NATURE AND TECHNOLOGY

Jimmie Durham, Still life with car and stone, 2004 Installation: Car, granite rock, paint, Dimensions variable.

Nature and Technology

At Walsh Bay, in the centre of the roundabout is the sculpture by Jimmie Durham, called Still Life with Stone and Car. This piece was exhibited at the 2004 Sydney Biennale. Durham, an American artist, created this artwork by dropping a stone from a crane onto a sedan.

Here is a comment from an observer- which I think sums up this artwork’s relation to this weeks topic.

“It was a performance and an installation, this work reflects the play between nature and culture, technology and organic matter, as well as human life and monumental architecture. This work both explores and questions how familiar objects can be transformed into 'history'.”

This is what Durham had to say about his work, "Like most of my recent work, this piece is concerned with monuments and monumentality, but also with 'nature'; that implacable hard stuff. In the first instance I am using the stone as a tool; to change the shape of an object. But I also, as usual, want to make stone more light, more moveable, even if it is in a fairly horrible way - like a road accident. I do not think the piece is humorous; even though it turns out to be. The kind of face painted on the real version will, of course, depend upon the shape of the stone, but it will in any case be placid, and neither 'realistic' nor cartoon-like. To my way of thinking if the stone is simply a stone without a face it becomes a gesture but with the face painted on it, the work develops a strange narrative. "