Installation Strategy

We installed components from Cullen’s installations Moon/Navigation and Explaining the Results of Observation (1991), drawing on the artists conceptual framing of these installations. In these installations, Paul rearranged groupings of components in response to the architectural features of each gallery space, which included a model moon, wooden boat forms, papier-mâché land formations, and generic building structures marked with pencil and Letraset. He also positioned model trees, balsawood aeroplanes, and railway-track sections on the walls and floor, creating a landscape that viewers perceive from an aerial perspective. Cullen labelled the groups of components, numbering them and assigning them with unique titles.

In “Some Notions of Site”, (c. 1993–94), a compilation of speaking notes towards a lecture, Cullen notes that Moon/Navigation references Mary Miss’s large-scale outdoor work Field Rotation (1980–81) in Park Forest South, Illinois, which he observes must be experienced by “looking, seeing, walking into and through.” He also cites Rosalind Krauss’s essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” (), and expresses his interest in “sculpture that is instrumental in a particular sense of place and which is engaged with its location.” He frames Moon/Navigation as “an attempt to create site-related work that leverages and develops the gallery space’s architectural or physical features.” He writes:

“A globe of the moon hovers above the white square, which contains a house, a tree, a piece of railway line, plus various pencil marks and bits of Letraset. This grouping is located within a relatively vast field (landscape) of space. I had Field Rotation in mind because it has a central locus of activity and is situated in the landscape. Adjacent to this but articulated on the wall plane are further groups of similar elements: model trees, a generic house, a landform (hill), a boat. Pencil lines and Letraset are again used as a further means of defining the site.^”

Cullen’s transformation of the gallery space into an immersive field or landscape resonates with Krauss’s concepts of ‘axiomatic structures’ and ‘site-construction’. The architectural elements of the space become integral to the work, blurring the boundaries between the artwork and its environment. This approach guided our reinstalling of these pieces in the warehouse in 2022 (where the Paul Cullen Archive is housed), and we positioned them in response to existing architectural features like door frames, existing holes, and nails in the walls.

This project was developed as a component of Layla Tweedie-Cullen's PhD research Circles Within the Archive: Navigating the Paradoxes of Paul Cullen’s Practice. Components from Cullen’s installations Moon/Navigation and Explaining the Results of Observation (1991) were installed in the warehouse where with Paul Cullen Archive is housed by J. A. Kennedy, Layla Tweedie-Cullen, and Ry Tweedie-Cullen, 2022. Documentation by Marie Shannon.