Painting place: Picturing experience and feeling in the urban landscape. A Project submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Nicole Slatter BEd, BA (Hons), MCA (Res), School of Art College of Design and Social Context RMIT University September 2015 Declaration I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the choose an item is the result of work which has been carried out since the official commencement date of the approved research program; any editorial work, paid or unpaid, carried out by a third party is acknowledged; and, ethics procedures and guidelines have been followed. Nicole Slatter 7th September 2015 Painting place: Picturing experience and feeling in the urban landscape. A Project submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Nicole Slatter BEd, BA (Hons), MCA (Res), School of Art College of Design and Social Context RMIT University September 2015 Painting place: Picturing experience and feeling in the urban landscape. Nicole Slatter Nicole DECLARATION I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the thesis/project is the result of work which has been carried out since the official commencement date of the approved research program; any editorial work, paid or unpaid, carried out by a third party is acknowledged; and, ethics procedures and guidelines have been followed. Nicole Slatter 7th September 2015 iii Painting place: Picturing experience and feeling in the urban landscape. Nicole Slatter Nicole ABSTRACT Identifying with the field of representational painting, this project investigates the embedded complexities in urban landscape that can be experienced and communicated to provide a greater understanding of place. Through two main foci: articulations of place and contemporary landscape painting, I aim to question how the experiences of place can contribute to the construction of evocative spaces through urban landscape painting. The urban and suburban places I choose as focus in this project are ones that are familiar, experienced, passed through and lived in. They can be at times digressive and changing in either incremental ways or dramatic unexpected transitions. My interest in the urban landscape originates from my own tactile experiences of time spent in these places both in an early part of my life and in current daily experience. Within this project I reference examples by contemporary and historical artists who use painting and photography to explore representations of place, including Pierre Huyghe, Roni Horn, Antonio López García and George Shaw. The consideration of visual representation of place through painting has required an understanding of facture and materiality to unfold evocative practical, poetic and psychological connections. My principal concerns with place are based in experience, memory, feeling and tactile interaction. I use painting to explore these themes through elements such as scale, composition, tonality and colour, manipulating the material of paint to unfold the non-physical and physical experience of place. I draw on the research of social anthropologists, philosophers, theorists and writers to delineate the broad possibilities of place; particularly how understandings of place impact identity and belonging in a rapidly changing world. The understanding of place in contemporary and historical thought is defined through the time spent in, and the embedded experiences of place. Personal experience and collective societal understandings of urban place are vital to the tactile understandings elaborated in this project. The writing of aesthetic theorist and architect Lars Spuybroek has been a key influence in terms of sensing and feeling the urban environment through the conceptual and physical construction of images to create sympathies with the urban landscape. In this project I particularly focus on how the perceptible and fragile complexities of our experience of being in an urban landscape can be mediated. I represent and manipulate the known experiences of a place shifting emphasis between the physical objective facts of the space and subjective remembered experiences of time spent in the space. This creative project uses the medium of paint to investigate and provide insights into the representation of place through four series of paintings that explore the complex aspects of place. These series’ provide the basis for exploring and articulating notions of place to create original understandings of the complex matterings of place in the genre of contemporary representational landscape painting. v Painting place: Picturing experience and feeling in the urban landscape. Nicole Slatter Nicole ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Professor David Thomas for his generosity, calm trust, superior supervisory expertise and indepth painting discussions. Lee Ingram for collegiality, humour and design expertise. Professor Julian Goddard for his ongoing encouragement as the former Head of School, Head of Art Department and inspiring Visual Culture lecturer at Curtin University. Dr Susanna Castleden for her friendship, support, advice, collegiality and for showing me the way in PhD, life and Art. Bevan Honey for demonstrating that making art and family go hand in hand, also for the curatorial advice on many occasions. Robert Frith and Adrian Lambert from Acorn Photography. Norah Ohrt from Perth Galleries. Dr Dean Chan for his very prompt and precise copyediting. The staff at the School of Design and Art, Curtin University, especially Mark Parfitt for his cheery ‘can do’ attitude. Nick and Glenys Phillips, my parents, for ongoing support in everyway and providing a warm family environment that allows empathy to prevail. My sister Cassie who shared all my early memories and experiences of place and her new family Paul, Jake, Sophie and Stella Manning for looking after the cousins and supporting us during the long process of this project. Grandpa Clive, Aunty Kate and Uncle Matt for their support and encouragement throughout the long process. Lastly and most importantly I would like to thank Bruce, Matilda and Heidi Slatter for their immense contribution, love, understanding and patience. vii Painting place: Picturing experience and feeling in the urban landscape. Nicole Slatter Nicole CONTENTS Nicole Slatter: Painting place: Picturing experience and feeling in the urban landscape. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 - Witnessing Urban Place – Drift .................................................................................................................................................... 8 1.1 Defining place. .................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 1.2 ‘Suburban time’. ................................................................................................................................................................................. 9 1.3 Definitions of landscape and representational painting. ................................................................................... 10 1.4 Lars Spuybroek and the ‘infinitely textured universe’. ......................................................................................... 12 1.5 Attunement, projected empathy and tactile surface. ......................................................................................... 15 Chapter 2 – Perceiving Change – Bowling club (a case study) ................................................................................................... 29 2.1 Pierre Huyghe’s complex representation and experience of place. ............................................................ 29 2.2 Painting time with López García. ........................................................................................................................................34 2.3 Facture, fragment and Friedrich Schlegel’s ‘forever becoming’. ................................................................... 41 2.4 Collective memory and changing place. ........................................................................................................................43 Chapter 3 – Fragmented Place – Interval ...................................................................................................................................................48 3.1 My use of metonymy and motif. ..........................................................................................................................................48 3.2 Shared memory of place and object. ............................................................................................................................... 52 3.3 The porosity of Walter Benjamin’s city. .......................................................................................................................... 55 3.4 Paintings the impermanence of place. ............................................................................................................................60