School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemSymbols and power in Theatre of the Oppressed( 1999-09)Augusto Boal developed Theatre of the Oppressed as a way of using the symbolic language of the dramatic arts in the examination of power relations in both the personal and social contexts. Boal understood that symbolic realities directly influence empirical reality and that drama, as an art form that employs the narrative and the event, serves as a powerful interface between symbols and actuality. In the dramatic process, the creation and the environment from which it emerges are inevitably transformed in the process of enactment. These transformations manifest in the context of power relations - in the context of the receptors ability to make decisions and to engage in actions, and the communicators ability to influence the receptors opinions and behaviour. This thesis will examine two different practices in which symbolic realities have been utilised in the context of human relations of power. Primarily, this thesis examines the theory and practice of Theatre of the Oppressed as it has developed.
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ItemThe first Australian modernists: Tempe Manning, Norah Simpson and Grace Cossington Smith: gender, myth and art criticism during the First World War( 1997)Three women artists started the shift to modernist art practice in Australia during the first world war. Norah Simpson, Grace Cossington Smith and little known artist Tempe Manning contributed to the debate and practice of new techniques and new subjects. All were students of Dattilo Rubbo's school in wartime Sydney. Unable to find a relevant level of expression in the nationalist landscape tradition, they set about painting subjects that embraced the experiences of women. Bringing together their exposure to modem art in Europe prior to the war, the politicised environment and their own personal ideas, these artists forged a new vision of Australia and a new space for Australian art. Drawing on gallery archives, newspaper articles and reviews, oral histories and a comprehensive range of secondary sources, this thesis offers a more detailed account of the emergence of modernism in Sydney, and the critical role of women artists, than has previously appeared.
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ItemThe graphic journey: Murray Griffin linocuts( 1998)This thesis presents the first thorough examination of the prints of Vaughan Murray Griffin (1901-1992), produced in Melbourne between the 1920s and the 1980s. The thesis incorporates a catalogue raisonne of the 144 prints. Although recognised as an important contributor to early twentieth century Australian relief printing, Griffin's work has received little attention in recent years. Griffin first experimented with printing techniques in the 1920s, before settling on linocuts as a enjoyable and profitable artistic production, a sideline to his oil landscape painting. From 1932 until the 1970s, Griffin produced an opus of colourful linocuts, created by a combination of multiple block and reduction processes. This production was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he served as an Official War Artist and spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war in Changi, Malaya. The majority of the prints are decorative images of Australian native birds which were popular items from the Depression years well into the post-war period. However, in addition to these prints produced for the market, Murray produced a number of prints over the decades through which he developed and expressed personal ideas. These culminated in the 1960s group of prints which Murray called his 'Journey' series, representing his anthroposophical beliefs (based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner). The aim of this thesis is twofold: firstly, to provide a body of empirical data for the examination of Griffin's life and production and secondly, to analyse his prints in terms of wider social and artistic contexts. This analysis reveals that for a time he was at the forefront of Australian relief printmaking. Prints produced after the Second World War remained successful in the 1950s and 1960s, but have received minimal retrospective attention. This neglect was exacerbated by Griffin's involvement in anthroposophy and the intensely personal visual depiction of his beliefs.
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ItemEarly modernist landscape painting in Melbourne( 1995)In the years leading up to Federation at the turn of the century and in the ensuing decades up to about 1940, popular and respected landscape artists in Australia were preoccupied with distinctively 'Australian' images of the countryside. These nationalist landscapes tended to promote a conservative and masculinist imagery. Subsequently historians have constructed a narrative of landscape painting in Australia which follows the work of these popular artists and generally dismisses the early challenges to the art establishment posed by artists who produced modernist landscapes from 1925 to 1939. Historians have constructed a narrative of early modernism in Australia which focuses on Sydney artists and on painting genres and art practices apart from landscape art (design art, flower studies, prints). Furthermore, some historians have dismissed this period as unimportant or as a period producing unsuccessful works because a number of women painters were prominent and influential. Historians have not considered the impact of early modernism on landscape painting. This thesis recovers the work of a number of early Melbourne modernist landscape artists and discusses them in their historical context in order to re-evaluate the success of their modernist experiments and the importance of their challenges to Melbourne's art establishment. The work of early Melbourne modernists in educating a new audience for art, inspiring a new generation of art students, and in challenging the authority of critics and established artists was significant for the development of modernism in Melbourne.
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ItemThe Moravian-run Ebenezer mission station in north-western Victoria: a German perspective( 1999)This thesis analyses the German perspective of the Ebenezer mission station in north-western Victoria. The German-speaking Moravian missionaries were sent out from Germany in 1859 to civilise and Christianise the Aborigines of this area. Until now the German perspective of the Ebenezer mission station has been neglected, partly because much information is locked up in the German language. Through an analytical descriptive history the missionaries are contextualised in a European and also an Australian setting. This background clearly defines the cultural baggage that the missionaries carried with them to Australia, and how this affected their work at Ebenezer. With this background in mind an analysis of the German language writings in three mediums is conducted, these being: Missionsblatt aus der Brudergemeine (the Moravian mission's global publication), Der australische Christenbote (the journal of the Lutheran Church in Victoria) and also the missionaries diaries and letters that were sent back to Germany. It is shown that the missionaries were aware of the different perceptions that their audiences had and wrote accordingly. Through the missionaries' depiction of other groups an understanding of how the missionaries perceived themselves is formed. Although these depiction of the ‘other’ were different in all three mediums, they always advanced the interests of the missionaries (usually by reinforcing the contemporary cultural hierarchy) and not the ‘other’. The analysis of German language sources leads to a more detailed understanding of the perceptions of the German-speaking missionaries at the Ebenezer mission, and also to the history of the mission itself.