| Site or place focused art, or installations, have a specific relation to their location. They can either be reflective of a place, dependent on aspects of some site, or have any number of thematic content that is based around the concept of place. Place can be physical or imagined, and so the site specific art can travel into a very surreal and abstract area. One of the biggest ways art can foregrounds site is by being irreproducible in any other place than that which it is. If you tried to somehow move the work, it would either be impossible, or change its meaning all together. There is a very wide scope of work that deals with internal mental or imagined space which could be set up anywhere, because this art draws its content from a nonphysical space.
A site specific installation is made with a certain area in mind. The artist scouts out the site and forms an intimate relationship with the area. The work will usually reflect many aspects of the site including physical geography, context, or history. For example, If an artist is building a piece that will be a permanent fixture in a park, they might research what the park is used for, the history of the park or cultural or geological distinctions of the area and figure all these into their art. The work might be physically implanted in the environment in such a way that it needs the space to make sense. There might be a geological formation, or physical element, such as a hedgerow of trees, a waterfall, a bridge, a sidewalk, a building or any number of imaginable physical elements which the work engages or reflects. The curve and reflective nature of a sculpture might be enhanced by the water in a pool nearby. The sculpture may interact with a walkway where people will view the work. If you take away the walkway, the people will not experience the art in the way it was intended. Similarly, if you moved a memorial monument into the middle of a paved industrial site, it would drastically affect the meaning.
The context of a work in its area is always a factor in art. Typically, art is viewed in a studio or gallery, and so you are set up to view the art as art, in a certain preset qualification. When art leaves the studio, as an installation, or a permanent figure in landscape, the definitions of art are challenged and refined. Earthworks are a prime example of this sort of art. Andy Goldsworthy makes impermanent intricate assemblages of natural materials. He works reactively, designing his pieces as he enters a site, documenting them, and letting nature reclaim them. Installations don’t have the studio to preset audience for viewing. The work is out in the real world, with the entire infinite context of environment and site. Each place comes with a history, and is encountered by people in its own way. Place already has something to evaluate and react to, and the installation or site-art uses this to enhance its own meaning.
Imaged place opens up a whole new vast array of possibilities. These works don’t have as much physical dependence on space, because they are using it as a source rather than a presentation element. An artist creating a work that is imagined place still has all the decisions to make about presentation and site, but they are engaging place in a more indirect way. This could mean an artist thinks up a conceptual world, or quotes memory of real or imaginary places and creates an art piece that reflects that.
Artwork that foregrounds place can mean many things. There are infinite possibilities, and it could be argued that all art is place art, because if it exists in any real physical way, it is in a place. Maybe even imagined or nonphysical art has its place, because the audience has to occupy some real space. But the art we are looking at has a direct focus of site and place. The works are designed for a specific site, or define a place and need the physical area they occupy to express the artists goals and meaning.
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