School of Art - Theses
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Item"I am 'Mia'"( 2010)This project investigates a type of visionary art partly inspired by ecstatic and automatistic states, partly hypnoid or trance states, and partly drawn from my hallucinatory experiences. These experiences can manifest in compulsively laborious tasks: unpicking the weave of canvas sheets to leave drawn insignia hanging on threads. They can also induce transfixed video imagery: repetitive gestures, for instance, and repetitive, rhythmic but maddening sounds. There is a symbolic effect to this project: the fatal seduction of the Siren’s song.
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ItemObject-Appendage( 2010)Object-Appendage is an investigation into the relationship between corporeal fragmentation and prosthesis. The project aims to conceptualise my primary medium of 'soft sculpture' in terms of prosthesis and to explore the tenuous relationships between subject and object which manifest within my photographic works. Fantasies of the 'body in parts', amputation and prosthesis, in conjunction with the dynamics of desire and disgust associated with these particular reconfigurations of the body are analysed in depth. In short, Object-Appendage explores permutations between flesh and fabric, focusing on the ambiguity of these perverse couplings.
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ItemDetours along the spectrum of visibility: embodying views through three apparatuses: imaging, experimenting, re-presenting( 2010)Focusing on the spectrum of visibility that art operates within, and on art as a framingdevice that produces various forms of visibility, this thesis questions at what thresholdsomething becomes invisible enough to cease being recognisable as art, and how onereconciles the re-presentation of ephemeral art and fleeting events with their inherenteventfulness. This is framed through three aspects of my practice: imaging,experimenting and re-presenting, in context with the work of Ann Veronica Janssensand Elizabeth Grosz.
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ItemScenarios: taming the real( 2010)For many of us the world seems to be one of undifferentiated performance, where success lies in the ability to perceive and perform our respective roles. ‘Scenarios, Taming the Real’, explores the experience of the individual who is left to negotiate a world of players. The project has been led by a series of art explorations and empirical inquiries, discussed in relation to the way that power is manifested in the body and photography. The project has an interest in mediated experience and contemporary art practices that situate the viewer within the representational realm. This dissertation stands alongside a series of completed artworks, which are discussed in relation to the ideas that have surfaced through the research interests and the work itself as it materialised. Each artwork, Dancer, Horse, Pigeon, Bear and Critique, provide a title for the chapter and a forum of discussion. The dissertation thus brings together different voices, emerging from both the research and practice, sitting in adjacency to each other. At all times an interest in the agency and instrumentality of photography is present. The role of photography has been continually addressed throughout the project, from an apparatus that masters light, bending the world to the photographer’s vision, to an unstable interaction of relations -like any other. Through the various devices deployed throughout the project the viewing experience has been opened up, examined and exposed as a space for habitation and future art practice.
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ItemLand( 2010)My research investigates how landscape can be interpreted within a contemporary context and the ways in which it has been interpreted and investigated with particular reference to the painting medium. This research defines the relevance of the landscape motif and the need to gain perceptual understanding via first-hand experience. I have examined how attitudes developed in which the Australian landscape was being perceived as parochial and retrograde within the contemporary context as Australian artists began to see themselves as being considered ‘international’ artists, and how appropriated experience became a replacement for actual experience in the post-modern era. My thesis explores the search for perceptual and conceptual discovery of the landscape from the viewpoint of an Australian Eurocentric background, how it has impacted as a motif within the painting medium and how it is regarded within a contemporary context. Whist the history of Australian landscape painting is littered with heroic narratives of the explorer taming or enduring the frontier, this research searches for the narratives contained within the landscape as opposed to narratives intentionally placed upon the landscape. The private experience of being in the landscape and the subjective response attained from that experience is what I am examining. Rather than deconstructing the landscape or the history of the landscape motif, I am searching for a personal dialogue, understanding and aesthetic response to an individual space and place. Although the concept of en plein air painting has not been considered in most contemporary circles as acceptable, my research demonstrates the importance that the en plein air perceptual experience has in order to understand the conceptual frameworks of a space. In so doing I have examined the work of artists who have ventured out and uncovered a new understanding of the subject and a new aesthetic response. I have examined how artists have ventured into uninhabited terrain, lived there, examined the life forms there, and preserved and interpreted these landscapes into their work. The genesis of this research was a trip to the Daintree Rainforest in 2006 and my reaction to this experience. My work investigates and interprets the Daintree Rainforest and the interrelationships and constructs contained within this subject and the narratives that are uncovered within my investigations. These investigations examine the ecosystems, biology, geology and topography of the landscape and the ways of interpreting those ecosystems and the narratives that can be read into them. Through my investigations I have uncovered a new set of aesthetic dimensions and possibilities within the landscape and my work as evident in a series of paintings and watercolours I have produced on this subject for my final presentation.
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ItemA little gathering( 2010)This project consists of three individual visual works, each with an accompanying essay. The first work titled 'Births Deaths and Marriages' explores a painting experiment in which data abstracted from the human body is collected, collated and compressed to replicate a text-based document. The practices of Bridget Riley, Yayoi Kusama and the Papunya Tula artists are interrogated as artists who organize non-illustrative information with paint. 'We' is a video project that investigates the construction of an 'unspectacular' body that specifically references its anatomy. Mary Kelly's 'Post Partum Document' and the 18th century conversation piece are considered with this work. 'Understudy' examines the production of an abstract and self-contained painting that expresses the body as existing simultaneously within biology, sociology and history. The work of Tomma Abts is discussed and the stripe is researched as an ornamental pattern that possesses both meaning and optic effect. Collectively these works form the thesis 'A Little Gathering' which is an enquiry into the understanding of the human body as belonging to and situated within the realm of material culture. This means the body belongs to a world of things and is itself a thing available and able to be collected, anatomized, fixed, observed, studied, documented, preserved, as well as presented and displayed in various ways.
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ItemThe (im)possible image( 2010)The paper questions the representation of truth and reality in an image. Firstly the paper looks at the rise of photography as a tool for verifiable and truthful purposes and how it is used to influence public opinion. This is followed by a survey of a number of artists whose work questions the appearance of reality and the construction of meaning in images. This leads to a discussion on my current work which questions news media imagery, and seeks to enable a viewer to question and negotiate the limits of an image. The screen has become a focal point in much of society with its ability to allow a viewer to replace their day to day reality with a world of fantasy. News media today entertains and dazzles and leaves little room for dialogue or critical debate. As John Berger states; "The screen replaces reality. And the replacement is a double one. For reality is born of the encounter of consciousness and events. To deny reality is not just to deny what is objective. It is to deny an essential part of the subjective." We have entered into an ever increasing world of screens and find ourselves gazing and grazing across an abundance of imagery, now available at a press of a button or click of a mouse. Take the Gulf War (1990) as an example. The audience viewed images that were similar in appearance to that of video games. A viewer saw night vision imagery and missiles directed with pinpoint accuracy. The images of war were a surreal visual spectacle; the viewer lost contact with the real and the fact that these weapons were aimed at real people. This research leads to my own studio practice of exploring video on the internet that presents independent eyewitness accounts of trauma and conflict. I compare these images with examples from the mass media in a bid to widen our scope and understanding of events taking place in the world.
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ItemApproaching site( 2010)This project is critically situated within the Melbourne urban environment. Encounters within the proximate of my everyday environment form the basis from which sculptural works are generated. Research has been undertaken in many ways include walking, studio and installation based experimentation, and investigation of other artists who are critically situated within the urban environment. This paper establishes the key considerations of this project, including mapping, fragmentation, transformation, and the ordinary. These discussions lead to an expanded understanding of site as an experienced situation. Claire Doherty’s term ‘situation-specific’ is explored, and has heavily informed this position. Section One explores the Situationist International and their projects that re-constructed the city through processes of mapping. This section considers mapping as a means to explore cities and the act of walking as an embodied methodology for this process. The Situationists provide an historical context for approaching urban environments as a shifting situation composed of multiple relations, introducing notions of fragmentation to the project. Discussion of the Situationists within this section provides an engagement with site, offering an opportunity to introduce my own approach to site developed throughout this project. Section Two engages in a discussion around my own processes employed throughout the project to investigate and experience site. Walking is established as a key approach, assisting an understanding of site that is multilayered and temporal rather than fixed. Part of my encounter with site involved the formation of collections; these collections of photographs and sculptural moulds form the basis of the studio component. The art practices of Francis Alÿs and Lucy Pedlar inform this section for the particular ways in which they generate work in response to their immediate environments. Engaging in a discussion of their work, the paper explores how their processes unravel sites and produce outcomes that are generative and responsive to the situations of site. The final component of the project, Section Three, brings together a culmination of images that reflect the various processes undertaken within the project, including daily photography, mould making, and studio-practice. The research has been concerned with establishing a framework for understanding site as a temporal, shifting environment, that when explored through a situation can open up the possibility of multiple relations. It is within the logic of this framework that the final exhibition accompanying this paper operates, creating a new situation for the viewer to encounter.
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ItemSalt-water-art-science( 2010)Salt-Water-Art-Science is a practice-led research project in which art making and writing are equal partners. The thesis is made up of an installation and a paper. The installation is comprised of many elements, which operate as a total system. The installation Salt-Water-Art-Science will be exhibited for one week at the VCA studios, starting on the 6th December 2010. Contained within the paper and on the accompanied DVD are images of the components, which constitute the installation. I have chosen to separate this work into is elements. By discussing each element I can assist the reader in understanding the complexity of the installation, how each part relates to the other and the final presentation. The paper provides an insight into my research, focused on Salt-Water-Art-Science. It explains in detail what has arisen through the combination of both writing and art production. The paper is a reflective account and critical analysis of my practice within which my installation is situated. The meanings that surface from the research are compiled in four sections: the Historical Influences, the Repercussions/Problems, Artists that bridge the Discipline’s and the final installation, Salt-Water-Art-Science.
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ItemPut to work( 2010)Put to work is a practical fuelled research project supported by a thesis. The topic of work is explored as a fundamental human activity with a certain emphasis on labour in art practice. The paper is written in two sections and the methodology employed is dependent on two closely related factors – a combination of description and critical reflection on significant works of art within the realm of performance. The first section is titled Art, Life and Work. This triad forms the major themes running parallel to the topic of the factory. An early exposure to the working processes of the factory has formed a fixation on repetitive actions, discipline through routine and production systems. As an environment the factory is examined in relation to a labour intensive art practice. A romantic conception of work that is born from a childhood nostalgia is overturned as the realities of the hardships of factory life are unraveled through the research. The seduction of the factory image is predominantly discussed to reinforce and reveal the true punishing nature behind the aestheticized façade of the factory depicted in past and contemporary artistic explorations. The photographs of Edward Burtynsky, the documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal titled Manufactured Landscapes, 2006 and narratives by author Leslie T. Chang in her book Factory Girls focuses China as a major trading nation in the manual labour of production. Reflections are made on the interconnected theme of industrialization in preceding films such as Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy, 1982-2002 and Ron Fricke’s Baraka, 1992. Karl Marx’s theory of alienation is briefly referenced particularly its association with production in art practice. Personal aspects of the experience of work provide an alternative to a labour mediated by commerce. The second section is titled The Performative Through the Process of Work. Performance art defines the context for the research undertaken inside the practices of three key artists. One work by each key figure is discussed – One Year Performance 1980-1981 by Taiwanese born artist Tehching Hsieh, The House with the Ocean View, 2002 by the female pioneer of Performance Art Marina Abramović and Occurrence, 2009 by contemporary Melbourne based artist Mark Themann. Fundamental features in the engagement of Performance Art such as the concept of time, duration and endurance, production through repetition and the similarities between life and art offer the basis for the research. The labour embodied within artistic production is an integral facet of performance and propositions to celebrate and embrace this aspect are put forward.