RE: [-empyre-] intro from David Waldelton - from Tom Nicholson

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@subtle.net>]

from Tom Nicholson - tomjnicholson@hotmail.com

__________

David, I am interested in how the process of archiving is built into your
painting.  One of the things I enjoy in your recent paintings is the sense
of ephemeral cultural material being invested with the weight and permanence
of an immaculately crafted painting.  The labour involved in this is
disproprtionate to the intended life of much of this material.  This strikes
me as a kind of archiving, particularly when I think about your earlier
works dealing with fragments of ancient sculptures, objects normally
regarded as worthy of archiving and intense procedures of preservation.

In this respect your work reminds me of Christian Capurro's (recently
completed) five year project in which he organised for the 300-odd pages of
a 1980 French Men's Vogue to be erased, page by page, by friends and
acquaintances.  To encounter this white (apart from the intact but battered
cover, feraturing a much younger Sylvester Stallone) magazine now is to
confront a startlingly uncanny object.  And I think this uncanniness largely
flows out of such disproportionate labour being expended on an object
intended as throwaway. (See http://www.christiancapurro.com).



>From: "Melinda Rackham" <melinda@subtle.net>
>Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>Subject: [-empyre-] intro from David Waldelton
>Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 14:43:29 +1000
>
>David's intro mail was caught in the empyre filters.. his web site is at
>http://members.optusnet.com.au/~davidwadelton
>
>  David Wadelton <davidwadelton@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>  I find myself struggling with an unfamiliar computer in a backpacker's
>internet
>cafe in sunny Queensland trying to kick off my contribution. Over the years
>I have worked (or continue to work) in a variety of  media including music,
>photography, painting and digital media. All  present different
conservation
>challenges.
>
>  There is a certain irony in photo-documenting an ephemeral event for
>  posterity in the 70s, and then face conservation issues with those
>  same  photos now.
>There is a very interesting article in this month's Artforum about the
>preservation of Don Judd's sculpture - so many problems and issues have
>come up that nobody could anticipate. What to do? There is even  argument
>about what the artist would have wanted.
>
>  Even the most "archival" form of colour photo media has a life
>  expectancy of around 80 years. This is considered highly fugitive by
>  painting standards, whose life span is measured in centuries, (unless
>   handled by a reckless freight company!).   What will happen in 100 years
>to all the new large-scale colour prints   that sell at Sotheby's for half
a
>million dollars now? Think of  Atget's  vintage photos of Paris taken in
the
>early 20th century, already fading  away to nothing. Of course they could
be
>digitally preserved, but
>  then  the debate about authenticity arises.
>   Music on the other hand is endlessly reproducible, and we all still
have
>the "original"...from vinyl to cd to whatever's next, each "copy"  is still
>the "original".
>
>Should we preserve old work? Of course. How we do it is the big  problem.
>Keith Haring's mural on the wall at Collingwood Tech. here in  Melbourne is
>a classic example. Everyone agrees it should be preserved,  but short of
>demolishing the whole wall and re-assembling it in a  controlled museum
>environment it will inevitably disappear within 10  years. It looks older
>than Pompeii already.
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>http://www.subtle.net/empyre


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