School of Art - Theses
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Item'Help a sculpture' and other abfunctional potentials( 2016)This practice-led research investigates the relationship between sculpture and concepts of function in contemporary art. Since the Enlightenment, art and function have commonly been understood as mutually exclusive concepts. Associated with everyday life, function is considered outside the sphere of art, where the art object is predominantly positioned as “functionless” and hence “autonomous” from the everyday prerequisites of living. In the instances where art has incorporated function, this has frequently been framed in terms of dysfunction, “dissolving art into life,” or as an alternative strategy in the “dematerialisation of the art object.” Yet, a neologism that emerged from my own art practice – “abfunction,” meaning to move away from function – implies that function is implicit within art itself, suggesting that the neat separation between art and function is not so clear cut. This thesis, includes the artwork produced for the Help a Sculpture exhibition at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, VCA in July 2016 and the written dissertation. The project asks: in what ways can the neologism abfunction reveal and divert the role of function within the production and end-effect of the contemporary artwork? Three bodies of artworks were produced for the project and have been used as case studies within the written dissertation. They are: How long (2008-ongoing), Houses that are happy to help with at least one of the possible problems of art (2010-ongoing) and the Hold UP series (2013-ongoing). These artworks comprise: video, photographic installations, photo-sculptures and sculptural assemblies. The written dissertation establishes a foundation for abfunction within contemporary art. Part I seeks to define “function” that abfunction maybe moving away from within the artwork. Given art is considered to be functionless, concepts of function are investigated by Aristotle, early modernist architectural discourse, and those involved in function theory, such as Beth Preston and Ruth Millikan. It is proposed that function can be understood from two points of view. I have termed this as, “use-ready” function (what something is for), and function as “forming” of an object or thing (summarised by the adage: “form follows function”). Part II of the written thesis investigates how these two roles of function occur within art. The Russian and Polish avant-garde from the 1920s to the mid-1930s, provides an uncharacteristic example of artists and theorists activating the role of function in art. Discussed in this written component of the thesis, are artworks and theories from the Russian Constructivists and Productivists, including artists Alexandr Rodchenko, and Karl Ioganson and theorist Boris Arvatov, in addition to the Polish Unists: sculptor Katarzyna Kobro and her husband, painter Władysław Strzemiński. Part III applies the understanding of the role of function in the artwork to investigate how abfunction both reveals and departs from function in the artwork case studies produced for the project. Abfunction represents a significant opportunity for a more complex understanding of how function might operate with the artwork. Its meaning in relation to art is not encompassed by existing terms of function including, functionless, dysfunction, malfunction and the lesser known term para-functional. Moreover, in describing a deviation away from the end expectations of function, abfunction also acknowledges the alternative materialisation of objects and things produced through this method which the terminology associated with the “dematerialised” object fails to do. This research project draws to a conclusion with the argument that abfunction offers a new insight into processes within the production of art. Revelatory in its reveal of the pervasive role of function that it generatively departs from, abfunction accounts for the alternative unimagined outcomes produced in art beyond the teleological grip of function.
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Item(K)rap(p): voice as gaze in the mundane( 2015)(K)rap(p): Voice as Gaze in the Mundane examines ekphrasis - the “telling of vision” - in contemporary art. Between the scenario of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape; unorthodox voice recordings by Konstantin Raudive, recorded interviews and archived material relating to my deceased parents’ involvement in the Communist Party of Australia during the 1950s; a type of proletarianisation of the gaze, an ekphrastic dematerialisation and re-materialisation of vision is interrogated into political and uncanny dimensions. The ekphrastic relation to art is that of viewing and articulating, visually rendering an articulation as an inversion of ekphrasis. The sonorous act of verbalizing becomes visual representation, therefore art. Paradoxically the notion of what constitutes art is complicated by its own description. The research begins with the examination of art and voice in relation to ekphrasis, hypothesising whether ekphrasis might be made visible as art through its inversion and concludes with voice in relation to the spectral, invisible in both social and political terms, made visible through the unification of sound (voice recordings) and image (archival and artefact), in which selected audio and visual material are manipulated to form artwork. The exhibition created for this project was an accumulation of these manipulations, found and fabricated artworks in the form of photography, voice recordings and collated archival material including original documents regarding the Communist Party between 1948 and 1960. The selected material was presented with archaic voice recording equipment as part of the Installation project exhibited at the Margret Lawrence Gallery in February 2015. The exhibition was not just a product of research into the Communist Party of Australia, but of voice in the broader sense. Voice has been examined from multiple facets, in its many incarnations and it is through Samuel Beckett’s work and Raudive recordings that voice as a subject of the gaze has highlighted the uncanny potential of voice as gaze.
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ItemAustralian animal painting and the human-animal bond in art( 2014)Animal painting is a critically important part of Australian art history, yet it has been afforded scant–if any–scholarly attention. Additionally, as the genre reached an apotheosis in the nineteenth century, animal painting represents a window into Australian society during a phase of rapid development. Domestic animals were a key part of society during this period, as cherished companions and as a driving force behind the expansion of Australian agricultural interests. This thesis begins the task of establishing animal painting within the annals of Australia’s art history. Commencing with an overview of animal painting in different cultures since the birth of art, the thesis then moves to consider the human-animal bond and its impact on the visual representation of animals. The human connection with other species has been represented artistically from Palaeolithic times to the present, yet the portrayal of animals in art is often dismissed as symbolic. By examining the science of the human-animal bond, the thesis explores why humans like to create and look at images of animals. It postulates that a connection with animals affects the way people view paintings when animals are part of the picture. In the same way, artists who specialise in animal painting not only exhibit a strong affinity with animals, they are able to capture the sentience and intelligence of their non-human subjects with greater veracity. Turning to Australian art of the nineteenth century, discussion focusses on the role of domestic animals in colonial society and on the artistic legacy of animal painters. Several artists are singled out for closer scrutiny, in particular, Harold Septimus Power. Septimus Power can be considered an archetypal animal painter: he evinced a strong connection with animals, was highly successful throughout his career and is largely overlooked and underrated since his demise. The intensity of the bond shared between mounted soldiers and their horses was played out in paintings portraying the Australian Light Horse in action during World War I. That Australian animal painters were on the spot to record these events meant their art contributed significantly to the horse-soldier bond forever being entwined with the legend of Anzac. By confirming the importance of animal painting in Australian art, this thesis suggests new avenues of research, both in regard to art and to the human-animal bond. Further exploration of the way animals have been represented in the art of different cultures, and into the significance of the animal gaze in art are just two of the ways in which the study of animal painting can facilitate greater understanding of the role animals play in human life.
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ItemBeautiful little dead things: empathy, witnessing, trauma and animals' suffering( 2015)This sculptural practice-led research investigates empathy, trauma and witnessing and the role of testimony in visual arts practice. The thesis argues that Edith Stein’s phenomenological account of empathy articulates an empathic encounter that recognizes the alterity of the other. Stein’s account, I argue, can be drawn out to include encounters with nonhuman animals and sculptural objects that resemble embodied forms. Responding to developments in my sculptural practice the research examined the possibility of visual art practices to bear witness to the ongoing suffering of animals: marking out the possibility for sculptural objects to perform as testimonial objects. As testimonial objects they attest to the trauma of the one who witnesses for the other. Ethical considerations in relation to materiality, representation and the position of one who testifies for, or on behalf of, the other are examined.
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ItemThe telepathy project( 2012)The thesis comprises two interrelated parts: An exhibition of artwork generated by and in response to telepathic prompts and processes, including telepathic events made with people from around the world at varying physical distances and degrees of intimacy. These attempts/events manifest as curatorial projects, performances, conversations, lectures, photographic tableaux, drawings, paintings, dream interventions and group wall drawings. The second part of the thesis comprises a written dissertation that responds to and expands on the practice led research by introducing a range of thinkers, writers and artists who approach telepathy in their work. In particular it is concerned with the ways Sigmund Freud and Jacques Derrida apprehended and deployed telepathy in their writing. The text proceeds via a logic of association and assemblage – a telepathic writing – finding its precedent in Derrida’s Telepathe. Emerging out of this research is a discussion and performance of some of the anxieties generated in the practice and contained in the literature and current knowledge surrounding the questions telepathy poses for subjectivity, interpretation and meaning making. This has been achieved by shifting some of the questions telepathy posed to Freud and Derrida et al. to a contemporary art practice. This shift has allowed new nuances in the discourse around telepathy to emerge and it is this that comprises the research’s original contribution to knowledge.