Unmasking Modernity through Urban Ruin

Abstract

This thesis is a visual artist’s investigation into the role of urban ruin as the site of revelation and redemption from the impacts of capitalist modernity on urban communities. The urban ruin of Sydney’s gentrifying suburbs is the focus of the visual exploration of this research.

The research connects approaches to urban ruin in contemporary art with a succession of traditions, starting with those of ruin in art in antiquity. It seeks to reveal how decay and decrepitude have shaped narratives and critiques concerned with human history and societal development. The thesis posits new ways of working with and interpreting urban ruin in contemporary art through its exploration of Marxian theory, especially as adopted by Walter Benjamin and Henri Lefebvre.

The research started with the overarching question—How can an artist unmask the reality of modernity through urban ruin? It developed along the following trajectory:

• What has been the role of ruin in art since antiquity? • How have artists addressed capitalist modernity through the urban ruin? • Can historical materialism expand readings of contemporary art practice? • How can a practising artist create new forms in contemporary art through an engagement with seminal practice and historical materialist discourse?

The thesis accomplishes a major contribution to knowledge; it is a definitive study which combines four elements: an application of a framework of historical materialism to urban ruin; an analysis of Benjamin’s and Lefebvre’s novel approach to urban ruin; an investigation of contemporary art concerned with urban ruin, from the seminal works of Robert Smithson in the 1970s through to contemporary practice; and four artworks produced in cross-pollination with the research.

The artworks of this thesis aim to unmask the reality of modernity through the Marxian aesthetics of urban ruin in select gentrifying suburbs of Sydney—Bondi, Marrickville, Millers Point and Arncliffe.