Materials

The choice of materials was extremely important in determining if a work of art could be defined as Minimalist. Many artists chose natural, easily available or organic materials, sometimes creating works outdoors or bringing elements of the environment into the gallery.  Many of these environmental or land artworks did not survive for long, their temporary, ephemeral nature adding to the minimalist aesthetic. 

Other artists chose industrial materials such as plaster, glass, metal and household bricks, often working with factories to fabricate each piece.  The materials they used were not trying to represent something else, or to tell a story.  Whatever material was used, it was simply that.  A rock was simply a rock, a pre-fabricated cube was purely a cube. As American Minimalist painter Frank Stella said in 1964, “What you see is what you see.”

BC-prints on paper
3 photographs, 52.5 x 80 cm (each)

Mary Miss has been creating striking sculptural and architectural interventions into public space since the 1960s. A contemporary of Donald Judd, Miss had significantly fewer opportunities to show her work in museums or galleries. Instead she chose to create large outdoor sculptures that were intended to give the viewer an experience of space.  In her work, Battery Park Landfill, Miss uses her materials to highlight something inherently intangible - a column of air.  One of the few large open spaces in New York in the 1970s, was a landfill site that was later to become Battery Park City. Miss used this location to construct five billboard-like structures spaced approximately 15 metres apart. Each structure had a circle neatly cut within it, each one set at decreasing heights. The three photographs in this gallery show that from a particular angle, the structures appear to be directing a column of air towards the ground.

Also on view is:
- Portable Window (1968)

Stone Installation: 1068 cm (diameter); 258 stones

Since the 1960s, British artist Richard Long has been at the forefront of Land Art, pioneering a form of practice centred around long walks in natural landscapes. This monumental sculpture is an example of his involvement with the landscape, evoking the natural cycles and rhythms of the wilderness. Comprised of 258 stones arranged in four concentric circles, it echoes the circular forms seen in other areas of this exhibition.

Ring of Stones is one of the largest examples of many stone circles Long has created in remote natural landscapes and in the gallery, beginning with Circle in the Andes in 1972, which is on view at National Gallery of Singapore. Using materials such as slate, stone, wood, even pine needles, his circles can be found in landscapes as diverse as the Sahara, Ecuador, Mongolia and Ireland. Long describes his work as a “balance between the patterns of nature and the formalism of human, abstract ideas like lines and circles. It is where my human characteristics meet the natural forces and patterns of the world”.

Purchased 1993 with funds from the International Exhibitions Programme, Collection of Queensland Art Gallery

Also on view are the photographic works:
- Tsunami Coastline Walk (2013)
- A Bend in the River, China (2010)

Neon tubes and transformer, 70 x 250 x 250 cm

Taking inspiration from the cubic geometries of the sculptures of Robert Morris and Donald Judd as well as the conceptual work of Sol Le Wit, Jeppe Hein’s sculpture is a playful, ironic yet meaningful reinterpretation of the static forms of the Minimalists of the 1960s and 1970s. In a darkened space a series of cubes — a form that has come to epitomise Minimalism — is made from neon lights that switch on an off in sequence and, as a result, appear to roll around the floor. The complex materials and electronics as well as the spectacle of the sculpture’s ‘performance’ seem to contradict Minimalist aesthetics while simultaneously representing the most iconic Minimalist form — the cube.

C-print on Dibond, 90 x 90 cm (each)

One of the often cited criteria for a work of art to be considered Minimalist is the use of simple geometric, repeated forms as seen in the sculptures of Donald Judd for example, or in the abstract paintings of Carmen Hererra. Zhou’s starting point for these ghostly photographs was the construction of small plaster sculptures ranging from simple spheres and columns to more complex forms, which she then went on to photograph. Once the photograph was taken Zhou destroyed the original sculptures. The only record that remains of her minimalist works are in the form of a thin layer of ink on a digitally reproduced photograph. These works convey a sense of weight, or solidity, yet they are transient images that capture a fleeting moment in time. The short-lived objects these photographs document seem strangely contradictory to the permanence of the photographic images themselves.