Painting Landscape: Mediating Dislocation
In: Culture, Creativity and EnvironmentSearch for other papers by Judith Tucker in
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The thrust of this paper is to investigate how painting and ‘landscape’ might interrelate, how one can be the interface for the other, and what possibilities there are in the space that is created at this interface. The paper takes as its point of departure two encounters. One is with ‘landscape’ paintings, those of David Bomberg, and one with a piece of writing about ‘landscape’ painting, Griselda Pollock on Lydia Bauman. These serve as the foundation for a discussion, exploration, theorization and positioning of Tucker’s own painting practice. Her recent work is about location and dislocation. It evokes travel, distance and being in place, and reflects the shift between direct experience and memory. The paintings become concretized evidence of fluid events, reflecting both the land and those processes involved in the making. The form of this essay has evolved out of a methodology parallel to Tucker’s practice of painting: the issues have developed out of the painting/objects and the painting/processes, thus demonstrating how a very particular relationship with and understanding of ‘landscape’ might be imbricated in the creative process itself. This argument encompasses concerns that are both spatial and temporal: a consideration of Marianne Hirsch’s notion of postmemory is pivotal. What emerges through the dialogue between these theoretical concerns and the materiality of both paint and landscape are the fertile possibilities inherent within the site of painting for both viewer and maker.