School of Art - Theses
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ItemHow we live now: The place of class and taste in contemporary Australian art( 2018)This practice led research has explored the various ways taste (with its implicit relationship to class) has manifest itself as a type of cultural marker, sending a series of complex and coded messages to its audience. With a focus on a local, Australian contemporary and historical culture, the research exerts that the talismans of 21st century taste inhabit a psychic space, a complex matrix of subliminal and latent cultural ideas, implicitly understood by both artist/producers and their audiences/consumers. Themes and motifs present in the paintings are examined and hypothesised as exemplifying this condition, simultaneously offering the superficial comfort of naïve recognition and a deep,reflective cultural discourse. The research finds that a middle–class hegemony permeates not only the fields of reception and production, but unlike other creative disciplines in Australia, the visual arts are reluctant to engage directly with these issues. It also finds that the process of aestheticisation, once the domain of the creative arts is now embodied in all aspects of middle–class culture, best seen through its hagiographic treatment of food and foodism.
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ItemInto the void: exploring the experience of vision loss through visual art( 2016)This thesis explores a personal experience of vision loss caused by the onset of juvenile macular dystrophy, through the framework of a studio art practice. It asks, “What does vision loss look like?” or, more specifically, “what does macular dystrophy look like to me?” seeking to find those answers in the very arena where its impact is felt most – in the field of vision as it is experienced in everyday life, and through the very visually expressive language of art.
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ItemThe embarrassment of sincerity: the changing state of contemporary figurative painting( 2014)This practice led PhD is concerned with the problems and possibilities of figurative painting. It examines questions of perception and interpretation and interrogates agency and affect in figuration. The thesis comprises an exhibition exploring empathy and a dissertation considering the limitations of the conceptual model and in what other terms painting might be viewed. Considering formal painting language and research linking emotion, sensation and perception, new possibilities in making and viewing are revealed. This comprises the research’s original contribution.