Another page of the diary (over here/over there)
The spareness struck one on entering the space. Four large assemblages, triptyches, on facing walls separated by expanses of white walls and the Experimental Art Foundation's (EAF's) industrial grey floor and low hung ceiling. But there was more than a spareness of space. There was a palpable spareness of spirit. Was this the impact of living in Adelaide for a year? For it is claimed that this work came very much from the experience of moving cities to be employed at the South Australian School of Art as a lecturer in painting on a one-year contract in 1990.
It is to be expected. You move towns and there is a void – even if it is not admissible to admit such dislocation in this supposedly homogenised, kool, postmodern, chic world where identity is constantly dislocated and displaced and relationships 'survive' on a commuter basis.
The autobiography is unavoidable (and being mugged in the first week in Adelaide must have had an impact on Anderson's sense of self and location). But the work is an endeavour at more than a personal record. Anderson with her contiguous offering and obscuring of the intimate (the diary available yet placed on a high shelf such as to discourage violation) offers herself as generic, as an everyperson.
Diary in the title, my dominant on the catalogue cover-further support the declared autobiographical reading, a reading that is there but also partly concealed. It is a personal statement about the artist's own experience, her sense of a journey. Journeys have long exorcised artists across many cultures from Hirosheige's Down the Emperor's Road to Australia 's own powerful road movie tradition.
There is also the tradition of