Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson, Viewing the invisible: an installation By Fred Wilson, 1998 (Detail) at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Univerisy of Melbourne. Photograph by Robert Colvin

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For TRACE, american artist Fred Wilson (b. 1954, Bronx) used the archives of Liverpool universities and museums to develop his piece for the exhibition. His work explores the implications of historical study within the contemporary world and approaches the theme of the trace through the academic tradition. Where other participating artists focus on individual memory and personal experience, Wilson's piece was a reflection on the nature of collective memory. His interventions represented objects from museum collections in an effort to illuminate associations that were absent or invisible in the museum context. 

In previous exhibitions he has worked with themes such as Memory, Artist and the Community, using archival materials to interrogate social roles, stereotypes and structures. Within the context of TRACE his re-evaluation and re-interpretation of historical subjects inevitability brought to mind the peculiarly Western desire to trace, preserve and document the past. But this work went further than this in its pluralist and post-structuralist intentions. Wilson's traces, in the final analysis, did not so much as contribute to historical knowledge as deconstruct it.

Fred Wilson at Liverpool Biennial 1999

Untitled, 1999
Site specific work 
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York