Deeply excited by his environs

Otago Daily Times

12 hours ago

More than 40 years ago American artist Les Joynes first visited New Zealand. That visit made such an impression he was determined to come back. Here on a Dunedin School of Art residency, he talks to Rebecca Fox about his love for museums and community.
Les Joynes is about experiencing life as deeply as possible.
The New York-based contemporary multimedia artist has lived in 12 countries across the world but the life of tourist is not for him.
"So I don't like the idea of being an artist and a tourist, helicoptering in."
Instead he wants to listen, learn and experience the cultures he finds himself in, a trait he got from his mother, who was an oral historian in Santa Barbara, California.
"I remember what my mother said is people have stories. And it's up to us to really be present, to listen. When we were in a new space, we could just learn about it and integrate better by listening to other people's stories. And they really wanted to tell their stories."
In Dunedin on a Dunedin School of Art (DSA) residency, Joynes is doing just that by attending lectures and visiting museums as well as doing research for possible future projects.
Interested in boats since he learned to sail as a child growing up in Southern California, Joynes is fascinated by their ability to take people from one place to another.
"They are a means of connection, of communication, of survival."
New Zealand's waka fascinate him, in particular how they lashed joints together with natural materials.
"I'm interested in how that becomes an extension of culture. So I'm taking lots of photographs."
Photography is where it all started for Joynes. As a child he picked up a Agfa Silette 35mm film camera from a box of cameras in the back of the living room cupboard. His mother Dorothy was always taking photographs of family moments and life in general.
"I wanted to be part of that picture-taking. I wanted to be on the other side of the camera."
He went on to take darkroom photography in high school and then started working with a professional photographer. Taking photographs of the unexpected in the community became his next fixation.
"Just the way architecture could be re-perceived through a camera, but also sometimes at Christmas time, people would decorate trucks, which I thought was pretty fascinating. And they would have a truck in their driveway, decorated with Christmas lights. And it just gave me a place to, in a way, memorialise things that were exciting for me."
Nature also captured his imagination, especially sandstone rocks placed to prevent erosion from the sea and how they became "pockmarked like Swiss cheese" by the pounding surf.
"That, for me, was really curious, because they changed over time, and they stopped becoming the blocks that they were. I loved photography. I was found every place with my camera."
He went on to study art, mostly photography, getting a chance to study under German cinematographer Wolfgang Lauter, learning how to effectively use a camera and frame the world around him.
Those early experiences stayed with him as his PhD was on form.
"What is form? But then I realised it was a better question to ask, 'when is form?' So I looked at, in people's studios, they would create something, they would bring in a bunch of raw material and they would start doing stuff with that. And then they would be working on it, it would be like work in progress and then it would be finished at some point. And I was like, when is it finished? And I know when a piece of work is finished, but I wanted to play with the idea of when a piece of work continues to exist."
That in turn led to Joynes' interest in performance art. In an exhibition in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he created a transparent studio within an exhibition space that people could see into and watch what he was creating in the middle of the space. Then they would bring the object out into the gallery space so people could see it.
Next he would "recapture" the object, take it back inside the studio and redo it.
"So there was an idea that it was never finished. There was a sense that it was playing with the idea of the museum pushing maybe some of the boundaries which were interesting to me."
It was in his early 20s that Joynes made a conscious choice that he whatever he did, he wanted the ability to say where he would live and did not want to be there temporarily.
"I wanted to learn about the people. And so I thought about the foreign service. I thought about all sorts of things that you think about. I love travelling and learning about new things. But the foreign service usually would have people on three-year rotations. And I said, well, that's not for me. I want to be able to build my life within the community. And so with that attitude, I continued my life and kind of curated it."
So he moved to France before going to the United Kingdom, where he studied for his master's in fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London. It was during his foundation year he met New Zealander teacher and artist Stephen Furlonger and discovered sculpture.
"He said, 'so what do you think?' And I said, 'I want to study here in this department and learn from you'. Because I had such a powerful feeling this is somebody I could learn from. And it was spot on. It was the best decision. And he, just by virtual example of being such a great sculptor, that also inspired me to come back many years later."
In his master's study he branched out to be more conceptual with his work. Joynes created FormLAB, an idea that came out of a thought of how art studios are like laboratories, an experimental place where people create things.
"I would work with things like plastic foam and found objects. I was quite skilled with my bicycle, bringing back things just from skips around London and going into the Isle of Dogs, which is now the Docklands financial district. And they gave me permission, and some people even gave me a hard hat."
He looked at the debris as potential material for sculpture, not rubbish that was to be destroyed. He was also fascinated by the histories of the objects.
"That, to me, was really powerful. On the ground were these vestiges of things, almost like Roman ruins. And some of the things were just too darn heavy. But they each had a powerful history."
He applied for a scholarship to study at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. Not expecting to get it, when he did he was faced with leaving London where life was going great to move to Tokyo where there was so much to learn.
"It was the hard road. There's so many challenges."
But he knew it would be the experience of a lifetime, one he would regret not taking up, so seven days after graduating from Goldsmiths he was in a dormitory room in Japan looking up at the ceiling wondering what he had done.
"And it's those moments that really made me feel lucky."
He returned to the UK to do his PhD at Leeds Metropolitan University and continued grabbing what opportunities came his way. The opportunity to travel to a conference in Korea came through a connection in London. At that conference he was invited to be a professor at a university in China.
"We just developed this great friendship and I was learning about Chinese culture. Things happen when you're kind of on a certain frequency."
Time in Mongolia came about after meeting Brazilian poet August de Campos, the founding father of concrete poetry in Brazil in the 1950s.
"He said, 'come to my wife's birthday party. We'll have all of our friends there'. And there was this amazing welcome. And then I showed him my work and he said, 'you need to go to Mongolia'. I was like, 'what?' And he says, 'your work, I think you'd be really interested in their types of performance and singing'."
While he was in Brazil he took a capoeira (a type of martial art combined with dance) class and unfortunately broke his foot in multiple places. This led to a revaluation of his residency as his movement was restricted.
"During that time, I wrote the most polite letter to the US ambassador to Mongolia. And they responded. They said, 'when would you like to come?"'
So over the next three summers Joynes travelled to Mongolia to work with different communities and build up relationships. Key experiences were meeting a shaman, seeing reindeer and being part of nature, which formed part of a performance he created.
He has also spent significant time in Taiwan and served on the curatorial team that produced the 1998 Taipei Biennial at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan.
Having first visited New Zealand as an 18-year-old and enjoying the experience, Joynes has always wanted to return. So with a gap in his schedule he was researching residencies in the country when he came across the opportunity at the DSA for a six-week residency.
"I was like 'I've never been to the South Island. I would like to see that'. So I had a real strong feeling I was in the right place."
While here he will listen, learn and take photographs. These days he is an "iPhone guy", finding he does not like taking his camera as often as he used to.
"Photography for me is kind of like capturing a memory. I'm just here to listen, to make these images and to develop an idea for a future exhibition."
As he investigates the relationship between land and sky, the architecture of the city has also been attracting his attention as a photographer.
"I have also discovered how beautiful the winter light illuminates the buildings, revealing an aspect of Dunedin's unique architecture. I come from Santa Barbara California and the relationship between the earth, nature, the sea and the sky has always been close to me as an artist.
"As an artist I'm very interested in fragments and how a fragment of a building can tell a story."
It is also another opportunity for him to experience another tertiary art school system, something he takes a strong interest in given many nations are struggling to fund art education.
"So I'm really fortunate to see how a school like Dunedin School of Art creates this unique purpose. When you have something like that, it's monumental for a country."
Top of his list of places to visit when in a new place are always museums and he says Dunedin's are "outstanding". So the first thing he did on arrival in Dunedin was visit Toitū Otago Settlers Museum and Tūhura Otago Museum where he particularly enjoyed the video Toitū te Whenua , which tells the stories of Māori place names in the South made by Allied Productions in collaboration with the Otago Daily Times . He was also impressed by the waka at the Hocken Collections and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery's "Kua marara hoki ngā mana o tōna kaha ki runga i te katoa" HK Taiaroa exhibition.
"It has given me unique perspectives on the depth of Māori culture."
Joynes likes to walk wherever he is as he believes it gives him the ability to see "a lot of things in a really rich way".
"There is so much to do in Dunedin. There's a rhythm to the way we can experience the world. I'm into experiencing life just as, not as slowly as possible, but as deeply as possible." Comment:
One of the most memorable projects Les Joynes created was a collaboration with Chinese artists in mainland China "where we created performances on a wild section of the Great Wall of China, where we improvised a series of performances".