Art of place and displacement: embodied perception and the haptic ground

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between art and place, and challenges conventional readings of the paintings of the late Aboriginal Anmatyerr elder Emily Kame Kngwarray of Australia and Canadian/American modernist artist Agnes Martin. In the case of Kngwarray, connections between body, ground and canvas are extensively explored through stories told to the author by Emily's countrywomen at Utopia in the Northern Territory. In the case of Agnes Martin, these relationships are explored through personal interview with the artist in Taos, New Mexico, and by phenomenological readings of her paintings. The methodology is based on analysis of narrative, interview material, existing critical literature and the artists' paintings. The haptic and embodiment emerge as strong themes, but the artists' use of repetition provides fertile ground to question wholly aesthetic or cultural readings of their paintings. The thesis demonstrates the significance of historical and psychological denial and erasure, as well as transgenerational legacies in the artists’ work. A close examination is made of the artists' use of surface shimmer in their paintings and the effects of it on the beholder. The implications of being mesmerized by shimmer, especially in the case of Aboriginal paintings, bring up ethical questions about cultural difference and the shadow side of art in its capacity for complicity, denial, appropriation and commodification.

This thesis challenges the ocularcentric tradition of seeing the land and art, and examines what occurs when a painting is viewed on the walls of a gallery. It addresses Eurocentric readings of Aboriginal art and looks at the power of the aesthetic gaze that eliminates cultural difference. Differences between space and place are explored through an investigation of the phenomenology of perception, the haptic, embodiment and ‘present-ness’. Place affiliation and the effects of displacement are examined to discover what is often taken for granted: the ground beneath our feet. Art can express belonging and relationship with far-reaching cultural, political, psychological and environmental implications, but only if denial and loss of place are acknowledged.