DEREK KRECKLER

Artist Statement

Photographing the Corinthian capitals in the Chryssopolitissa basilica for archaeological comparison with the Paphos Theatre site was both joyful and informative. Archaeological methodologies require precise measurements of varied forms that, in turn, mix the past with the present by revealing everyday things from this remarkable world-heritage listed place: "a theatre used for performance and entertainment for over six and a half centuries (c.300 BC to the late fourth century AD). At its maximum extent during the Antonine Emperors of the second century AD, the theatre could seat more than 8500 spectators" (1).

 The Paphos theatre remains a meeting place; the town was dusty and hot. Attending the theatre site became a meeting of mind and action; team enthusiasm and dedication were instrumental in working the site. From slow looking and keen observation; scratching at the earth, investigating trenches, the theatre, the nymphaeum and the road; finding, documenting, defining, assessing meaning in a clay sherd, and many other invaluable objects – involving an onion-skin layering of time, of ideas. 

 The Paphos Theatre capitals were strewn throughout the site, with only some partially visible. Ingenious devices moved and placed the heavy and large-scale archaeological objects. The scientists and their support team remarkable as they winched stones many times more than their weight. See the image on these pages Lifting mechanism 2010-2017.

 The processes found in art and archaeology offer differences and similarities in production, excavation and interpretation (research); I learnt that the most commonly found items in archaeology are the everyday things, the most common things used by people, people like us. We know these things, but to witness this was a profound experience.

 The exhibition Travellers from Australia mixed memory, poetry and recorded fact, contemporary and period artefacts into a relational model of the site. One work in the exhibition, Shadowlands (also seen on these pages), records the shadows of living artists (our crew) falling across the remarkable mosaic of the Birth of Achilles in Paphos. Other works, including Capitals numbers 1-8, features eight capitals, each represented by three photographs: showing the capital in situ, the second with measuring stick; the third with measuring stick and a slate showing location.

During the residency, thirty-six capitals were sited and recorded, some miles from the site used as building rubble, lining the driveways of private homes and so on. It was fascinating to learn that the archaeologists could determine through high-resolution photographs detail about the crafting of the capitals by observing the tooling used to carve the stone to identify the work of different craftspeople. One is left to wonder if anyone will be looking at our contemporary architecture two-thousand-three hundred and twenty years from now.

Derek Kreckler, May 2021.

Biography

Derek Kreckler (BA South Australian School of Art, MVA University of Sydney, DCA University of Wollongong) produces multi-media artworks that feature landscape and natural events expanded through accident and chance processes developed in the field and in his studio. His work is held in prestigious national and international art galleries, libraries and private collections including the Pushkin Museum, Moscow; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, The State Art Galleries of South Australia and Western Australia. In Accident and Process, a monograph to accompany his eponymous survey exhibition that toured Australia 2015-18, Monash Museum of Art Senior Curator Hannah Matthews wrote of his “tough insistent imagery at the critical edge of Australian art history”. His work spans performance, film, sound, photography, installation and video since the 1970s. Derek Kreckler attended the Paphos Theatre Excavation in 2010. He is Associate Professor Visual Arts at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

http://derekkreckler.com