Victorian College of the Arts - Theses
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ItemSoft edges: Blue mediations( 2021)This research project investigates the oscillation between immaterial imaginings and feelings and the tangible material manifestations of desire. Focusing on the image as the primary site for constructing and sustaining consumer desire, the research explores how the intrapsychic moment of desire and its material manifestations are mapped and manipulated in contemporary consumption practices. The research asks “are my desires mine?” and seeks to unpack how inherent perceptual responses to images are being exploited or amplified, to create moments and spaces in which an individual's desire to engage with consumer objects is based on, and far exceeds, an already distorted ideal. The project uses the lapis lazuli stone and the ultramarine pigment produced from it, as a framework for investigating this question and a method for mediating the photographic process. - The research project aims to develop an understanding of how the photographic image is used as an apparatus for constructing desire to identify why, in spite of an awareness of the gap between reality and the unreality of that which-is-looked-upon, I am continually drawn to engage with the ideal.
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ItemHoming Away from Home: Identity Through a Transnational Cree-Métis Arts Practice( 2020)This research exemplifies the important role Indigenous art practices have within the development and maintenance of identity formation whilst practicing away from home and community. The artwork created within this research has come from experiences of carrying artistic and cultural practices from Canada to Australia. It was done as a response to the complex challenges which arise from establishing identity and cultural practices through instances of displacement. I discuss the value of working cross-culturally between various nations, and the influence it has had on my creative project. The artwork and research provide examples of how engagement with Indigenous arts practices can help foster and maintain cultural connections unaffected by geographical location or place of practice. My research culminated in six bodies of work: Ground in Stone, an installation of stones gathered across Melbourne and Canada, Spirit Threads, a hanging installation of threads embroidered with stones and seed beads, Flora, a series of seven beaded works, Bad Medicine, one-hundred hand sewn pouches, Blak Apothecary, an installation of living plants and antique apothecary bottles, and a series of photographic documentation of these works and their processes. These works have been presented as photographs in the thesis and exhibited throughout the course of the research. The creative works are related through a focus on materiality and Indigenous knowledge, particularly focusing on native plant knowledge and botanicals. Through these artworks I ask why Indigenous art is often defined as either contemporary or traditional. I reflect on these terms in relation to Western ideology and perceived notions surrounding Indigenous representation, cultural authenticity, validity, and values of Indigenous artistic practices. I contemplate ways in which I can rebuke these ideas through the use of art. I consider how other Indigenous artists and researchers are using artwork to foster identity and as a method of breaking down this possession of Indigeneity and representation. Done in calm gentleness, this work is ensnared within a duality that both challenges the violence of our colonial history which caused chaotic disruptions to be rooted throughout generations, and the celebration of the reactivation and assertion of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. (50% creative practice and 50% written dissertation).
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ItemHolding space and taking time: locating quiet resistance through artistic practice( 2020)The research considers daily rituals, tactics and actions for artistically reimagining lived experience. Using a variety of distributed, site orientated and lens-based methods, I speculate upon ways that daily routines can be utilised as forms of restoration, resistance and care. In developing the creative outcomes, presented in conjunction with a dissertation, particular notions of feminism and postconceptual methodologies are drawn upon. These contribute to the imagining of ways in which artistic gestures of holding space and taking time might suggest more mindful and empathetic engagements with the world.