Island of Discarded Plastic (Leonia) water bottles + glue + Venice
installation | islands of venice by charles stankievech
Robert Smithson Venice rubbish materials installations maps land art
In 1969 near Vancouver, Robert Smithson attempted to create an earthwork that was never realized: Island of Broken Glass . In the middle of the Georgia Straight he intended to dump 100 tons of broken glass onto a small rock island called Miami Islet, completely covering its surface with the shattered material. Due to the swirl of protests from environmentalists and anti-Ameri- cans, the project was suspended by a governmental telegram at the last moment. Aside from drawings, letters, and plans, the only physical artifacts which remain are studies which Smithson called ‘maps’. One in a series of different materials, Hypothetical Continent-Map Of Broken Glass: Atlantis was a temporary small pile of broken glass arranged in a field in New Jersey. A version of Map of Broken Glass presently exists at the Dia: Beacon which presents the work in a white cube context. While Island of Broken Glass would have been Smithson’s first ‘permanent’ earthwork, the idea’s failure spurred him to make the famous Spiral Jetty the following year. A site-specific rendition of Island of Broken Glass remains to be made.
When I was invited to Venice to make a site-specific work, my natural inclination was to revisit Smithson’s work. Several years earlier, while living in Vancouver I had created a series of works that intervened (at the request of the curator) with the Smithson exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery. In dialogue with Smithson’s ideas, the work engaged with site-specificity, ‘non-sites’, and the museum as a site. In practice, each of Smithson’s works in the exhibition Smithson in Vancouver: Fragment of a Greater Fragmentation (curated by Grant Arnold), was documented using various coordinate systems, treating each hanging as a specific loca- tion in an institutional structure. Each work’s temporary coordinates were gleaned from a GPS receiver, maps, architectural plans, or gallery measurements, and were printed on Post-It Notes placed beside the title labels. Photographic documentation of the intervention included a corner of the Smithson work, the title label and a Post-It Note with the prescribed coordinates. Situated somewhere between Smithson’s irony and Louise Lawler’s tongue-in-cheek documentation, the work attempt- ed to continue, or perhaps reverse, the spiral of thought present in the exhibition and the legacy of Smithson’s work in Vancouver.
1 Charles Stankievech. Locating the work: docu- mentation of Smithson in Vancouver: Fragment of a Greater Fragmen- tation, Vancouver Art Gallery. 2 Discarded plastic wa- ter bottles in Venice. 3 Islands of Venice 4 Island of Discarded Plastic (Leonia) 5 bottles
1
on site review 17
49
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator