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James Newitt
My primary aim is to investigate the capacity for visual art to identify, describe and elaborate relationships between people and place. By focusing on
relationships that are fragile, subtle, complex or in a state of change I aim to reveal micro-histories and subjective experiences that bind people into
communities and to place. 21 James Newitt, 2007
Since branching out from his formal training as a graphic designer, James Newitt has swiftly become one of the more prominent new media
artists currently working in Tasmania. His video and photography works often incorporate objective documentary strategies, using observation and
interviewing in tandem with facilitated performance and experimental narratives. Newitt explores concepts surrounding individual and collective
identity, community memory, and a sense of place. In 2007, Newitt completed his doctorate in Fine Arts at the University of Tasmania’s
School of Art, and was this year appointed as the School’s Associate Lecturer in Fine Arts, specialising in visual communication. Concerned with
the inherent complexities of human social engagement, Newitt’s artistic practice is informed by his ongoing research into social and cultural
relationships with place, as well as his own personal experiences. As such, many of Newitt’s new media works predominantly focus on localised issues
and situations specific to his homeland of Tasmania, such as his 2007 project, Saturday Nights, in which the artist facilitated a country-dance in a
small town hall on the Tasman Peninsula in Southern Tasmania, five kilometres from the site of the Port Arthur Massacre, and filmed on the 10 th
anniversary of the tragedy. 22
Newitt’s single-channel video work, Passive Aggressive (2009), and corresponding suite of 30 photographs titled Landscape (2009), are both part of
a body of work that investigates the long-standing social tensions between forestry workers and environmental activists in the Upper Florentine Valley
of south-western Tasmania. For years, Government and privately-owned companies have been logging this expansive region of old growth forests
that border the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. In an ongoing campaign of political lobbying and environmental retribution,
anti-forestry activists have devoted themselves to obstruct forestry practices by taking action in creative, rebellious and sometimes dangerous ways.
Newitt utilises the familiar vehicles of documentary, film and photography to record the interactions between the police, loggers and protestors in the
Upper Florentine Valley. His photographs capture the strategies used by protestors to disrupt the attempts of developers by ‘blocking roads, building
elaborate rope structures attached to logging machines to make them inoperable, and establishing tree-sits to draw attention to their campaign.’ 23
Collectively, these two works actively engage with the quarrels and controversy surrounding a specific time, location and community, without
resorting to mere social commentary, and maintain a critical distance from the situation at hand by focusing instead on exploring the relationships
between people and place.
21 James Newitt, Relational Perspectives: A Visual Investigation into Social and Cultural Relationships with Space, PhD exegesis, University of Tasmania, 2007, p.13
22 ‘Stories of Celebration and Dissent’, Rosalux Gallery,
23 Elise Routledge,’James Newitt’, In the Balance: Art for a Changing World, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2010, p.124
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