School of Art - Theses
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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.
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ItemExhibiting visual culture: narrative, perception and the new museum( 2002)This thesis maps a recent emergence or shift in museological discourse. It focuses on the moment where the discourses of narrative, cinema, and museums come together visibly and publically in relation to the built environment which hosts them, and the experience they offer. In Australia, this moment may be identified as emerging in 1995 with the Museum of Sydney, reaching a critical mass in 1998 with the developmental plans for the Melbourne Museum, Federation Square, and National Museum of Australia, and reaching its most satisfactory and effective manifestation in 2001, with the opening of the National Museum of Australia. This thesis considers these (and other) museum projects to look at how and why this emergence or shift came about. It is interested more in the processes of development than with the respective outcomes, which it may as yet be too early to evaluate fully. As such, this thesis evaluates the production and reception of recently developed museums that embody this shift. It is concerned with the ways that these developments present themselves rhetorically, architecturally and through their exhibitions, and with the type of experience that they aim to offer visitors. They tend to represent this experience as unique, immersive, and postmodern, and the thesis argues that these museums share a similarity based on their cross-disciplinary approach to self-representation, and other key factors. Because of this, the thesis presents a close exploration of these signifiers of ‘newness’, asking why these are privileged by the contemporary museum, and looking to see whether this trope of newness itself has a historical chronology, or a predecessor in earlier museums. It also looks at how the effect of newness is conceptualized, designed, and produced. The thesis contends that the ‘new’ museum presents itself as being a primarily interdisciplinary institution that is concerned with replicating and developing connections across disciplinary fields, rather than according to an historical chronology. However, despite this denial of historical relationships, the ‘new’ museum’s attention to a conceptual and thematic acuity can itself be historicized. Although the museum is not produced according to concerns for historical or traditional accuracy, the cross-disciplinary focus that it champions as an innovative signifier of its ‘newness’ itself has roots in earlier examples of museums and other cultural experiences (that include reading and cinema-going). As such, the primary historical allegiance that is shared by the cross-disciplinary impulse, and by the museums which champion this, is with early modernity. Characteristics associated with the new technologies and experiences of modernity (from cinema and other technologies, to the Crystal Palace, to new modes of writing and narrative form) are all valued by ‘new’ twenty first century museum projects, and many of the technologies and approaches to textuality that they also present. Locating the origins of cross-disciplinarity at the moment of an emergent modernity, the thesis deconstructs the concepts, specifically privileged by the ‘new’ museums, in order to look at the ways that these concepts also engage with each other, and to consider how and why they have been incorporated into these museum projects at all. In order to do this, the thesis is divided into three sections, ‘Narrative’, ‘Cinema’, and ‘Museums’, with each Part providing a discussion of each discipline in isolation. Part Three, ‘Museums’, looks at ways in which recent museum projects have attempted to combine these discrete areas, and it also contends that the appropriation efforts have varying degrees of success in this activity. (Part abstract)