The excavated object

Keywords:

painting, archaeology, excavation, object, body-ground, metaphor

Available in:

JVAP 5.1 - about JVAP

Funded by:

NAFAE - about NAFAE

Pulished:

July 2006

Article abstract

The search for new forms of representation of our relationship to the land engages us in exploring this relationship and how it can be embodied in our chosen medium. Working from a concept of painting as metaphor and our relationship to the land as that embodied in archaeology, this explores how a study of archaeological excavation can enrich painting, and how painting can put our understanding of archaeology in a new light. The work progressed through replicating what was seen and felt and through physically replicating the archaeologists' changing postures. In the final paintings the body comes to the fore, sometimes merging with the ground and sometimes with the remains. The painter identifies with the archaeologist through the development of a shared body-ground, but in the paintings the abstract time of history has been replaced by a sense of the ongoing life of the object as it emerges in the present.

Written by: Gillian Robertson

Other articles in: JVAP Volume 5 Issue 1