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Site-Specificity in Recent Art The following piece was written for an exhibition of work by Annie Chan and Wong Wo-bik, which was held in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Hong Kong, where I teach. We had a classroom there which could be cleared during term breaks and used for low-budget exhibitions. This was the first time I had organized an exhibition ofwork by local artists, it having taken me a bit oftime after my arrival in Hong Kong to get in touch with local art events. Annie and Wo-bik's show was inspired by the particular qualities of the room in which it was held, and took that room and its surroundings as its subject matter. Hence I was inspired to think about issues to do with sitespecificity , and this essay was the result. All three of us were also involved, along with a group ofother artists (including Yank Wong and Antonio Mak) and organizers (such as Hugh Chiverton, now a presenter on RTHK Radio 3, and Christine Loh, now a Legislative Councillor) in a project called the Mobile Art Show. We took art to, and made art in, a variety ofpublic spaces such as Yan Oi Square in Tuen Mun, MacPherson Playground in Mongkok and Chater Garden in Central. Planning for this project had an influence on the writing of the essay too, and a version of it went into the catalogue for that show. There are many ways in which a work of art can be said to have a special relationship to a particular place. Most obviously, a work of art can represent or otherwise comment upon a place, as John Constable's landscapes do in the case of Suffolk. The images he created evoke such a vivid sense of place that it takes quite an effort of will to begin questioning (as art historian John Barrell does1 ) the narrowly ideological account of the rural scene which they give. His 'Suffolk' may be fictional, but the power of the fiction is such that over 150 years later many people visit the sites referred to in his paintings and view them as if through his eyes. 3 Art and Its Contexts 4 Since Constable's paintings make Suffolk apparently visible to our eyes when we view them, it would not be surprising if a spectator were to assume that Flatford Mill, for instance, was visible to Constable when he painted Scene on a Navigable River (Flatford Mill) in 1817. In fact, however, the work was constructed (with the aid of sketches) in a studio. A second type of relationship to a particular place which an artwork can have is for it to be made there. The ritually separate space of the studio is that place in the majority of cases, and although the qualities of that location may be of great importance to the artist's frame of mind and to the creative process, it is usually hidden from view in the final work. Constable's Scene on a Navigable River (Flatford Mill) is typical in this respect. Some exceptions would be: landscape sketches made wholly out of doors, 'artist in his studio' self-portraits and studies of studio models posing which do not attempt to disguise them as, say, Venus or Hercules. A work of art can also refer in an indexical way (rather than an iconic way) to its place of making. This is the case with Richard Serra's Casting (1969), which was made by throwing molten lead into the angle between a wall and floor. The solidified strip of lead was removed towards the centre of the room, and flipped over. The process was repeated a number of times till the space between the first form and the wall against which it had been made was filled with a series of wave-like shapes each bearing the imprint of the wall-floor juncture. The final casting was left in its 'mould'. Casting also belongs in the third category of this simple taxonomy of relationships between artworks and particular places, since it was a sculpture made for a particular location, and not just in one. The importance Serra attaches to site where his works are concerned can be shown by the example of Tilted Arc (installed in 1981 and removed in the late 1980s; fig. 1.1). When the owners first attempted to move the sculpture from its location in downtown Manhattan Serra instigated a US$30...

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