EXPLAIN HOW DO AUDIENCES ENGAGE WITH SITE-SPECIFIC ARTWORKS?
Refer to the work of 3 artists whom you have studied in class.
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place where the artist takes the location and environment into account while planning and creating their artwork. Site-specific or environmental art refers to an artist’s intervention in a specific location, creating a work that is integrated with its surroundings and that explores its relationship to the geography of its location whether indoors or out. Unlike more traditional mediums such as painting and drawing where a viewer can only respond to the 2d image in front of them, with site specific there are more levels with which you can engage as an audience. The audience is physically involved in the artwork which provides them with an ‘art lived experience’. In this essay I will look at the works of three artists - Christo and Jeanne Claude’S SURROUNDED ISLANDS, Jeff Koons’ S PUPPY and ...... and investigate how the audience engages with theSE site-specific artworks.
The installation of CHRISTO AND JEAN-CLAUDE’S Surrounded Islands was completed on May 7, 1983. 11 islands in Biscayne Bay of Miami, were surrounded with 585,000 square metres of pink woven plastic fabric covering the surface of the water, floating and extending out 61 metres. THE FABRIC WAS SEWN TO FOLLOW THE CONTOUR OF THE ISLANDS. The luminous pink colour of the fabric was in harmony with tropical vegetation of the islands, opening eyes and turning heads. CHRISTO AND JEAN-CLAUDE’S INTENTION WAS TO MAKE THE PUBLIC MORE AWARE OF THE ENVIRONMENT BY GIVING THEM A FRESH VIEW OF IT. THEY WANT THEIR WORK TO BE JOYFUL AND BEAUTIFUL.
By creating an artwork integrated with the nature that is lived near, seen through windows and experienced from the surrounding land and waterways everyday by locals Christo and Jeanne Claude have taken away the sterile formality which one might feel in an art gallery. The want of...