School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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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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ItemContemporary art: the key issues: art, philosophy and politics in the context of contemporary cultural production( 2007)This submission comes in two parts; the written dissertation, Contemporary art: the key issues, and the exhibition Melbourne - Moderne. When taken together they present a discourse on the conditions facing contemporary art practice and one artist’s response to these conditions in the context of Melbourne 2003-2007. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemJeff Wall: reading pictures( 2013)This thesis examines four seminal artworks by Jeff Wall. Through close readings I offer insights into the intellectual work in Wall’s picture-making and the dynamic relation between his writing and art. I argue that Wall’s photographs share the same resistance to resolution as the historical works that he draws upon. Such ambiguities indicate Wall’s interest in the instability of what he calls the Western Concept of the Picture, heightened by the need to negotiate transitions in the history of photo-media.
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ItemThe aesthetics of counter-memory: contemporary art and Australian refugee histories after Tampa( 2013)This thesis provides the first in-depth examination of experimental methods for memorialising Australian refugee experiences in works by the contemporary artists Rosemary Laing, Dierk Schmidt, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green. As this thesis argues, each of these artists’ methods for memorialising refugee experiences is distinguished by the use of montage (the conjoining of disparate materials and references). By bringing together—or montaging—cultural documents from a variety of sources at both a historical and geographic level, these artists create deeply fragmented images of refugee histories. Representations of refugee experiences such as those involving the Tampa, the “children overboard” affair and SIEV-X are juxtaposed and sutured with a range of other seemingly incongruous histories from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In engaging strategies of montage and juxtaposition, this thesis finds that the artists examined therein develop a distinct paradigm of experimental memorialisation—termed here the aesthetics of counter-memory. Developed through a critical engagement with discourses on contemporaneity, globalisation, migration and memory, this thesis’ development of the notion of the aesthetics of counter-memory offers a historical and theoretical framework for understanding the import of Laing, Schmidt and Brown and Green’s experimental methods of memorialisation. In contrast to the notion of the “counter-monument”, which focuses on analysing official and state-sanctioned memorials, the notion of the aesthetics of counter-memory addresses the possibility of art directly intervening in the politics of memory of that which escapes collective consciousness: that is, the politics of who and what is remembered and why. As this thesis shows, in grappling with the politics of memory, the aesthetics of counter-memory refuses didactic or agitprop modes of communication and is instead structured by affective and poetic forms of address. The aesthetics of counter-memory determines our experience of migratory flows, place and inter-subjectivity through a series of analogies, resonances, ligatures, networks and border-crossings. It places montage and juxtaposition—the conjunction of heterogenous and at times seemingly incongruous things—as central to a critical understanding of experiences of place, migration and exile in the twenty-first century. In mapping the emergence of the aesthetics of counter-memory this thesis theorises and analyses a new paradigm of contemporary art and its impact on remembrances of recent refugee histories.
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ItemThe rise of the private art foundation: John Kaldor Art Projects 1969-2012( 2013)What role do private foundations play in a global contemporary art world? Not-for-profit art foundations presenting site-specific temporary art installations have become established institutions in their own right. This thesis traces the development of these foundations from the 1970s, placing their role within the context of the evolution of contemporary art institutions. My research focuses on Kaldor Public Art Projects as one of the earliest exponents of this form of patronage and support for contemporary art. The thesis examines the history and impact of Kaldor Public Art Projects, from Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Wrapped Coast (1969), to Thomas Demand’s The Dailies (2012). It explains the motivations behind collector John Kaldor’s early invitations to leading international contemporary artists to travel to Australia to present temporary art projects. The thesis traces the subsequent evolution of the Projects. The thesis argues that consistent with trends in a globalising contemporary art world, Kaldor Public Art Projects became increasingly professionalised, formed embedded relationships with public art museums and was part of the rise of international contemporary art events such as biennales.