Landscape in the Imaginal, An Imaginally Enriched Episteme of Place
Johnstone, Alexi (2024-10-02)
Johnstone, Alexi
Taideyliopiston Kuvataideakatemia
02.10.2024
Maisterin opinnäytetyö
taidegrafiikka
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2024120499639
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2024120499639
Tiivistelmä
A place can be more alive than merely living, it can be tangibly alien and unending, as real to you as a lover, as mutually disclosing yet always receding, it can hold the weight of all your earthly doubts and crumble them in a seed. Here everything begins to shake, sway and shiver, words are wind whispers of an unabridged lore, it says “Remember To Die.”
This Masters of Fine Arts thesis consists of the artistic component, “Leposaari,” exhibited in Kuvan Kevät 2024 at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, and the written component, “Landscape in the Imaginal, An Imaginally Enriched Episteme of Place.” The artistic component of the thesis consists of a hand drawn animation, a three dimensional lithograph, two drawings on found papers, a paper based sculptural form with printed components, a drypoint drawing on plexiglass and a sound work. The greatest commonality among them is the use of drawing both directly and through resultant prints. The works have a common prefix because they are each one part of a larger whole, all contributing to the emergence of the spirit of Leposaari.
The various artworks that make up “Leposaari,” appear out of the gradual development of a relationship between myself and the eponymous island in Eastern Helsinki. This island is arranged in concentric forms, the outer perimeter a shoreline of rocks and trees, held apart by a fence into a cemetery; the trees, rocks and gravestones all converging on a small chapel. The project of “Leposaari,” begins from a sense of existential necessity to move out of the mode of mere materialism, and into real contact with the eternality of experienced phenomena. In this project these poles are seen as the difference between abstract space and known place. Through ritualised visits to the island, with the intention and expectation of seeing beyond its constitutive parts, Leposaari gradually became a mythology, a truth in form, of the relationship between the living and the dead, and what holds them both together. The tree sentinels, the crow necromancer, the veil of the iron gate, and the promise of a love binding.
The artistic and written component of my thesis centres around the question of ‘relationship’ as it relates to a depicted landscape. In the written component, I consider and analyse the ideology and epistemology that underwrote traditional landscape art, and allied it to the colonial mission and the view of nature as merely a resource for human usage. I connect the loss of experiential transcendence post reformation, and the glorification of propositional knowledge of the enlightenment, to the eventual desacralizing of nature, and the eventual loss of meaningful connections between people and places. I make the argument in this paper that the view of landscape as space, is the view of a desacralized external world, which should be replaced by landscape as a reflection of an imaginally enriched relationship to a particular place, as the antidote, to the nomothetic quality of a materialist understanding of landscape. In this text I explain how I came to this reconfiguration of landscape art, and how this understanding eventuated in a practice involving an active relationship with the island Leposaari. I describe how this relationship informed my artistic practice and how this was made evident in the works themselves
This Masters of Fine Arts thesis consists of the artistic component, “Leposaari,” exhibited in Kuvan Kevät 2024 at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, and the written component, “Landscape in the Imaginal, An Imaginally Enriched Episteme of Place.” The artistic component of the thesis consists of a hand drawn animation, a three dimensional lithograph, two drawings on found papers, a paper based sculptural form with printed components, a drypoint drawing on plexiglass and a sound work. The greatest commonality among them is the use of drawing both directly and through resultant prints. The works have a common prefix because they are each one part of a larger whole, all contributing to the emergence of the spirit of Leposaari.
The various artworks that make up “Leposaari,” appear out of the gradual development of a relationship between myself and the eponymous island in Eastern Helsinki. This island is arranged in concentric forms, the outer perimeter a shoreline of rocks and trees, held apart by a fence into a cemetery; the trees, rocks and gravestones all converging on a small chapel. The project of “Leposaari,” begins from a sense of existential necessity to move out of the mode of mere materialism, and into real contact with the eternality of experienced phenomena. In this project these poles are seen as the difference between abstract space and known place. Through ritualised visits to the island, with the intention and expectation of seeing beyond its constitutive parts, Leposaari gradually became a mythology, a truth in form, of the relationship between the living and the dead, and what holds them both together. The tree sentinels, the crow necromancer, the veil of the iron gate, and the promise of a love binding.
The artistic and written component of my thesis centres around the question of ‘relationship’ as it relates to a depicted landscape. In the written component, I consider and analyse the ideology and epistemology that underwrote traditional landscape art, and allied it to the colonial mission and the view of nature as merely a resource for human usage. I connect the loss of experiential transcendence post reformation, and the glorification of propositional knowledge of the enlightenment, to the eventual desacralizing of nature, and the eventual loss of meaningful connections between people and places. I make the argument in this paper that the view of landscape as space, is the view of a desacralized external world, which should be replaced by landscape as a reflection of an imaginally enriched relationship to a particular place, as the antidote, to the nomothetic quality of a materialist understanding of landscape. In this text I explain how I came to this reconfiguration of landscape art, and how this understanding eventuated in a practice involving an active relationship with the island Leposaari. I describe how this relationship informed my artistic practice and how this was made evident in the works themselves
Kokoelmat
- Kirjalliset opinnäytteet [1557]