PROJECT SPACE SPARE ROOM / 10 to 31 October 2008
From The Series: Propositions For An Uncertain Future
An ongoing investigation though video and text of a pre-fabricated gold rush residence imported from Europe in 1850. The Swiss House reveals stories of immigration, of European glamour faded by the harshness and effects of climate, drought and globalization in rural Australia.
The Swiss House - From the series: Propositions for an uncertain future
This research project is developed through the Sustainability Through Art, Media and Technology Research Group at the School of Creative Media at RMIT University. Within this umbrella group, I lead The Avoca Project: Art, Place and Climate Change and Antoni Jach leads The Future of the Book.
The Swiss House as an exhibition began as a conversation between us about ways that both might carry out research on issues of sustainability at this house which is the central image and site of The Avoca Project. As a result, The Swiss House exhibition manifests our very different responses to the proposition that issues of 'place' are central in addressing climate change.
The Swiss House as proposition.
While The Avoca Project is based in Avoca in regional Victoria it is equally present internationally through its website www. avocaproject.org. As a result, the project was one of 25 nominated internationally for the OISJ Prix Green for Environmental Art at the San Jose Art on the Edge Festival in 2008.
It is also present through a series of Propositions for an Uncertain Future; exhibitions developed elsewhere to provide connections between the research on art (in the broadest, most interdisciplinary and hybrid sense of that term) and climate change being carried out in Avoca with that occurring in larger communities (in this case Melbourne). Central to this is the larger proposition that the Swiss House, indeed Avoca itself, might serve as a laboratory for engagement with climate change action through art at the local level.
The Swiss House as an exhibition becomes the 5th of component of Propositions for an Uncertain Future1.
Lyndal Jones
Footnote:
1- Other exhibitions include: The Axe Murder incident, DMZ, 2005, South Korea; Field day at the Swiss House, 2007 - a collaboration with housing researchers Ralph Horne and Tony Dalton from RMIT University, Eric Bottomley from Ceres, Sustainable Farmer Peter Andrews, Climate change activist Simon Pockley, Heritage Architect Lorraine Huddle, artist Mel Ogden and filmmaker Ben Speth; Counterbalance – an installation in the grounds of the Swiss House by British artist Jane Prophet, 2007 and the bridge of no return, 2008, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.
A response to the proposition by Antoni Jach
As a result of a number of visits to Avoca, I have made an artistic response to the site of the Swiss House and the adjoining Avoca River. I have found the almost-dry Avoca River to be a powerful inspiration for, as well as being actual, a river is a symbol of transformation. For this exhibition I have created a video work entitled Still River in the Numinous World, which is accompanied by a book of images and text using the same title.
A response to the proposition by Lyndal Jones
While this project began as individual long-term art research, it is only made possible through a continuing series of collaborations with other artists, designers, builders, climate change experts across the disciplines and engagements with local groups and individuals who have with a wide range of friends and acquaintances, volunteered their time to support this climate change action undertaking. My own role has shifted to that of artist/director of a project that importantly engages many voices. In keeping with this complex, layered (sometimes contradictory) presentation of the house, my response to this brief has been to invite a number of additional artists to each contribute a work from their own engagement with the house/project. This is based on the proposition that the fragments produced by such a range of voices will provide a stimulus for viewers to find a more active role in creating the project as an imagined space that potentially includes their own climate change actions. Additional artists invited: Nigel Frayne who recently recorded the sound over 24 hours in the house/town; Aldo Iacobelli who has painted a series of small responses to the website from his home in Adelaide (www. avocaproject.com); Mel Ogden who has collaborated in development of the water conserving design of the grounds; Ben Speth who documented the 2005 Field Day and has produced a video work of memories of the day; Longin Sarnecki who has contributed a page from his daily diary written during a visit to the house in 2005 and Gosia Wlodarczak whose performative drawing on the shop front window of the gallery will continue throughout the exhibition as a response to both the exhibition and the street outside thereby bringing Avoca and Melbourne together on the glass. My own contribution will be to design the space itself.
Steed, Max. "The Swiss House", Trouble Magazine, October 2008, pp 38-39.
Johnson, Frances. 'Art of Sustainability'. Sightlines, The Age. 24 October 2008. Pg 17.