This week will be an amazing turn of history as the sketches and dreams of a poor Bulgarian émigré, who arrived in Paris just over 60 years ago, will be realised—with Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s final work, the monumental Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, opening to the public on 18 September 2021.

Closer to home, it’s nearly 52 years since they changed John Kaldor’s life—and contemporary and public art in Australia and around the world—with the realisation of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work and the first Kaldor Public Art Project, 1969’s Wrapped Coast at Little Bay in Sydney.

It’s a moment of pride, reflection and sadness for John, who shares his memories and feelings about a couple he calls “more than friends, like family”.

What did you love about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artwork?

That’s really hard to explain! I was familiar with a number of other contemporary artists at the time, but initially I wasn’t aware of their work.

It was something really very different, something that I responded to. Not through any reasoning—it was more just an emotional reaction, that meant more to me than somebody explaining it.

What do you think Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s art means, wrapping things?

When Christo and Jeanne-Claude were asked why they did it, they would reply, “We just want to do it because we think it’s beautiful.” That’s enough for me!

When we first met, I bought a small package because I couldn’t afford much more. I donated it to the Art Gallery of New South Wales much later on. I still don’t know what’s in it. It will stay wrapped.

What did you like about Christo and Jeanne-Claude personally?

Both Christo and Jeanne-Claude were absolutely charismatic and totally committed to their art. Their enthusiasm and determination, their single-minded drive to get things done captured you and brought you along. Not only me, but everybody who worked with them. They recruited people from all walks of life—they could appeal to everyone, not just people who were interested in art.

When we were working on Wrapped Coast at Little Bay, what is now a beautiful golf course was a rubbish dump, and every afternoon the council workers would dump garbage. On the first morning, they laughed. The next day, after chatting to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, they began helping us. Christo and Jeanne-Claude managed to make them feel the need to be part of the project, and that was the same with young and old, with students and volunteers, with everybody who worked on it or talked to them.

One of the things that fascinated me was the contrast between Christo in person, and when he was working. Personally, he was very relaxed, very charming. But when he was working on a project, he was completely different—utterly determined, not accepting any nonsense and completely absorbed. But just being in their company was most wonderful. They made a great couple. They were born on the exact same day in 1935. Jeanne-Claude had the most marvellous sense of humour, and they argued all the time, but they loved and complemented each other in every way.

Was there anything else Christo and Jeanne-Claude proposed wrapping when they were here?

Most famously, the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge. It never went further than a proposal because it was totally unrealistic at that time. I mean, you can’t wrap the Harbour Bridge! Can you imagine? Well, I suppose you could, and still have traffic on it, but I don’t think it was meant realistically—rather as an exercise in possibilities.

They did wrap the oldest bridge in Paris, the Pont Neuf (The Pont Neuf, Wrapped, 1985) and later, they wrapped the Reichstag (Wrapped Reichstag, 1995), which wasn’t realised until two decades after they’d first envisioned it—one of the hallmarks of their work is the time it takes to get permission. It went to a vote in the German Parliament and snuck through with only two votes.

And now, of course, the iconic Arc de Triomphe in Paris!

What’s your favourite memory of Christo and Jeanne-Claude?

I have so many great memories of them, being in their home, sitting around the table, having dinner—never lunch, because they were always working during the day. It’s been—what?—52 years since we met, and I saw a lot of them over that time. They were more than friends—they were like family. We had some real fun together. I remember once they were exploring a project called Over the River, which in the end didn’t go ahead. We were in the Colorado foothills, looking at different rivers, staying in motels in those strange little American towns. I remember in one there was a restaurant full of real cowboys where they gave you lots of peanuts while waiting for dinner, and you could just shell them and throw the shells on the floor. The whole floor was littered with peanut shells! A great artistic memory!

We used to talk on the phone every three or four weeks just to say hello. It wasn’t anything world-changing. We’d just chat about what he was doing, what was I doing. If you know somebody for 50-odd years, you just chat like you would with family. Small talk, keeping in touch.

How do you feel about the realisation of Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, given it was the first one of the first things he conceived when he came to Paris as a young Bulgarian emigré?

I’m very excited and very proud that this is his last work. And I feel very fortunate that I was able to enable Christo and Jeanne-Claude to do Wrapped Coast.

How you feel about not being able to be there?

I’m really upset. I’ve seen most of his projects, especially all the large ones and this, his last, eludes me. Thank goodness, it’s not for the same reason it eludes him, but, still, I wish I could be there.

How do you feel about the work being livestreamed on their website?

Well, there’s no other way. Now we have to use every possible means for people to see the work. Christo and Jeanne-Claude have fans from all round the world, so thankfully television, social media and the website will really show the work for all of us who can’t be there in person.

What do you think their legacy is or will be?

Very different from other artists. They didn’t follow a trend. I mean, it’s easy to say you were a Cubist or Surrealist or a Pop artist or a Conceptual artist. But you can’t define them or put their work into a little box—even a wrapped one! He made spectacular projects that appealed not only to art enthusiasts, but to everyone. Wrapped Coast had a great impact, not only here in Australia, but internationally. I feel so fortunate that I met them and it became our first project. And Christo and Jeanne-Claude didn’t just make an impact on the art world, they changed my life!

But their legacy? Christo only died about 18 months ago! I’m reminded of that story—possibly apocryphal—about a conversation between the French President François Mitterand and then-Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. Mitterand asked Zhou, “What do you think the effect of the French Revolution was?” And Zhou replied, “It’s too early to say.” I think we’ll really see and understand Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s legacy in the next 50, 100, 150 years.

• It All Started with a Stale Sandwich, directed by Samantha Lang and produced by Felix Films, celebrating 50 years of Kaldor Public Art Projects, is now streaming on Docplay.

• You can see L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped via livestream on https://christojeanneclaude.net/

Images: John Kaldor and Christo, Little Bay, 1969, Harry Shunk; Wrapped Sydney Harbour Bridge and Wrapped Sydney Opera House, 1969; Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

Our do it (homework) e-book is here! A handy PDF that’s both a case study of our first digital learning program and a resource for your classroom.

On Tuesday 1 December 2020, we launched the e-book with a live discussion of the do it (homework) program via Zoom, hosted by Kaldor Public Art Projects curator Emily Sullivan. Speakers included artist Dale Harding, participating teacher Heather Davidson from Macquarie Fields High School and Kaldor Public Art Projects educators Antonia Fredman and Lleah Smith.

do it (homework) was a 10-week creative learning program developed alongside Project 36: do it (australia). With new instructions by artists Lauren Brincat, Dale Harding and Amrita Hepi written especially for secondary students, the program sought to facilitate meaningful connections between artists, students and teachers across NSW.

Download the e-book, do it (homework): a case study

Introducing the do it (australia) catalogue! Presented as the final instalment of Project 36, the digital catalogue documents the hundreds of extraordinary submitted by audiences in response to do it (australia).

Featuring new essays by Hans Ulrich Obrist, John Kaldor and Emily Sullivan, the experimental online publication presents all 18 artist instructions alongside the creative interpretations they inspired.

To celebrate the catalogue’s release, Kaldor Public Art Projects hosted a live virtual “scroll-through” of the publication. Moderated by digital curator and critic Lauren Carroll Harris, a panel of speakers zoomed in on digital art commissions and audience engagement in the online realm. Speakers included the catalogue editor Monique Leslie Watkins, artist Dale Harding, audience participant Zhen Kueh and Kaldor Public Art Projects curator Emily Sullivan.

Visit the do it (australia) catalogue

It’s been a year since we opened Making Art Public: 50 Years of Kaldor Public Art Projects at the Art Gallery of NSW, and to celebrate, we’re excited to share documentation of a commissioned live work by artist Miralda.

Best known for his artworks combining food, colour and ritual, Catalan artist Miralda created a kaleidoscopic feast in celebration of our 50th anniversary in September 2019.

In the moments before the curtain lifted, we captured Miralda at work on Five Feastables, a spectacular event commissioned by Kaldor Public Art Projects and presented at the Art Gallery of NSW. The work’s technicolour food, emu-egg instrumentation and dazzling table settings formed part of a participatory spectacle inspired by our 50 year history.

Miralda’s collaboration with John Kaldor dates back to 1973, when he created Coloured feast for the opening of the John Kaldor Fabricmaker showrooms, and Coloured bread at the Art Gallery of NSW as Kaldor Public Art Project 4. The memorable rainbow-coloured bread was recreated for the exhibition Making Art Public in 2019, with Miralda consulting on the creation of new loaves for his project’s popular “archive box”. Read more about the process in the Gallery’s brilliant blog post.

The video is directed by James Vaughan, with cinematography by Dimitri Zaunders. Artwork collaborators on Five Feastables are Dessislava Pirinchieva, Chiswick at the Gallery, Anthea Leonard, Keiran McKay, Megan Alice Clune, Holly Conner and Saskia Havekes.

Watch the video Miralda: Five Feastables

do it (homework) was an 8-week creative learning program developed in direct response to Project 36: do it (australia), the organisation’s first public art project to be presented digitally.

The program was delivered in May–August 2020 and was specially tailored for Stage 5 (Year 9–10) learners. Young people from eight schools in diverse locations across inner Sydney, Western Sydney and regional NSW participated in the program and were often introduced to instructional art for the very first time.

About the program

do it (homework) provided an exciting chance for Kaldor Public Art Projects to connect with students and teachers during uncertain times. It was a unique opportunity to play and explore new methods of delivery and technology and provided a platform for young people to connect with their peers across the state. The program was a quick, thoughtful response to an urgent need for high-quality online programs and resources for in-school and remote learning contexts. It aimed to introduce new methods of art making to students and to highlight the significance of the audience in artistic encounters.

Connecting students with artists

We designed do it (homework) to foster collaboration and a sense of community during the global COVID-19 crisis. The program supported students to create their own collaborative instruction-based artworks, guided by the Kaldor education team, in close partnership with classroom teachers. Through live online sessions, students enthusiastically interacted with practising Australian artists Lauren Brincat, Dale Harding and Amrita Hepi and received advice and feedback on their own instructional artworks. The response from students was overwhelmingly positive, with some students expressing that they had never expected to meet a “real-life” artist.

The participating do it (homework) artists were also commissioned to create new instructions, expressly written for a student audience, and invited to reflect upon how rules govern the lives of young people. 

The program was informed by research into online learning, which identified that virtual delivery is more successful when students are able to directly interact with teachers, facilitators and peers, and actively engage in collaborative tasks. In light of these findings we gave ample time for students to actively participate, engage and ask questions.

Activities and workshops

The enthusiasm and commitment of the teachers was paramount to the success of the project and the Kaldor education team prioritised early meetings with teachers to establish a foundation of mutual understanding and trust. Following the initial Zoom meeting with teachers, students worked through three learning activities, which provided an introduction to instructional and conceptual art practice. Next, students participated in a series of online workshops facilitated by the Kaldor education team. The workshops encouraged students to reflect on individual values, skills and knowledge, and how they might work collaboratively as an ‘artists’ collective’. Building on ideas explored in the workshops and guided by their classroom teacher, students collaborated in small groups to create their own instruction-based artworks in the spirit of do it.

School exchange

Through July and August each school exchanged their instructions with an assigned ‘partner’ school, enabling students to engage with the work of their peers across metropolitan and regional NSW. All students had their work interpreted at least once by a friendly stranger they had never met. This was a significant part of the program as it aimed to highlight how audiences engage with art and ideas differently. Students were left feeling surprised but delighted with the audience response as it was often not what they had imagined.

Staying connected

As excursions and incursions are limited for the foreseeable future, do it (homework) aimed not only to introduce new methods of art-making for students, but to connect young people with artists, the wider art world and each other. It was a timely response to an urgent global situation, which has directly impacted the lives of teachers and students across NSW. do it (homework) offered a rich framework for creating artwork by students for students at a time of need.

do it (homework) was a meaningful opportunity to rethink the importance of artists and art-making in our daily lives, especially during a time of global change.

Kaldor Public Art Projects would like to thank the participating schools:
Denison College, Bathurst High Campus
Glen Innes High School
Karabar High School
Macquarie Fields High School
Marsden High School
Nepean Creative & Performing Arts High School
St Clair High School
Sydney Boys High School

do it (homework) was collaboratively delivered by Antonia Fredman (Manager, Education & Public Programs) and Lleah Smith (Assistant Manager, Education).

do it (homework) is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.

Read more about do it (homework) on the project microsite

Words by Lleah Smith

Image: In Remembrance of Social Distancing by Sneha, Amelia and Natalia from Macquarie Fields High School. This work was made in response to Amrita Hepi’s instruction Monumental piece (2020) for do it (homework)

We’re delighted to release the online publication Lion’s Honey: A Reader.

Agatha Gothe-Snape’s Lion’s Honey was a durational performance commissioned for the exhibition Making Art Public: 50 Years of Kaldor Public Art Projects at the Art Gallery of NSW. From 7 September 2019 to 16 February 2020, a weekly roster of readers, selected by Gothe-Snape and curator Emily Sullivan, occupied the space of the exhibition, reading to themselves each day while curious visitors looked on.

Lion’s Honey: A Reader documents the performance from the perspective of the artist and readers, beginning with a list of every book read throughout the performance. The publication includes a poem by Anne-Marie Te Whiu, essay by Stella Maynard and a personal reflection by Agatha Gothe-Snape.

Lion’s Honey: A Reader is a downloadable PDF, designed to be read onscreen or printed on A3 paper.

Download Lion’s Honey: A Reader

Image: Agatha Gothe-Snape, Lion’s Honey, 2019. Performers, green vinyl chair, letter from the artist, the artist’s sheepskin rug, books, wall-mounted shelves. Commissioned by Kaldor Public Art Projects for the exhibition Making Art Public: 50 years of Kaldor Public Art Projects, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 7 September 2019 – 16 February 2020. Photo: Document Photography

Supported by The Nelson Meers Foundation. Courtesy The Commercial, Sydney

Behind the scenes at Kaldor Public Art Projects, in a small room at the back of our office, is an abundance of folders and boxes reaching from the floor to the ceiling. Inside the boxes are thousands of items that have been collected through our 50-year history of creating groundbreaking projects with Australian and international artists in public spaces.

Each item sparks joy through its connection to a moment in the life of a project—from the proposal of an idea through to realising a large-scale public art project—and documents its path toward the last footfall of its audience and beyond.

We’ve shown you many of the interesting photographs, letters, artist sketches and objects that tell the story of Kaldor Public Art Projects’ 50-year history through our exhibition Making Art Public. There are thousands more intriguing and unseen objects sitting silently on our shelves. This year, in celebration of 50 years of taking art outside the gallery walls, our archive is transforming into a digital resource that will allow global audiences to access our collection from their desktops.

Digitising the archives allows us to highlight the ideas and themes that connect across projects, and makes available this physically large collection to a wide audience, beyond our office. The archives can be discovered through searchable content tags, enabling site users to browse our archive by themes, project titles and their creators.

The significance of our archive collection and its transformation to a digital resource for researchers was recognised through the award of an Australian Research Council Linkage grant in 2018. The grant, awarded to a research team led by Professor John Potts from Macquarie University, has made possible the digitisation of our archive material and the creation of a digital repository to house these digital assets.

The archive has been central to our entire 50th anniversary program. Not only have we worked with Michael Landy and the Kaldor Studio artists to display, reproduce and reimagine some of the treasures of the archive in the Making Art Public exhibition, our team has delved deep into our records to reconnect with all sorts of people who have contributed to our projects over the last 50 years for our Living Archives project, and for Alicia Frankovich’s performance, The Work.

While utilising the archives across so many projects has presented logistical challenges for us, it is exciting to see some of the creative ways people engage with our archives, and to know that many more people will be inspired by the collection when we share it online.

To celebrate the launch of the Kaldor Public Art Projects Digital Archive, a public symposium Archives in the Digital Age is being held to explore the cultural impact of digital archives on 20 November 2019. Speaking at the symposium will be experts Katrina Sedgwick (ACMI), John Potts (Macquarie University), Alice Desmond (Kaldor Public Art Projects) and Steven Miller (Art Gallery of NSW).

This project has been made possible through the support of our university partnership with Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales, with recognition of the ARC Linkage Grant LP170101175. Special thanks and gratitude to our academic partners Professors John Potts and Ross Harley, and Nicole Anderson and Dr Scott East. Our gratitude to Peter Heery from Inzen Digital Agency and the team at State Archives and Records Authority of New South Wales for their enthusiasm and support in making the digital repository a reality.

The digitisation of our archive has been championed and carefully executed by Kaldor Public Art Projects staff: Alice Desmond, Archive Collection Curator; Eliza Ormsby, Archive Assistant; and Roslyn Walker, Research Intern, Macquarie University.

References

Australian Research Council, Digitising the Kaldor Public Art Projects Archive, 29 June 2018, retrieved from www.arc.gov.au/news-publications/media/research-highlights/digitising-kaldor-public-art-projects-archive.

ARC Linkage Grant Application, LP170101175. Making the Temporary Permanent: Digitising the Kaldor Public Art Projects Archive https://researchdata.ands.org.au/linkage-projects-grant-id-lp170101175/1344179

Your Public Art Project offers a unique opportunity for Kaldor Public Art Projects to connect with primary and secondary schools across NSW during our 50th anniversary year. Our extended reach has led to rich engagements with students from Bourke, Dubbo, Parkes, Wilcannia, Western Sydney and Sydney’s Inner West.

Kaldor Public Art Projects’ physical archive serves as a jumping-off point for the program. It enables students to understand diverse approaches to artmaking and welcomes new ways of ideating and conceptualising what is possible in the realm of public art.

Learners are introduced to Your Public Art Project through four specially designed video resources, which unpack our archives through four key themes—site/environment, scale, community and time. The video resources are presented by Australian artist David Capra and his beloved 8-year-old dachshund, Teena. The playful and whimsical vision that David brings to the archives is a conscious attempt at making the content accessible for all learners, introduced to vastly new concepts and methods of artmaking for the very first time.

Community networks and connections are central to Your Public Art Project. It is our aim to serve as a catalyst for encouraging meaningful relationships between schools and their wider community. Through the project, schools have established mutually beneficial exchanges with The Local Men’s Shed, Bourke; Inner West Council; Penrith Regional Gallery and Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery, amongst others.

Another key aspect of the program are our incursions, which address how the established themes—site/environment, scale, community and time—come together in the creation of a public artwork. I have been facilitating incursions across NSW over the past two months. From 22–25 June, I spent time in Broken Hill and Dubbo facilitating programs in partnership with the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery and the Western Plains Cultural Centre.

The incursion program is experimental in nature and process-based. The driving intention is to encourage students to observe their environment (the classroom) in detail and to identify specific locations that had been ignored, forgotten, or required love and/or a new use. Next, the students intervened in these spaces through assigning ‘instructions for engagement’ at each selected site. The instructions were next performed by the students, as they interpreted the words in their own unique ways.

The beauty of being experimental and process-based is that the workshop has the capacity to be responsive to the needs of the group. For example, the students from Bourke Public School are working to reclaim their cultural heritage and through the project have gathered knowledge about signs, symbols and totems, which are of great significance to their community. To ensure the incursion program was most beneficial for this group, students were encouraged to use lines and symbols as another visual device, to guide the body to move in new and unexpected ways. Through building a safe, responsive and collaborative environment for knowledge exchange and learning, the students felt empowered to share their knowledge systems with me, including new words in language and culturally specific dance and movement.

Your Public Art Project is still underway and is a continual process of questioning and reflecting.

As an organisation, we ask ourselves:

How can we make our archives and our history relevant to diverse students across NSW?
How can we best support the development of local networks and community partnerships?
How can we encourage schools and learners to take authorship over their projects and make it relevant for them?

We hope to address some of these queries, with our invited students and The Arts Unit, NSW Department of Education, at a special showcase event for Your Public Art Project to be held on 18 November 2019 at the Art Gallery of NSW.

This exciting new program would not have been possible without the generous support of our Major Education Partner, Gandel Philanthropy. Special thanks also to the NSW Department of Education for their enthusiasm and support.

Words by Lleah Smith, Education and Public Programs Coordinator, Kaldor Public Art Projects

Image 1: Student from St Clair High School completing their class groupsYour Public Art Project  submission. Photo: Lleah Smith
Image 2: The finished work at St Clair High School. Photo: Lleah Smith

Over the past year acclaimed British artist Michael Landy has been visiting the Kaldor Public Art Projects archive to delve deep into our 50-year history.

Landy has drawn upon our rich collection of letters, artist sketches, photography, personal notes, press clippings and mementos to create Making Art Public: 50 Years of Kaldor Public Art Projects, which reimagines our archive in a surprising new exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW.

How did you first come to work with the Kaldor Public Art Projects archive?

John came to me first of all a couple of years ago, maybe 2017, and he talked about his idea, about how to celebrate the 50th anniversary that was going to be on at the New South Wales Art Gallery.

At that juncture John was thinking about showing the [John Kaldor Family Collection] and the archives together. I persuaded John just to concentrate on the archives. How does one make that into an exhibition, a physical exhibition? I think that was the first issue. I came up with the idea of showing each and every one of the archives. How do you turn that into something that’s not the project, but at the same time you want it to be interesting.

I came up with the idea of creating boxes to take on the actual space in the New South Wales Art Gallery, which I found is a bit sprawling. I thought, if we actually create physical things, then we’ve got something to put the information into. The idea was to create 34 archive boxes, 4 x 4 metres, 3 metres high. A box is something you open up and you find out what’s inside.

We’re not trying to replicate the projects because we can’t do that, you can’t recreate Little Bay or Gilbert & George’s Singing Sculpture. We’re trying to do it in a different way. Not all the information we’re trying to do it [with] is immersive, so sometimes it’s a bit more playful. I came here—twice, I think I’ve been here—and I looked at all the archives and I tried to find what essence is the most interesting.

Most people think of archives as a set of precious documents stored somewhere within the annals of a library or museum. Was this your experience of the Kaldor Public Art Projects archive? What form does it take?

I’ve been to other archives in Switzerland and in New York, and you have to wear white gloves and there’s normally an archivist looking at you the whole time. Everything’s normally laid out for you, you have to ask them beforehand, so you have to know what you’re looking for. Well, can’t I just go over there and have a poke through your archives, please? It’s more informal here. It becomes more like a material then in a way, and that’s what I liked about it.

Part of the archive is dedicated to your own project from 2011, Project 24: Michael Landy, Acts of Kindness. What’s in your own archive and how will you go about re-working it for the exhibition?

We collected 200 stories to make the work, so there’s stories in there. We got the brochure where people could read about the project and they could tear off the perforated part and fill in the story if they’d witnessed or taken part in an act of kindness. And then there’s lots of images of innocuous parts of the CBD, which we had to get permission to use, like a lamp post or a side of a building. We had to find out who owned that lamp post or side of the building, and then get their permission to put one of the jigsaw puzzle pieces onto it.

With all the other 33 archives, I’m trying to create some kind of artwork in each box. Coming to my own, suddenly I felt it would be quite nice for another artist to deal with that information. Like a swap.

But it’s not a definite. If we’re not going to have another artist deal with it, then the box is going to be like a space where people can actually bring Acts of Kindness stories and pin them on the wall. So it’s kind of like an updated version. That’s what we’re trying to do in all the boxes, trying to somehow add, if not literal participation, then some way for people to take part.

What is the biggest challenge when thinking about how to translate 50 years worth of archival material into an exhibition?

I guess it’s trying not to replicate the same experience for the spectator each and every time. I’ve read about Jeff Koons’ Puppy and how it’s the most popular artwork Kaldor Public Art Projects have ever done as far as numbers are concerned. I also remember the idea that when people saw it they smiled. And that really stuck with me. Somehow I’d like to try and replicate that. Like I said earlier on, we’re not going to remake Puppy. We’re not going to revamp Little Bay. We’re not going to perform Underneath the Arches. It’s trying to convey that information in a different way, but an interesting way.

Which object stood out to you the most?

The initial correspondence between John and Christo. John says, oh, I’d love you to come over to Australia and give some talks. Then Christo says, my English is not so great, but what I’d really like you to do is find a piece of shoreline to wrap. I think that kind of sums it all up in a sense. That very direct conversation that John has with Christo. That’s basically what starts the whole thing off, John’s interest in doing public art projects.

Making Art Public: 50 Years of Kaldor Public Art Projects opens at the Art Gallery of NSW on 7 September 2019 and runs until 16 February 2020.

Interview by Monique Leslie Watkins

Michelle Demers is a scientific advisor and cultivator on Asad Raza’s Absorption. We spoke to Michelle about the plant science behind Absorption, and the potential for sharing scientific concepts through art.

Where and what are you studying, and what is your area of research?

I am currently working on my PhD. I’m at the University of Sydney and I’m based at the Plant Breeding Institute in Camden, so my area of research is plant pathology. At the moment I’m researching diseases of wheat—they’re a bit of a threat to our crop security.

Can you describe the kind of discussions you’ve been having in your role as an advisor on the project?

The main focus of the project was soil and that’s not exactly my area of expertise, but what I do know is plants. The reason we want to have good soil is so that we can grow good plants and make good food. We’re adding in all of these things to improve the soil, but where my expertise came in was, what benefit are these things going to have downstream?

For example, we made these clay leeches, which were a lot of fun, but we also had some micro-nutrients on those leeches—some copper oxides which are good to have in the soil in small amounts. So it’s checking, why is that good to have in the soil? Because it’s a micro-nutrient that plants can use. Or other things, like we’re constantly checking the pH—whether the soil is acidic or whether it’s alkaline. A lot of the conversations were like, why are you checking pH? Of course you want to have a neutral pH, because that’s where plants are able to absorb most of the nutrients, and that’s how you can have healthier soil.

You have also been working as a cultivator on Absorption. What does that role entail?

As a cultivator we have different duties, and we rotate around those tasks so that we all get to try our hand at different things, and that’s been a lot of fun. Some of the time I’m literally just ploughing the soil. It’ll be really compacted from a lot of people walking on it—it’s quite squished down and we need to loosen it up again to make it a lot softer. So it’s really quite manual labour putting that pitchfork in and trying to turn up the soil, and that’s been really nice. Going around to the next step and doing a science rotation, we’re checking the pH and we’re checking what type of soil we have. And then after that moving on to Jana [Hawkins-Andersen]’s leeches and getting to dabble our hands in clay.

How have visitors been responding to Raza’s work?

A lot of people are quite engaged with the idea, they have some really good questions. They’re not just asking, “What are you doing?” “I’m doing a pH test”. They want to know why and what’s the purpose, and can they try it. Of course you can try it, that’s why we’re here! So really being able to engage with people about the soil and answer some of the questions that maybe they’ve had for a long time and they’ve never known the right person to ask, it’s been a real pleasure for me. I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope it’s been a pleasure for them too.

Raza is interested in bringing art and science together to help us understand concepts and ideas. Do you think the project has potential as a way of helping visitors connect with soil, or to better understand it?

Honestly, I think it’s a brilliant idea, because art is made to connect with people. It’s meant to be engaging, it’s meant to make people think.

One of the issues that science can have is that it’s a little bit inaccessible. If you’re looking at scientific literature it’s a hard read, it takes a lot of time to get it. A lot of [scientists], it’s difficult for them to explain their research to the general public because what they’re doing can be so specific and not directly applicable.

I think merging that science through an art medium gets the scientific message across in a way that’s useful and interesting for people, in a way that they’re not intimidated. It’s really easy for them to access and understand. I think merging those two things together is a really good way to get both messages across so people can learn something really interesting, but also just come in and enjoy themselves.

Interview by Monique Leslie Watkins

Image 1: Photo by Emily Sullivan; Image 2. Kaldor Public Art Project 34: Asad Raza, Absorption , 2019. The Clothing Store, Carriageworks. Photo: Pedro Greig;
Image 3. Jana Hawkins-Andersen, Swell, 2019, handmade plaster moulds, clay objects prepared and poured by cultivators within Absorption. Clay, copper oxide, iron ore oxide, phosphate. Photo: Pedro Greig
Image 4. A cultivator making leeches in Jana Hawkins-Andersen’s Swell. Photo: Pedro Greig