School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemArt and mental illness: an art historical perspective(Neami Splash Art, 2007)Mental illness has for centuries been closely associated in the popular imagination with exceptional creativity and great works of art. I will argue today that it is important not to be complacent about this association, as it has led to some grave misconceptions about the nature of mental illness. The persistence of such misconceptions in the media demonstrates that there is a pressing need for ongoing analysis and debate about appropriate and ethical ways in which to discuss, exhibit and interpret the art work of people who experience mental illness. Coming from an art historical perspective, I hope to suggest ways to make progress in this debate. For the purpose of today’s talk, in speaking of ‘art,’ I will be referring not only to those works judged to provide evidence of exceptional creativity but rather any created visual product in any medium. Mental illness will be defined as clinically significant, psychological syndromes associated with distress, disability or loss of freedom.
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ItemThe ice-age(Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2007)Lee Bul’s Mon grand récit: because everything … 2005 is a table-top miniature world. One of a pair of major sculptures sharing the same title and mapping the same mysterious topography, the Govett-Brewster’s Mon grand récit: because everything’s alter ego, Mon grand récit: weep into stones… 2005 was shown at the Basel Art Fair in 2005. The two works are very similar, though the Govett-Brewster version is slightly larger and is dominated by a glossy, sprawling, white base resembling a vast glacier, whereas the same forms in Weep into stones… are suspended in space, like a huge train-set on scaffolding. Both works are composed of images of the wreckage of modern history’s mass utopias, of the twentieth century visions of crazy perfection that were shared by capitalism, fascism and communism. These visions have now disintegrated. First, this essay looks at Mon grand récit: because everything… as a work of art that represents the duration of modern history and its entropic end. It does this by translating duration into metonymic images, into images that represent the twentieth century’s failed utopias by architectural models of never-completed modernist monuments in construction: a hanging, bent wood freeway hovering above a snowy abyss; a mountainous central tower encrusted with miniature crystal models; a tiny scale model of Vladimir Tatlin’s never-constructed Monument to the Third International 1920 perched on a glacial waste. Second, the essay shows that because Lee Bul presents modern history as both personal and shared, the instructional diorama represents her quite strategic and very conscious argument against contemporary art criticism’s hermeneutics of nationality, in favour of a determinedly global perspective.
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Item'The Invisible Fire': Sovereignty, History and Responsibility(Allen & Unwin, 2007)
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ItemWhat Do Animals Dream Of? Or King Kong As Darwinian Screen Animal(Brill Academic Publishers, 2007)