Painter, sculptor, theorist, film-maker and photographer. Smithson helped pioneer the Earthwork movement of the 1960s and 70s, which took at its subject “the artistic recording of the American landscape in its many varied forms.”

Chalk-Mirror Displacement belonged to a series of works combining mirrors and organic materials. The artwork is composed of 8 double-sided mirrors dividing a pile of chalk on the gallery floor and is the second stage of a whole site/nonsite work: the initial stage he set up and photographed the same composition in a chalk quarry in Oxted, York. The materials were then dismantled and reinstalled for the 1969 exhibition When Attitude Becomes Form at the ICA in London.

‘This process purposefully blurred the boundaries between art and its environment, within and without the gallery walls.’

Why did he use mirrors/what were their relevance to site/nonsite concept?

Does it blur the boundaries? Is that the right word? Does it do something else?

Could I make something similar on Calton Hill? Photograph it, dismantle it, then reconstruct at home in my bedroom studio (the nonsite). Might be interesting to do that with the wallpaper up.

Could use mirrors But would like to understand why he used mirrors first.

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/93345/chalk-mirror-displacement