Minerva Elements Records
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ItemNaked awareness: the private performance of inscribing skin( 2018)This practice-led research reflects upon the testimonies and engagement of participants and audience in my art practice, The Letting Go, which is performed both privately and in galleries and is informed by the intersections of visual art, psychotherapy, somatic practices, Buddhism and ritual tattooing. Drawing on my experiences, private sessions and participatory performances the thesis asks the question: Can this practice inform a new social practice for artists - a “private practice” model that collaboratively addresses shared vulnerability and self-awareness?
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ItemReperformance: a dedication( 2015)This research explores the relationship between reenactment, performance art, and the document. Seminal performance artworks from history can now only be accessed through their documentation; this paper explores the effect this may have on reperformance, as well as how it can be utilised, particularly through a discussion centred around my own practice, and Marina Abramovic’s Seven Easy Pieces. This conversation takes place through the lens of a number of prominent performance art theorists, such as Peggy Phelan, Amelia Jones, Philip Auslander, and Christopher Bedford. In this thesis and through my practice, I also use and adapt Jacques Derrida’s theory of the archive of the body proper, which can be found in his paper ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’. My paper extends Derrida’s writings on the archive of the body proper, and explores the ways in which performance art, and reperformance encompasses them, putting forward that within performance artworks, the wound can also operate as a document. My thesis accompanies five video works, each of which reperforms a performance artwork from history; Chris Burden’s Shoot (1971), Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 10 (1973), VALIE EXPORT’s Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969), and Mike Parr’s Drip Blood from Your Finger onto the Lens of a Camera... Until the Lens is Filled with Blood (1972) and Have a Burning Match Dropped onto Your Bare Chest (1973). Through this process of reperformance, I explore the ways that documentation can function within performance art, and the myriad ways it might be accessed and continually appropriated by contemporary artists.
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Item'Parafeminism' and parody in contemporary art( 2014)Humour is a pleasurable and productive strategy for feminist artists; however, its role within feminist practice has received limited scholarly attention in the last two decades. The most recent study on the role of humour in feminist art is Jo Anna Isaak’s book Feminism and Contemporary Art: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Laughter (1996, Routledge), which frames feminist subversive laughter through the carnivalesque. Arguing that Isaak’s theory does not account for subsequent paradigm shifts in practice and ideology, this thesis aims to develop a conceptual framework that can explicate the forms and effects of humour currently emerging in contemporary feminist art. To develop this conceptual framework I draw upon art theorist Amelia Jones’ concept of ‘parafeminism,’ which suggests that contemporary feminist art is engaging in a revision of second wave methodologies: assessing and building upon earlier strategies by rejecting coalitional identity politics and reworking feminist visual politics of ‘the gaze.’ I interpret Jones’ theory by returning to Linda Hutcheon’s notion of parody, in order to frame three significant shifts in feminist practice: intimate corporeal preoccupations, phallocentric modes of spectatorship, and historical re-appropriation. To give focus to the influence of these changes in artists’ practice over the last three decades, I apply my framework of parafeminist parody to two major Euro-American case studies: an early Pipilotti Rist video, entitled Pickelporno (1992), and a more recent example, Mika Rottenberg’s video installation Mary’s Cherries (2004), as well as to a selection of works that traverse both video and performative modes of practice by three Australian artists (and collectives): Brown Council, Catherine Bell and the Hotham Street Ladies. Drawing upon writings from Freud, affect theory and corporeal semiotics, I extend Jones’ theory to this wider range of artworks thereby identifying ‘parafeminism’ as a greater phenomenon than previously proposed. To summarise, I aim to identify and develop a theoretical approach that will enable deeper understanding of humorous elements in contemporary feminist art.
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ItemEnvelopes and appendages: the body’s response to structure and geometry( 2013)‘Envelopes and Appendages: The Body’s Response to Structure and Geometry’ examines the body’s capacity for agency in its entangled relationship with found objects, regulating structures and geometric spaces. The structure and the ‘envelope’ feature as recurring sculptural devices that visualise these relationships. Abstract structures play a significant role in our understanding of human systems of order that enable protection and survival. Architectural and infrastructural constructions provide functional spaces for us to inhabit and traverse. However, these structural entities can also exert a constrictive and compromising impact on the body, and my work addresses this bodily vulnerability. I articulate the ways in which my creative practice synthesises elements of geometric abstraction, postminimalist sculpture and performance art in order to present the human body as truncated, disarticulated and abstracted, but also as adaptable and resilient in response to the regulating effects of geometric space. My primary research question is as follows: How can a provisional, performative, postminimalist sculptural approach to discarded objects engage ideas of bodily agency and resilience within delimiting geometric urban spaces and structures? I have produced artworks that address the role of the body in art-making through physical interactions with discarded objects in the urban context, employing specific strategies (aggregation, distribution, participatory activities, envelopment, convergence and effacement) that result in fragmented and distorted abstractions of the body. I collect discarded quotidian objects, often salvaged from suburban streets and recycling facilities, and create improvised, provisional structural assemblages. I combine these structural elements with malleable surfaces, such as balloons and stretch textiles, in order to generate disarticulated, abstracted forms that manifest containment and compression, protrusion and distension. The elastic membranes, or ‘envelopes,’ feature in my sculptural work as pliable, penetrable, dynamic vessels (analogous to body parts, such as flesh and internal organs) that respond to the rigidity of the structure. In some works, an exoskeleton compresses the envelope and in others, an internal structure is enveloped by and gives form to the elastic membrane. Drawing on the work of a number of theorists, including Elizabeth Grosz, E.H. Gombrich, Peter Sloterdijk and Jane Bennett, I will consider how we perceive and inhabit our environments, how we interact with the living and nonliving entities that surround us and how we adapt and change, or ‘become’ in response to our circumstances. Their theories provide a platform for my haptic investigations of the interconnected relationship between humans, the objects they acquire and discard and the spaces they inhabit. Connections will be traced between my work and that of other artists working with: the body’s relationship with structural and restrictive forces; processes of effacement; and the ‘absurd’ body’s entanglement with found objects. My work’s increasing performativity will be mapped and I will analyse the implications of these developments, specifically the work’s capacity to embody the flux and instability of matter.
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Item“Without the room to roam we are but contained”( 2012)“Without the room to roam we are but contained” is an investigation into why the body travels between the security of one place, and on to foreign ‘unknown’ spaces. This research has been achieved through my direct experience of places with high public circulation: the airport and the hotel room, in countries such as Japan and India. My observations about Nomadic movement in these surroundings were reinforced by this ‘Neu Nomad’s’ reading list of classic literature. This included Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Rimbaud and Jack Kerouac, to name but a few. Further research on the spatial philosophies of Henri Bergson and Yi Fu Tuan has been contrasted with a personalised spatial ethos. In order to visualise themes of Nomadism and connection to place, I created temporary studio sites in selected overseas locations. This study addresses the notion that ‘the spaces in between’: breaks in dialogue, the halts within space and missed connections, are the key factors in a Nomadic existence. These are the things that provide us with opportunities to roam in ‘duration’ beyond containment.
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ItemArt 2.0: identity, role play and performance in virtual worlds( 2011)Art 2.0 – Identity, Role Play and Performance in Virtual Worlds is a studio based research project positioned within the virtual world of Second Life. Focusing on identity as a key provocation, the project explores new possibilities of the use of virtual reality software in contemporary art through repositioning “in world” performances into physical installations to create mixed reality video and installations. The key difference in methodology is my approach to the work from an installation paradigm rather than code or script based models used by new media artists. The work breaks with traditional forms of visual arts practice - installation, new media art, video art, and performance - and attempts to bring them together in one "event". This exploration not only questions the “bastard space” in which this work exists but also the nature of identity in the virtual realm and how the image of identity affects the nature of contemporary art and performance in this new frontier. The project is supported by research on role play and identity and the work of artists and theorists who utilise Second Life as a primary medium. Beginning with an examination of how role play and identity have been explored by contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin, Mariko Mori and Cindy Sherman and drawing on virtual world theorists such as Patrick Lichty, the creative component of this project includes installation, mixed reality performance and machinima. Your Clothing is Still Downloading is a multi dimensional installation which includes a live performance by the real life performers and Second Life avatar performers, pre-recorded machinima and video, a live video stream into Second Life, a virtual build of the gallery in Second Life and live projections within the gallery space. This work – which explores identity and desire - is accessible both in the gallery and via a Second Life portal. The technical demands of this work on the system often results in a major crash, negating the work in its process. / dead daddy explores themes of identity and death in virtual worlds. The work is a four video horizontal projection composed of Second Life and re-photographed images of my dead father in a 21st Century “exquisite corpse.” The final work iObject is a four video machinima where the identity of my Second Life self-portrait avatar is completely negated.