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Artist Jorg Immendorff's ill-fated Auckland residency in the 1980s, dealer Tony Shafrazi's badly-timed gallery opening in revolutionary 1970s Tehran, Ian Fairweather's near disastrous 1950s raft journey across the Timor Sea - these are some of the more curious art-world narratives that New Zealand-German artist Michael Stevenson has resurrected in his peripatetic practice. Of particular note for Australian audiences has been the artist's reconstruction and recreation of Fairweather's 1952 raft odyssey. Exhibited at Brisbane's 2006 Asia-Pacific Triennial, Argonauts of the Timor Sea, 2004, seemed less interested in the mythic dimensions of Fairweather's persona than the chain of economic and cultural transactions of the artist's journey. In Berlin, Wes Hill spoke with Michael Stevenson about the dramatic disjunction between his historic narrative and contemporary aesthetic.

Wes Hill: I wanted to do this interview with you because a mysteriousness still exists around your work, particularly in Australia. You've been living in Berlin since leaving Melbourne in 2000; how do you think this has changed your practice?
 
Michael Stevenson: I suppose my practice in Australia was influenced by my earlier practice in New Zealand and my entry into the art market itself. Three months after the 1987 share market crash I made my first exhibition in a gallery in Wellington. It was a bad time to begin an art career (commercially at least) but I think that in significant ways this moment informed my trajectory. It was my first real brush with market economics. During my time in New Zealand and Australia I understood that these things determined the realm in which I operated. At that stage I didn't try to explore this in a conceptual sense but later, while in Germany, this is one of the things I have attempted to do.

WH: I've always thought that you managed to balance literal critical reflection with a relatively hermetic aesthetic sensibility - so much so that it doesn't seem like critique at all. How would you describe the way you approach aesthetic decisions?

MS: The aesthetic, developed for each project, can really be anything or any material. Sometimes it is very unexpected for me. I can be a long way into a project but still lacking a way to express it in terms of what could exist in the exhibition space. I guess what I am searching for is a form to conceptually hang the project on. When I recognise the appropriate form I can find myself amidst an aesthetic that I have never used before. Often these materials are very limited in terms of what can be done with them in the exhibition space. So it is really the entity I describe here as the form that determines much of the aesthetics. It is often something that is actually described in the research or something that can be brought to the research to make it concrete. It can't be too illustrative. It is often drawn from the history; an historical object or occurrence that then reoccurs in the exhibition space somehow...

WH: Many people have spoken of your Ian Fairweather-themed work - starting with Argonauts of the Timor Sea, 2004, and concluding with The gift, 2005 - in terms of a motivation to rewrite/recontextualise art historical narratives. How does this figure in your practice?

MS: I am not trying to rewrite history. My work is perhaps on the fringes of what is called art history; boundaries I think of as permeable. I simply like to set up situations where some osmosis can take place. Economy is significant in terms of this. It is something that affects us all and in the arts it affects us in special ways. From my point of view I think it is not possible to study a figure like Fairweather without considering something of economics. From every account I read he lived significant periods of his life as a destitute; it was a hand-to-mouth existence. Such an existence determines many things. One of my propositions was: does this determine anything in regard to practice? I was not really providing any answers but my feeling is that this proposition was not considered healthy in terms of art history in Australia. I was asked on a number of occasions if I even liked Fairweather's paintings - as if the work somehow undermined his reputation. The tangential relationship that I often have with narrative can cause further problems as it is widely thought that first-hand experience of the situation is necessary - otherwise it is the domain of the historian. Being an artist and occupying a different role can be difficult...

This article appears in excerpted form. You can read the entire article in Art & Australia's Autumn 2009 issue.