School of Art - Theses
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ItemNoise & mischief( 2013)Noise and Mischief is the culmination of two-years of research on the inherent negativity towards noise. The connotation of noise arrives as being immediately an undesired excess material. The political economy of noise anticipates a reception of hostility. Given its etymology of the Latin nausea, and associations with obstruction and interruption, this is not surprising. While mischievous behaviour functions with a similar anti-aesthetic and necessity for resistance, its reception is much less offensive and often even likeable. Throughout this project the application of noise is partnered with a mischievous demeanour in order to incite a thrill-seeking experience that may flirt with trouble, danger and pleasure. Incorporating mischief to noise reduces the hostile reception. This is imperative to make the work more accessible to the viewer. Introducing fundamental aspects of play liberates noise from pure obstruction, interruption and chaos. This enables a broader pallet of noise, incorporating elements of nuisance, pest and annoyance as well as humour. Kinetic, sound-based sculpture is the vehicle used in order to deliver this expanded outcome.
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ItemEach copy may perish individually( 2013)Today when the digital image is but an instance existing in multiple versions, the aim in this paper is to investigate how each instance may differentiate. In the research that follows it is suggested that it may not be possible to fully gauge the implications of a digital image at the moment of its production or through the sharing of its popularity in transmission – this may in fact only emerge some time later. This measure may be introduced as a material durability, yet a central issue arises in that it is only by assumption that this can be known, given that the digital age is relatively recent. In the absence of any substantial digital history, we can only postulate what digital duration may be. It is to this end that my work and research is focused. The final body of creative work in the graduate exhibition has been produced in a manner that oscillates from screen to print and back again, across a range of objects using artistic and commercial services. A digital painting is printed in multiple outcomes, stratified across a host of surfaces and sites. It is with humor that a game situation is invoked, where each instance must silently compete against the others through time. The game is not just about which one lasts longest, but most beautifully, faithfully, or poorly. A website has been established to document the digitized versions of the work. It is hoped that this exhibition may go some way to exploring the ways in which an image belongs to a network.
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ItemThe land of rainbows( 2013)My research is about the community where I was born and raised in rural Victoria, the town of Rainbow. Rural communities are now seen to be fading into the abyss. Within these communities exists a deep emotional and rich visual culture covered by layers of relics and artifacts, a resource for the arts not just historians. My practice draws on the lived experiences and memories I shared in this community. My practice uses digitally manipulated visual media to reflect a mindscape and narrative correlating with medieval artists such as Bosch and Chaucer. I further translate these influences and digital processes into my practice via my journey into other worlds. In this project, the other worlds I inhabit are the jail, the asylum and death. These other worlds come without the protection and nourishment of the microcosmic world of Rainbow.
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ItemDistributed mobility and space investigated( 2013)This research project considers the body's movement within built form. It takes a multidisciplinary approach embracing theories and practices of visual art, architecture and dance; it examines ideas of the 'latent' and architecture's power to modulate the body. The research ambition is to materialise that which is concealed so that forces within space can be articulated. The project investigates installation methodologies, and the specifics and generics of public spaces. The artists, architects and theorists discussed in this paper have been chosen for their relevance to a consideration of the generic body and its interaction with architectural space. In addition, the methods by which perception and comprehension are attained via experience, and how these modalities affect the awareness of self within a direct and expanded context will be examined. The major interests and techniques of this research investigate working in a site responsive way to built form, centering on the passage of the body through and in space, and ideas of articulation and intervention. Methodologies include phenomenological analysis, diagrammatic and three dimensional representations, and installation/de-installation strategies within public and private spaces. This paper is presented with a site specific installation work that spans two rooms and attempts to demarcate the bodily movements connecting and within these spaces. Ideas of surveillance, focusing on the passage between the rooms, are considered in the work as well as notions of the body traversing interior spaces. The installation investigates the questions: to what extent does the body pre-empt what will be experienced in moving between spaces within a built form; how present is the body's memory and vision of what has been passed through; and can this memory and vision be absorbed from one place and carried to another. Methods of installation, which include both the adding and subtracting of building elements as a means of attempting to reveal what is already within the built form are utlised in the work, as well as ideas of containment of the viewing access zone. This final work is a response to the omnipresent surveillance of the spaces we move in.
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ItemRepresentation of the 'Temporal Real'( 2013)Representation of the Temporal Real is an exploration of temporal representations, variable syntheses between artist, environment and technology, in the fabrication of the multi-dimensional. This research is an attempt to dissolve the roles of art and science to reconcile a disconnected relationship to reality effected by technology by exploratory making that lies between experimental verification and poetic speculation. The works investigate the boundaries of sight and scientific visualisation as a way of de-centering the human in networks of artistic production. The enquiry builds on previous visualisations, Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Deluge series’, Etienne-Jules Marey’s ‘Birds in flight’ and Jean Clair’s ‘Cosmos’ exhibition, and recent cosmological theory into the depiction and description of what I have termed the ‘Temporal Real’. Art in this research is the interrogation of this Temporal Real.
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ItemThe collapsible landscape( 2013)This MFA project draws upon imagery of the natural environment, primarily geological, to construct imaginary landscapes. These landscapes resist the depiction of any actual site, and instead flex between constructed spatial binaries as seen to exist in nature, focusing on the division (and connection) between terrestrial and cosmic space. With a phenomenological underpinning, processes of assemblage pertinent to painting and drawing reinterpret the generic landscape formation to encourage a holistic vision of the environment. In turn, this project questions how constructing a landscape image ‘collapses’ its natural referent. Considering the ‘wilderness’ as a pre- or post-apocalyptic site, landscape without a figurative presence becomes the setting for a re-evaluated sublime experience. Here, potential environmental collapse threatens the terrestrial world (as in Jonathon Bordo’s ‘ecological sublime’), expanding our ‘natural’ position into a cosmic field. From this location, internal and external spaces are seen as interconnected. It is therefore through a geological metaphor or ‘mythologem’ that mountains, crystals and minerals are defined as subjects that create connections between these spatial zones. From this analysis derives a practice that expands and subsides the generic landscape formation through assemblage processes. This is presented in a series of studio investigations (drawing, photographic, sculptural), which pay particular attention to a separation of landscape elements, framing devises and collage techniques. Consequently, these experiments have encouraged a more open and propositional painting practice. In reference to Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of the Baroque Fold, the work of Per Kirkeby and Laura Owens (among others) reveal a similarly fragmented approach to image making that conjures a flexible pictorial site or threshold. In summary, the construction of a landscape image subjectifies the natural world, transforming the tangible environment into a vision. From studio experiments, theoretical engagement and visual analysis, this project considers mechanisms for collapsing the natural referent of a landscape image. The fundamental technique utilised in this ‘collapse’ is assemblage: a fragmentary and connective visual process that enables the natural world to be envisioned as ‘siteless’.
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ItemArtificial aesthetics( 2013)This practice-led research project interrogates the concept of what I have termed an ‘artificial aesthetic’ in painting. The research explores how the aesthetics of synthetic and technologically inspired forms, produced in our contemporary environment, can influence the methodology and visual style of contemporary painting. The concept of an artificial aesthetic provides a useful means to address my art practice and to identify some of the key conceptual ideas and artistic discourses from which it emerges. The ‘artificiality’ explored in this thesis refers to the industrialised, urbanised material environment, with its associated array of factory made goods, plastics and digital and screen based media. The research explores a range of visual properties and processes in painting that draw in the appearance of these technological and commodity products. The research explores: • The visual characteristics of an artificial aesthetic in painting. • The place of the handmade in generating a range of ‘natural’ expressions in painting, and how developments in digital technology impact upon this. • How concepts of nature and artificiality bear upon the lineage of abstract painting. • How painting can variously absorb and critique the aesthetic properties of factory produced commodities and screen based media, particularly through an emphasis on surface and superficial formal structures. This thesis proposes that an emphasis on surface and a teasing at the withdrawal of the artist’s hand characterise an artificial aesthetic in painting, forming a strategy to address some of the products and images associated with the contemporary environment. I address the elements of my paintings that draw towards this aesthetic, discussing their use of plastic textures, grids, patterning and colour gradients. The practice based component of this research involves the production of paintings and works on paper and acetate. The outcome, a selection of works made during the two years of this research project, will be presented within a cohesive exhibition. This thesis aims to compliment the creative works, addressing the formal visual language they share.
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ItemThrough touch and sight: approaching enantiomorphism( 2013)Can visual perception be formed through an encounter with touch? Investigations into the visual phenomena of mirror symmetry, the horizon line, and their relationship with the haptic. This research uses the near visual symmetry of the flat white landscapes of dry salt lakes as a context to examine the relationship between visual perception and touch. Throughout the Masters of Fine Art program I have undertaken several research trips to lakes in north-western Victoria, gathering material using photography, observation, and collecting salt from the sites. I have captured the space of the dry salt lakes through the camera viewfinder and inserted the photographs into my sculptural practice. Using light boxes and backlit projection, I have returned them to their mode of production: light. Light sources are a central material of the work, simultaneously illuminating the images and lighting the installation as a whole. The photographs are presented in dialogue with delicate salt crystal collages encased in Perspex®. These transparent Perspex objects act as apertures, standing in for the viewfinder, and simultaneously capture reflected light from the installation. The majority of the images printed in this dissertation are intended as documentation, however, due to the nature of my work with light, my installations are often difficult to photograph. The view of my work through the mediation of the camera lens has produced perspectives, lighting and cropping that cannot be seen with the human eye. This photographic documentation has become part of my research and I have reinserted it into the work. This thesis is broken down into three chapters, each addressing theoretical concerns I contemplated while walking on the salt crust of the lakes and working in my studio. This document exists in dialogue with my artwork, and seeks to locate my practice within a wider context. I examine my perceptual experiences at the dry salt lakes using the concepts of enantiomorphism (mirror symmetry) and inframince (Marcel Duchamp’s term describing fleeting moments of contact), which are linked by the mysterious fourth dimension. The notion of ‘touch’ is viewed from the philosophical perspectives of Jean-Luc Nancy, Johann Gottfried Herder, Andrew Benjamin and Laura Marks. In this discussion I explore the possibility of haptic visuality, particularly through the medium of light. I propose that the haptic gaze is present both in my perception of the landscape and my resultant installations. These perceptual instances reveal the inexactitude of the visual perception of optical phenomena such as the horizon line and the enantiomorphic space of the dry lakes. Duchamp’s inframince is examined as a temporal space akin to Jacques Derrida’s conception of the ‘now’. Within my research, inframince operates as a lens, a space, a measurement and sometimes a momentary reflection.
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ItemFamily traditions and continuity: kinship laws of the Bardi/Jawi people( 2013)“The young people are not interested in the Bardi way; The white man has killed the old way" This was said by one of the Bardi/Jawi elders, who returned his family by boat back to Sunday Island after resisting assimilation in Derby, Western Australia. (Fig 1) This research focuses on a brief glimpse into the turbulent history of the Bardi/Jawi people of the North West Kimberley region of Australia between the late 1870’s to the mid 1990’s. The generational damage from colonization to dispossession of the land and culture that happened over this time is explored in this research through interviews with Bardi/Jawi elders and close readings of historical and anthropological text in combination with my own memories. I revisit my family’s journey through this process, imbedding my own experiences throughout these pages and in the artwork to approach the questions: • Was there a time when strong family traditions were upheld and balanced? • Could we learn from our ancestor’s way of life and still draw from those beliefs and values of long ago and use them in a contemporary context? Contemporary Aboriginal researchers like Dr. Tracy Bunda, whose PhD on ‘The relationship between Aboriginal people and the university’ and Cindy Solonec’s research about her parent’s story in the Kimberley inspire me to use my own story and my people’s endeavours and to explore these histories and stories through my art work. The creative component of this research has investigated steel fish sculptures in combination with painting, projections and sound to explore ‘fish schools’ as a metaphor for the Kinship structures and family traditions discussed in the paper. We can appreciate and learn from the natural environment and its eco systems. As an artist I constantly try and bridge the gaps between nature and culture and how that relates to every person. Indigenous people have had our oral history passed down through generations. With my work I tend to use this method very strongly but in my own interpretive way. I am much imbedded in the notion of carrying this tradition forward which is evident in my work. I work across disciplines, from sculptural forms to painting and socio therapy. In exploring contempory styles, my work attempts to channel those narratives forward which give endless space for expressions. With Kinship, there is an identifiable effect of this breakdown in Family Traditions and kin values over the generations. The extensive efforts by current related government departments have raised concerns in the area of exploring and seeking ways to research effective ways of utilising the Indigenous kinship laws. My findings have narrowly captured one tribe’s struggles and issues associated with the rapidly changing world. Every Indigenous tribe across Australia has their own story to tell.
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ItemMelancholia or Delirium upon one subject exclusively( 2013)This dissertation explores the concept of melancholia in relation to my practice by identifying the commonality of an oscillation between the opposing points of intimacy and distance. This research investigates how materiality can facilitate an active engagement between intimacy and distance in the viewer and in doing so conjure an in-between state. This in-between state can be seen to relate to the suspension and ‘stuckness’ within the emotional state of melancholy as well as the ebb and flow of everyday human connection. The written component of this exploration takes the form of three chapters. The background and significance of a melancholic oscillation between emotional intimacy and distance, how an intimate distance is articulated visually in the work of Tacita Dean and the application of an intimate distance in relation to the two main points of connection within my own work; the gaze of the subject and surface materiality. Through an examination of contemporary artworks by Tacita Dean, Thomas Ruff, Michael Borremans and others, this dissertation identifies different approaches to creating an intimate distance through a manipulation of materiality. This analysis establishes a platform for practical experimentation centred on establishing and collapsing the emotive distance between viewer and subject with specific regard to an artwork’s surface materiality. These conceptual and practical findings posit a solution to the combining of intimacy and distance in my own work as the creation of a permeable surface, that is, one able to produce the sensation of being able to move into and out of a damaged and incomplete surface. The dissertation is accompanied by a presentation of works, which increase the engagement of the viewer’s senses and elicits an embodied and empathetic experience through surface materiality.
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