School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemThe formation of an abstract language in the early painting of Roger Kemp( 1985)The development of an abstract language in Roger Kemp's early painting reflects the manner in which Kemp assimilated elements of the two main currents of European abstraction. The more intellectual, structural current stemming from Cézanne was strongly developed through his initial training in design. It was strengthened through his experience of George Bell's teaching of Significant Form, and his contact with designers from the Melbourne Technical College. His knowledge of Mondrian's theory of dynamic equilibrium and of Russian Rayonism reinforced his structural edge. Parallel to this line of development ran a more expressive awareness of colour and form. Academic training under Bernard Hall in the Aesthetic tonal tradition, and experience of Symbolist theories of synaesthesia through the art of Rupert Bunny disciplined Kemp's intuitive approach. Ambrose Hallen's Fauvist style and the decorative folk element in Vassilieff’s art also influenced Kemp's expressive power. These two currents, by no means distinct in themselves, intermingled in Kemp's own development. His early work shows the complex interaction of temperament and training through which he expressed his personal vision of dynamic equilibrium.
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ItemThe etched work of Jessie C.A. Traill, 1881-1967( 1982)Jessie C. A. Traill, 1881-1967, a Melbourne-born artist, was, during her heyday, well respected both in her home state and beyond, as a painter and etcher. Today her name is most readily associated with etchings, and it is generally recognised that her contribution to the etching revival in Australia is a major one and that her work in this medium warrants a thorough study in order that her relative place in this context be fully appreciated. Her prints are, moreover, of a high quality technically speaking, and show significant innovations for Australia in both this respect and in their subject matter. They are, as well, delightful and much sought after items for the collector and connoisseur of prints. This paper is the first written study of Traill's etchings, the present generation print lover having been introduced to her work in a retrospective exhibition at the "Important Women Artists" gallery in Melbourne in 1977, and in subsequent exhibitions of Australian etchings where her works have been included. As such, the study will add to a slowly growing body of information on the major Australian etchers, material which is invaluable for an adequate formulation of the history of printmaking in Australia.
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ItemThe decorative works of Sir Edward Poynter and their critical reception( 1999)This thesis examines the decorative works of the nineteenth century British artist Sir Edward Poynter (1836-1919). His achievements as a decorative designer received considerable recognition during his lifetime but in more recent years have been overshadowed by his reputation as an academic painter. The neglect of this important component of Poynter's oeuvre by twentieth century scholarship is partly due to the destruction or dismantling of several of his major decorative commissions. Other schemes which were the focus of extensive public debate during the Victorian era — such as Poynter's designs for the Central Hall of the Palace of Westminster, the Lecture Theatre apse at the South Kensington Museum and the decoration of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral — were either not realised or only partially completed. This thesis aims to establish the extent and significance of Poynter's decorative career by a comprehensive analysis of the individual commissions and their historical context. These works encompass a variety of media, including painted furniture, stained glass, mosaics, ceramic tiles and frescoes. The accompanying catalogue and illustrations document the commissions with particular reference to their design and the stages of their execution. The thesis also locates Poynter's decorative schemes in the context of the wider debate regarding the nature and role of mural decoration during the second half of the nineteenth century. It elucidates, in particular, the crucial role played by materials and techniques in the contemporary reception of decorative works. Another important issue that arises from this study is the previously unrecognised importance of the Gothic Revival movement for the development of Poynter's career. Its influence is apparent in his belief in the role of architecture as a unifier of the arts, and in the emphasis in his decorative designs upon eclecticism and craftsmanship. Poynter's extensive involvement with the South Kensington Museum also had a major impact upon his decorative aesthetic. The strong Renaissance orientation of his mature work, which focusses on pictorial and narrative values, was directly reinforced by that institution. Poynter emerges from this study as an important but neglected figure in the history of nineteenth century British art, whose career illuminates both the positive and negative attitudes to mural decoration that characterise this period.
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ItemUneasy allies: an Englishman in Australia: Henry Vigors Hewitt 1839-1931( 1985)This thesis is an edited selection from, and commentary on, a collection of many hundreds of letters written between 1864 and 1972, diaries written 1860-1864, 1867, 1869-1871 and 1903-1907, and poems. In the first chapter diaries written 1860-1864 by my greatgrandfather Henry Vigors Hewitt are edited. These diaries were written in England, before his emigration to Australia. In following chapters, later diaries written by Henry, and several letters and poems, record his early colonial experience. Henry's second wife Mary Simmons emigrated. to Australia in 1871, and letters written by her in that year are edited in Chapter 6. Subsequent chapters draw on letters written by Henry, Mary and their children, and poems written by Henry and several of the children. Diaries written 1903-1907 by Will Hewitt while on the Coolgardie goldfields are edited in Chapter 15. All of the original letters and diaries were kept, first by Henry, then by Will, my grandfather, and then by my father. Many of the poems appeared in various newspapers; none of the rest of the material has been previously edited or published. My treatment of the material has been chronological, with some overlapping, for instance in chapters concerning the West Australian goldfields and the Boer War. My intention has been to retain the distinctive voice of each writer, while providing an historical and literary framework. For example, in looking at Mary House's poems written on the subject of World War I, I have touched on the origins of her style and convictions, the political climate of the time, and contrasted her romantic and heroic notions with letters written from Gallipoli and the Somme by her brothers Tom and. Deane Hewitt, and of course I have used historical texts as well. Thus I have provided more of a mise en scene than does the editor of Rachel Hennings' letters for example. (The Letters of Rachel Henning, ed. David Adams, Penguin, Melbourne, 1969.) At the same time my outlines of various events are necessarily brief; the material spans, at its furthest stretch, one hundred and eighteen years. It would have been possible to concentrate on one period or theme, as for example Dr. James A. Hammerton does in Emigrant Gentlewomen (Australian National University, 1979), which uses letter books of the Female Middle-Class Emigration Society as a starting-point, or as Judith Wright does in Generations of Men (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1959) in which she draws on her grandfather's diaries to explore the history of the pioneers of north Queensland. It would also have been possible to restrict my thesis to a biography of Henry alone, which was my original intention. However as Mary Simmons' presence became more insistent and active, she demanded equal billing with Henry, and their childrens' correspondence from, variously, the Coolgardie gold-fields, remote cattle-runs in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and the trenches of. World War I, also drew me on into increasingly tangled personal relationships and wider history. In order to untangle the lives and experiences of the eleven people whose letters, diaries and poems are edited here, I have in effect peacocked this large body of valuable source material. For example, Will's letters and diaries written in Coolgardie between 1896 and 1906 provide an extensive picture of daily life on a diggings. Only a fraction of that material is included in this thesis. The same is true for a wide range of topics which I have touched on: the colonial experience, emigrant women, the squattocracy and the labour movement, the 1890s, Australia at war and so on. My starting-point was not historical. It was a curiosity about the hedonistic and indolent young gentleman who wrote a diary in Bath in 1860. I followed him to Australia in 1864 and watched him change into a hardworking and ambitious landowner. In 1871 the indomitable Mary Simmons sailed into view and things became increasingly complicated. During the 1890s Henry lapsed into disappointment and apathy. But now their children were setting out to discover Australia all over again, this time seeing not through English, but through Australian eyes. Nearly all of the children shared their parents' facility for expression, and individuality of style, and many of them wrote poetry, like Henry. Thus the record of two very different Victorian English emigrants changes into the record of an Australian Victorian and Edwardian family.
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ItemShakespeare in Australia: the making of a colonial literary institution from 1788 to 1901( 1997)In the 1980s and 1990s Shakespeare scholarship in Britain and North America has produced powerful analyses of the ways in which Shakespeare operates as a cultural institution. In analysing Shakespeare as a cultural institution it is less the meanings of his plays or poems that are examined than the role that Shakespeare plays in securing important social and institutional relationships, both inside and outside the academy. This thesis adds to that body of scholarship an analysis of Shakespeare as a cultural institution in colonial Australia during the period from 1788 to 1901. Its aim is to examine the historical conditions for the development of Shakespeare's preeminent signifying power with a focus on the ways in which the "transportation" of Shakespeare from Britain to the Australian colonies occurred. The thesis develops the argument that the transportation of Shakespeare to the Australian colonies and his reproduction within the colonies were important enabling conditions for the formation of a colonial public domain. In the early years of colonial settlement the presence of Shakespeare in the colonies enabled them to exhibit evidence of the development of colonial culture both to imperial eyes and to the colonists themselves, while later in the century a number of literary and cultural organisations were established with the affirmation of Shakespeare as one of their central goals. Colonial reproduction of Shakespeare therefore helped to secure channels of communication between the colonies and the metropolitan centres of the British Empire and influenced the formation of central colonial cultural institutions - the theatre, criticism, and literature, for example - through which this communication occurred. At the same time, colonial Australia's Shakespeare helped the colonies to negotiate tensions and contradictions in their relationships with the metropolitan culture, in part because the colonies' constructions of Shakespeare registered complex interactions between discourses of colonialism, nationalism and imperialism. This thesis draws upon recent work in Shakespeare studies, postcolonial studies and Australian studies, and on original archival research into nineteenth-century Australia. Its analysis of Shakespeare as a colonial cultural institution aims to contribute to our understandings of Shakespeare's continuing influence in Australian culture and to revitalise discussion of established topics in Australian literary studies.
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ItemChinese New Year pictures: the process of modernisation, 1842-1942( 1997)The thesis is a study of a traditional popular art form of China known as New Year Pictures. Although the production of these woodblock printed images virtually ceased early this century, the relevance of this art form in contemporary China has continued. The New Year Picture is often hailed as a prototype for modern forms of visual expression. A renewed interest in this old art form has also prompted widespread conservation of the New Year Picture at the same time as making it the subject of scholarly pursuit. This study evaluates the relevance of New Year Pictures to contemporary art and society by focussing on prints produced in the period spanning the century from 1842 to 1942. This period is definitive of the changes that occurred within the popular art form. The year 1842 marks the end of the Opium War with Britain and the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, permanently changing China’s international relationships. This, in turn, impacted greatly upon Chinese society and culture. The 1942 was the year of Mao’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art”. In mapping out strategies for artists to participate in the communist transformation of Chinese society, the “Talks” articulated an approach to Chinese art and culture that would permanently alter the way in which artistic traditions were to be utilised, both in a practical way and in the sense of how the past was to be perceived.
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ItemMedieval textual production and the politics of women's writing: case studies of two medieval women writers and their critical reception( 1991-07)Recent discussions of the state of Medieval Studies, sparked by such books as Lee Patterson’s Negotiating the Past, provide an important impetus for this thesis because they highlight the critical abyss which exists between Medieval Studies and other areas of literary studies. For one entering the field of Medieval Literary Studies this revelation is disturbing and inhibiting. However, the history of Medieval Studies cannot be ignored by those now working within the area. If Medieval Studies is to survive it must come to terms with its past and recognise the precarious position in which the discipline now stands as a result of its academic isolation. ...
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ItemPerformance studies as a discipline?: a Foucauldian approach to theory and practice( 1993)This thesis has three major purposes: firstly, to describe and analyse the institutional power/knowledge relations operating in the constitution of the academic ‘discipline’ of performance/theatre studies. I deploy Michel Foucault’s conceptions of ‘discursive formation’, ‘discursive practice’, and ‘power/knowledge’; in an attempt to demonstrate the ways in which the academy distinctively articulates the discipline. The second purpose of the thesis is to map and critique specific conceptions of the ‘discipline’s’ epistemological profile, through an examination of the discursive practice of theatre at the University of Melbourne from the mid-fifties to the present. Third, I go on to prioritize a specific performance oriented articulation of the field’s epistemological profile, based on an interdisciplinary pedagogy. I describe the techniques, methods and theoretical justifications for such an articulation of the discipline by offering a critical account of The Killing Eye project - a multi-media performance which deals with the topic of serial murder - which was initiated in the context of a third year performance studies course. I conclude with an analysis of the academy’s institutional enablements and constraints in the areas of theatre practice and pedagogy.
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ItemThe Pinschofs: patrons of art and music in Melbourne 1883-1920( 1991)This thesis deals principally with the period following Pinschof’s arrival from Vienna in 1879, to just after the First World War. It considers the Pinschofs’ generous and timely support of the arts within the context of the amount of private and institutional patronage and the British, German and other cultural influences on Melbourne society at the time.
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Item"Representing" Anglo-Indians: a genealogical study( 1999)This dissertation examines how historians, writers, colonial administrators, social scientists and immigration officials represented Anglo-Indians between 1850 and 1998.Traditionally, Anglo-Indians have sought to correct perceived distortions or misinterpretations of their community by disputing the accuracy of deprecatory stereotypes produced by ‘prejudicial’; writers. While the need to contest disparaging representations is not in dispute here, the present study finds its own point of departure by questioning the possibility of (re)presenting an undistorted Anglo-Indian identity. (For complete abstract open document)