This project has been extremely significant to my conceptual development in this course. I strongly connected with the notions of site and identity that were explored in the text by Miwon Kwon. The impact of the environment on the human condition is substantial, as the interaction between the two embody the “intersections of nature, culture, history, and ideology” (Kwon, 2002, p.158). Lucy Lippard, referenced by Kwon, describes this as “the external world mediated through human subjective experience” (Kwon, 2002, p.158). I engaged with these ideas on a personal level, as I believe environments – even just from a visual or aural perspective – play a huge part in the general human experience and condition. The homogenization and gentrification of structures and spaces (in Melbourne specifically) is something that I have noticed considerably. I have always been bothered by what Kwon calls the “abstraction of space”. To me, it is symbolic of the forfeiture of cultural and historical significance in order to perpetuate the capitalist and industrialist discourse that connects the Western World for all the wrong reasons. In an everyday setting this is seen in the form of beautiful century-old terrace buildings demolished to make way for generic apartment housing. I often find myself very connected to the history of a place that I am occupying, which is why I find it difficult relating to so many contemporary non-places.

In working with landscape painter Eugene Howard, these frustrations surrounding the degradation of locational identity were a pertinent component of his work, something that became evident during the production of his interview. His work connects with Kwon’s notion that a “particular site/place, with its identity-giving… properties, exists always and already prior to whatever new cultural forms might be introduced to it or emerge from it” (Kwon, 2002, p.158). This was a particularly prominent sentiment for him in relation to the historical Indigenous significance of sites. During his time at Testing Grounds, much of Howard’s expressions were developed through consideration the colonialist history of Southbank and the Yarra River. When researching his work the emotional depth that was displayed in his site-specific watercolour and oil paintings was palpable. Eugene explained that his art is less of a product of self-expression within the site, and more a unification between artist and nature, developing a relationship with the environment and allowing the site to reveal itself. I found Eugene’s approach to his art extremely beautiful in the way he considers his surroundings, as well as pertinent to ideas I had been engaging with in Kwon’s work. He suggests, “all site-specific gestures… have to be understood as reactive, cultivating what is presumed to be there already rather than generating new identities and histories” (Kwon, 2002, p.164).

Eugene’s work helped immensely in informing my own considerations of this course and what it means to be site-specific. I found it almost eerie how connected his approach was to the notions of Kwon’s text. As a site-specific artist, his approach was masterful in “reconnecting to uniqueness of place—or more precisely, in establishing authenticity of meaning, memory, histories, and identities as a differential function of places” (Kwon, 2002, p.157). I found his profound contemplation of a place’s unique and pre-existing identity remarkable, and hope to emulate this depth of site-specific consideration in my own artistic approaches.