Lyndal Jones - The Avoca Project (2008 - )

http://www.avocaproject.org/


Lyndal Jones is a Sydney-born artist who began experimenting professionally with performance art (from a visual arts basis) during the late 1970s starting with her At Home series (1977 - 1980, 5 solo performances). Within her performances she combined feminist influences with poststructural concepts and practices. Thus her performances were typically fragmented and disjointed in regard to their overall structure and narrative.
Jones critically analysed aspects of patriarchal culture from a feminist informed perspective. She dismissed patriarchal authority by representing woman as subject who was able to manipulate materials and images and express ideas. Thus she presented concepts and images of women who were alert, analytical and non-passive possessors of power and knowledge.
By the mid-1980s Jones's feminist ideologies demonstrated characteristically 1980s attitudes and beliefs, advocating an intellectualised and theoretically-based feminist practice. She created performances which served as critiques of 1970s feminism, rejecting the idea of exclusively female content in art while asserting the social construction of gender.
Lyndal Jones focused predominantly on performance art and performative visual arts practices through until the 2000s. From the 2000s, Jones began to engage with film and sound, creating a number of video projections with sound. Her videos still often included performative aspects. In her Crying Man (2003) interactive video installation she attributed male refusal to express certain emotions to socially constructed notions of gender appropriate public behaviour. When audience members walked close enough to the projection screen which showed the man crying, a sensor caused him to appear as if he was aware of being watched. The video then switched to one of him appearing embarrased and self-conscious.
From 2008 Lyndal Jones has been attempting a large environmentally-based community art project entitled the Avoca Project. The project attempts to highlight climate change from a visual arts perspective. The artwork is a large house located on property in Victoria. The house, the rooms of the house and parts of the surrounding landscape will be the sites of various art installations. The Avoca Project is a very unique Australian-based art project, the results of which will establish a new direction for art production both locally and internationally. The Avoca Project is definitely one to keep an eye on.