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Spaced

Art Out of Place

Zara Stanhope
Eyeline 77
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Spaced: Art Out of Place’ (‘Spaced’), billed as ‘IASKA’s inaugural biennial event of socially-engaged art’, entered general public visibility as an exhibition and symposium at Fremantle Art Centre, Western Australia (WA), in February 2012. ‘Spaced’ included international artists and transnational interactions, but its predominant focus was as a platform for encounters between specific geographical communities and artists, rather than the conventional biennial public event. ‘Spaced’ raised questions about who socially-engaged art is for, the value of developing models of practice, the role and significance of exhibitions and discursive events, and the difficulties of researching new forms of process-based art.

‘Spaced’ is the sequel to the activities of International Art Space Kellerberrin Australia (IASKA) that brought artists to the small town of Kellerberrin, two hundred and ten kilometres east of Perth.1 For a decade IASKA supported ‘context-specific’ projects and residencies in which artists engaged with aspects of the local situation, people, place and local consciousness. Outcomes were directed at the Kellerberrin population, who were also involved in education and mentoring programs. The Kellerberrin initiative reflected the shift beyond static and place-based public art that at the time was still infrequent in Australia. It preceded the arguments, made by Miwon Kwon, for more relational specificity and criticality in site-specific art to avoid practice being co-opted by institutional and market forces.2

‘Spaced, Art Out of Place’ reintroduced the importance of place after its supersession by other subjects of critical studies in the 1990s. It expanded the Kellerberrin model to support artists in situation-specific art projects across Western Australia, often in very remote sites.3 IASKA’s negotiations resulted in sixteen communities hosting twenty-one artists for two-three month residences during 2009–2011. The brief... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Jakub Szczęsny (architect) and Kaja Pawełek (curator), Banksia Tower, Narrogin Railway Station, WA, 2011. Courtesy the artists. © The artists.

Jakub Szczęsny (architect) and Kaja Pawełek (curator), Banksia Tower, Narrogin Railway Station, WA, 2011. Courtesy the artists. © The artists.

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, The Way You Move Me, 2011. Video still, two-channel video, 5:1 channel audio, 10:30 min. Courtesy the artists and Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne.

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, The Way You Move Me, 2011. Video still, two-channel video, 5:1 channel audio, 10:30 min. Courtesy the artists and Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne.