School of Art - Theses
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ItemLight through medium( 2015)This research project titled Light Through Medium explores transitory moments in our everyday life that are caused by light phenomenon related to refraction. My research method observed the concept of experiential learning through drawing mindful awareness of sensory stimulus informed by my studio based experiments. The investigation focused on the materiality of everyday objects with reflective, translucent, or transparent surfaces and the effects generated by interaction of these objects in different light sources. I worked towards refining a set of effective and personalized communicative apparatii in my endeavour to move the audience’s perspective of modest everyday light shifts and occurrences. I sought to research the ephemerality and transitory moments of reflective objects configured as art. The recurring themes in this investigation are feeling, recursion, and perception. “This too will pass” is a simple yet profound phrase used by renowned Buddhist monk Ajahn Bhram, which I feel poignantly defines the conceptual terrain. The outcome of this investigation is comprised of an explanatory written account and analytical inferences from the studio experiments and research processes. Alongside this written account is a body of artworks I have made which are a series of light installations. In this research project, these are titled, Light Through Medium #01 through to Light Through Medium #08. In this document I will speak to these works individually. I will also discuss connections with three artists known for their light related works, namely Robert Irwin, Olafur Eliasson and Daniel Armstrong. The three artists are from different time periods and they embraced varying approaches and philosophies towards employing light phenomena in their artworks.
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ItemIn the realm of phobia: exploring the duration of repetitive schizogenesis and ambiguous morphs( 2012)This research explores the ‘in-between’ as a field of encounter, collision, penetration and fission in visual art practice. I accommodate my own phobia and its power as the main discourse to traverse the gap between the conscious and the unconscious, and to retrieve latent memories along with emotions and sensations. By examining how fear influences me, and triggers paranormal phenomena in perception, I acknowledge fear as a predominant impulse in making art for it constantly reaffirms its significance within my work. I have referred to Freud and Jung’s ideas about the function and meaning of dreams in order to adequately inform my metaphysical and psychoanalytic approaches to investigating the ambiguous mind, thought processes and the recursive nature of fear. I have drawn on discourses by Bergson and Deleuze for my commentary around transitioning between psychical and physical manifestations of fear. This is followed by an exploration of Kristeva’s theory of the abject to highlight the subversive terrain of the ‘in-between’. Thus as a metaphor for unnameable frailty or want, which is to be faced and overturned, then acknowledged in its indispensability, I spit out my own phobia through the process of spontaneous thinking, making and becoming. My thesis accompanies a set of drawings that are made with combination of unassuming and conflicting materials; charcoal, shellac, paper and aluminium, in order to achieve unusual or unexpected phenomena that perturb mundane thoughts. Through the repetitive process of (de)activating the materials’ natural properties, I ultimately experience a contemplative state of mind that embraces transcendental memories. In this arena I explore the possibility of art making as a pathway to understanding the self. I have gained a deeper understanding about my practical processes in the studio, and the prevailing psyche that motivates, drives and informs my art. Hence, this research has allowed me to explore what has been overlooked in the continuum of my daily life, and to revisit things that were sacrificed over the course of obedience to social or cultural standards, values and conventions. Furthermore, my investigation around the process orientated approach to creative work has reassured me of the liberating force and cathartic potential of making art.
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ItemCasting an ensemble of objects: producing objects within a post-medium specific 'photographic' logic( 2012)This practice-led research project investigates the potential of an evolving relationship between photography and sculpture. The aim is to expand photographic discourse through the production of a cast ensemble of objects, within a post-medium specific ‘photographic’ logic. That is, a post-medium specific understanding of ‘photography’ that is not solely contingent on a photograph, as a material host, but rather, generative of sculptural objects in relation to images. The paper explicates a series of conditions or relationships, which can be seen as ‘photographic’, based on the photographic mediums facilities to reproduce, copy and multiply – as the principal impetus in not only the production, but also the presentation and perception of objects within the gallery space. A trajectory that originated from correlations made between the sculptural technique of moulding and casting to the technical production of photographic images. A lineage is drawn through a culture of copying pictures and images, commonly associated with appropriation art, and more specifically, the ‘Pictures Generation’, as a means to position the production of cast replica objects within a ‘photographic’ logic. Subsequently, links are made between the presentation and display of ‘sculpture’ within framing mechanisms, which includes the gallery space as a framing device, as a process of ‘image’ production and composition. And lastly, the paper considers our perception of everyday objects, in relation to images of the mind or memories as ‘psychologised objects’. Positioning replica objects as physical ‘ghosts’, which embody the absent object, they were reproduced from – as a conflated object image. The paper contextualises these processes, which form the parameters for the practice-led research, within a theoretical argument, leaving the greater ‘meaning’ of the work open-ended. The exhibition presents a series of recognisably commonplace replica objects, as a cast ensemble of interrelated yet discrete sculptural objects. The works are arranged and displayed predominantly on the floor of the gallery space, or on other objects, which act as host structures for display.