After working with the de-constructed images of installations, my own installation works began to explore several systems of form and function in the framework of the exhibition. The institutional framework of the gallery and the museum wall as the structural support for painting is not always stable and permanent. Walls carry with them the context of the buildings that they belong to. Like painting, the neutrality of a monochrome is not universal but rather influenced by the circumstances and ideas of the maker. Depending on the context and circumstances applied, we can interpret the relationship of the painting to the wall and the art space in which it is installed. After considering the historic deconstruction of the pictorial surface of the painting and its theoretical transition into a flat 2-Dimesional abstract space, I wanted to re-enact this process through a series of works which considered the sculptural and architectural dimensions of the work in relation to the floors, walls and even the ceilings of the artspace. 

Employing the theories outlined in Rosalins krauss’s ‘Scuplture in the Expanded field’, the first of these works included Non-Tertiary Injunctions, Constructing learnt Behaviors, and SoOld / pLease, featured in the duel collaborative exhibition ‘The Double Bind’(2011), created with artist Nick Briggs at 55 Sydenham Rd Gallery, Sydney. These works foregrounded an approach to materials and reflected on the visual and conceptual parameters of the exhibition space that would lead towards an ongoing series of works based on the physical and metaphorical structures of tables, platforms and walls. 

Although the physical structures of tables, platforms and walls had already been employed and analyzed in the works of many other artists before these works, what was initially important was to construct and install these forms in consideration of their conceptual and historical relation to the deconstruction of painting. 

Furthermore, I was questioning the wide spread use of The Workshop or “Studio Trestle Table” in contemporary art exhibitions which without a valid theoretical reason that I could find, was being repeatedly used by many artists all around the world as a visual trope of the contemporary artwork. In artworks which perceived themselves as open-ended and process based, the studio table was especially prevalent. In my research at the time I had discovered that the interpretation and wide spread trend post Relational Aesthetics had been partially responsible. The works of Liam Gillick which used his so-called social structures with architectural screens, stools and display platforms for text and information. Gillicks installations although aesthetic and usually void of participants are supposed to invite the viewers to have social engagements with or amongst these structures, forms and objects. Or, in Rirkrit Tiravanijia’s / リクリット ・ ティラバーニャ open installations such as ‘free / still’ Soup Kitchen (1992 – 2012) & Soup / No Soup (2012), which uses the studio table not just as display but as a functional object for cooking and serving which justified the final display of the work post-participation and post viewer engagement. 

After processing my research into these forms and structures and considering their functions in the exhibition installation, I had the opportunity to create a bigger work which would combine both this formal collapse of painting into installation and work as an object which could invite or propose social interaction. The piece came about after extensive planning and research for the exhibition 1.85 Million |Art Peripheries at Campbelltown Art Center (CAC), Curated by Joseph Allen shea, 2012. Joseph Allen Shea's curatorial framework designed especially for CAC, was based on the concept of how art practices function and evolve outside of the main art centers of power. Artists were asked to consider this relationship between both the inner city art centers of Australia and regional artists practice. Although Australia itself is a regional power in the Globalized art world, artists practice outside of the main centers of power raises issues of representation regarding location and identity. 

At the time I was practicing my art based in the regional location of the Blue Mountains situated approximately 80km outside of western Sydney. The curator had selected me based on the fact that 1: I was an Australian artist who worked with main canon histories and complexes of minimalism and conceptual art. And 2: That I fulfilled the requirement of being a peripheral artist living more than 80km outside the center of Sydney. 

The piece that I exhibited as a part of 1.85 Million | ART PERIPHERIES at Campbelltown Arts Centre was an installation piece based on a reconfiguration of an Architectural model titled, T.A.C. Temporary Autonomous Construction, 1,920 (2011). The large geometric work is at the same time a visually spatial minimalist sculpture and also an micro-architectural representation of possible living space or studio. The black and tinted plexiglass panels recall the reflective geometric sides of Donald Judd's square geometric objects and structures with-in the mathematical frame that reminds us of Sol Lewitts - Lattices and models of multiple cubes and geometric spaces. In fact it was my intention that the black glass panels would bring in the reference of one of the earliest deconstructions of the pictorial dimension of painting, Kazimir Malevich’s, Black Square (1915). However in T.A.C., the promise of a Suprematist art of architectural function is not just imagined but actually suggested through the reflections of the museum walls shifting on the structures glass panels as the viewer walks around the piece optically observing the structure before physically engaging its interior. 

In this piece the architectural dimensions were important to signal the idea of a possible space the artist could use whilst existing on the periphery without a residency at an art space or without being based in a centrally located studio in the city. In fact the unique construction of the piece is designed so it can be easily assembled and then completely flat packed and transported to another location. This aspect of the work was also a reference to the flatpack design economy of design mega companies such as Ikea, which promises their customers an aesthetic and functional living experience through their products. An aesthetic once again based in the theoretical art history references of the Bauhaus, Abstraction and minimalist design. All theories which can be traced back to the origins of the deconstruction of painting in De Stilj, Constructivism and Suprematism. 

The actual design template for T.A.C. came from a more obscure artistic source but one that is very relevant to the curatorial framework of practices that exist in the periphery of urban and artworld centers of power. The piece was actually made following instructions given in ‘How To Build Your Own Living Structures’ by Ken Isaacs, published in 1974. For T.A.C. I re-assembled the design as a minimalist sculpture and art publication library platform, employing anarchist Hakim Bey’s sociopolitical tactics to create temporary spaces/structures that elude from formal structures of control. Ken Isaacs along with other DIY artists and architects of the 1960’s & 70’s were important figures in the Temporary Micro-Architecture movement associated with ‘Back to Earth Projects’ and other programs developed and published in ‘The Whole Earth Catalogue’, 1968 -1972. 

The Work was once again exhibited in the artist run Space 55 Sydenham Rd Gallery, Marrickville Sydney, curated by the artspace Director Iakovos Amperidis. A Brief description of the work with specific emphasis on the physical nature of what we were presenting is featured below: The Process of Construction as a Will Towards Autonomy / The Temporary Autonomous Library, 2012 - JESSE HOGAN / NICK BRIGGS. Themes of autonomy, countercultural experiments and the eco-aspirations of communes are central to the next installation at 55 Sydenham Rd, a Temporary Autonomous Library. Presented within the micro architecture of a Temporary Construction, the artists curated a selection of essays, musical scores, recorded artist dialogue’s, artists books and publications all displayed for audience interactions. The artist also hosted a Publication Launch of their new art publication  – Presenting the Weird Heavy Issue 01. 2011- 2012.

¹ ‘How To Build Your Own Living Structures’ By Ken Isaacs. 1974. Is about Isaacs’ Matrix Idea of building sustainable, eco-friendly, modular, flexible, multi-functional living structures which reconfigure the entire volume of a room, being bigger than furniture and smaller than architecture.

² T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone & Ontological Anarchy is a book by anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey published in 1991 by Autonomedia and in 2011 by Pacific Publishing Studio.