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The timber and the trees: a simultaneity of nature and colonialism
Citation
Malor, D, The timber and the trees: a simultaneity of nature and colonialism, Fabulation: Myth, Nature, Heritage - The Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, 5-8 July 2012, Launceston, pp. 650-666. ISBN 978-1-86295-658-2 (2012) [Refereed Conference Paper]
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Copyright Statement
Copyright 2012 the Author
Official URL: http://www.sahanz.net/conferences/index.html
Abstract
In 2005, in the contextual essay for the survey, Claiming Ground: Twenty
Five Years of Tasmania’s Art for Public Buildings Scheme, I commented
that while Tasmania’s public art did not always follow that experienced
overseas, differences could be largely explained through the state’s lack of
critical mass in terms of population, economy and political will. In the USA,
for instance, the 1970s saw contemporary sculpture taken into the urban
forum in an effort ot compensate for a degraded urban environment and
nostalgia for lost nature. While Christo’s Running Fence crossed Marin and
Sonoma counties, Tasmania was attracting people into the wild nature that
was the Gordon and Franklin Rivers, the centre of international
environmental protests against the building of the Franklin Dam.
Permanent public artwork was not a significant element in these events,
however a unique identity for the state was being configured beyond its
borders, and in the public mind, through the emerging contemporary genre
of wilderness photography, exemplified in the work of Peter Dombrovskis.
The new identity was taken up as reflecting both the popular image of
Tasmanian nature and the equally enduring impress of colonialism. This
paper draws on this context to consider the commissioning of Peter Taylor,
Mervyn Gray and Kevin Perkins’ suite of crucifix and Huon pine furnishings
for Robert Morris-Nunn’s St Paul’s Chapel (1979) in the Launceston
General Hospital precinct as the initiating project for the Art for Public
Buildings Schem,e and as perhaps the earliest expression of a simultaneity
of nature and colonialism in Tasmanian public art.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Conference Paper |
|---|---|
| Research Division: | Studies in Creative Arts and Writing |
| Research Group: | Visual Arts and Crafts |
| Research Field: | Crafts |
| Objective Division: | Cultural Understanding |
| Objective Group: | Arts and Leisure |
| Objective Field: | The Creative Arts (incl. Graphics and Craft) |
| UTAS Author: | Malor, D (Dr Deborah Malor) |
| ID Code: | 78968 |
| Year Published: | 2012 |
| Deposited By: | Visual and Performing Arts |
| Deposited On: | 2012-08-09 |
| Last Modified: | 2015-02-09 |
| Downloads: | 4 View Download Statistics |
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