Olafur Eliasson – Riverbed at Louisiana, Denmark

 

 

From a visit to Olafur Eliasson's Riverbed I was drawn to a landscape that the catalogue described as being “free from information and meaning”, which in turn relates to my practice in the sense of attempting to create places that are in some way neutral but also structured in order to harness authentic response from the inhabitant(s).

 

I was interested in the necessity for movement within the environment employing separate origin and destination to challenge preconceptions. This is a recurring theme in Eliasson's work.

 

“It is impossible to encounter something with no preconceptions at all, but the full recognition that the encountered is also moving on at least slightly disturbs one's confidence in the fact that these expectations will be met. An encounter is always something 'on the move'. The voyager is not the only active one. Origin and destination have lives of their own. This project of undoing that traditional counterposition of active subject and passive object is an element in Olafur Eliasson's practice. He challenges the static, given, implacable 'objecthood' of art.

 

Massey, D.  'Some Times of Space'

in Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project, London: Tate Publishing, 2003.