Site in the Site Work...

I have been lured in by different books presenting ‘site-specific’ in the title, leading me onto ‘site-specific’ artists, such as Lucinda childs, Meredith monk, Allan Kaprow and Trisha brown. Who’s work have really inspired me to look at framing in the city and the merging between life and art...

Trisha Brown’s aptly named performances Walking on the Wall (1971) and Roof Piece (1971) inspired me to relate to everyday objects in a city space in unique ways. Through working with distance the piece really made me look at the space in a new way, and I was only able to watch this online... therefore, it got me thinking about what it must be like in person. This made me become a lot more inquisitive and explorative when I visited the space for performance – looking for areas/objects to be transformed.

However, this site-specific works I have been resonating got interrupted by Robert Irwin’s distinctions between different site based art, of which ‘site-specific’ seems to have become the fashionable term for all site based approaches.

Irwin describes Site Specific as “conceived with the site in mind”*; however work done this way isn’t necessarily focused on the context or understanding of the site.

Now, often performances are Site Adjusted – this is works which are inspired by the site, but created in the studio and then taken back to the site.

I feel my work lays more under the title of Site Conditioned/Determined, which Irwin describes as work which "draws all cues from its surrounding”*; therefore the work needs careful consideration and understanding of the site. As my piece is created and performed on the site, I will now refer to my work under this title.


*Irwin, R (1985) Being and Circumstance: Notes Toward a Confidential Art. Lapis Press