SCULPTING HISTORY: A Formal Analysis of MichaelStevenson’s The Fountain of Prosperity (2006)

Art historian Amy Knight Powell has suggested that a key characteristic of form is its temporal “promiscuity.” Reliably unfaithful to its original moment, form is open to de- and re-contextualisation: as it enters into different settings and new liaisons it is capable of taking on numerous alternative associations. This paper analyses Berlin-based New Zealand artist Michael Stevenson’s The Fountain of Prosperity (Answers to Some Questions About Bananas) (2006) in light of Knight Powell’s observation. Focusing on the sculpture’s installation in Stevenson’s 2011 survey exhibition at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, I uncover a Duchampian methodology underlying Stevenson’s research-based practice. In its use of found material, contemporary research-based art builds on conceptual art, institutional critique and appropriation art practices, and like them is situated within the genealogy of the readymade. However, as with the apparently anti-art gestures of the readymades and conceptual art, the aesthetic motivations and formal innovations of research-based art tend to be neglected. The historical material such artists present is frequently read as a didactic illustration of their archival sources, with the artwork itself reduced to little more than a prompt for a history lesson. By exploiting the promiscuous temporal elasticity of form, works like The Fountain of Prosperity in fact demonstrate the sculptural logic that underpins the use of found objects in contemporary art.