W6 - Australian Pastoral

Following on the idea of sculpting a group of animals from rubbish, there is a need for a reason to do so. The following are a selection of Australian pastoral paintings from the 19thC.

'Jeremiah Ware's stock on Minjah Station', 1856
http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/TLF/972p9/
'View from Borodomanan Station homestead of sheep being herded across a river'
http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Collection/detail.jsp?ecatKey=107
Cattle. The last gleam of the setting sun, john Glover, 1816
http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Collection/detail.jsp?ecatKey=1485
Winter Sunlight, Frederick McCubbon, 1908
http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Collection/detail.jsp?ecatKey=1863
http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/TLF/01889/
Dogging a Log, Tom Stretton, 1924
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/collection/pub/itemDetail?artworkID=20007
'Evening, Templestowe', David Davies, 1897
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/collection/pub/itemDetail?artworkID=47731
'Ford at Wollondilly', Conrad MARTENS , 1839,
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/collection/pub/itemDetail?artworkID=59642

A couple of references:
Horn, Jeanette, 2007, 'Australian Pastoral: The Making of a White Landscape', Fremantle Press
Dixon, R. W. (2004).

Two Versions of Australian Pastoral: Les Murray and William Robinson. In Judith Ryan and Chris Wallace-Crabbe (Ed.), Imagining Australia: Literature and Culture in the New New World 1 ed. (pp. 285-304) Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: Harvard University Committee on Australian Studies/Harvard UP.

These paintings tend to echo European romantic yearnings for a 'Golden Age' as populations become increasingly urbanised. Here they are important in the formation of European-Australian national identity - a population that identified with mastering the harsh Australian bush but which, in fact, grew up in urban centres.


So here is the idea of a double identity the constructed bushman versus the actual townie and the reality of rubbish from manufacture versus a desire for naturalness (usually mediated via popular culture, advertsing, tourism etc).

Here's a sheep constructed from telephone cords by Jean-Luc Cornec:


The imported sheep, especially, is used as a historical symbol for Australia's growth and prosperity. Rubbish is also evidence of our propserity; our increased leisure time, our convenience food, our pharmaceuticals, our lifestyle diseases. And rubbish, like sheep, is in plentiful supply, covering the landscape and ruining it.

So I'm thinking we could build sheep of rubbish (possibly with plastic bags using some of the techniques I've found) and restage the essential elements of a famous Australian pastoral landscape!

Appropriation Art reuses elements of pre-existing art and in some cases restages the complete work as Anne Zahalka's photographic work. This link takes you to her Bondi exhibition:
http://www.zahalkaworld.com.au/pages/bondi.html, where she recreates other works, such as Max Dupain and Charles Meere 'The Bathers' on an undisguised fake beach background. Bondi is an Australian icon and surf culture another supposed facet of Australian lifestyle / identity. The point of her appropriation is to re-appropriate and re-populate the beach with 'bodies expelled' from it (Perera, 2006).

For a fuller description and evidence of Appropriation in history rather than a recent post-modern phenomena: http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/martin/art_law/image_rights.htm

...which includes the much copied American Gothic (the original is here: http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Modern/pages/MOD_5.shtml)

and here's a Google image search of of the many images:
http://images.google.com/images?q=appropriation%20art%20%22american%20gothic%22&rls=com.microsoft:en-au&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

Perera Suvendrini 2006, 'Race Terror', Borderlands, vol 5, No 1, viewed at http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol5no1_2006/perera_raceterror.htm, on 3 September 2009.