscience and parapsychology to test patients for extrasensory perception and telepathy:
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Wearing a sleeping mask or sitting in a dark room puts the brain to sleep.
Looking at a featureless white field with no cues for depth, shape or distance
keeps the brain alert and looking for information. When no information is
present, the brain starts amplifying the senses, until the neural noise is confused
as real sensory information and hallucinations occur (Biotele, 2019, para. 6).
Figure 10: Example of a subject in a Ganzfeld experiment.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment. ©Wikipedia
I have attempted to initiate Ganzfeld effects with my sculptures to create visual disorientation [see ‘Assimilation’, Chapter Four, p. 40].
Voronoi diagrams. The artist Agnes Denes (2008) wrote about mathematical patterns in relation to her artworks: “Pattern-finding is the purpose of the mind and the construct of the universe. There are an infinite number of patterns, some of which are known; those still unknown hold the key to unresolved enigmas and paradoxes” (p.
173). Voronoi diagrams (or cryptic colourations) are systematic digital diagrams and sets of mathematical data that are widely used in science and technology. Named after the mathematician Georgy Voronoy, they have many applications that include the generation of mapping systems, medical diagnosis, computer graphics, information technology, anti–face recognition software and ecological modelling (Voronoi diagram,
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n.d.). The shape of Voronoi patterns are more angled, multi-faceted, and adopt less conventional colour schemes than the four-sided squares used in digital camouflage
[Figure 11]. Voronoi diagrams are based on fundamental biological forms found in nature (cell cultures) and have informed many of the designs on my recent sculptures
[see ‘Tessellation’, Chapter Four, p. 36).
Figure 11: Example of a Voronoi diagram.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1970392. ©Wikipedia
Military biotechnology. Military camouflage is “a practice intended to alter the specificity of an object in relation to its surrounding space . . . [it is] perceptual confusion through visual misinformation” (Elias and Behrens, 2011, p. 191). Today biotechnology and biomechanics are used extensively by the military in the creation of active (adaptive) camouflage: “The science of biomimetics has encouraged [military] designers to look to nature for inspiration and apply a systematic approach to camouflage interpretation” (Vincent, 2009, p. 76). Foliage and terrain absorb and reflect ultraviolet light—ultraviolet camouflage considers the reflected light from a soldier’s immediate environment to manufacture, for example, a highly ultraviolet-reflective white paint for use on vehicles, uniforms and weaponry in snow conditions (Military
Recognition of the Ultraviolet Sensor Threat, 2012, para. 2-5).
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Other innovative camouflage-generating systems used for military defence include: MultiCam [Figure 12 (l)], a seven-colour, ‘multi-environment’ camouflage pattern used for military uniforms based on the colour palette, terrain topography (urban and natural) and light conditions of various environments (Tsai, 2014, p. 8); MAPA
(Multi-environmental Adaptive PAttern) [Figure 12 (r)] uses mathematically generated data collated from maps to create micro/macro patterns and blurred/sharp motifs for three-dimensional camouflage effects on soldier’s uniforms (Raźny, 2018, para. 2-3);
Adaptiv, an ‘active camouflage’ that uses stealth technology to transfer the heat signature (or thermal reading) of a vehicle’s surroundings to panels on its surface, rendering it invisible to enemy infrared detectors (Adaptiv, para. 1). These artificially rendered patterns provide a blueprint for surface designs on many of my sculptures [see
Chapter Four. Retrospective practice, p. 33], and have assisted in the determination of slurry colouration for Mud Dispositions [see ‘Slurries’, Chapter Six, p. 62].
Figure 12: (l) Example of a MultiCam camouflage pattern.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiCam. ©Wikipedia; (r) Example of a MAPA
camouflage pattern. Source: https://pl.pinterest .com/pin/484066659940049746/.
©MAPA
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Chapter Three. Unorthodox art practices
This chapter examines a selection of visual artists working within the theme of duplicity. These artists display flexible aesthetic principles in their re-imagining of camouflage and nature as tools of deception—some are concerned with form/site integration and the contradictions that can exist between the two. I believe that reference to the work of these artists will help conceptualise and position Mud
Dispositions in relation to unorthodox approaches to artmaking and site selection.
Monochromatic colour
The Ganzfeld effect [see ‘Ganzfeld effect’, Chapter Two, p. 18] is used to great effect in the work of Olafur Eliasson. In Room for one colour (1997) [Figure 13 (l)]
Eliasson floods a featureless gallery with monochromatic light (in this case, yellow) which optically disorients the visitor, altering their perception of (and association with) objects and space and questioning their interrelationship with the volume around them.
Everything in the room, no matter its colour, presents as various shades of yellow—less visual information (colour) makes objects appear in more detail and flattens them into two dimensions (Eliasson, 2013, p. 75).
A similar use of monochromatics can be seen in Ganzfeld Aural (2018) [Figure
13 (r)] by James Turrell: “In the diffuse field of light that is his installation . . . the boundaries of space disappear [and] a sense of disorientation unfolds” (Ganzfeld
“Aural”: An Installation by James Turrell, 2018, para. 3). Turrell is a proponent of the
Light and Space art movement of the 1960s—artists in this group “made the spectator’s experience of light and other sensory phenomena under specific conditions the focus of their work” (Light and Space, n.d., para. 1).
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Figure 13: (l) Eliasson, O. (1997). Room for one colour. [Monofrequency lamps].
Installation view. Your emotional future. Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev (21/05/11-02/10/11).
Image: Dimitry Baranov. Source: https://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/-
WEK101676/room-for-one-colour. ©Olafur Eliasson; (r) Turrell, J. (2018). Ganzfeld
Aural. [Monochrome lighting]. Installation view. Ganzfeld Aural. Jewish Museum
Berlin (12/04/18-06/10/19). Gift of Dieter and Si Rozenkrantz. Image: Florian Holzherr.
Source: http://www.chromart.org/james-turrell-ganzfeld-aural-at-berlin-jewish-
museum/. ©Jewish Museum Berlin
In both of these works the artists have manipulated light in order to create unusual optical sensations—similarly, by saturating a gallery with flourescent light and initiating a ‘white on white’ effect with form and space, I believe that my installation
11+UPVC9.323745.006474 (2011) [Figure 14] achieved comparable results [see
‘Assimilation’, Chapter Four, p. 40].
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Figure 14: Booth, M. (2011). 11+UPVC9.323745.006474.
[PVC pipe, enamel paint, fluorescent light]. Installation view.
11+UPVC9.323745.006474. MOP Projects, Sydney (2011). ©Mark Booth
Optics
In the case of 11+UPVC9.323745.006474, extreme levels of light created the illusion of object reverberation. Similar impressions of deceptive movement are attained
(not with light) but with pattern and colour by the artist Bridget Riley. “Destabilising a shape, or disrupting a regular formal sequence” (Moorhouse, Cooke and Riley, 2004, p.
19) are processes Riley uses to make her canvases oscillate and vibrate, causing sensations of imbalance and instability in the viewer—patterns (although static) appear to move [Figure 15]. To a degree the paintings have control over the viewers’ responses—they enter into an evocative and “dynamic relationship with a work of art
[where] the process of looking ‘activates’ the painting . . . This state of flux generates vivid perceptual experiences of movement and light” (Moorhouse et al., 2004, p. 15).
Looking at these paintings can lead to afterimages “in which retinal impressions persist after the removal of a stimulus, believed to be caused by the continued activation of the visual system” (Afterimage, n.d.).
Figure 15: Riley, B. (1973). Paean (detail). [Acrylic on canvas].
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Collection of National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/bridget-riley-review-royal-scottish-
academy-edinburgh-eye-scrambling/. ©Bridget Riley
Algorithms
Pattern and colour is extensivley used throughout my art practice. I have already discussed the use of mathematics to generate pattern, and related this process to some of my artworks where motifs are inspired by algorithms. For example, Holding Pattern
(2019) [Figure 16 (r)] employs tessellated designs on its surface to heighten frantic movement of the twisted forms. A correlation can also be seen between the geometric shapes and the patterns produced by Voronoi diagrams and the artworks of Angela
Bulloch, who adopts systems, patterns, rules and “the order of mathematics, the beauty of geometry, and the calculable comfort of frequency” (Wilkes, 2013, para. 1) in her work. For example, Stacks (2017) [Figure 16 (l)] are towers of irregular geometric blocks where vinyl wall motifs are often a background to the forms, echoing the shapes and colouration of the sculptures and challenging the viewer’s perception of an object in space:
Each of the Stacks offers a distinct rhythm created by the variations in shape,
size and colour of its elements. The surface of the vertically assembled
rhomboid shapes, painted in a combination of light, bright or dark colours,
creates an illusion of pushing and pulling planes (Esther Schipper gallery, 2017,
para. 2).
Bulloch, through her use of colour, pattern and shape, has made three- dimensional objects appear flat and on the same plane as the wall behind them.
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Figure 16: (l) Bulloch, A. (2017). Heavy Metal Body. [Mixed media]. Installation view.
Heavy Metal Body. Esther Schipper, Berlin (28/04/17-17/06/17).
Source: https://www.estherschipper.com/exhibitions/142-heavy-metal-body-angela-
bulloch/. ©Andrea Rossetti; (r) Booth, M. (2019). Holding Pattern. (Detail).
[PVC pipe, vinyl wrap]. ©Mark Booth
Displacement
In ‘Conundrum’ [see Chapter Four, p. 41] I discuss the displacement of artworks from where one would expect them to be presented. For example, when a camouflaged object made in and matching a natural outdoor setting is removed from said location and displayed in an artificial setting such as an art gallery, it looks completely misplaced. This paradox can be seen in my exhibition colour[kələr]
[Figure 17] where a series of camouflaged, organic-looking forms burst from the surface of a wall in a room that shares no commonality with its sculptural inhabitants. I also discuss the movement of work from one location to another in ‘Site/Non-site’ [see
Chapter Five, p. 43].
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Figure 17: Booth, M. (2013). colour[kələr]
Installation view. colour[kələr]
The artist Agnes Denes presents her work in unconventional environments in order to change its “preciousness and collectability” (Denes, 2008, p. 260). For example, in Wheatfield: a confrontation (1982) [Figure 18] Denes planted wheat on an area of landfill in Lower Manhattan. As the wheat grew and matured it re-manifested itself from artwork to harvestable commodity. Once the grain was gathered, the site returned to its former state. This re-invention of an artwork can be attributed to Mud
Dispositions, whose appearance as a ‘whole’ work durationally changes as it breaks down in the environment [see ‘Symbiosis’, Chapter Seven, p. 65].
Figure 18: Denes, A. (1982). Wheatfield: a confrontation. [Mixed media].
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Installation view. Battery Park, Manhattan, NY (05-08/82). Source: https://www.
nytimes.com/2018/06/14/t-magazine/agnes-denes-art.html. ©Agnes Denes
Like Denes’ wheatfield, the displacement of natural materials from their normal, expected place of origin (site) to an alternative location (non-site) can be seen in Olafur
Eliasson’s Riverbed (2016) [Figure 19]. Here a ‘radical intervention’ (Eliasson and
Tojner, 2016, para. 2) in the architecture and scale of a gallery occured when an artificial landscape was created at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Real geological material filled the gallery spaces to destabilise and disorient the visitor, disrupting their sensory functions and forcing them to recalibrate their presence within the space (Eliasson and Tojner, 2016, para. 3-4). A stream meandered over the rubble providing an “energy that course[d] through the building . . . as a biotope” (Eliasson and
Tojner, 2016, para. 1). Riverbed gathers the natural (rocks/earth) and deposits it into the artificial (gallery), a procedure that is also evident in the work of Smithson [see ‘Non- site’, Chapter Five, p. 49].
Figure 19: Eliasson, O. (2014). Riverbed. [Mixed media]. Installation view.
Riverbed. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (20/08/14-04/01/15).
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Source: https://www.archdaily.com/540338/olafur-eliasson-creates-an-indoor-riverbed-
at-danish-museum. ©LMMA
Similar innovative artwork/space interventions can be seen in Urs Fischer’s You
(2007) [Figure 20], a 1:3 scale replica of a gallery within a gallery complete with a large excavated hole, and Untitled: Hole (2007) [Figure 21], where Fischer creates an open- cast pit extending through the gallery floor to protrude from the ceiling of the room below. Interestingly, Fischer (unlike Eliasson) is creating a natural-looking feature without using genuine biomatter (the rocks are in fact cast from bronze). This relates to the artworks I have made and discuss in ‘Illusion and Scale’ [Chapter Four, p. 38], where an object appears to be made from a material other than its actual composition, an illusion that I also scrutinise in the work of Hany Armanious [see ‘Casting’, Chapter
Six, p. 57].
Figure 20: Fischer, U. (2007). You. [Excavation, gallery space]. Installation view.
You. Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (25/10/07-22/12/07).
Source: https://publicdelivery.org/urs-fischer-you/. ©Ellen Page Wilson for Urs Fischer
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Figure 21: Fischer, U. (2007). Untitled: Hole. [Bronze]. Installation view.
Uh... Sadie Coles HQ, London (11/10/07-17/11/07).
Source: http://www.ursfischer.com/images/188637. ©Urs Fischer
Photosynthesis
The impermanence of Mud Dispositions and its physiological composition
(biomatter) is examined in ‘Symbiosis’ [see Chapter Seven, p. 65]. The terrapods contain living organic matter, and chemical reactions occur within the soil between microorganisms—spores give rise to fungi that creep across the outer layers of the modules, and grass seeds that once lay dormant in the earth break through cracks in their surfaces. The artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey manipulate natural biological processes and control the life and death of plant material in order to generate their unconventional portraits. The duo project negative images of faces and bodies onto walls of grass [Figure 22]. By artificially controlling light exposure (and its duration) on the grass, they are able to manipulate shadow and tone (Heather Ackroyd and Dan
Harvey’s ‘Photographic Photosynthesis’ Grass Portraits, 2017, para. 3).
“Photosynthesis uses light to produce glucose, while photography uses light to produce images . . . [The artists] bring the two processes together in their living grass portraits, using chlorophyll as pigment” (Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey’s ‘Photographic
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Photosynthesis’ Grass Portraits, 2017, para. 1). These works explore issues of transience in nature—the grass portraits fade and die over time. Ackroyd and Harvey also make “architectural and spatial interventions with grass . . . altering and engulfing structures . . . [that become] verdant abstract sculptures” (Warr, 2002, pp. 1-2). These relationships between artwork, nature and building are similar to those I have discussed in the works of Eliasson and Fischer. The re-greening of derelict buildings brings new life to the spaces—the reclamation and re-emergence of organic materials on wasteland, and the artificial introduction of biomatter into a gallery, will be discussed in Chapter
Four.
Figure 22: Ackroyd, H., & Harvey, D. (2007). Myles, Basia, Nath and Alesha. [Grass].
Installation view. The Big Chill Festival, Eastnor Castle, UK (03-05/08/07).
Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/heather-ackroyd-and-dan-harvey_n_
1586650?guccounter=1&slideshow=true#gallery/5bb229cce4b0171db69df9c4/1.
©Ackroyd & Harvey
Much like Ackroyd and Harvey, Špela Petrič exploits the “[s]ensitivity to variations in illumination” (Haskell, 2012, p. 202) of vegetative matter. For example, in
Confronting Vegetal Otherness. Skotopoesis (2017) [Figure 23] she casts her silhouette over a bed of cress for nineteen hours. The cress grows in the unshadowed areas and,
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where her profile falls, withers and dies from deprivation of light for photosynthesis and growth. This leaves a lighter imprint of Petrič’s body against the darker surrounds.
Figure 23: Petrič, S. (2017). Confronting Vegetal Otherness. Skotopoiesis. [Cress].
Performance. Click Festival, Helsingor, Denmark (20-21/05/17).
Source: https://we-make-money-not-art.com/trust-me-im-an-artist-ethics-surrounding-
art-science-collaborations-part-2/. ©Miha Turšič
Mud Dispositions utilises biotic processes (decay) in order to symbiotically link it with its environment. Organisms grow within the terrapods that contribute to their eventual breakdown—paradoxically, life is generated, which in turn leads to expiration of the earthwork.
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Chapter Four. Retrospective art practice
Seriality, process, repetition, modulation and recursion—these are terms that describe my practice which recognises the grouping of identical, ready-made components into “ecologies of interconnected elements, [and] the assembly and juxtaposition of individual parts to create a fragmented whole” (Ellegood et al., 2011, pp. 17-19). Various techniques enhance the visual distortion of the artworks in their environments. These include the use of camouflage pattern (natural, digital, pixelated and mathematically generated), background blending and matching, fragmentation of form, scale, illusions of materiality and assimilation (all of which relate directly to the list of components that I reference throughout this research project in the development of Mud Dispositions). The following brief survey of my art practice will provide a link between the earlier ready-mades and Mud Dispositions, and demonstrate that the final iteration of the earthwork is a logical and natural progression of themes and objectives determined by my earlier work.
It is important to state here that although Mud Dispositions adopts the use of camouflage as a tool for background blending and site integration, it is not utilising this process in order to symbolise or depict the military (unlike some of the works discussed below, which have obvious and deliberate militaristic associations). Rather, in my opinion, Mud Dispositions’ camouflage technique has morphed and softened over time, subsumed by the temporal aspect of the work so that it is no longer discernable as militaristic.
Pixelation
Digital camouflage and pixelation are types of motif-making that I use extensively on my artworks. For example, Graffiti Studies: Berlin (2017) [Figure 24 (l)] were an edition of inkjet prints based on digital photographs of urban graffiti enlarged
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to an exaggerated point of pixelation in order to distort and misrepresent the original images.
Similarly, Woodland 1-4 (2017) [Figure 24 (r)] were multiple elongated panels that encoded rural scenes (rather than the metropolitan data portrayed in Graffiti
Studies: Berlin). Their narrow, horizontal format represented the horizon line of a digitised landscape. Both works aimed to challenge conventional concepts of photographic and landscape representation.
Figure 24: (l) Booth, M. (2017). Graffiti Studies: Berlin. (Detail). [Inkjet print on
paper]. ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2017). Woodland 1-4. (Detail).
[Plastic, enamel paint, aluminium]. Installation view. Mining Pyrite.
The Armory, Sydney (17/06/17-20/08/17). ©Mark Booth
UCP
On some of my works, the Universal Camouflage Pattern [see ‘Jellybean’,
Chapter Two, p. 15] provide a more ‘traditional’ approach to camouflage design. In the series colour[kələr]
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Figure 25: (l) Booth, M. (2013). colour[kələr]
[PVC pipe, acrylic paint]. ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2016). 28.300-90°.
[PVC pipe, vinyl wrap]. Installation view. War: A Playground Perspective.
The Armory, Sydney (14/05/16-14/08/16). ©Mark Booth
A combination of UCP’s and digitised motifs were used on Munitions (2017)
[Figure 26]. In this series of works, re-appropriated toy guns had their original garish colours replaced with drabber camouflage colours that transformed them from harmless playthings into menacing weapons, reflecting on contemporary issues of children’s desensitisation to violence, media saturated with death and destruction, and the normality associated with today’s readily available toys of war.
Figure 26: Booth, M. (2017). Munitions. (Detail). [Plastic, enamel paint]. ©Mark Booth
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Tessellation
On some of my recent sculptures, Voronoi diagram imaging [see ‘Voronoi diagrams’, Chapter Two, p. 19] has been a source of information for the generation of camouflage patterns. For example, repetitive tessellated arrangements can be seen on
Schema (2019) [Figure 27 (l)] and Concrete Dispositions (2020) [Figure 27 (r)]. These sequences and markings are more hard-edged and uniformed than the free-flowing patterns of the UCP—despite their apparent chaotic appearance, they are more regular and predictable, and display a greater energy.
Figure 27: (l) Booth, M. (2019). Schema:Yellow. (Detail). [Enamel paint, acrylic,
aluminium]. ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2020). Concrete Dispositions No.1.
[Enamel paint, concrete]. ©Mark Booth
Background blending
I believe that the visual disorientation of an object can be heightened when a pattern on that object replicates its immediate surroundings. For example, Tigrit (2016)
[Figure 28] was a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe sculpture mounted directly to a gallery wall. An adhesive vinyl wrap on its surface had an identical pattern to the one reproduced on the wall behind the artwork—the sculpture assimilated completely with its background.
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Figure 28: Booth, M. (2016). Tigrit. (Detail). [PVC pipe, vinyl wrap].
Installation view. TARNUNG. Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney
(03/09/16-21/10/16). ©Mark Booth
I employed another adaptive camouflage design to enhance background integration on Kokoda (2016) [Figure 29 (l)], a large free-standing PVC pipe work installed amongst vegetation in a public park. The sculpture’s presence was minimised by pattern and colour-modification to best complement the surroundings. To most viewers the sculpture remained anonymous, unidentifiable as an artwork—it could have been misinterpreted as a natural organic formation such as a root system or plant composition.
The same could be said for Jellybean (2017) [Figure 29 (r)], a sculpture bound high up a tree in a rainforest. The camouflaged fabric wrapped around the sculpture mimicked the weave of the surrounding foliage. The irregular composition of the netting, activated by local conditions such as the movement of air through the perforated material, made the surface patterns appear to jump off the work, further deconstructing the form’s outline and amplifying its disguise. The work, therefore, not only displayed the same characteristics as its environment, but had the same mannerisms too—as the leaves of the trees shimmered in the breeze, the sculpture’s
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surface reciprocated with undulations and gesticulations of its own. These visual irregularities “deceive the eye by creating the perception of edge where there is no edge, thus distracting . . . neural processors” (Haskell, 2012, p. 204). The fabric disrupted the underlying form, and aided background blending to such an extent that the original base structure became unrecognisable—the artwork was rendered almost entirely invisible against the tree canopy.
Figure 29: (l) Booth, M. (2016). Kokoda. [PVC pipe, vinyl wrap]. Installation view.
Future/Public:Artlands. Dubbo, NSW (27-30/10/16). ©Mark Booth;
(r) Booth, M. (2017). Jellybean. [PVC pipe, nylon netting]. Installation view.
Sculpture at Scenic World. Katoomba, NSW (07/04/17-07/05/17). ©Mark Booth
Illusion and Scale
The sculptures Yellow:23.300-90° (2013) [Figure 30 (l)] and 22.300-90° (2014)
[Figure 30 (c)] were concerned with scale and illusions of materiality. Viewer recognition of their mass was influenced by the lack of volume surrounding them. They were large-scale sculptures painted in monochromatic enamels traditionally associated with powder coated outdoor steel sculptures (for example, yellow or grey). This form of trickery gave the impression that they were constructed from a base material other than plastic.
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Scale played an important role when viewing these sculptures. Hughes (2015) states: “Unless the [object] is relational, scale vanishes” (p. 584). I believe, therefore, that a sculpture’s scale diminishes when located in an expansive context (outdoors) and, conversely, increases when confined in a small space (gallery). The use of industrial- sized PVC pipe made the sculptures large. Designed in multiple parts, their sections could be easily disassembled and reassembled to fit into tight spaces—when rebuilt in confined areas their proportions were substantial in relation to the dimensions around them, thus amplifying their scale. This can be seen to best effect in Cold Steel (2015)
[Figure 30 (r)], a large monochromatic work stuffed inside a disused industrial ball- crusher. It is difficult for the viewer to differentiate between the artwork and the receptacle, and to discern where one ends and the other begins. Was the writhing mass of pipes an actual functioning feature of the abandoned grinder, integral to its machinations, or were they simply a non-functioning addition?
Figure 30: (l) Booth, M. (2013). Yellow:23.300-90°. [PVC pipe, enamel paint].
©Mark Booth; (c) Booth, M. (2014). 22.300-90°. [PVC pipe, enamel paint]. Installation
view. Plastic Action. Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, NSW (06/02/15-22/03/15).
©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2015). Cold Steel. [PVC pipe, enamel paint].
Installation view. Cementa15. Kandos, NSW (09-12/04/15). ©Mark Booth
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Assimilation
A Ganzfeld-based visual anomaly occurred when viewing the installation
11+UPVC9.323745.006474 (2011) [Figure 31]. Here, a series of PVC pipe works were sprayed matt-white and mounted to a wall of the same colour and finish. The gallery was flooded with fluorescent cool-white light designed to disorient the viewer and merge the sculptures into the substrate they were clinging to. This combination of monochromatic light and colour induced an unusual optical distortion of the wall-based works— a hallucinatory sensation occured after prolonged viewing, resulting in the apparent oscillation of the objects. This could be described as a sensation similar to snow blindness. Trying to distinguish between shape/background and light/shadow was difficult. Matt paint on all the surfaces eliminated any glare and reflection, enhancing the illusionary effects, and perfectly assimilating the forms with their surroundings to create an installation with a sense of transience and non-presence. In these works all frames of reference were lost. This kind of visual experience can also be seen in the works of Eliasson and Turrell [see ‘Monochromatic colour’, Chapter Three, p. 22].
Figure 31: Booth, M. (2011). 11+UPVC9.323745.006474. (Detail). [PVC pipe, enamel
paint, fluorescent light]. 11+UPVC9.323745.006474. MOP Projects, Sydney (2011).
©Mark Booth
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Conundrum
I am of the opinion that once an object has been relocated from its original environment and positioned in an alternative one, its physicality and presence becomes immediately obvious to the viewer:
Highly effective camouflage, within its designated surroundings, melts into the
background, becoming almost invisible. Necessarily, the colouring and
patterning are maximised towards mimicking their host environment. Outside
this intended setting, however, the visual effect is severely compromised, even
reversed, with the camouflaged object now contrasting with and standing out
from its new background (Elias et al., 2015, p. 129).
This dichotomy is exaggerated in my exhibitions Plastic Action (2015) [Figure
32 (l)] and Holding Pattern (2019) [Figure 32 (r)]. Rather than blending the camouflaged artworks with an appropriate background (here, for example, woodland) the sculptures (due to their referencing of nature) looked completely artificial in the prefabricated, harshly-lit, sterile gallery spaces. It could be said that the accentuated sculptures were now disguised, paradoxically, in a conspicuous manner.
Figure 32: (l) Booth, M. (2015). 22.150-88°. (Detail). [PVC pipe, acrylic paint,
aluminium tables]. Installation view. Plastic Action. Bathurst Regional Art Gallery,
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NSW (06/02/15-22/03/15). ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2019). Holding Pattern.
(Detail). [PVC pipe, vinyl wrap, table]. Installation view. Holding Pattern.
Canberra Contemporary Art Space, ACT (17-27/10/19). ©Brenton McKeachie
Parasitism
Unlike Jellybean, Tunable Colouration No.1 (2018) [Figure 33] was not strapped to an organic substrate in a rural environment—rather, it hung four metres off the ground on an abandoned industrial apparatus in an urban area. Camouflaged fabric cloaking the sculpture closely matched the colour of the edifice it was attached to. In appearance it could have been a manufactured, prefabricated extension of the framework, or alternatively, a parasitic growth or wasp’s nest. Here the discord between the object and its host was less pronounced than the imbalance created by placing, for example, Holding Pattern in a gallery—Tunable Colouration No.1 was a similar colour to the steel structure and could have been a functioning part of it. On the other hand it could, like Jellybean, have been referencing a more natural organism.
Figure 33: Booth, M. (2018). Tunable Colouration No.1. [PVC pipe, nylon netting].
Installation views. Contour 556. Canberra, ACT (05-18/10/18). ©Mark Booth
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Chapter Five. Site/Non-site
This chapter is concerned with theoretical ruminations on the definitions of site/non-site, biotopes and wasteland. It will consider themes of displacement and dislocation, disposition, situationism, permanency, ephemerality and symbiosis in relation to a selection of artworks. These will be cross-referenced with the earthwork
Mud Dispositions.
Site
In her definitive essay Sculpture in the Expanded Field (1979), the art theorist and critic Rosalind Krauss discussed the radical changes that were taking place in contemporary sculpture during the 1960s and 1970s—namely, the breaking down of conceptual boundaries and the interactions between these innovative sculptural interventions. She defined sculpture’s relationship to space as follows: “Redefining sculpture in a place is a heterogeneous representation and displacement of a specific space. It is in and of the site but not part of it—it is the inverse” (Krauss, 1979, pp. 30-
44). This disconnection is an important consideration in the determination of a location for Mud Dispositions—site-centricity and site-selection are paramount so that the artwork, although not a part of the site, has the appearance of belonging to it.
Site centricity. Mud Dispositions is a negotiation between artwork, artist and landscape—I lived and worked in the same environment as the artwork. In order to experience it one must be physically present at the site on which it sits. A similar interrelation exists in James Turrell’s The Roden Crater (1977-) [Figure 34], an immersive land art installation situated in a dormant volcano in the Arizona desert that consists of a series of interconnected subterranean tunnels, chambers and apertures to the sky (James Turrell’s Roden Crater Set to Open After 45 Years, n.d., para. 2). The work relies on “human visual and psychological perception . . . [it] is a controlled
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environment for the experiencing and contemplation of light” (Roden Crater: About, n.d., para. 1). Its location is central to the artwork—one would not exist without the other.
Figure 34: Turrell, J. (1977-). The Roden Crater. [Excavated earth].
Painted Desert, Northern Arizona, USA.
Source: https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/james-turrell-roden-crater. ©James Turrell
Similarly, Richard Long’s ‘walks’ “[extend] the possibilities of sculpture beyond traditional materials and methods . . . [they] bring together physical endurance and principles of order, action and idea” (Richard Long, n.d., para. 1). His footsteps disturb the ground and alter its appearance, the walk itself becoming the artwork. For example, in A Line Made by Walking (1967) [Figure 35] Long repeatedly tramples over a field of grass, flattening the vegetation to create a transient pathway (Richard Long: A
Line Made by Walking, n.d., para. 2). Here the artist is utilising a specific site with a performance which tranforms the location—no longer just a host of the work, it becomes the work itself. Long also creates gallery-based ‘non-sites’ [see ‘Non-site’, p.
49] to document his durational journeys, displaying maps and texts detailing the locations he has visited. He often uses earth, mud and other materials from the landscapes he traverses to paint directly onto gallery walls. Later in this text I discuss
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the possible relocation of Mud Dispositions from site to non-site for assessment (and the necessity of presenting documentation of the artwork in situ) [see ‘Documentation’,
Chapter Eight, p. 75].
Figure 35: Long, R. (1967). A Line Made by Walking. [Photograph, gelatin silver print
on paper]. Source: https://publicdelivery.org/richard-long-line-made-by-walking/.
©Richard Long
Situationism. The theory that “[b]ehavior is believed to be influenced by external, situational factors rather than internal traits or motivations” (Situationism, n.d.) is known as situationism. Therefore, from a situationist perspective, I argue that the placement of a sculpture in a specific site, and its subsequent relationship and integration with that site, will affect the reaction and interaction of the viewer with the sculpture. My work 30.300-88/90° (2017-2020) [Figure 36] are an ongoing series of large-scale sculptures that address the deliberate misplacement (or disembodiment) of an object in a landscape. Krauss (1979) observes: “[sculpture] was . . . what was in the landscape that was not the landscape . . . [they are] forms which are distinct from the setting only because, though visually continuous with grass and trees, they are not in fact part of the landscape” (p. 36). This is true of 30.300-88/90°—although they are visually compatible with outdoor locations (that is to say, their patterns and forms
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resemble what an organic object should look like in nature), their synthetic incongruousness renders them totally incompatible and mismatched with their surroundings.
Figure 36: Booth, M. (2017). 30.300-88/90°. [PVC pipe, vinyl wrap].
Installation view. Sculpture on the Wharf. Sydney (01/11/17-16/03/18). ©Mark Booth
30.300-88/90° is questioning the visualisation and presence of an artwork in space. So too does Mary Miss’ excavational earthwork Perimeters/Pavilions/Decoys
(1977) [Figure 37]. A large subterranean chamber has slots in the wall of a passage that circumvents the underground void affording views into a deeper compartment of absolute blackness. People are disorientated as they navigate through artificially constructed components that appear to be out of context with their natural surroundings.
When referencing this artwork, Krauss (1979) states that “[t]he work itself is . . . entirely below grade: half atrium, half tunnel, the boundary between outside and in” (p.
30). In order to create the subterrestrial vacuum there is a displacement of soil below ground and a deposition of it above ground. In Mud Dispositions, soil is appropriated from the site in order to construct mud bricks—here the movement of earth is creating positive forms rather than a negative void (the inverse of Miss’ process).
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Figure 37: Miss, M. (1977). Perimeters/Pavilions/Decoys. (Detail). [Excavated hole].
Installation view. Nassau County Museum, Roslyn, NY (1977-78).
Source: http://marymiss.com/projects/perimeterspavilionsdecoys/. ©Mary Miss
Nature’s materials. The perpetuation of Mud Dispositions is determined by the fragility of the materials it is made from and the durational destruction caused by the processes of nature. These themes resonate with the land art of Andy Goldsworthy who
“works with what he finds in the landscape and mostly where he finds it. Some of his works remain, others die, melt, [and] are blown away by the wind” (Rivers and Tides -
Andy Goldsworthy: Film and Conversation, n.d., para. 1). Goldsworthy uses natural materials such as ice, twigs, leaves and stones to create intricate patterns and compositions that directly reference complex biological forms found in nature [Figure
38]. In Mud Dispositions and the work of Goldsworthy, time and its ramifications inevitably lead to decomposition. The unpredictability and preciousness of the accumulations render them all the more beautiful—were these not thoroughly documented at the time of making most would be reclaimed by the land with only the artist as witness to their existence.
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Figure 38: Goldsworthy, A. (1987). Sticks. [Wood].
Source: https://www.fasinfrankvintage.com/blogs/blog/17952092-andy-goldsworthy-
sticks-and-stones. ©Andy Goldsworthy
Gwion Gwion. The Gwion Gwion ancient cave paintings [Figure 39] in the
Kimberley ranges of north-western Australia allow us further reflection on the durability of an artwork. They are difficult to accurately date because of their unique ability to regenerate in a “beginning-less process of self-painting” (Mircan, 2015, p. 13).
Pigments have slowly been replaced by a symbiotic “biofilm of living, pigmented micro-organisms whose natural replenishment may account for the longevity and vividness [of the paintings]” (Pettigrew, 2010, p. 326). Photosynthesis triggers chemical reactions in the spores, bacteria and fungi that constitute the biofilm, paradoxically increasing the permanency of the images by etching them deeper into the rock. The older the paintings become, the more their persistence and permanency increases. Their unique ability to resist effacement creates an eternal artwork. The stability of Mud
Dispositions, however, is compromised over time—as it ages its constituents will deteriorate until the artwork is eventually destroyed.
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Figure 39: Gwion Gwion cave paintings. (Detail). Kimberley, Western Australia.
Source: https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2012/11/4-million-endowment-
for-rock-art-research/. ©Peter Eve
Non-site
Rosalind Krauss (1979) believes that sculpture “sits in a particular place and speaks in a symbolical tongue about the meaning or use of that place” (p. 33). When sculpture is removed from its intended site to a ‘non-site’ (for example, from a site- specific outdoor setting into a gallery) it enters “the space of what could be called its negative condition—a kind of sightlessness, or homelessness, an absolute loss of place”
(Krauss, 1979, p. 34) [see ‘Conundrum’, Chapter Four, p. 41]. These relationships between artwork and place are demonstrated in Robert Smithson’s “temporal entropic earthworks” (Biography, n.d., para. 3). Smithson called the specific outdoor locations for his sculptures ‘sites’—the art galleries where he exhibited other works were classified as ‘non-sites’ (Robert Smithson, n.d., para. 5). An example of a sited work is
Spiral Jetty (1970) [Figure 40 (l)], a large counter clockwise spiral made from rocks and mud that juts into a lake. Smithson’s non-site works were accumulations of detritus taken from a site and placed in a gallery. They were often compartmentalised and linked with maps and photographs of the site from where they had originated [Figure 40 (r)].
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Smithson is transferring the meaning of a particular place by representing it in an alternative space. This he does through documentation and relocation of materials.
He states: “[O]ne site can represent another site which does not resemble it—thus the
Non-site” (Smithson, 1968, para. 2). Mud Dispositions may well require assessment in a gallery. Therefore, the disconnected terrapods will need to reflect the original site in a non-site. They will not be trying to replicate the original site—rather, they will have to give a sense of attachment and recognition of where they came from:
[T]he key to Non-site is the concept of displacement, how the meaning of an
object is changed by removal to another site. But … the Non-site retains a
connection to its original site (through the negative impression it leaves as well
as the documentation that accompanies it) (Mackey, 2011, para. 2).
Figure 40: (l) Smithson, R. (1970). Spiral Jetty. [Mud, basalt rock]. Installation view.
Great Salt Lake, Utah. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smithson. ©Estate
of Robert Smithson; (r) Smithson, R. (1968). Non-site (Palisades-Edgewater, N.J.).
[Enamel on aluminium with stones, and ink on paper drawing]. Purchased with funds
from the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Whitney Museum of American Art.
Source: https://whitney.org/collection/works/5560. ©Estate of Robert Smithson
So, one can see that the perception of a sculpture’s materiality and meaning varies depending on its location (site or non-site). Artist and architect Richard Goodwin
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attaches sculptural extensions to architectural frameworks: “Parasites build on the existing dissolution of the autonomous building . . . The sculptural prosthesis as other to the self-contained building . . . manipulates the identity of the building” (Goodwin,
2018, p. 37). Goodwin believes that these armatures need not be destructive—rather, they can bridge and connect buildings (Parasite: The Building, n.d., para. 1).
Metaphorically, it could be argued that Mud Dispositions is a dynamic, reciprocal attachment (or sculptural prosthetic) linked to its host site (the dam). Goodwin’s carbuncles are parasitic in that they conceptually feed off the support structures of their architectural hosts. I believe, however, that they are also commensalistic [see
‘Symbiosis’, Chapter Seven, p. 65]. For example, Deepdene Penthouse Parasite
(Goodwin, 2010) [Figure 41] is a roof that provides protection from the sun, beneficially cooling the building it is attached to. Neither the extension nor premises are harmed by their association.
Figure 41: Goodwin, R. Deepdene Penthouse Parasite. (2010).
Source: https://richard-goodwin.com/deepdene-penthouse-parasite/. ©Richard Goodwin
Wasteland. In The Plant Contract (2018a) Prudence Gibson discusses the exploitative relationship that humans have with nature, and their destruction and
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urbanisation of the land. She argues that a human symbiosis with nature is needed in order to end this misuse:
The wasteland is . . . a space on the urban periphery which had a prior utility but
is now redundant. It is also a place that humans have abandoned, neglected or
otherwise misused; a place that once had vegetal life . . . It has the remembrance
of nature and instrumentalism, but the terms and conditions of the space have
altered (pp. 21-23).
These areas were once sites of industry, agriculture, mining, pollution and other forms of human misappropriation and degradation at the expense of nature and the environment. Left to their own devices, however, these wastelands will re-wild— vegetation such as weeds, grass and moss will take hold in the harshest of places to restore and reclaim what was once theirs (Gibson, 2018a, pp. 22-25). I speculate that there is a connection between the wastelands and the biotic growth that occurs on Mud
Dispositions—organisms that lay dormant, hidden inside the earth bricks, began to emerge over time [Figure 54]. Green shoots and fungi pushed through and spread across the surface of the terrapods, regaining the tampered soil as their own.
In EXOTE (2011) [Figure 42] the Belgian artist Kris Verdonk creates his own wasteland, an artificial ecosystem of invasive alien species (IAS) specific to his home country. IAS are “animals and plants that are introduced accidentally or deliberately into a natural environment where they are not normally found, with serious negative consequences for their new environment” (Invasive Alien Species, n.d., para. 1). Once established in an area, IAS threaten its biodiversity. In Verdonk’s synthetic jungle the more assertive species have free reign to contaminate and eradicate the weaker specimens through disease and consumption. Gibson (2018a) writes: “[D]ominant species spoilt the bounty by taking over the other threatening elements, leaving a
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wasteland of post-violence . . . post-virus, a post-apocalypse. Thus, chaos ensued, and the outcome was a hideous zoo of overriding nature” (p. 25).
Figure 42: Verdonck, K. EXOTE. (2011). [Various animal and plant species].
Installation view. EXOTE. Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture,
Hasselt, Belgium (30/04/11-21/08/11). Source: https://
www.flickr.com/photos/z33be/5693389664. ©Kristof Vrancken/Z33
Mud Dispositions, I argue, is situated on a wasteland (for analysis of the dam chosen as a site for the earthwork refer to ‘Dam’, Chapter Six, p. 61). The dam is an artificial feature, a large crater dug into the land for the retention of water at the expense of the local terrain. On initiation of the installation the dam and its environs were neglected due to prolonged adverse climatic conditions that had led to a drought.
Vegetation had died and the soil dried, resulting in semi-desertification of the area.
However, as time passed and the terrapods accumulated, rains broke the drought, water returned to the basin, and vegetation regrew [Figure 43]. Gibson states: “[P]lants in these wasteland spaces create an atmosphere of resilience and versatility” (2018a, p.
23). Mud Dispositions could be construed as a symbol of the rejuvenation of the dam from wasteland to reimbursement of local habitat—as the components of the earthwork multiplied, so the constitution of the surrounding environment improved through
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re-greening and a surplus of water. This is in direct opposition to Verdonk’s EXOTE, where his wasteland became a toxic combination of competitive species that, were they to escape, would have irreparably damaged the environment around them.
Figure 43: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Panoramic view (post drought, April 2020). ©Mark Booth
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Chapter Six. Methodologies
This chapter details the processes involved in the research and development of
Mud Dispositions. Initially, I compiled a list of components as a methodological framework to inform decision-making processes in the location, construction and implementation of the earthwork. These factors would ultimately assist in the successful integration of Mud Dispositions with its terrain. It was as follows:
• Pattern: conceals and disguises an object to minimise its detection and
identification.
• Colour: relates, matches and blends an object with its surroundings.
• Tone: light and shade create the illusion of flatness on curved objects, depth on
flat surfaces and dictate shadow, reflection and illumination in the field.
• Form: disruption of shape and outline can fragment a sculptural body.
• Temperature: determines object visibility (dependant on season and climate).
• Scale: distance and perspective distort an object through space; object
perception is affected by its size in relation to its situation.
• Material: local material can be used as a composite for sculptural construction to
assist in site integration.
Material and Scale
I will refer to the items on the list of components in brackets when they become relevant.
[Material]: I decided that the main constituent of Mud Dispositions would be earth bricks cast from a plaster press-mould—earth mined from the very site that the installation was established on would, in my opinion, be the most suitable material for its composition and provide a naturally occurring foundation assisting in site integration
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and eliminating any artificial or synthetic connotations. Earth would also be the most environmentally friendly material to use.
[Scale]: A preparatory ready-made concrete block that had the potential to be replicated in earth would act as a base-form for the casting of a mould. I assembled a prototype module that consisted of six of the concrete blocks attached to an inner core
[Figure 44]. This preliminary model was built in order to pre-empt any potential issues in the construction process of the earth terrapods. It would also act as a marker to help determine the overall scale of the installation once the modules had been replicated and placed en masse on the site. The earthwork’s size in relation to its surroundings was important for its successful integration with the chosen site—if the installation was too large it would be overtly conspicuous and its obfuscation incomplete (this contradicts the presumption that ‘traditional’ representation of sculpture in expansive spaces should be monumental and attention-grabbing). Conversely, if the earthwork was too small it would be a diminished and insignificant feature against its backdrop.
Figure 44: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Concrete].
Prototype concrete module. ©Mark Booth
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Casting
The ephemerality and decomposition of the materials that constitute Mud
Dispositions will lead to their corruption and decay over time. Degradation is also inevitable through the process of casting: “[R]epetition, which is intended as a defence against difference, can actually produce eruptive difference” (Dyer & Parr, 2012, p. 86).
Casting the earth bricks is a quick and efficient way of reproducing and replicating the modules. Transgressions occur, however, during this process—although the forms remain inherently the same, their size, composition and appearance ultimately vary due to material-mixture and drying times. This occurrence is in addition to the natural progression of decay and dissolution that the modules are subjected to from exposure to the elements: “Destruction will alter [the earthwork’s] form and appearance, yet its substance will be untouched” (Steyerl, 2010, p. 49).
Here it is pertinent to discuss the work of Hany Armanious and his duplication of objects. Armanious transforms original materials into alternative cast matter—the new forms appear to be made from something they are not. For example, in Limerick
(2012) [see Figure 45] a seemingly innocuous pile of bricks on a metal pedestal are, on closer inspection, a group of objects cast from pigmented polyurethane, foam and resin.
I have discussed this illusory technique in relation to my work in ‘Illusion and Scale’
[see Chapter Four, p. 38]. Armanious casts in order to create a unique, single entity, contrary to the more common association of casting as a means of obtaining a series or multiple of the same object (Ellegood et al., 2011, p. 37). So, in Armanious’ case,
“[c]asting an object . . . confers value—marking a shift from commodity good to symbol” (Ellegood et al., 2011, p. 37).
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Figure 45: Armanious, H. (2012). Limerick. [Cast pigmented polyurethane, foam,
resin]. Installation view. Hany Armanious: The Golden Thread.
Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (1/2-7/4/2012).
Source: http://www.galerieallen.com/en/artistes/oeuvres/4/hany-armanious. ©MUM
I argue that Mud Dispositions, rather than adopt Armanious’ idiosyncratic methodologies in relation to object replication and significance, uses the casting process in a more traditional sense—that is, to clone multiples of an original object to achieve recurrence and nothing else (as opposed to objectifying the forms in a purposeful way)
[Figure 46].
Figure 46: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. (detail). [Biomatter]. ©Mark Booth
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Mould-making
Once I had decided that the scale of the concrete module was practical in relation to its surroundings (a number of the replicated modules at this scale would have a strong enough presence on the site without being too obvious) I made a plaster cast of one of the concrete footings. The cast was poured in two halves to create a two-part press mould [Figure 47]. This served as a receptacle for the reproduction of the mud bricks (I later made an additional mould to increase the rapidity of the replication process). Plaster was the most suitable material to make the moulds from as it readily absorbed water from the biomatter packed into them, shortening drying and release times of the earth bricks from the mould.
Figure 47: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Making of plaster cast. ©Mark Booth
Biomatter
An appropriate balance of materials was formulated to create the strongest and most suitable mud composition for casting. Each earth brick consisted of approximately one shovel of sand, four shovels of earth and three large handfuls of dead leaves, twigs and other organic detritus [Figure 48]. The sand and leaves provided aggregate, acting as a binder to give the mixture strength and to help prevent cracking during the drying process. Water was added to the amalgam and mixed with the ingredients until a
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workable solidity was achieved (it was important not to add too much as this would lead to excessive evaporation, high shrinkage and cracking of the earth brick in the mould).
Figure 48: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Earth brick composition. ©Mark Booth
The pliable biomatter was then packed into the mould and left to dry for 24 hours before removal (prior to casting, talcum powder was used to dust the inside of the plaster mould to prevent it from sticking to the mud during the drying process and to aid in the separation of the two plaster sections from the brick once dry). On release the bricks were sun-dried for two to three days depending on air temperature and flipped once for even desiccation [Figure 49].
Figure 49: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Casting and drying of mud bricks. ©Mark Booth
Terrapods
Six of the dry earth bricks were then amalgamated into one individual unit which I called a terrapod. An accumulated grouping of these would constitute the
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installation Mud Dispositions. Each core consisted of a particleboard cube (this material was light and easy to work with and provided a framework for the earth bricks to be attached to) [Figure 50]. Three steel bolts were nutted to each side of the cubes to provide stability for the bricks (the pins would locate holes drilled in the bricks, thus strengthening the bond between brick and core). I used a water-based dispersion adhesive (non-solvent glue) to fix the bricks to the core (this type of glue was eco- friendlier than its solvent equivalent).
Figure 50: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Core construction and brick attachment. ©Mark Booth
Dam
The dam on my property was chosen as the most suitable location for Mud
Dispositions [see ‘Dam as site’, Chapter Seven, p. 69] [Figure 51]. Access to the dam was possible through an opening in the rim at its northern end. The terrapods, strapped to a trolley, were individually transported to the site (a distance of approximately one kilometre from where they were made).
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Figure 51: (l) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Satellite location of the dam. Source: https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Mount
+Narran,+196+Tunbridge+Rd,+Merriwa+NSW+2329/@32.245419,150.3013395,1278a
,35y,347.5h,36.12t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x6b0c74201316b4c5:0xbcf988e9b493
93a7!8m2!3d-32.2371579!4d150.302851?hl=en-GB. ©Google Maps;
(r) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. The dam. ©Mark Booth
Slurries
[Colour/Pattern/Tone]: Colour schemes and patterns (camouflage) to mask the sculpture’s surface were developed from naturally occurring biomatter (for example, ochres from charcoal, iron, mud and leaves) which was ground and mixed into a slurry
[Figure 52]. These tones and hues were based on local flora physiology—slurry palettes were adjusted to respond to seasonal variations in flora colouration and density effected by drought and rain. For example, slurries applied during wet periods would be richer in colour due to an abundance of green foliage, and during drought the vegetation, blanched of colour, would make the slurries browner and more washed-out. When applied to the modules, the slurries were key elements linking the material and the ephemeral, mimicking the ‘host’ site, increasing visual integration and (conversely) physical disintegration of the installation with its surroundings.
[Temperature]: Colours chosen to mask Mud Dispositions were critical in order to accurately match it with its environment. Through crushing, sieving and dissolving
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local biomatter in water, a palette of turbid pigmentations was developed that best reflected the environment. Four predominant colours were used: brown (earth from provincial areas around the dam); orange (a loamy clay soil from the dam edge); grey
(ash); black (charcoal). The latter two were sourced from the legacy of past bushfires.
[Form]: These deliquescent slurries were mixed on site using water from the dam and applied directly to the bricks in a spontaneous fashion. The colours, tones and random patterns the slurries created on the surface of the bricks visually disestablished the artificiality of the forms, blending them consummately with their background.
Figure 52: (l) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Slurry mix. ©Mark Booth; (r) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions.
[Biomatter]. Slurry application. ©Mark Booth
All of the procedures discussed above are the building-block methodologies for the creation and implementation of Mud Dispositions. Refinements and additions (in conformity with the list of components) were made along the way. These will be discussed in the next chapter.
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Chapter Seven: Results
Disposition
Defined as the way objects are placed or arranged in relation to other things, disposition plays an integral role in the siting of Mud Dispositions on the dam and in the proximity of the terrapods to other organic/non-organic articles. I assert that the physicality of the installation is critical in relation to its surroundings in order to covertly transform the visible artificiality of the earthwork’s unnatural forms into a natural-looking organic entity. This involves the use of specific camouflage techniques, fused with organic materials, to achieve the most effective visual mediation and material integration with the site. I argue that by using an unorthodox setting such as a hidden or relatively inaccessible domain (the dam) rather than a more traditional or readily accessible locale, that detection of the site or direction of the viewer is greater
—the more substantial the obfuscation of the artwork, the more pronounced and effective its disappearance is when attempting to identify it in the field. By referencing the elements from the list of components, it was possible to locate an appropriate site and determine the most suitable materials for the installation.
Mud Dispositions avoids interference with its site by incorporating a set of characteristics that bind it to a specific locus—it is constituted from the actual soils and biomatter of its immediate vicinity, thus precisely replicating the characteristics of neighbouring milieus [Figure 53]. In such a situation “[c]olour and form melt into the variegated surface[s] . . . [yielding] the camouflaged beauty of belonging” (Haskell,
2012, p. 200).
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Figure 53: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions (detail). [Biomatter]. ©Mark Booth
Biotopes
Biotopes (habitats) are environmental regions associated with specific plants and animals. The biological relationships between organisms and their surroundings constitute the ecology of the biotope (Biotope, n.d., para. 1-3). A symbiotic relationship consists of “mutual sustainability” (Gibson et al., 2018b, p. 41). The terrapods and the soil of the dam merge as the deleterious processes of decomposition take effect. The ground on which the installation sits slowly absorbs and dismantles the artwork—earth mixes with earth. The bio-bricks are contrived, artificial and unnaturally deposited on the site. Yet, I propose, they are simultaneously temporal, transitional and resigned to reclamation. Although their structural integrity is compromised, it is through this concession that they repurpose, recycle and re-present the soil, sharing an authenticity with the land and “a built-in openness to change, erosion and softening into abstraction, representing the natural deterioration of things” (Denes, 1990, p. 919).
Symbiosis
Symbiotic connections between organisms can be mutualistic (beneficial to both parties); commensalistic (one gains benefits while the other is unharmed); or parasitic
(one is harmed, the other unharmed). (Commensalism, n.d., para. 1). At first it appears
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that a dichotomy occurs between Mud Dispositions and the fungi and other bacteria that live interstitially on its surface—the organisms feed and grow off the earthen forms, breaking them down in a parasitic manner, giving nothing back to the artwork (which serves no other purpose than being an artwork) [Figure 54]. I argue, however, that this relationship is mutualistic rather than parasitic—the decomposition of Mud Dispositions is encouraged and accelerated by the organic activity which, therefore, plays an instrumental part in the reintegration of the artwork back to the soil, and hence, the material it was created from. “[T]he rights of mastery . . . come down to parasitism.
Rights of symbiosis however are reciprocal and must give back to nature” (Gibson,
2018a, p. 3). Mud Dispositions does just this.
Figure 54: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. (Details).
[Biomatter]. ©Mark Booth
Ready-mades
Some of the items on the list of components were more influential than others in defining the final constitution, appearance and placement of Mud Dispositions. In conjunction with the list, local factors such as site accessibility, visibility, topography and composition were taken into consideration in the development, construction and implementation of the installation. The repurposing and “appropriation of familiar
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existing commodities” (Ellegood et al., 2011, p. 25) (in this case the ready-made concrete block) formed the basis for the new disconnected, autonomous forms of Mud
Dispositions. “Sculpture needs casting to create surrogate things, stand-ins for objects when the thing itself is not enough. Casts multiply what is singular, provide permanence to the ephemeral, stabilize what is entropic, and offer further efficiencies of form” (Le
Feuvre, Orr, Williams and Wagner, 2012, p. 52). The mimetic terrapods are accumulations of material from casts of commercial hardware arranged in random modular configurations. This “transference of information” (Ellegood et al., 2011, p.
45) from the precast concrete block to cast earth block produces sculptural iterations where individual components cluster and conglomerate to create a greater whole. Their mould-based make-up references mass industrial production and seriality of form.
Tetrapods. Once dam water levels had been restored by rainfall following cessation of the drought, Mud Dispositions clung to the edge of the waterline like a symbolic flood barrier, akin to tetrapod seawalls used in the prevention and impediment of coastal erosion [Figure 55 (l)]. The wall of earth that Mud Dispositions creates can be interpreted as an opposition to the revived aqueous content of the dam—a blockade temporarily holding back the water (or, conversely, preventing water from running back into the dam) [Figure 55 (r)].
Figure 55: (l) Example of coastal tetrapods. Source: https://namrataa.fm.alibaba.com/
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product/101648456-100653148/TETRAPODS_rocks.html. ©Alibaba.com;
(r) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. (Detail). [Biomatter]. ©Mark Booth
Repetition. The repetitious “doubling and . . . redoubling” (Le Feuvre et al.,
2012, p. 52) that constitutes the primitive building process of Mud Dispositions is characteristic of plant metamorphosis where “nature produces one part through another, creating a great variety of forms through the modification of a single organ” (Gibson et al., 2018b, p. 111). Each terrapod sequentially replicates its predecessor, becoming a
“vocabulary of simple, repeating units” (Moorhouse et al., 2004, p. 102).
Visibility
Agnes Denes’ installations [see ‘Displacement’, Chapter Three, p. 26] contain elements of the landscape with “sculptural forms [that blend] into their surroundings to become visible only in certain lights, angles, and perspectives, conveying the conflicting and interdependent aspects of art and existence, illusion and reality, imagination and fact” (Denes, 2008, p. 88). When Mud Dispositions is viewed from a distance, perspective-based distortion comes into play—as one moves away from the earthwork, clarity diminishes and assimilation with site increases [Figure 56].
Figure 56: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Panoramic view. ©Mark Booth
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The terrapods are placed in plain view, yet they hide in plain sight and question figure/ground relationships. The work’s brutalist structure seems at odds with its anti- monumentality—its weight and presence belie its ephemerality. When looking at the installation the viewer is not “sure of the identity or even of the actual forms [they are] looking at . . . confronting us with an experience just beyond our visual grasp, with something unfathomable, the imperceptible” (Moorhouse et al, 2004, p. 102).
Dam as site
Although access to the dam is relatively easy, the site has an anonymity— looking from the outside, the dam’s steep banks, surrounded by trees, are all that can be discerned. What lies inside is unknown—it is only as one climbs the rim and looks down that the dam and artwork reveal themselves. This assists in the concealment of
Mud Dispositions by “minimising presence profile” (Elias et al., 2015, p. 127).
Scale. Scale is important in relation to Mud Dispositions and its site—the confined, moderately sized hollow of the dam generates an intimacy that engages with the dimensions of the earthwork. I believe that if the terrapods had been installed, for example, in the surrounding bush, their physical presence would have been compromised and greatly diminished in the more dominant vegetal landscape.
Light/colour/tone. The anthropologist Michael Taussig writes that “colour is a whole lot more than hue . . . colour is not secondary to form . . . it is not an overlay draped like a skin over a shape” (Taussig, 2009, pp. 3-9). I believe that the colour of
Mud Dispositions is just as important as its form—in order to achieve maximum site immersion the terrapods needed to accurately match their surroundings by imitating the colours and patterns of natural elements around them. When first removed from the moulds, the uniformity of the plain brown colour of the earth bricks provided
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insufficient camouflage for high-level site integration—their monochromatic appearance looked too unnatural [Figure 57].
Figure 57: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Ariel view. ©Mark Booth
The surface of the forms, therefore, required further treatment to enhance background blending. In consultation with the list of components, and by observing the local lighting conditions and predominant colours and tones of the locale, I developed a range of natural slurries from earth samples at the dam. These compounds were applied to the terrapods directly in the field. Dug and mixed in situ, they yielded a palette of hues that exactly matched the environment—the slurries could not be anything but an exact replication of their backdrop as they were sourced directly from it. Application of the pattern and colour combinations were random and free-form. During this process splashes and drips inevitably fell on to the ground in the immediate vicinity of the terrapods—this spillage further assisted in background blending by blurring the boundaries between the forms and the terrain they sat on.
Light is drawn into the basin, bouncing and scattering luminosity off the water’s surface and illuminating the banks. Trees lining the outer rim help contain and concentrate light within the confines of the depression, simultaneously casting shadows
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and accentuating dips and depressions in the earth and natural debris. Colours and tones are less drab here than the outlying areas—the orange-red tones of the clay-based soils and the myriad ochre colours of multiple rocks scattered around the dam create a rich palette. In the summer months when temperatures are extreme, the whole scene bakes and whitens—colours and tones become monochromatic and harsh. When viewed as a whole, the landscape resembles a rugged Martian landscape [Figures 58-59].
Figure 58: Sols 1196-1197: Aeolian paradise. [Photograph]. Example of the Martian
landscape taken by the Curiosity rover (December 19, 2015). Mars Science Laboratory
mission (NASA’s Mars Exploration Program). Source: https://www.360cities.net /sets/
curiosity-mars/page/2. ©NASA/JPL Caltech/MSSS/Andrew Bodrov
Figure 59: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Panoramic view. ©Mark Booth
Orientation. Initial placement of the first terrapod was critical—all others would emanate from this spot. The expanding cluster needed to travel in an easterly direction—a southerly orientation would have thrown them into the dam water, and a
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northerly route would have seen them run up too acute an angle. If they had taken a westerly course they would have aligned across the main point of water entry for the dam—this could have caused water erosion and immediate damage to the installation before it had taken hold. Therefore, the logical route was east, hugging the high water line and the slope of a side wall.
Working in and with the terrain seemed to dictate a linear movement with little room for digression. During the summer months this specific path happened to follow the extent of the shadows cast by trees over the basin—the terrapods are either illuminated or darkened by constantly shifting patterns of light and shadow that move over them during the course of the day. This activity helps to negate any inanimate or static qualities that the sculptures would normally display, and enhances their assimilation with the ebbs and flows of nature’s cyclical rhythms.
Material. Local biomatter is an important consideration when constructing Mud
Dispositions—in my opinion it provides an unambiguous, explicit representation of site
[Figure 60]. “The Earth’s soil is nothing more than the accumulation of destroyed material on the surface of solid land” (Gibson, 2015, p. 21). This degraded matter, combined with other elemental factors (weather), plays a part in the decomposition and destruction of the soluble installation (apart from the central cube). Configured from biological elements, the earthen constituent of the terrapods ultimately re-engages with the soil in a liminal, transitional way, re-colonised by forces within, below and around them. The earthworks and site co-exist, sharing a commonality of soil.
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Figure 60: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Aerial view. ©Mark Booth
I believe that Mud Dispositions physically manipulates the landscape in a display of impermanent marking, its cohort of ingredients multiplying as a series of modules that command space on the land. Established on site as sculptures, they durationally dis-establish through decay, becoming a “stabilising and destabilising of formal progressions” (Moorhouse et al., 2004, p. 21). The reiteration of Mud
Dispositions and its ramifications will be discussed in the next chapter.
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Chapter Eight: Conclusion
Duration
In regard to Riverbed (2014) Olafur Eliasson states: “[T]he landscape I am representing [is] not real nature—it does not pretend to be a piece of nature. Under these stones there is wood. It is a construction, and it is inside a museum” (Eliasson and
Tojner, 2016, para. 17). Visually, Mud Dispositions also resembles a natural feature or part of the landscape, but closer inspection of its form reveals something less organic, the considered artificiality of its organised, moulded construction betraying its apparent communalisation with nature [Figure 61].
Figure 61: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Aerial view. ©Mark Booth
The terrapods need a central substrate for support, and it is here that the earthwork’s level of ephemerality comes into question. A degree of solidity is required for the core of each module to provide strength during transportation and placement/stacking of the modules on site. Mud Dispositions is a durational artwork and prolonging its installation is a necessity—relatively intact physical objects are required for assessment at the end of the research project. An organic core made, for example,
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from earth, would have reinforced the installation’s aesthetic of temporality but, other than providing a more purist form of support, would have compromised its integrity— the earthwork is time-based (it takes many months to accumulate a series of the terrapods) so each pod needs to hold its rigidity and longevity over an extended period of time. In order to achieve this lengthened stage of installation the support structure has to be made from durable materials. Here I acknowledge that an eco-compatible core constructed of highly decomposable and very strong biomaterials (for example, corn starch bioplastic polymers or biodegradable cellulose fibre-based matter) would have been more appropriate than the particleboard chosen. Transformation of the core will be a transitional process that progresses over time—moving forward, the work’s low ecological footprint will decrease further with more research and experimentation into contemporary materials for the armatures.
Documentation
Due to the temporality of Mud Dispositions, thorough documentation is needed to record its process of degradation. Photographs offer a perspectival view of the earthwork in relation to its site and immediate surroundings [Figure 62]. Drone imagery provides site analysis on a broader scale—a panoramic aerial and topographic “spatial representation” (Kurgan, 2013, p. 13) of the work, mapping geo-location and coordination. Both these methods of registration chronicle the spatiality (scale and orientation) of the artwork in relation to its location in the landscape. They also date and geo-stamp the images, contributing spatial data that, in effect, presents a two-year time- lapse of the multiplication, placement and natural degeneration of the terrapods.
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Figure 62: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Stitched photographic view. ©Mark Booth
At the conclusion of this research project Mud Dispositions may need to be resituated in a gallery for assessment. If so, the power and presence of the then mis- located earthwork in an alternative space (gallery) will create a yearning in the viewer to see it in its original setting. Photographs and drone footage would need to be displayed alongside the terrapods, playing to the amplified gap created between experiencing the artwork in the gallery rather than on the dam. The imagery will not only represent the work, but simultaneously act as a lure, encouraging the onlooker to conceptualise it as it was in its primary location.
Drones. Drones have obvious militaristic connotations—they are used extensively by the military for strategic reconnaissance. Bearing this in mind, a link could arguably be determined between Mud Dispositions, the language of camouflage in the environment, the military, and with devices of authority (drones). Image-mapping provided by the drone could imply that the earthwork contains a hidden identity that propounds to an aggressive or militaristic purpose (especially as this research project has discussed the use of camouflage in the military and on artworks). Perhaps the terrapods could be “geological remains [or] extraterrestrial artefacts” (Mollard, 2020, para. 10) serving as something more sinister than imitators of nature? Militaristic
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 77
associations potentially add a layer of complication and confusion when interpreting the use of a drone for documentation. However, here it is important to state that the drone surveillance used to transcript the presence of Mud Dispositions has a non-militaristic motive—it simply provides a platform for unambiguous site analysis, recording the placement of the object on site in a visually effective and accurate way. There are no covert intentions or surreptitious agendas in the deployment of the drone [Figure 63].
Figure 63: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Aerial view. ©Mark Booth
Bio-art
I argue that Mud Dispositions is bio-art that resonates, coexists and has a commonality with the soil—the earth of the site and the terrapods are the same, and therefore share a communality in their compositional makeup. I see the installation as a nascent, slowly moving, sluggishly expanding and potentially infinite earthwork with no finitude, spreading and depositing its imprint across the sylvan areas of the dam in much the same way as slugs or snails sedately move over the ground, coating it with their slimy residues [Figure 64]. This “biotic diminishment” (Haskell, 2017, p. 195) leads to the recursive accretion of one thing upon another, a superfetation of gradual growth that accumulates matter and layers of decomposition, composting depth and
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 78
strata to the surface surrounding the dam, authenticating the holistic relationship between sculpture, land and nature’s cycles of life and death. They are “structures that stir existing matter . . . giving the impression they are the result of millenial processes of sedimentation and erosion” (Mollard, 2020, para. 10). As Mud Dispositions visually dissolves, the decay itself becomes a deleterious form of self-making camouflage as the shell of the earthwork reintegrates with the soil.
“[P]erformance is about disappearance rather than preservation . . . [it] plunges momentarily into visibility in a maniacally charged present and disappears into memory” (Phelan, as cited in Warr, 2002, p. 1). I speculate that Mud Dispositions can be interpreted as a performative artwork, its brief occupation of the site taking centre stage until its presence is waned by denudation, its extirpation complete.
Figure 64: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Installation view. ©Mark Booth
Entropy
According to Agnes Denes (2008) the tenacious relationship between sculpture and nature is a:
cyclic phenomena . . . as from chaos to order and back. [It’s] analogous,
interactive, and interdependent, creating the tension of opposing forces acting on
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 79
each other and the momentum necessary to pass from one state to another . . .
[t]heir interaction creates a counterbalance as they pass into each other’s realm
or meaning to become successively interchangeable through their inherent
polarity (p. 88).
I argue that this observation is visible in Mud Dispositions—it has an entropic relationship to site, “link[ing] the physical and the ephemeral” (Roden Crater: About, n.d., para. 1) in an evolving system of fluidity within the environment. The order and production generated by its multiplication process gradually declines into disorder through decay, the initial predictability of its replication at odds with its decomposition.
Ironically, by composting back into the ground, Mud Dispositions “persist[s] through impermanence” (Haskell, 2017, p. 64). Once the forms have been destroyed by nature’s forces, their compositional materials will merge with the soil and continue to have a presence long after their physicality has gone [Figure 65].
It is important to note here that I am referring to the perishing of the biomatter component of the terrapods only and not to the central core constructed of particleboard and steel bolts—these materials will obviously remain on site after the earthen outer- shells of the modules have deteriorated.
Figure 65: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Panoramic view. ©Mark Booth
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 80
Phenology
When full of water the dam is purposeful and beneficial, but during the drought it lays dormant and empty, waiting for the resuscitation and restoration that future rain will surely bring. In other words, “[it] marks the end of one utility, whilst awaiting the next . . . It has the remembrance of nature and its instrumentalism, but the terms and conditions of the space have altered” (Gibson, 2018a, p. 23). I see the dam as an intermediate zone, an area that exists between two physical states [Figure 66].
Figure 66: (l) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter].
Installation view during the drought (January 2020). ©Mark Booth;
(r) Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. Installation view after the rains
and artwork relocation (April 2020). ©Mark Booth
The phenological aspects of the site (its cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena) played an important role in the development of Mud Dispositions. At times it was personally challenging to live and work within the territory of the installation.
Responding to weather changes on a daily basis was physically and mentally exhausting. Extreme heat, severe thunderstorms, drought, dust storms and bushfires were ever present during this period. Stress induced reactions to these adverse weather patterns took a toll on my health and wellbeing. On occasions, severe heat made
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 81
installation of the work impossible, while at other times rains and flooding threatened to destroy and wash it away [Figure 67].
Figure 67: (l) Example of extreme temperature. Merriwa, NSW (January 2020).
©Mark Booth; (r) Example of severe thunderstorms and rainfall. Merriwa, NSW (April
2020). Source: https://weather.bom.gov.au/location/r66cjmj-merriwa. ©BOM
Drought/Flood. A prolonged drought had dried up the dam when I first began to install the terrapods. I positioned them initially at what I thought was the old high water line. However, once the rains came, the dam began to fill and pass this water level. The installation was in danger of being entirely submerged, so I was forced to relocate it higher up the side of the crater [Figure 66 (r)]. As of March 2021, heavy rainfall had flooded many parts of NSW—at the dam the water level had risen further to partly immerse the terrapods closest to the water’s edge [Figure 68].
Figure 68: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. Panoramic view
showing rising water level in the dam (March 2021). ©Mark Booth
Bushfires. During the catastrophic nationwide bushfires of 2019/20 a ‘Watch and Act’ alert was issued by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service for my immediate
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 82
area [Figure 69]. Had a bushfire swept through it could have severely damaged Mud
Dispositions, relegating the installation to an unsalvageable pile of rubble before adequate completion and documentation of the project had occurred (conversely, a fire may also have vitrified the terrapods into a state of permanence by the alchemic processes induced by heat, irreversibly destroying their impermanence and turning them into indelible markers in the landscape).
Figure 69: (l) Example of satellite image of bushfire footprint, Upper Hunter Valley,
NSW (February 2020). Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-19/australia-
bushfires-how-heat-and-drought-created-a-tinderbox/11976134?nw=0. ©ABC News;
(r) Example of bushfires, Goulburn River National Park, NSW (December 2019).
Source: https://hotspots.dea.ga.gov.au. ©DEA Hotspots
Future Directions
Mud Dispositions is an ecological work that could be replicated anywhere around the world. The tools and moulds needed to reproduce the installation are rudimentary and easily transportable. The essential component (biomatter) is readily available in any natural environment and could be manipulated in conjunction with the list of components—the list could help define processes of concealment and obfuscation and contribute to the homogenisation of an earthwork with its location. Terrapods could be cast, for example, from compressed sand in the Sahara, packed snow in the Arctic, or
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 83
mud cakes from the Everglades. Contrasting habitats would affect the composition of the terrapods and their surface patternation and colouration. Potential locations could be traditional/non-traditional or urban/peri-urban sites (here matter for the modules may be compacted from scrap industrial materials to create ‘faux-pods’, the patterns on their surfaces adapted to match the ambient buildings and wastelands they inhabit).
Tumuli. At the time of writing, I have been developing a series of earth-cast pod prototypes called Tumuli [Figure 70]. These will consist of multitudinous mounds of bricks stacked directly from a mould on top of (or alongside) each other. This will negate the need for a central support like those used in Mud Dispositions. Although too late for this project, these coreless pods signal a pathway towards a totally ecological solution to the evolution of the earthworks.
Figure 70: Booth, M. (2021). Tumuli. [Biomatter]. Installation views. ©Mark Booth
Mud Dispositions is an ephemeral, amorphous aggregation that disassembles with a torpidity, biomorphically bleeding back into the soil. The earthwork embeds and repatriates itself with its surroundings, losing its individuality and entering into a relationship with nature. “The act of burial, or placing into the ground and receiving from it, a cause-and-effect process, marks our intimate relationship with the earth . . . it indicates passing, returning to the soil, disintegration, and transformation” (Denes,
2008, p. 88).
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 84
In answer to the research project question, I believe Mud Dispositions is able to corroborate the notion that despatialisation and disorientation, in relation to camouflage and bio-physiological responses, can lead to the successful intersection of an artwork with organic systems and entropic forces in nature. Mud Dispositions becomes, however, more than a mere imitator of nature—it physically interacts and amalgamates with its surroundings, assimilating itself into the very matter it is cast from. Ultimately, it takes nothing and leaves nothing, as though it never existed.
Figure 71: Booth, M. (2018-21). Mud Dispositions. [Biomatter]. Satellite location.
Source: https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Mount+Narran,+196+Tunbridge+Rd,
+Merriwa+NSW+2329/@32.2371579,150.3006623,771m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m
4!1s0x6b0c74201316b4c5:0xbcf988e9b49393a7!8m2!3d32.2371579!4d150.302851?hl
=en-GB. ©Google Maps
SCULPTURE AS ARTIFICE: MIMETIC FORM IN THE ENVIRONMENT 85
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Appendix
The following links contain documentation of Mud Dispositions in situ, including drone footage of the installation. There are also recent images of new earthworks (Tumuli) that I have created since the thesis was submitted for examination. As a response to the negation of inner support structures like the ones used in Mud Dispositions (a concept initially discussed in the Conclusion) [see ‘Tumuli’, p. 83] [Figure 70], these Tumuli, I believe, demonstrate a more purist approach in the progression of the original terrapods — with the elimination of their central fortifications and the artificial materials they were constructed from, there is only earth left to break down.
Image links Mud Dispositions https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QmxB_UPNvYmUW0m4SwJi9p25fg5Lkf7w/view?us p=sharing Tumulus https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xwAEdrT62M- AvM2rc9KoFinHhsEZlfFT/view?usp=sharing
Drone links https://drive.google.com/file/d/1twIx5ps2SfD_7wXdu57gxs5HmzMqljnG/view?usp=sh aring https://drive.google.com/file/d/18EuTDmJ1KBtzR7nqK3i3UXjzBVgSb0yk/view?usp= sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ny9Ig4nVOFU7uTMvETqViuuJY_A455QF/view?usp =sharing
Social media links Website: https://www.markboothsculptor.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marktbooth YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDxNK4N6WQDraFf0pQoEH- sy5OaOfjOTN