Index Project: renovated

Artist: Fiona MacDonald (Australia)

Date: February 14 to March 21, 2009

Artist's Talk: February 13, 2009

Fiona Macdonald is an artist who makes history itself a material part of her artistic process. During her time at Open Spac Macdonald created the Index Project: renovated, intended to catalyze the subtle, enduring influences of history— specifically art history—as it animates contemporary art production. Macdonald investigated how art made during the 1970s and 80s continues to inhabit contemporary art production with particular emphasis on how historic ‘translation’ adapts to the creation, presentation and reception of art. Macdonald based this project on the influential collaborative conceptual art group Art & Language, whose Index Project was presented at the international art fair Documenta 5 in 1972—the same year Open Space was incorporated. Art & Language was part of a massive shift in art practices during the 1970s and 1980s, a shift that hard-wired the dialogic framework of conceptualism and art theory into artist-run culture, art education and production. Macdonald’s project reviews assumed histories and self-reflexive habits of presentation. She proposed to “locate modalities of meaning and interpretation as conditions of necessity and contingency relative to differences of circumstance.”

Index Project: renovated demands active response, which Macdonald included in videotaped and written forms. Macdonald issued a casting call seeking respondents whose videotaped response formed a central component of the installation.

The Index Project: renovated involved two parts. The first part included a large-scale wall text—an index of conceptual formulations—with accompanying catalogues and ample space for the addition of notations and concatenatory entries. The second part was performative, a videotaped component that was included in the exhibition as a projection. It sparked subsequent annotation to the wall work.  As the work was modified, it became part of an experiment in modality: generational, regional and political.
 

Fiona Macdonald acknowledges the support of the Visual Arts Board of the Australian Council for the Arts and the Monash University.

Open Space acknowledges the support of the Type 'N Write Shop of Victoria, BC.