Mythology of Place: the three worlds of James K Baxter
About this ebook
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Lloyd Godman and Lawrence Jones were neighbors and friends who had lived for years at Brighton, New Zealand. Both lived very close to where James K Baxter had lived and were familiar with his work. Jones was writing a paper on Baxter and asked Godman to consider contributing some photographs of the places Baxter wrote about.
During 1993 to 1994 Lawrence Jones and Lloyd Godman worked collaboratively on the Mythology of Place project. They retraced the words of one of New Zealand’s most acknowledged poets, James K Baxter, searching for artifacts ion the surrounding landscape that referenced real places of his mythology. Places where the youthful Baxter’s naked feet once trod, places that remained with him until the bare foot days before his death. This project was about the unearthing three different worlds of James K Baxter and though the critical text of Jones and the photographs of Godman, a poignant focus of Baxter’s work emerged. Finding the real locations that inspired him and capturing them on film.
Alongside the poems of Baxter, the stunning black and white photographs offered their own mythology and symbols of place.
About the author
Lloyd Godman established and was head of the photographic section of the Dunedin Art School, New Zealand, for 20 years and then taught at RMIT, Melbourne, for a further 9 years. From 1989, his work moved from camera-based images to camera-less photograms with projects like Codes of Survival, Adze to Coda. He began exploring light sensitivity and evolved to where he grew images into the leaves of Bromeliad plants. Then followed a series of interactive gallery installations with plants which evolved into his current work with Tillandsias and the built environment.
He is now seen as a leading ecological artist integrating Tillandsias into the built environment in a fully sustainable manner, with The AGE newspaper referring to him as an extreme gardener.
Artist Lloyd Godman is at the forefront of a modern trend to bring an appreciation of the natural world into our structural domains. Buildings do not rest ‘above’ or ‘outside’ a landscape, separated from the surrounding environment. On the contrary, structures interact with the natural world as objects that cast shadows, consume resources and provide rich habitats for life.
Godman’s living, plant-based artworks reinforce the necessary connectedness of buildings and the wider environment. Not only do these artworks convey powerful messages and philosophies of sustainable and ethical physical interaction, but they also reach out beyond ideas to become part of the actual structure – as physical objects, Godman’s artworks are purifiers of the air as well as the soul, suppliers of colour as well as calmness, and filters of water as well as the human spirit.
...... it is highly unusual for an artist to forge new aesthetic, philosophical and architectural directions through his work; Godman, however, has managed to use his diminutive plants to convey global concepts, and in the process participate in a new wave of appreciation for plants in the built environment.
John Power
Lloyd has a Masters of Fine Art from RMIT and combines his extensive knowledge of air plants based, on his personal collection of airplants, and his photographic skills to the Tillandsimania series of EBooks.
