An Artist’s View: Place as a Centre of Meaning

Nola Gasmier

How can a visual art practice which images local places convey the concept of place as an affective “centre of meaning constructed by experience”? My research explores place as an affective and embodied construct through practice-led painting. The account of artistic activity proposed here combines with a diverse theoretical framework, drawing on humanistic geography, phenomenology, post-structuralism, affect theory and practice-led visual art research. The goal is to contribute fresh knowledge to the academic, philosophical, and art community by interpreting this body of scholarship. By applying these theories to a body of creative work focused on local sites in East Victoria Park, WA, the aim is to interrogate the relationship between theory and practice. In connecting habitus, phenomenological reflection, and the power of both materiality and affect through painting and drawing, my practice tests, complicates and extends these concepts. A concurrent endeavour is to present practice-led visual art research itself. This incorporates both artists and art researchers. Through practice-led research, I strive to generate sensitive meanings of place. Living in East Victoria Park for sixteen years, the place has profound meaning for me, and my artwork merges with theoretical research, endeavouring to integrate my lived sense of place and give rise to original art. This project uses local places to focus on a sense of a place using haptic, tacit and intuitive methods and connections to memory and imagination, thus revealing a sense of place. The concept of place refers to a lived sense of current, immediate, remembered, or anticipated places of significance for an individual or group. Place is an embodied dimension that can be physically, mentally, and emotionally recognised. Some places have spiritual importance to various people because we may have experienced a pivotal life event, such as marriage, death, or birth, in that place. A place can be perceived with fondness or antipathy. Hence, our experiences, both consequential to ourselves or not, build towards or construct a sense of place. As the project progressed, my awareness developed regarding Yi-Fu Tuan’s ‘centre of meaning’ as constructed by the phenomena of experience. Just as habitus itself is shaped by social, cultural, economic and material elements, painting challenges us to interpret and find meaning in the dynamic relations between these entities. In this way, Tuan’s place as a centre of meaning can be extended beyond experience to include further elements that contribute to the construction of meaning in place. For instance, elements such as the materiality of painting, the artist's tools, the environment, tacit knowledge, and the affective outcomes provided by these aspects of art practice also contribute to my sense of place in my practice and research. Tuan’s human is there, but this research posits that the human is always embedded in relation to place and materiality; these relations should also be considered. Although Tuan’s human subjectivity is important, the human also responds to relations with materiality, affect and elements of visual art, and so our experience is in part mediated through these relationships. Similarly, in an effort to capture the impulses of practice, this research also requires taking into account how these relational effects affect my painting. For example, Gilles Deleuze described the British painter Francis Bacon’s move away from strict representation by creating representation, to some extent, with accidental and non-resembling methods. I found that these methods can be mobilised in the physical process of painting, and a drift towards non-resemblance can be effective in place paintings. Thus, I employ energetic mark-making, tonal colour and the cyclical painting process, as does Bacon. Deleuze sees Bacon’s method of painting as capturing forces and sensations. My artwork for this visual art research also seeks to capture forces and sensations; however, my art differs from Bacon’s work in that the art depicts characteristic places rather than portraits. Nevertheless, following Deleuze’s analysis of Bacon’s painting process, in my painting, a rhythm-chaos cycle is initiated with the diagram. The diagram is a motif, or a theme sketched on the canvas or as a drawing and is a geometry of lines, hatched and shaded, that seeks to express sensations both seen and felt. As the process of painting happens, haptic texture and volume are introduced via tonal colours to provide further sensations. However, further work can disintegrate the diagram and push the painting into a state of catastrophe or upheaval. An artist may take a break and then resume the rhythm of performative, gestural painting, eventually resolving the calamity. Thus, the rhythm-chaos cycle starts again until the artist leaves the work as resolved, finished or on a hiatus. In this way, new original work emerges. Deleuze’s perspectives on Bacon’s painting, such as the diagram, the rhythm-chaos couplet, tonal colour and the catastrophe, speak to the forces and sensations of practice that in turn add meaning to a sense of place in my artwork. For this project, when embodied in place, I am aware that the materiality of a place, the art materials and the lived phenomenological awareness of my habitus or immediate surroundings produce affect. Moreover, I am bodily affected by the materiality and phenomenological effects of place so much so that when painting, I am aware of these affects when observing and absorbing the materials, light colour and textures of a place. Affect is linked to forces of encounter and sensations on the body’s nervous system. As affect grows or modulates over time, affect may permeate the artwork via my body, which acts as an interface with the surroundings. My artwork endeavours to integrate my lived sense of place and the way my experiences in the Town of Victoria Park produce forces and intensities which vary across time.

An Artist’s View: Place as a Centre of Meaning

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