School of Art - Theses
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ItemSupercharged paintings move towards light and space( 2018)This project considers certain connections between the so-called art world and global social mobility. Is the ubiquity of some universal aesthetic frameworks implicitly promoting the ever-expanding cultural class to become even more seduced by the forces of late-capitalism? The thesis, which comprises a dissertation presented in conjunction with a studio-based investigation, is centred around three distinct, but inter-related templates for display: the generic living room TV wall unit; the painted canvas; and the gallery. I consider how each format conditions our reception of cultural information by influencing our sense of individuality, whilst as the same time signalling our inclusion in a unified non-culturally specific world view that is rooted in western modernism. Significantly, these three selected display arenas all convey a sense of universality—not necessarily through specific content, but rather through their inherent structures. I argue that these successful systems of display potentially mask otherwise visible signs of power through implicit democratic ideologies disseminated via inspirational design trends. Considered together, I demonstrate that all three offer insights into the underlying function of international systems of cultural exchange. A substantial part of this research considers the homogenising effect of Internet image-searching, especially in relation to notions of class and sophistication at a time characterised by a global democratisation of desire and appreciation for ‘good’ design principles. The artworks I have produced in conjunction with this dissertation are designed to critically engage and antagonise the already fuzzy intersection of art, architecture and design. Accordingly, I have sought to produce works that are less distinguished by traditional art-making decisions but rather emphasise compositions, materials, and principles associated within modernist and minimalist infused trends in design and architecture. This strategy seeks to recode the sublime grandeur of late-formalist abstract paintings as a kind-of banal realism perhaps more associated with marketing and pop consumerism. The physical creation of individual artworks has taken place in accordance with two predominate modes of production. Firstly, and in reference to painting, wall mounted sculptural relief works incorporating materials such as Formica composite wood panelling, plywood, hardwood, acrylic paint, enamel paint, glass, vinyl flooring, composite stone samples, imitation plants, real-plants, pots, fluorescent lights, and found objects, were produced. The second mode of production is in the digital realm, and includes digital photographic montages (combining online images with my own photography), video (using online content and making interventions within it) and creating audio tracks (to accompany the video works). Considered together, these modes of production are used as tools to psychologically position the viewer in a space in which materials, surfaces and compositions, might trigger considerations of social mobility, our relationships to design, and finally, notions of personal intimacy and memory that are activated through smart-screen technologies.
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ItemFinal room: encountering the body through absence( 2018)When I look at images of pain, my mind enters a nexus of complicated reactions. When met with images depicting bodily injuries, deformities, disease and open lacerations, my eyes wince - as if apprehending the amount of visual information travelling through my eye and into my brain and then into my body is too much. In the absence of implied physical danger to myself as the viewer, my mind plays out a psychological dread enabled by proprioception. Parts of my body that normally lie dormant of pain are suddenly awakened through empathy and metamorphoses, gauging how that pain might feel. These concepts are juxtaposed with an altogether different scenario, that of an emptied gallery space. When a viewer is faced with a bare room their desires are challenged. In place of objects and stimuli, my rooms ask that the viewer’s interaction with the work become the impetus of the work itself, activating the work. In this research project I wanted to bring two of the following two subjects together: I wanted to reconcile the situation of the viewer encountering a bare room inside a gallery. The characters here are the viewer and the empty space. The viewer brings their body in its physical and mental state. The bare room brings the semblance of a void, or a manufactured emptiness by means of a lack of objects or materials. This paper investigates the relationship between interior space and the body, seen through a lens of absence and loss. These installations pose a void that removes the art object as the primary focus, shifting the focus to the viewer. My art process incorporates a reductive approach, focusing on the minimal forces that space can exert upon the body to negotiate absence or loss. This paper documents this development through a series of three installation works primarily concerned with bare rooms, while exploring the deactivation of desire and mechanisms that can trigger proprioception. The final outcome of my research project was an immersive installation in a seemingly bare room. In this instance, the material gesture was contained to the locus of the walls. Hundreds of 23-gauge hypodermic needles were pinned into the walls like spines from a cactus. The needle tips were only visible from the wall when standing close within two metres from the wall.
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ItemTime after time: an exploration of lineages of social space and materiality( 2017)This practice-led research project is concerned with investigating lineages of social space and its associated materialities constituted by homosexual men of the past. The project, which is reflected on in the ensuing paper, was developed over two years and has taken form as an emergent sculptural and spatial investigation that considers how an artistic practice can constitute a form of materialist historiography. The final outcomes of this research are comprised of a written dissertation and an installation which includes prints, video and sculptural objects. Each element of the installation elaborates on a proposition reflected on through the dissertation to consider trans-historical relationality; the performative and ephemeral establishment of lineages in the present through installation; and the literary evocation of homosexual desire through abstraction and codes. The exploration of a series of ‘texts’ has informed the propositions that have been developed through the studio research to consider the question: if and or how can an artistic practice act as a materialist method for evoking lineages of homosexual social-space?
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ItemMishandling the human: virtual surveillance and actualised error( 2017)This project is a practiced-based inquiry into the relationship between physical reality and virtual worlds in a period where digital technology has substantially transformed how we interact with our surroundings. The research investigates this relationship with emphasis on the interdependent nature of neural networks, extended consciousness and online surveillance. The research explores the increasing use of digital surveillance and the potential for the surrounding world to be restructured on feedback derived from algorithms. As the neural networks filtering such data are programmed with values reflecting the ideology of liberal capitalism, the results will inevitably be skewed in favour of this perspective. As smart devices and their users are contained within this feedback loop the paper considers how these systems of surveillance influence the perception of human identity. The resulting work responds to the use of surveillance technology, focusing on gaps in information and distortions in representation that occur through this filtering and assumed information. The works question the nature of online surveillance from a posthuman perspective and explore the potential problems that can occur with the adoption of cavalier attitudes towards these technologies. I have created three systems to reproduce the human form based on the mishandling of data. The resulting forms echo the fundamental contradictions inherent in these systems. The artwork produced through this process draws from limitations common to neural networks that process collected data. By decontextualizing, filtering, fragmenting and reconstructing data to create distorted versions of the original, the resulting sculptures present a vision of how systems alter subject matter when rendering a model from reality.