Tributaries: public art, connecting & reflecting people and place

Tributaries are geographic fingers of water moving across the landscape making connections with a main water source. As a title for my Master of Fine Arts research paper this metaphorically refers to the political, social and cultural streams which are expressed through my public artworks. It is also a poetic play on notions of paying tribute.This research examines the process of collaboration and cross-cultural arts practice and the relationship between a public artwork, the site and the audience. Four diverse yet interrelated public art projects are presented for my Master of Fine Arts degree. This research investigates the conceptual links between the four projects and the current discourse of cross-cultural collaborations. Although my art practice varies in location, materials, forms and approach, generally it is focussed around sculpture and installation and includes temporary and permanent public artworks. Two of the projects discussed took place in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, the other two took place in Vietnam.This research discusses the advantages, disadvantages and challenges in choosing to work collaboratively and questions the relationship of the author to the work and the importance of the process in creating an artwork. It also explores notions of hierarchy and power relationships that occur between artists from within the same culture and between artists from different cultures.Exploring the connections between public art and specific communities/sites has expanded my research into related notions of homes, homelessness and displacement. My approach to public sculpture is deliberately anti-monumental. This takes into account the relationship of scale within a public artwork: including the relationship of the work to the human body and to the surrounding environment I examine how contemporary public art can serve as a form of tribute to historic events and people of the past. My poetic approach to creating public art differs from more conventional monuments and statues of tribute and can be considered as a non-linear approach to presenting history. While the events these artworks refer to have taken place in the past, the issues surrounding them continue to have relevance to political situations of today