School of Art - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 95
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
ItemAboriginal art: creative responses to assimilation( 2003)This thesis argues that the interpretation of significant aspects of Aboriginal art. especially the movement. Urban art - here renamed Revolutionary art - in the light of the effects of assimilation, breaks new ground. This approach reveals common characteristics and themes, which reflect an interest in shared histories, cultural heritage, and individual and communal directives. In the broader sense it points to fresh ways of unraveling and understanding the Aboriginal collective experience. The thesis begins with an analysis of the history of the approach to Aboriginal art, examining in particular, the convergence of anthropological and art historical frameworks, which contributed to the interpretation of Aboriginal art throughout the last century. An analysis of assimilation and its effects in relation to artist Albert Namatjira (1902-1959) follows, together with an examination of the categorisation and thematic approaches of Urban or Revolutionary artists. The analysis of the historical approaches to Aboriginal art of Namatjira's world, and of the issue of categorisation and its relationship to the themes of Revolutionary art, from the perspective of assimilation, is complemented and expanded in three specific case studies, which demonstrate individual and collective creative responses to assimilation. The artworks of Leslie Griggs (1958-1993) were produced between 1984 and 1989; a short, yet important period for the artist. Griggs used art as a medium to give voice to his experience of enforced separation from his family as a consequence of assimilation processes. Removed at the tender age of two years, Griggs grew up in the environment of the institution, separated from the Gunditjmara cultural heritage and people to which he belonged. Art was to become the vehicle through which he could later establish cultural and personal reconnection with this background. The artworks of Another View Walking Trail, 1994-1995, provide an opportunity to study a collective response to the silencing processes of assimilation. Since their installation in 1995, Another View artworks have undergone certain changes. Natural damage caused by environmental conditions, workplace accident and vandalism, have contributed to this. This thesis analyses the original and complete works of Another View in the condition they were in at time of installation. It also discusses the implications relating to the censorship of several of the artworks originally planned for the project. The artworks of Lin Onus (1948-1996), an artist deeply conscious of the need to respond to his sense of loss caused by assimilation processes, reveals a different creative response from that of Griggs. Onus reaches out to another Aboriginal group for cultural sustenance. He chooses an assimilatory experience of his own, inspired by the desire to revitalise his creative work and life by his adoption into the Yulungu family of Jack Wunuwun. Onus's art developed alongside a heightened consciousness of the duality of life in relation to cultural traditions and contemporary cultural contexts. This thesis studies a selection of paintings and sculptures by the artist, which demonstrate how conscious re-assimilation of traditional Aboriginal knowledge can assist in a creative response to losses brought about by assimilation. In arguing that the individual, artistic expressions of Leslie Griggs, Lin Onus and the collective, collaborative work of Another View Walking Trail, can be interpreted as creative responses to assimilation, the thesis indicates a positive way forward both in the interpretation of Aboriginal art and in cross-cultural understanding.
-
ItemHilda Rix Nicholas: a catalogue raisonne( 1994)This thesis is a study of the art of Hilda Rix Nicholas, an Australian painter who constructed what appeared to be a successful career in the period between the wars. Her achievements were impressive: she held several solo exhibitions and showed her work in a large number of group shows, and in 1926 became an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Despite her accomplishments, however, Rix Nicholas has been virtually ignored by art historians. Often mentioned, but rarely discussed, her work, like that of a number of women artists, has been excluded from and marginalised in the writing of Australian art history. In seeking to account for the reasons why Rix Nicholas's work failed to achieve any lasting recognition in Australia the thesis examines the ways in which she constructed her career. In Paris, before World War 1 she attuned her art to the standards of the Salon, appropriating its genres, particularly the French peasant tradition, as models of artistic excellence, models which underpinned the emergence of her distinctive Australian imagery in the early 1920s. In Australia, Rix Nicholas conscientiously set out to represent the national landscape in her work. Describing herself as 'the man for the job' she attempted to establish her career within a milieu where the rules of representation were controlled by men. In doing so, she challenged the masculinist framework of the cultural and artistic establishment, as well as the idea that the representation of the nation was the exclusive domain of male painters like Arthur Streeton and Hans Heysen. Furthermore, Rix Nicholas painted several pictures of women in the bush, and dared to suggest that women had been equal partners in the formation of the imagined community of the nation. Refusing to acknowledge the gendered boundaries of the Australian art world, she constructed a position for herself that was at odds with the prescribed role of a woman painter, a role which was acknowledged by most women artists working in Australia. Like her male colleagues, Rix Nicholas distrusted the modern movement and was sceptical about the involvement of women artists in it. As far as she could see women modernists had accepted a subordinate position within the artistic hierarchy, a position Rix Nicholas was not prepared to recognize. Her assertive affirmation of her rights meant that her artistic practice occupied a difficult and ambivalent position. Existing outside the mainstream of both male and female representation she challenged the establishment on too many levels, making it virtually impossible for her to achieve any lasting recognition in Australia.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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’.
-
ItemTraces of torture: women, murder and representation( 2005)This thesis examines the excess of discourse that is produced when women kill - or are accused of killing - and suggests that these narratives function as part of a disciplinary process that attempts to reassert control over 'unruly' women and regulate constructions of femininity. While murder narratives are commonly structured by their search for murder's origins within the murderers themselves, this thesis argues that when women are associated with murder the generic scrutiny of the criminal is compounded by the historical construction of femininity as an enigmatic, 'dark continent.' That this convergence between the conventions of genre and constructions of gender has resulted in an insatiable desire to 'know' the female offender is revealed in the recurring metaphor of the mask, which has consistently underpinned her production within discourse. Analysing the representation of women as diverse as Myra Hindley, Aileen Wuornos and Phoolan Devi, this thesis demonstrates that the impulse to 'unmask' the female offender, evident in the aggressive practices of examination and classification, exposes the entangled relationship that exists between investigation and punishment. Repeatedly reinscribing these 'unruly' women as 'unknowable' in order to facilitate further scrutiny of them, I argue that these narratives trap the female offender within a space of perpetual punishment and, so, reveal the 'traces of torture.' Following Michel Foucault's assertion that we must use history to dispel the 'chimeras of origin,' the second part of this thesis contains in-depth analyses of two female murder narratives; the Parker Hulme matricide in 1950s New Zealand and the Chamberlain case in 1980s Australia. The discursive construction of these historically significant episodes reveals that rather than extract the 'truths' of their female subjects, murder narratives are instead inscribed with the deepest anxieties of the cultures in which they were produced.
-
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.