School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemJanet Cardiff and George Bures Miller: spatial environments and experiments in sound( 2018)This thesis is the first scholarly monograph that comprehensively examines the work of contemporary Canadian artists Janet Cardiff (b. 1957) and George Bures Miller (b. 1960). It provides a detailed account of their sound and media installations, audio walks, and video walks between the late 1980s and 2014. This thesis asks: how may Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s artworks be investigated and understood as sound installations? The significant focus of my research is Cardiff and Miller’s emphasis on recorded sound, media, and experimentation that has defined their works since the late 1980s. I emphasize that sound design (the mixing, layering, and editing of sound) was pivotal to Cardiff and Miller creating their self-described “spatial environments.” These methods and technologies enabled Cardiff and Miller to confront and redefine existing trajectories of sound, video, and installation art within contemporary art. This in-depth study of Cardiff and Miller’s artwork contributes to the discursive category of sound and video installation. The wider contribution of this thesis to the field is to develop and explain how sound is exhibited and encountered as contemporary art.
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ItemMike Nelson's hybrid scripts( 2015)This thesis takes as its subject the work of the contemporary English installation artist Mike Nelson (born 1967). While Nelson’s work has been included in many major survey exhibitions of contemporary art, this thesis is the first dedicated, scholarly account of his work. It analyses his practice from the late 1980s through to 2013, focusing on the way that he incorporates fictional and non-fictional, and historical and futuristic narratives into his works, with a particular stress on the ways in which his work represents the past. While Nelson’s work is compatible with many prominently theorised trends in past-oriented art since 2000, which includes re-enactment, the archival impulse, retromania, the archaeological imaginary, anachronism, the temporal turn, and the artist-as-historian, none of these models fully accounts for his particular approach. It is my contention that Nelson’s ‘hybrid script’ method, which braids together site-specific, political and fictional narratives upon which sculptural or installation works are then based, is the most crystalline example of this unique approach. The hybrid script methodology has underpinned Nelson’s work since 1994. I discuss it in detail in this dissertation, in addition to considering the ways in which it has changed over the last two decades. My analysis is based largely on archival research and interviews. Nelson’s hybrid script methodology also distinguishes his work from that of the young British art movement, which is exactly contemporaneous with Nelson’s timeline and concentrated in the same city, London. Where the most stereotypical examples of young British art are said to communicate directly, using techniques gleaned from the mass media, Nelson’s works frustrate and delay clear communication through their warren of back-stories. The significance of this finding not only contributes to the history of British art since 1990, enriching a localised art history that can at times appear monolithic under the heavy weight of the yBa moniker, it also contributes to the discursive category of ‘installation art’. While much discourse on the ontology of installation art emphasises the centrality of the viewer’s literal presence in the work — the paradigm of immediacy — I show that, by contrast, the impact of Nelson’s work is typically belated. It occurs at a futural moment of looking back.
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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.