Material conditions in the post-human city

This chapter articulates my ‘art-geography’ practice, with specific reference to one of my artworks, Material Conditions in the Post-Human City, which was included in Thresholds, a group exhibition held in 2015 at Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney (Gorman-Murray, 2015). Art-geography is a term I have used elsewhere to describe my art practice, which is situated at the intersection of contemporary art and cultural geography (Gorman- Murray, 2018a, 2018b; see also Gorman-Murray, 2014a, 2014b, 2016; Gorman-Murray & Brickell, 2017). I am a geographer by profession, and geographical debates and provocations inform my art practice: I combine my geographical expertise with concepts and methodologies from contemporary art to make research-led, practice-based contributions to both fields. Indeed, both disciplines are visual-spatial modes of inquiry, and I am interested in where and how their ‘expanded fields’ intersect (Hawkins, 2013). My art-geography practice explores how concepts and methods drawn from both disciplines cross-fertilise each other to generate different approaches to, and knowledge about, place-making. discuss my art-geography practice by focusing on the conceptual and methodological processes behind Material Conditions in the Post- Human City. I begin by explaining the project, including its geographical and art-historical catalysts. I then identify and discuss the key terms and concepts I used to locate and inform my art-geography practice for Material Conditions in the Post-Human City. These terms are drawn from both geography and contemporary art, and they simultaneously constituted the foundations for the art-geographical experimentation that guided the project. In terms of methodological approach, I located precedents in contemporary art for the practices I wanted to implement, explore, and extend. These artists and their work are discussed in the subsequent section, along with comments on, and some images of, my experimental process. Finally, I present documentation of the installed, resolved work, along with my artist’s statement.