Putting Personal Texts into public space: Research
by Debbie Harman Qadri
This is one of two documents that I submitted for my masters of Fine Arts ( Art in Public Space). This document explores the theory and conceptual ideas of the research.
Introduction
Our public space is saturated with advertising and signage which seem to have an authentic place and validity. All around us are signs telling us where to go and what to do and advertising that shows us how we should look and what we should desire. There seems to be no place for a personal voice. This research project explores ways in which we can insert personal texts into public space, permanent, ephemeral, permissioned and un-permissioned. Debbie undertakes a series of small projects that explore methods of making and placing personal texts into public space. Using these activities with community participants leads to events where personal texts are made by the people for the spaces that they inhabit. Exploring ideas of personal expression and ownership of public spaces.
Contents
Introduction
Contents
List of Projects
Research Directions
I was here
Community and Place
Nuts and bolts
Communication and reaction
Afterword
Appendices
Curriculum Vitae
Bibliography
List of Projects undertaken for this research
Note: This research was conducted part-time over three years June 2011 – June 2014
Empty: memory, hope, love, grief, 2011 ceramic installation for the Moreart Public Art Show 2011. Commissioned by Moreland Council.
A series of installations spanning two kilometres of footpath alongside the train-line and a specific garden space at RMIT. Installations were explorations of ceramic text in a range of languages exploring personal text responses to grief.
21 Alfred st, commissioned by Curator Anabelle Lacroix, for the group show ‘Uncomformity”. 2011. Uncomformity used a condemned house, and artists were asked to respond to the house. I devised text that explored the history of the house and excerpts of the text were written on parts of the house, using slip or ceramic letters. I also made a film which featured the house and the act of writing the text on the house and the full spoken text.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLlD0CxZilE
Parksong, Moreland council park, unsolicited, ceramic and silicon, 2012
Collection of ceramic text interventions which celebrate the movement and freedom that open spaces provide us with.
Sing to me – intervention in St Marks park, Hawthorn, ceramic letters, 2012
Ceramic letters strung on fishing line around tree trunks
http://ceramictextart.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/messages-from-trees/
Stop and Go, Intervention on Brunswick Rd. Brunswick, ceramic letters with fishing line. 2012-14
Street publishing trials, commissioned, private residence, 2012
Television interventions, ceramic letters on televisions on local nature-strips, 2012
http://ceramictextart.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/she-loves-me-she-loves-me-not/
The poets of Moonambel, permissioned community project, ceramic on fence at Moonambel common with the Moonambel Art and History Group, 2012
Concrete Poetry made with local group, clay workshops and installation at community common.
Exquisite Me, participatory workshop with ceramic letters, Brimbank Festival with Sunshine Gallery Everywhere, Feb 2012, Feb 2013
Concrete poetry workshop with Yea School, August 2012
Exquisite Me Project - Plastic Banners with letters workshops with Children from Mother of God Primary School, Ardeer, August 2012.http://exquisiteme2012.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/mother-of-god-primary-school-alive-and.html
Filling the Cracks with Conversation. Ceramics and all purpose silicon, and blog. Fringe Festival, September 2012 and ongoing installations till 2014.
The Clothesline Timeline, Ephemeral Artwork at Djerriwarrh Festival, November 2012, plastic, tape and mixed media, (Commissioned by Melton Council) documentation of the project:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IvK1lMC_n4
Sunshine Babel Onion, participatory and durational installation over one month at Sunshine Art Spaces, Sunshine, November 2012. Plastic, acrylic paint and mixed media (supported by Brimbank Council) http://sunshinebabelonion.wordpress.com/,
Sages of Sunshine Project, Sunshine, ceramic tiles mounted on marine ply, 2013. Portraits of local people and scenes with local wisdom written along the bottom of each tile. Sunshine Art Spaces Seeding Grant.
What does Faith mean to you?, Faith to Faith Exhibition at Sunshine Art Spaces Gallery, stoneware ceramic letters silicone to front window. February 2013. Excerpts of text collected via interviews about “What does faith mean to you”, are installed on the gallery window.
Sketch of Peg Poetry no.2, exhibited at D11 Supporters Show 2013
Installation of Peg Poetry , The Brimbank Writers and Readers festival,
http://concretepoetrymadness.wordpress.com/2013/09/
Mosaic Musings workshop, The Brimbank Writers and Readers festival, commission Brimbank Council, September 2013. Writing workshops with ceramic letters, peg poetry installations in street.http://concretepoetrymadness.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/today-at-the-brimbank-readers-and-writers-festival/
Stencil the Street workshop, The Brimbank Writers and Readers festival. September 2013, with Toni Burton and Mike Conroy, Brimbank Council.
Working with the local community to write on the footpaths using letter stencils and temporary builders marking spray.
Peg Poetry Installation and workshop, Kids Day Out Festival, 2013. Commissioned by Brimbank Council.
Concrete poetry with ceramic shells at La di Dardle, Tasmania, 2013
Shelton Lea was here, In memory of Shelton Lea. Ceramic plaques and poetry of Shelton Lea placed in areas he frequented. 2013 – 14
Concrete Poetry ceramic mural installations, Moonee Valley river reserves, un solicited, 2014.
Facilitated ceramic crochet hearts workshops and installation for the Fiona Warzywoda Vigil, Sunshine, April 2014. Requested, made and written on by community members.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s3991802.htm
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Research Directions
How can public art practices be used to insert personal text into public space?
WHY
Our public space, the space beyond your front fence is so regulated now, that you might find it difficult to write something in it. You have to have a permit to put up a sign, and you have to have money to apply for the permit and to make the sign. Perhaps you even need to own or be able to rent the land on which the sign sits. Otherwise what you write in public space will most likely be illegal. Everywhere around us the amount of text bearing instructions and advertising becomes more dense, whilst personal text, messages or statements become less and less. Advertisement text, whose aims are economic, which could be labeled permissioned graffiti, made of digitally printed words proliferate whilst the voices of locals have been criminalized. The proliferation of the opposite field of tagging and graffiti art has polarised the situation. The rules governing text in public space have been developed in reaction to tagging and graffiti and unfortunately preclude many other forms of personal text in public space. What does it mean? We live in a highly regulated urban landscape where governments and businesses have the power to alter the text in the landscape. Individuals have lost the opportunity to say something, even something pleasant, in the spaces they inhabit outside their homes.
Its an unhealthy situation if locals don’t feel they are able to contribute text in their own public spaces. Especially when there is a huge text conversation going on in public space, often carrying subliminal authority and influence in our lives. This text is predominantly designed by council employees and marketing experts. This research seeks to visualize what locally generated text might look like in public space and to begin a larger text or dialogue about this present absence.
Context
The number of texts that face us as we go about our lives are increasing. Signs generally tell you how to drive, where to walk, what to do and what you cannot do. Advertising lets you know what you should look like, how to dress and what to aspire to. You are limited to wearing your personal message on your t-shirt, on your skin or on your number plate.
Advertising and signage seem to bear less scrutiny than personal text interventions into public space. If you own or rent the space in which you advertise you are freer to say what you want. Our public space is increasingly designed, governed, watched and legislated which makes it difficult and seemingly inappropriate for an individual to place text in this space.
It’s also very interesting that advertising seems to be accepted by most people as if it has a right to be there. But if you put an obviously personal message somewhere, it is seen as not belonging. You can only make an advertisement if you have the money to pay for it or if you own the land on which the advertisement sits. The power to say something publicly is thus limited to those with money or means, landowners or the government.
Public space is more and more being seen as an area that has to be kept nice and neat, but at the same time it facilitates messages about how you should live and behave from government and economic entities. These types of textfeeds are seen as okay and normal for this space. In one city, Sao Paulo has challenged this idea by banning advertising in all public spaces. Neal Lawson (20.4.2012, theguardian.com) places it in this context, ‘We can choose the magazines we look at. But we’ve no freedom to walk down the street without the advertiser’s assault.’ Lawson suggests that we see an average of 3,500 brand images a day and these images of perfect bodies and flash new cars amongst other things are promoting unhappiness and the drive to purchase products, ultimately successful in creating anxiety and insecurity. “They help sow the seeds of mental illness, insecurity, humiliation, debt, brand bullying at school and, through the remorseless use of resources they inspire, they threaten the planet.’
The use of personal text in public space has changed dramatically from the sixties and seventies where the personal voice was used in many campaigns by individuals and collectives to change laws and social conditions. The increase in graffiti and tagging culture has meant that the idea of just writing what you want in public space is seen as transgressive and antisocial behaviour. Within this context the expression of personal text in public space is not viewed favourably as something a citizen should do. My observations have been that generally people feel uncomfortable about writing in public space. Public space is not seen as the place for a personal expression of self.
Placing a personal text in public space is also now regarded as graffiti. Graffiti as a major phenomenon in urban space, and its degenerative label, have had a role to play in our reluctance to place our own words in public space. The discussion of un-commissioned work in public space is topical, particularly in the area of local government management of this space. The research is useful to those who are making decisions about the use of public space. Many councils are loosening the legislation that was put in place to control graffiti, in favour of preserving street art that residents enjoy.
Part of my research into how personal text can be placed in public space has been done in the context of collaborative or community based works. Councils are also becoming more interested in engaging citizens in the making and ownership of public space. Methods of enabling the public to have a voice in public space are topical with an increasing pressure on council bodies to increase community consultation in all aspects of their decision-making. There is pressure on councils to involve a wider demographic in community activities and to move toward involving communities in ‘placemaking’ which is a philosophy promoting communities becoming more involved in designing, making and feeling community ownership of public space.
The concern of this research is to counter the idea advertising and signage should be the only texts in our public space and to explore ways that this situation can be challenged and changed using art practices. Artists, Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer have used text in analogous ways to interrogate our usual reading of text in public space. Kruger uses advertising mechanisms, such as billboards, posters, led lights and printed merchandise with ironical twists of text to comment on advertising and its role and influence on the way we think. Jenny Holzer places deeply personal texts into public space to expose the hidden texts and stories. Her work is often about what we don’t say out loud or acknowledge in public space. Street artist Banksy has also utilized text in his work and often in a way that addresses the particular place and local community. I admire his interest in addressing the general public and locals as his audience. These artists have influenced the way I perceive text and have compelled me to think about the usefulness of text as an artform. My artwork for this research is much less political in character and more subtle in its approach perhaps because it wishes to engage the audience, not as viewers but as accomplices. The text not being an artwork to look at, but as an encounter or conversation.
Method
The method of research for this project has been the undertaking of a series of small projects. Each project trials an idea and then subsequent projects further the exploration of the materials or methods of engaging participants. These have been both sole artist or collaborative works. Materials and concepts are always explored by the artist before being used in participatory projects.
As a series of installations of text in public space the artworks become a conversation or a text about this research. This text, which will be continually referred to, signifies the dialogue about personal text in public space which is created by the artworks. The changes in method, materials, audience, participants, place and context also become part of this wider dialogue about the role of personal text in public space.
Initially I began by using ceramic text in public space. I used unfired and fired ceramics, then explored other materials which could be recycled or economically viable for working with large groups of people.
My explorations also began to move away from personal practice towards community-based practice and the idea of getting the public to write their own text as a more authentic representation of place. This was influenced by my work in the Community Arts field where commonly my role is to produce a work of art that the whole community are engaged in making. My policy of enabling the community to make the artwork, means that the artwork has a strong relationship to the community and that it has a strong significance for them. Whilst as part of this research I did some projects alone, I always consider the audience for the text. The further I ventured into this research practice, the stronger I felt that if placing the text in a suburb where I did not belong, I was in fact intruding, I was installing in another person’s place. The personal text is more authentic and more powerful when made by locals.
I find also that when I work in new settings with people, I often have my own ideas questioned. The circumstances and the group that I work with often challenge and change what I plan to do. Opportunities for lateral thinking and explorations of how materials can be used alternatively are more easily explored when working with groups of people who have other ways of thinking. This type of practice provides more opportunities to learn about the medium, the process and opportunities for the site. Participants may move the artwork in a new direction or suggest something that sends the artist off on a new tangent. Also when you work with others, apart from new things cropping up, problems also arise that need to be solved and sometimes lead to something new.
Eventually my research also had to address some of the problems that I encountered repeatedly. One of these was the reluctance for the public to place their voice in public space. So my work has not only included forays into placing my own texts in public space but also excursions into how to encourage people to make texts, and eventually into more playful explorations of writing.
OUTCOMES
The outcomes of this project are a series of installations and activities where personal text is placed into public space. The intention of these activities was to explore ways in which this could be done by an individual artist and by communities and to explore the aspects of permanency, materials, installation methods and reactions. The other outcome of the project is a dialogue created from these instances of personal text in public space, which I refer to as the text.
It should be noted that at no time does the artwork produced in these projects take on any higher cause for aesthetics or take itself too seriously as an art object. For the purposes of this project the artworks are tools, in that they are made solely for a specific purpose or action. To engage the audience, viewer and participant in making, placing, reading or speaking about the idea of personal text in public space. The dialogue or text that ensues the artwork is what becomes most important. This dialogue raises questions about why there are not many instances of personal text in public space and why we don’t often get the chance or would indeed take the opportunity of writing in public space.
Roland Barthes situates the artwork as separate from the ‘text’. The work of art is the thing that I will place into public space or the objects that participants play with and move to create words and phrases. The text is the dialogue that happens as a result of the written text being in public space. The meaning of the work becomes contingent on all those choices, why, where, context, place, materials, audience, time and space, and the interplay between the meanings the works are given and the meanings that the audience gives and the thinking and discussions between (irretrievable and unknowable by the artist) becomes the text. It is what Barthes refers to as a writerly text, where the reader has to make an effort to read or understand the text and may have to even place themselves in the author’s shoes and reenact the actions of the author themselves to derive a meaning.
The work, so to speak, loses its ego and steps down into a field of interactions which Barthes refers to as play. In this context, I have noticed that my explorations have moved from the initial serious interventions made solely by the artist, towards an opposite which is the artwork providing a sense of play for participants to engage in and change how they think about personal texts in public space.
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Essays
I WAS HERE:
TEXT – Graf – handwriting
(Photographs – sunshine babel onion, djerriwarrh festival, Brimbank writers and readers festival canvases and graf on footpath, Brimbank festival names.)
mark graffiti means write, draw, mark, scratch or
otherwise deface property by any means so
that the defacement is not readily removable
by wiping with a dry cloth;
(definition of graffiti, Graffiti prevention Act, 2007)
Any discussion of text in public space has to take account of the phenomenon of graffiti. Graffiti has become so ubiquitous that it has redefined the role of text in public space. The proliferation of Graffiti in our public space has had a subsequent reaction with councils making rules to govern the use of public space, in an effort to combat graffiti. These regulations governing public space have created a different way of citizens viewing public space and the culture that surrounds it.
Reactions against graffiti have caused laws to be made that control intervention in public space and what has ensued is a dichotomous culture of authorised text vs non-authorised and a tension between the two. Laws to curb graffiti and the ongoing cleaning of walls to remove unauthorised texts has caused people to view a personal text intervention as wrong. Artist CDH speaks about the situation in Victoria where he says: ‘street art is actively stifled by the State Government; the Graffiti Prevention Act (2007) requires artists to provide lawful excuse if caught carrying a graffiti implement (aerosol can, sharp object, pencil) and thus reverses the burden of proof, to a presumption of guilt (2014).’
Halsey and Young (2009.p297) suggest one of the reasons that graffiti is disliked and controversial is because it serves to ‘. . . . interrupt our sense of the familiar, our sense of certainty, our sense of the established and proper order of things.’ This order of things Humphrey McQueen refers to as another type of graffiti. McQueen says of Graffiti, ‘As with gallery art, most pieces were third-rate, but no more so than the architecture that defaced the visual environment.’ Order is seen by some as how it should be, but by others, this is a sign of complacency, false security and limits to freedom of speech and creativity.
Subsequently the act of placing a personal text into public space, is akin to a criminal act in the eyes of the average resident. In the sixties, seventies and eighties, people often made their own posters and signs to comment and protest, to insert their personal ideas into public space. It seems to be seen now as only something that a radical person would do. There is an increasing emphasis on the uniformity of public space and expectations of local councils to preserve and develop this space in a neat and orderly way.
Above: demonstration signs in Ardeer South,
EINE, a graffiti artist tells a very interesting story about his career which sheds some light on this phenomenon. Eine says he realised that he could not continue doing the same graffiti as he was being arrested too often and a friend of his had been sent to prison for making graffiti. He changed tack and began to make artworks which had big decorative letters and were neat as if they were digitally printed. Because the text was a single neat decorative letter, a clear contrast from traditional graffiti writing style, it became accepted and sought after. Now people pay him to do the big letters on their roller doors. It was suddenly okay to do it illegally in public space because it was neat, beautiful and well-designed. His work demonstrates that if the artwork is neat and orderly (akin to the orderliness of advertising and signage) that it is more easily accepted into the environment, even though it may be illegal. This has had implications for what I do and where I do it. It has influenced me to make pleasant projects such as ‘Filling the cracks with conversation’, in the hope that the community will enjoy them and want to preserve them and also in the hope that my un-permissioned work will not get me into trouble with authorities and caretakers.
Graffiti is a very old practice, it has been found in the remains of Pompei and in the form of Aboriginal rock carvings. That it is an old and now such a prolific phenomenon, signifies that it has a significant meaning and place in human culture. There is a reason that people want to write their names or make their own marks in public space. There is some innate yearning to write “I was here”. I have noticed that when I facilitate participatory text projects, about fifty percent of people write their names. There is an instinctive compulsion to write one’s name. Is this to do with our ant like existence and our need for our fifteen seconds of fame and to make our mark in some way? I have been particularly drawn to one respondent of Halsey and Young’s ( 2009 p.287) interviewees who said of graffiti ‘It’s like putting a piece of you into your area.’ Making your mark on your territory.
(photogrpahs of people writing their names . (see concrete poetry madness blog, Sunshine Babel Onion, Brimbank festival with ceramic letters and the stencilling the street workshops).
Halsey and Young suggest that writing words in public space fulfils a particular ‘pleasure and desire in the act of writing,’ (2006, p.276). They suggest that the act of writing becomes a powerful heterogenous event, one for the writer only. In my work with participants the aim is to reproduce this pleasure and desire and give it to the ordinary citizen who would not usually imagine placing their text into public space. The main protagonist in the artwork is the participant that engages in the writing.
Handmade text
What is the meaning of placing personal text in the space? What is a personal text? What makes it personal as opposed to instructions and advertising? What type of text can begin a dialogue about the lack of personal text in public space, which will contrast with the type of text that is commonly found in the space. My work was very influenced by ideas of handmade, hand-written and the ungrammatical, informal and verbal. The signs all around us, and most of the text we read has been printed or digitally made in some way. Handwritten text and text that is hand selected and arranged (a bit like old printing type) is the opposite of this text that is produced by technology.
My initial workshops using writing implements did not seem to capture audiences but when presented with words or letters as objects participants became engaged with the arranging of them. The physical action of selecting words or letters provides a physical activity and is also durational over time. The slow arrangement of the words and letters allows for time to be used in thinking and making choices about the arrangements of the words. Choice provides avenues for ownership and the act of physically arranging or making text means that the creator will remember the act of making more because they physical made the text. When doing this in a community setting the process is also accompanied by conversations and often physical touching of other members of their family or group as they share and arrange the letters. The participant has used their body to make the text.
When I ran the clay workshops with the Moonambel community they had a choice as to how to make their text. There were plaster moulds for making letters but again this text is still handmade, it has to be hand-pressed into the mould and then removed and tidied. Other people chose to make their texts in other ways. Each piece bears the handprints of the maker on the text and each piece is different because it has been handpressed and hand moulded and shaped or handwritten.
Most text is now digitally printed. So to have the text hand written is to associate it with hand making, with art, craft and analogue processes. And also with freshness and immediacy. Handwritten text is more personal, it conjures up the act of letterwriting, card writing, writing personal thoughts, notes to oneself, recording daily events in diaries or daily needs on lists. Moreover, when handwritten text is in public space it is more noticeable because it is so different from the digitally produced text that fills the space.
The handwritten is also produced by the body, not printed by a computer. In an environment where the agency to produce text is given to a machine, and most of us can now type very fast, the handwritten becomes difficult, time consuming and more liable to mistakes and disorder. Intent and persistence are ingredients in producing a handwritten text. It is also harder to read. The situations that my participatory art produces are activities, which necessitate physical action. The artwork’s aim is to produce physical activity and also a dialogue or Text about the idea of writing in public space.
Again it is necessary to engage with what happens when unauthorised text is made in public space. It is intentionally made and the result of determined physical action. Halsey and Young suggest that graffiti writing is not just a static two dimensional activity of paint being applied to a surface, it is an ‘affective process that does things to writer’s bodies (and the bodies of onlookers) as much as to the bodies of metal, concrete and plastic, which typically compose the surfaces of urban worlds. In short, where graffiti is often thought of as destructive, we would submit that it is affective as well.’ (Halsey and Young, 2006 p.276)
Candy Chang’s project ‘Before I die’, is a blackboard made on an abandoned house in New Orleans. Chang stencilled onto the blackboard, the words ‘before I die I want to:, using neat digitally designed letters. But next to them participants wrote their responses in chalk by hand. The variety of handwriting demonstrates the different voices of the people who responded on the blackboards. Handwriting like signatures also demonstrates authenticity. The authenticity and reality of difference voices. The ownership of public space as a forum where people meet and share ideas is one of the tennets of Candy Chang’s work. Chang says ‘At their greatest, our public spaces can nourish our well-being and help us see that we’re not alone as we try to make sense of our lives.‘
Hand writing is also immediate. Making digital text is a longer process and often has stages. You write the text on a computer, someone edits it, you send it to the printer, they print it, then you pick it up and pay for it, then you install it (you’d better get a permit too). The spontaneous aspect of making texts on the spot references the unprofessional, the unedited, the incorrect, the unaligned, and unedited voice.
Graffitti also stands out as a handmade text. It is handwritten and also often illegible. It is a text, but a coded one. Fran Tonkiss suggests that although the act of graffiti sets up a discourse between the writer and the reader, it seems to be an act that alienates the reader. She says that in these circumstances , ‘ the politics of graffiti take the form of an identity politics which insists that nameless others should notice your presence and remember your name,’ (2005).
Doesn’t advertising do the same thing? But it does it with the air of authority of the digitised and expensive process of the printed text. Why is the billboard allowed to dominate your view? Because someone paid for it. Graffiti is a momentary unpaid for and unedited conquest of public space. The signs, advertising and the tagging are all a form of what Barthes refers to as the readerly text. It is straight forward, you read it and its meaning is clear. A sign tells you what to do, the advertising tells you what is a good deal, what you need to buy and the tag, tells you that someone is challenging your space, on the nicely painted wall. The writerly text is one that will make you think about it. An intervention of handmade text into the public space as an art practice is an example of the writerly text. Its meaning is not clear and it inferences other things, why is it there? who put it there? Why did they put it there? What do I think about it? Would I do the same thing?
What remains after the graffiti is removed is an anxiety about any un-authorised form of text in public space. There is an idea of what is and isn’t allowed and many people dislike any intervention into this landscape of text and will often remove it. Sanctioned forms of personal text in public space seem to be notices for garage sales and lost pets. Any text advertising business and products seem to be allowed even when they are interventions onto private or public property. This is one of the reasons why I altered my own work to either directly speak to the audience in a friendly way or to involve the local population in the making, so that the use of public space was by the people who inhabited it and was creating text collectively. I was very aware that the ego of the artists that says ‘hello I am here” can remind people of the audacity of graffiti artists who take space for their own.
In a sense I had to lose myself as the author of the work, in order for the work to speak to others. I might own the work in a secondary sense, on a blog or in an application for something, but apart from that the artwork has to be given over to the space or to the community that it is in. Hence there is no author signature on any of the work that I have made for this research.
When I began providing letters and words for participants to play with, the writing was difficult to make and constrained by finding the right letters and words and time and space to place it in. These constraints produced a truncated style of writing with a strong relationship to poetry, which is shortened and more concise writing than prose. The most common form of graffiti is a single word and secondary to this is a short phrase which carries meaning for the writer. These phrases are not prose (which has rules) and so they become its opposite – poetry (which doesn't).
Lawrence Weiner’s use of abstracted text has influenced my work. He does not use text grammatically but instead suggests ideas and leaves the viewer to wonder about what his meaning is. I enjoy the way in which the audience are forced to derive the meaning for themselves. And I also like the way that the work is not speaking directly or instructing the viewer about its own meaning. For my work, this has meant a loosening or relaxation of what happens to the letters and words. I have taken particular delight in watching how people will misspell, invent words and shorten phrases to get their messages across with the limited letters and words available, sometimes creating something that they understand, but others cannot. The misspelt and grammatical incorrect phrases accentuate the handwritten, the human made, in contrast to the digitally made text of signs and advertising all around them. Particularly with the peg poetry, as there are only a few available words to use. A loose prose develops that does not stick to rules, and this is closer to our oral language which is full of pauses, and words used incorrectly, unfinished sentences. It is not literature, grammatically correct or edited text, more of a colloquial shorthand related to idiom and conversational speech.
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Community and Place
Much of the participatory works that I have been doing loosely fall under the umbrella of community art because they involve community participants. I have practiced making and exhibiting my own artwork for the last twenty-five years but have become quite dissatisfied with the cultural practice of placing artwork into a gallery to be shown. This became particularly poignant to me when I noticed that close friends and family do not attend my gallery openings. I also found that there was a very strong cultural divide between the people I spend most of my time with and the people who frequent galleries. For this reason I have become very interested in art practices outside of the gallery world.
Reflecting upon my other art practices outside this research, it strikes me that I am driven by the idea that art is therapeutic for myself and for the communities that I work with. I think that art as product, but more so as a process, can be used to strengthen communities and give individuals confidence and pride in the work they have made. The community arts movement gave credence to this therapeutic process of art making and its value for community development.
The components of ceramics, writing, teaching and community artwork all contribute to my practice as an artist and have contributed significantly to my interest in the personal voices of community members and in the use of text in artwork. I worked as an art teacher for many years part-time but have also been making ceramic murals with communities for the last twelve years. This research project has provided a forum for joining some disparate areas of my experience and work.
In the beginning of the research I envisaged myself making all of the artwork, but since beginning to work full-time as a community artist in 2011, the research has been influenced by and has become part of my practice as a community artist. Throughout the project there has been a strong relationship between my own personal explorations of placing text in public space and collaborative community projects using the same processes. There has however been a difference between the work I am commissioned to do for communities and the work that I do with communities specifically for this research. When I am commissioned to work with communities they have their own agendas and outcomes, which I assist them to realise. This commissioned process has more of a relationship to the general Community art movement and the idea of art making as a conduit to achieving an outcome such as learning or community strengthening.
On the other hand the work that I do with communities as part of this research cannot really be classified as community artwork as it does not have at its heart the motive of improving the community, but instead is about creating a dialogue or text about placing personal text in public space. It is less about the community as an entity and more about dislodging a cultural norm, the interventionist act of placing text in public space and the dialogue or text that ensues.
In one of my very first projects, EMPTY: memory, love, grief and hope (2011 Moreart show), I asked people for contributions of words and phrases that they would use to remember people that had gone from their lives. Very early on in this research I thought that if I was going to place a text into public space, it needed to be a range of other people’s words, not my own. I felt that my own voice, representing the artist’s ego and a singular experience, was not the authentic voice for the context.
This also developed from the reflection and learning about the importance of the place in relationship to the artwork. That the artwork needs to respond to the people in the place, the audience. I am very concerned with the idea of an audience or reader for my text artworks, so this has been an important aspect of this research. If I designed the text myself I thought very carefully about the audience or the text’s relation to the place. The text may not come from the actual people in the place but it has to be resonant and able to ‘speak’ to them. So by gathering many voices, I hoped that the work might resonate with more people. I also gathered texts in different languages. And I was also collecting examples of oral language by speaking to people. So that the text felt like a conversation you might have with someone.
So how could I engage communities in writing text in public space?
Working with community participants brought about new challenges and restrictions such as time, budget, theme and legal installation mechanisms. The methods that I used working alone to place text in public space would not always work with communities, ideas had to be adapted or invented. There was also the issue of engagement, how do you get someone to place their own text in public space?
The most significant project was one of the first ones, where I worked with the Moonambel Art and History Group in 2012. One of the key ingredients for success was that the group knew me and trusted me as I had done many projects voluntarily with them in the past. I emailed the group and asked if they would like to do a public poetry project and got a very positive response. I ran the workshop to show them how to make ceramic poetry, I fired and glazed the work, then I helped them silicon the work onto the fence at the Moonambel Common. Because the participants were members of a small community this project was embraced by all and accepted as a worthwhile project. They only asked permission from the owner of the other side of the fence, not the local council authority because they felt that they owned the common themselves. The Mayor of the Pyrenes was invited to open the project by cutting a ribbon and a fabulous feast ensued which moved into the adjacent CFA fire brigade garage when it began to rain. The group already facilitate art projects in their town and they had the confidence to take over some parts of the project such as the media releases, advertising and organisation of the launch. Because of the large number of people involved from this small community there was a sense that the artists’ already owned the space in which they glued their artwork.
Photographs of the moonambel project
The Moonambel group worked together on this project but each participant made their own poem and installed it. For each person, their writing was an individual act of placing their own text into public space. The public space was theirs, and they wrote into it. I wonder now, has it posed a wider question for that community about placing text in public space?
The community art movement also gave credance to the idea that art made by community members, not just artists, was inherently valuable. Community art also values the process over the product. The product is evidence of the community working together and also becomes something that the community can keep. My perspective is similar in that I think everybody should be involved in art-making and that the layman has valuable insights and knowledge to add through the medium of art. The community art movement broadened the idea of who was an artist, and perhaps broke down some hierarchies between professional artist and community member, valuing them both as creative authors. Lori Hager says ‘Community arts break down barriers between artist and audience and include everyone, no matter the skill level, in creating and presenting the arts.’ Conceptual art has also broken down old definitions by allowing the author of the artwork, to be the author of the idea, and not necessarily the maker of the work.
Hager also suggests that Community arts differ from art by artists in that they, ‘are about fostering local dialogue, generating social capital, and stimulating positive social change.’ The idea of the community arts movement is one of civics, sharing values, community cohesion. Whilst some of these things are called to mind when I involve communities in this work of writing their own voices, I should be clear that it is my agenda that is being pursued, not theirs. In that sense it might be safer to describe my involvement of others in this research as participatory. The participants become involved in my agenda and my interests, by making text.
The involvement of community in writing is part of another dialogue about people being involved in their place, and about the words that I place into public space being derived from the inhabitants. I have often felt quite intrusive as I lure participants into an activity or dog them to give me their words of wisdom so that I can install them for public scrutiny.
(Photograph of the sages project – bukky etc.)
How do they feel when they see their words continually in public space. Do they regret it? How have the people they know responded to their statements?
No matter what the artist does, they are always an interventionist. They place something where it wasn't before. They upset the natural order of things. The practice of getting the locals to make text for or to write in their own places was not for community arts purposes of social cohesion or civics, but more as a natural evolvement of the question ‘how can we put our personal text into public space’.
Marc Schiller ( The Wooster Collective) suggests that Street art is almost a compulsive response from artists:
‘ . . . this proliferation of advertising in our urban environment, the repetition of that advertising and the mundaneness that one finds has led to the need for artists to make sure that these places are livable, that they’re humanizing. That there’s a balance between the advertiser who has the ability to buy the space, and the city, and the artist who has the need and the desire to take the space.’
What’s perhaps missing from the above idea is the inhabitants of that space. After all what is a place, but the amalgamation of objects, its history and its people.
This research began from the idea that personal text was missing and could be placed in public space, and then the question is why? and how?
The answer to the first question is; because we have lost that public space, it seems that it is not ours to interact with anymore. And how? has become more complicated. The how? could refer to the artist but ideally should refer to the people who use and inhabit the space. The how? leads to community and participatory art practices but does not necessarily stem from them. It stems from the personal viewpoint and personal interest of the artist. And like Schiller’s statement above, as it is in this research, the artist’s desire to intervene into the space.
In this project it came through to me very clearly that as an artist I can place something into public space which can reach an audience but how much more powerful it would be if I make an artwork in public space that involves the people who inhabit that space. Then the artwork has a connection with the people who had a part to play in its making and also the audience of the artwork. Also the loss of authorship has allowed the work to be more about the place where it is installed. For example the Sages of Sunshine project has no indication of authorship apart from the obvious, that someone made it and installed it. The only names on the work are those of the locals who have contributed the text. The imagery is of the local place or the local people. The artwork refers back to the place, and not to the artist.
This research project is also placed across different areas of arts culture. At one end of the spectrum it might appear as an activity at a festival, the very simple act of rearranging letters to make words. At the other end it is exhibited in a contemporary art space, alongside other contemporary artists and is successfully sold as an art commodity. In between it is found on the street by those people whose eyes look or find things.
(photos of words at festival and peg poetry at d11, and filling the cracks)
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NUTS AND BOLTS:
MATERIALS and making processes
This research was conducted through a series of small projects which facilitated placing personal texts in public space. Each project explored a number of variables such as materials, installation process, permanence and permission. Materials and installation methods affect the size, scope and permanence of the work and also have consequences for permissioned and unsolicited works.
The materials will also affect how people respond to the artwork, how they interact or remember it and also the materials create a conversation and relationship with the space they inhabit. For example the ceramics installed onto concrete and brick seem to be part of structural areas, whereas when ceramics are installed onto natural objects, they create a tension about manmade versus natural environment, which echoes larger issues. I have also noticed that when artworks are made of less permanent materials such as plastic, they are more quickly removed from the spaces, perhaps because they looked more temporary and not as pleasant in the environment.
Very early on in the research I had to let go of the concern about the cost of placing artworks into public space. I also had to let go of the artworks themselves. The artist’s time and materials is given over to the public and their response, much like craftivism or gifting.
The installation of text into public space, also commits itself to not being treated as valuable artwork by not existing within the gallery or art market structure. The artworks are often able to be taken home by an odd passerby for gratis or shared via photographs for free. The materials are recognisable but not especially valuable. The only value is the artist’s time and this is implied by the artworks being in the place. The audience are necessary participants in making text or in being there to read it. Because of this continual use and giving of materials, I have chosen to use cheaper materials or to work on a small scale unless funding could be obtained. The other aspect of this type of practice has been the loss of authorship of the artwork. When the art is encountered it is usually without any sign of who the author is. I felt this was necessary in order to give the work over more completely to the place it was in.
One of the text works, ‘Sketch for peg poetry no. 2’, was placed into a contemporary artist space, at D11 in August 2013. It was named sketch to indicate that it was not to be mistaken for a completed artwork, it was the sketch of an idea for making a mechanism that would invite people to play with moving the text on the pegs, and also as an attracter to lure people into engaging with the artwork.
(photo of artwork)
I think that any artist hoping to be able to make a living or part of a living out of art, cannot pretend to themselves that their art is free from the influence of economics. For many of the projects in this research I was able to gain funding or was paid for my time, which might free the work in regards to materials and time, but incurs other restrictions related to the funding guidelines of needs of the sponsor.
Actual materials
Ceramics and clay
(photograph of unfired clay work, slip on house, )
At the beginning of this project I experimented with using ceramic text. One of the reasons I am attracted to the use of fired ceramics is that if left in place it can be a permanent artwork. It also has a monumental feel about it as its surface can be made to look like stone. The material – clay is already found in many buildings in the form of brick and the glaze on the tiles is a form of glass, which is also a building material. So although the tiles have a handmade aspect, their materials have a strong relationship with the built environment in which they are installed.
(photograph of conversation tiles in brickwork)
Early on I realised that the process of making ceramics, drying time, access to kilns and the necessity of two firings often caused slow turnarounds, was sometimes costly and there is often difficulty getting access to firing. Ceramics is a time consuming process and projects needed to be planned carefully to avoid stressful situations. I also began making ceramic projects very small, so that the cost of producing them in multiples would not be a problem.
Part of the research for this project was to find ways of installing the ceramics that would suit different situations. I have experimented with a number of adhesives and installation methods. I have experimented with a number of adhesives but I have found all-purpose clear silicon to be the most effective material to use. The work can be permanent but it can also be easily removed with a knife and some silicon remover if necessary. I have discovered artworks still in place a year later. I also experimented with making holes in the ceramic letters so that I could string them up. This was an effective method for installing work around tree trunks or for situations that needed to be temporary.
Photographs
Letters installed using fishing line
Stop and go on Brunswick rd.
I found that my work with community participants was limited by using ceramics because I couldn’t provide enough letters for a lot of people to make a permanent work. For example if I wanted to do even a public ephemeral work cheaply, I needed to consider the time and money involved in making the ceramic letters. Also if I wanted the participants to make their own letters, I then had to fire them, which is a costly and time consuming process. These constraints in ceramic materials propelled me to explore other materials, which could be easily found, were economically viable and could be used more immediately. I used clay slip but I found that although it washes off easily, it lacks aesthetic appeal because it looks like dirt or white paint.
Plastic
I began using recycled plastic with fabric letters as a potential material to use with large groups of people. The plastic I found in dumper bins or given to me by furniture stores, and fabric is very cheap to buy from opportunity shops or easily sourced from the community. Cost-effective production methods are an important factor when you are working with large numbers of people on a limited or non-existent budget, which is often the case. I also discovered that the plastic reacted to sunlight, so it added another dimension to the artwork. This work was initially developed as a trial for the Moreart Art Show, and was further developed in workshops with school children, the Sunshine Babel Onion project and then used in The Clothesline Timeline (commissioned by Melton Shire, Ephemeral artwork for the Djerriwarh festival).
Photographs
I wanted to tell you
Plastic banner at Anstey station (trial), 2012
Fabric letters between two layers of recycled plastic
Sunshine babel onion
The Clothesline Timeline, Commissioned artwork for the Djeriwarrh Festival, Melton Council September, 2012, Plastic and fabric, clothesline with Nick and Mary Hackett, tape, pegs.
Pegs
Still on the search for easier ways to make words and something that the public would respond to. I discovered the idea of pegs mid 2013. You can buy 80 pegs for $2.50 so it was extremely cost effective. The other surprising thing I discovered was that you can place them in many situations and often they don’t get removed. There was a familiarity about them that people enjoyed and because they were small and temporarily attached they didn’t appear intrusive.
I initially thought of stringing a line for them but the first installation went onto a fence in Lauderdale. A second installation was made on a fence next to the Moonambel General Store. Both installations still exist one year later but with new arrangements of the words made by the respective communities.
I also developed pegs with labels on them which could be written on with permanent markers and were displayed on lines. An experimental installation at the Huntclub Community Arts Centre, led to a commission to make it on a larger scale at the Brimbank Kids Day Out and The Brimbank Readers and Writers Festival in 2013.
Photographs:
Peg Poetry installation on Fence, Bike path, in Lauderdale, Tasmania.
Peg poetry at the Moonambel general store
Sketch for peg poetry @ D11
Pegpoetry at the Brimbank Kids day out festival
Peg Poetry at the Brimbank Readers and Writers Festival
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COMMUNICATION AND REACTION
I was interested in the response to the text in public space: how the participants, audience, residents, and caretakers of the public space react to the personal voices. This is of particular interest to me, as this has affected the situation we have now, where a personal writing in public space is not welcomed. Block H says in his essay, Sanctioned and unsanctioned art in Public space, ‘Increasingly, public space is shrinking, morphing into ‘public-use’ or ‘public access’ space. It is progressively subject to surveillance and control where even minor deviation from the conventional established social standards becomes illicit, and commercial codes of conduct are enforced.’
I felt that this was particularly evident in my initial fear about placing something into public space. I was fearful of being prosecuted but after a while I worked out that someone had to complain first before someone would prosecute. Who owns what space and who are the caretakers of that space became more pertinent questions. How they would react to my use of their space was also something to consider.
How is public space viewed and how can a community’s idea of ownership of their public space be changed. Can they see it as a place in which they can place their own words?
Feedback is perhaps the most difficult thing for an artist to organize. How can I find out what the community response is?
Through the research projects I paid particular attention to how the participants, audience, residents, and caretakers of the public space reacted to the personal voices. What type of feedback do I receive or is there evidence of how the community felt about the artwork? People of course, love participating in workshops and activities and express this satisfaction but don’t usually comment on a deeper level. In regards to creating a dialogue about the idea of personal text in public space, I am not usually privy to how this affects people’s thinking. There are many places in time and space where this silent or conversational dialogue might take place. There is how the work affects the writer, how it is seen and thought about by others. How other people speak about it and how the dialogue continues. This is impossible to document.
I was however, able to gather some responses by blogging all of the artwork, and I accidentally came across some reactions by being in the right place at the right time.
Example, place in special box
Stop and go
Ephemeral installation, West Brunswick, November 2011.
Ephemeral installation, West Brunswick, November 2011.
When you drive along Brunswick rd. there is a particular amount of traffic congestion as you approach Lygon St. On your right is a traffic island with huge old trees in it.
I assembled a series of words, stop and go, with ceramic letters strung on fishing line and then tied around the trees. Using the words stop and go perfectly sum up the driver’s situation in rush hour traffic, particularly at this spot.
I assembled a series of words, stop and go, with ceramic letters strung on fishing line and then tied around the trees. Using the words stop and go perfectly sum up the driver’s situation in rush hour traffic, particularly at this spot.
Then I was at blacksmithing one day and I had some ceramics left over from the moreart show, which I was giving out to the other women.
Then Sarah said, "hey, did you do the stop and goes on Brunswick Road?’
Debbie: “Yes, I did!”
Sarah: ‘I was sitting on a bus getting pissed off at the traffic jam and I looked out the window and noticed them. It was so funny I just laughed and laughed!"
It was very valuable to get that response, as I had no idea about whether people noticed the installation, or what their response was. The fact that it was memorable and made Sarah laugh, is a good indication that other people may have seen and appreciated the stop and go texts.
Photograph: Stop and Go, ceramic letter installation, Brunswick Rd, Brunswick. 2011 - 2012
I was sitting in a staffroom at a school where I was doing a project one day. The school was in the next suburb from the Sages of Sunshine Project. A teacher came in and said that she had seen some artworks up in sunshine, ‘little portraits.’ She was referring to the project excitedly and I was pleased because she had even noticed them whilst driving through. I realised that there were probably thousands more conversations about the project but I had just witnessed one by luck of being in the right place at the right time to overhear it.
Photo – sages of sunshine
blogging
I began blogging individual projects in 2010 as a communication tool for communities to share the project that I was making with them. The blog also linked with my other blogs and worked as an advertising tool. But its primary role was to allow the participants to share their art making with their families and friends.
For artworks that people find on the street, being able to find the project on the Internet can provide the context for the artwork. For example in the Sages of Sunshine Project, I would tape the flyer nearby which listed the blog address, so that interested people could take the flyer and find out more about the project if they wanted to. When running activities that make ephemeral artworks the artworks would be photographed and then blogged to provide a record for the author and to also let them see their work in the context of the bigger project.
This is especially true of the concrete poetry madness blog where many projects have been posted of different types with different materials, it lets the viewer see that their poem as part of a larger practice of making poetry out of objects, letters and words.
By blogging your work you also get a second audience and the artwork has a second life as a series of photographs and text. In it’s virtual life it is an idea or image that people respond to. Often my projects are small interventions in very disparate places, so the blog brings all of the parts of the project together in one place. It makes the project viewable and more understandable. People can also see the size of the project and they can even ask questions and I can respond to them.
When I did filling the cracks with conversation I used the fringe festival as the conduit for the project. I knew that the fringe festival would use an online forum and that I could get an audience to click to my site through linking from the fringe festival app. This worked well and I had the most ever views on a project in such a short time.
Mixed reactions
Filling the cracks with conversation has been a very popular project and I receive many requests for it to be placed in particular areas. Often people will let me know if they see the work and some people let me know that they have gone out in search for it. I have had requests from Council art officers to install it around community centres and have not had any negative feedback about the use of Council Footpaths which house the work. The permanence of the project and ongoing installation has assisted in it remaining an durational artwork with an ongoing dialogue.
Photograph above: a Facebook message from May 2013 – demonstrating that the project is still current and seen over 9 months after it was installed.
Filling the cracks
Response via Facebook
Photograph; Facebook capture of sighting work 8 months after installation.
In 2013 I was asked by the curator to install ceramic conversations (from the filling the cracks with conversations project) temporarily in front of “The Front”, an artist run space at Docklands. This artwork extended 1.5 cm from the front window onto the street, in that it was glued down onto the silicon holding the glass in place.
I drew attention to the artwork by surrounding the tiles in hundreds and thousands. One week later it was requested by the management of the shopping centre that the artwork be removed. This was a response driven by the extreme rules of the shopping centre regarding signs and intervention by shops onto the footpaths and perhaps feedback from other shop owners who had expressed their fear of the hundreds and thousands attracting ants.
Photograph:
Installation of conversations at ‘The Front”, Docklands August 2013.
The Poets of Moonambel has been the most permanent and longstanding artwork. Its success lay in the ownership of the project by the community. The project has been up for two years now and only two letters have gone missing.
The heavy weight of Aspiration
Jan – Feb 2012 this was a poem I wrote and adhered to a slab of concrete in a park in East Keilor. I used liquid nails for this one. I noticed that it is still intact and complete 18 months later in June 2013. Council workers had done extensive works in the parklands where it was situated and had not attempted to remove it. I found it very interesting that it had lasted for 18 months. The concrete slab where I wrote the poem also had a large tank like structure above it, which is regularly updated with graffiti art, and I was pleased that the local artists had not tried to remove or paint over the letters. Sometimes it's a good response if there is no evidence of response.
Photograph;
The heavy weight of aspiration
Ceramic letters, liquid nails on concrete slab
East Keilor 2012,
The Television Interventions
Keilor East, Essendon and Coburg Jan – March 2012
In the spirit of Julie Shiels work, I began placing words on the televisions, which had been dumped onto the nature strips in the suburbs that I frequented. People had placed them on the nature strips even though it was not hard rubbish time and even though no one really needs an old television anymore, particularly one that has been sitting in the rain for several months.
The text of the work referred to the fact that the owner’s relationship with the television had ended and served as a metaphor for human relationships and our relationship to the objects that we purchase and discard. A couple of texts referred to the fact that we are all tossing out our fat televisions for slimmer models. The words on the televisions did not go down well with many people. Some people removed the letters, some turned the television face down, and some removed the televisions quickly thereafter. However, one television just across the road from me was left on the nature strip with the words ‘tele too tubby’ for at least four months.
The television project was really interesting because of the negative response. The project was political in nature in that it referred to our neverending desire to purchase the new and throw out the old at an ever-increasing rate. It reflected our ‘throw away society’ and also the rate at which relationships are disbanded. It said things that people didn’t want to hear. In that sense it effectively communicated the message but was not received well in public space.
Photograph: Tele too tubby ceramic letters on television
Television tipped over and tipped back
Afterword
It is interesting to note that the first and the last projects for this research have explored ideas of grief and loss as a common human experience.
The most recent project I made can be seen as the outcome of this research and again it related to grief. It encompasses many of the conclusions that I have found in this research and facilitated the writing of authentic and heartfelt personal text by the local community, and written in their own public space.
On Wednesday April the 16th Fiona Warzywoda was stabbed to death by her de-facto husband in Sunshine. In a response to this a Vigil against Violence memorial for Fiona, was organized for the following Tuesday at the place where she died. The organisers for the Vigil requested that people bring crochet or knitted hearts. I had two requests from friends who asked me, could we do something for the vigil. So I decided that we could have a workshop to make ceramic crochet hearts.
On the Saturday afternoon I made plaster casts of crochet so that the hearts could be positives of crochet not just prints, then I dried the casts in the oven Saturday night. On the Sunday morning 16 people arrived at my house to make the ceramic hearts and they made over two hundred of them. Sunday night saw me painting and drying the hearts in the oven so they could be ready for firing. The hearts were placed in the kiln on Monday morning and retrieved on Tuesday afternoon. Still warm they arrived at the vigil at five o’clock accompanied by eight permanent textas and fishing line. Some of the people who had made the hearts began writing on them and hanging them in the tree nearby, and then offering them to other people to write on. Other people that I knew and more that were unknown to me began to assist with the project. Within two hours all of the hearts had been written on and were hanging in the tree.
What was incredible about this project is that it evolved from the community upwards. The artist was used as a conduit for managing and processing the artwork. Two community members initiated the project by requesting the artist do something. I only physically made one of the hearts as a demonstration, then spent my time organizing the other needs of the project, such as moulds, clay, coffee, food, introductions. I also only wrote on one of the hearts. The text came from the community and each person wrote what they wanted. The people who wrote on the hearts felt free to write about how Fiona’s death had made them feel and also often wrote about other friends and family that they had lost through violence. The process extended the depth and meaning of the Vigil, and also extended the duration of the act as the text was left in the tree for others to read on following days. The remains of the flowers and candles left for Fiona and Her family were removed the day after the vigil, but the artwork in the trees were left untouched.
As I have worked through this research project, the use of text has invaded all of my art output, in public spaces, in public art and my personal work. Its ability of text to extend the meaning and depth of artistic expression is powerful.
In public space, hand written or arranged text is in sharp contrast to the digital overload of text we see around us and is more noticeable. It has the ability to stop us in our tracks as it was written by another human being, and usually cries out with a different purpose than advertising. It can tell us of a real story and experience that perhaps we also share.
The difference between my work and that of artist such as Holzer, Kruger and Banksy is that I have derived the text from the space in which it is installed. I develop it from the ‘ground up’ using the place or the people as the catalyst. Unlike graffiti and other forms of public art and indeed text in public space, my research practice has been to encourage textural community conversations which are layered into community history, place and people. This type of practice leads to benefits for the individuals and the community. Developing art practices in public space from the ground up rather than the imposed has the capacity to be owned by the community.
Photos of the hearts writing
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CURRICULUM VITAE
DEBBIE QADRI
Education
2011 - Currently studying for Masters of Fine Art (Art in Public Space) RMIT
2010 - Certificate 3 in Training and Assessment
1997 - Bachelor of Arts, Victoria University (Professional writing)
1991 - Graduate Diploma of Education, Victoria College
1989 - Bachelor of Fine Art, University of Tasmania (Ceramics)
Debbie works as a community/public artist in the Western suburbs of Melbourne. She exhibits her personal work under her maiden name – Debbie Harman.
Recent Projects
· Overnewton Anglican Community College, Noah’s Ark Mural 2013
· Artist in residence at Gardenvale Primary School, 2013
· Ardeer: My suburb, My Stories, Artists in Schools project at Ardeer Primary School and Mother of God Primary SchoolMural Project, St John’s Primary School, West Footscray 2013
· Brimbank Readers and Writers Festival – stencil the street and mosaic musings workshops 2013
· Artist for the Ephemeral Artwork at the Djerriwarrh Festival, Melton, Melton Council. 2012
· Two year residency at Deer Park Art spaces – Brimbank Council, 2012 - 2014
· Artist for the Future Knox Community Arts Project – Knox City Council, 2012
· Poets of Moonambel –facilitated ceramic poetry installation Moonambel Common. 2012
· Animal Storytelling Wall, Strathmore Community Kindergarten Ceramic mural, 2011
· Overnewton Anglican Community College – Artist in Residence, 2011
· Bird Garden Project - Lincolnville Kindergarten, totem poles, pavers and birdbath. 2011
· Caulfield Grammar School, Wheelers Hill Campus – Ceramic Dragon Mural 2011
· Bellevue Hill Preschool – Australian Animals Ceramic Mural, 2010- 2011
· St Bernard’s Primary School, Coburg – 16 Ceramic Totem Poles, 2010
Other significant Projects
· Ceramic Murals also at: Keilor Heights Primary School 2007, 2010
· Lincolnville Kindergarten, 2007, 2009, 2011
· Strathmore Kindergarten, 2008, 2011
· Keilor Downs Primary School 2008,
· Overnewton Anglican Community College 2010, 2011, 2013
· The Scarlett Bar, Burnley St. Richmond – ceramic murals interior and exterior. 2008
· Painted Murals for Taco Villa Mexican Restaurant, Elsternwick. 1999
· Painted Murals –at Victoria University, Footscray, 1997 -8
· Painted Murals - Visycare Youth Centre, Dandenong, 1998
· Painted Murals - Youth at Risk Offices, Frankston, 1998
· Painted Murals for Taco Villa Mexican Restaurant, Glenhuntly 1996
· Painted Mural - Native Birds of Tasmania, Sheffield, Tasmania 1987
· Collections; Devonport Gallery, University of Sydney, University of Tasmania,
Memberships
· Regional Arts Victoria
· Western Youth Arts Network
· Australian Blacksmiths Association
· Moonee Valley Council Arts and Culture Advisory Committee
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alberro, A, Zimmerman, A, Benjamin, HD & Batchelor, D, 1998, Lawrence Weiner, Phaidon, London, UK.
(surveys of the language-based art of Lawrence Weiner, which has been an influence on the non-didactic methods of making text, that I have used in my research)
A Man of Letters – EINE (Graffiti Artist) documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wY5hzCEn-4) documentary film by Jack Oliver, Joseph Brown and Will Abell
Banksy, 2005, Wall and Piece, New York: Random House UK.
Barthes, Roland, ‘De l’oeuvre au texte’,1971 ( English translation by Stephen Heath in ‘Roland Barthes, Image, music, Text, London 1977 pp155 – 64), Harrison,C and Wood, P (eds.) Art in Theory, 1992 Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, UK.
Block H (author’s name), Sanctioned and unsanctioned art in public space, <http://www.blockh.net/Block_H_publicspace.pdf>
Bolton, R, (ed) 1992, Culture Wars, New Press, New York, USA.
Burn, I, (essay) ‘The art market: Affluence and Degradation’, in Harrison, C & Wood, P, (eds) 1992,ART in Theory, Blackwell publishers, Cambridge, UK.
Carpenter, G, & Blandy, D (eds), Arts and Cultural Programming: A leisure Perspective. 2008, published by Human Kinetics, USA
(The role of Community Arts Practice in cultural programming, definitions and limitations of this art practice)
CDH, Selected writings links: http://www.cdh-art.com/writing.html
(The participatory projects by Candy Chang have been useful for my research)
De Botton, A & Armstrong, J, 2013, Art as Therapy, Phaidon Press pty. Ltd. London
(De Botton and Armstrong explore the roles of art in culture
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