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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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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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.
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ItemSigns of life: the art of artificial animism( 2012)Using drawing, painting and sculpture, specifically casting and mould-making techniques, this project involves the visual conflation of dualisms such as subject and object, natural and artificial, animate and inanimate, therefore destabilizing these polarizations by intentionally reconfiguring them. Through visual motifs derived from a variety of discourses, including animism, metamorphosis, and fantasy narratives, my work posits an investigation of non-human subjectivity by ascribing a sense of agency to all natural and unnatural phenomena.
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ItemLandscape: interwoven knowledges( 2010)My project presents an analytical and intuitive consideration of ways in which the epistemology of Western Modernity frames my perception of landscape. Through the research I have begun to develop a more emergent and ecologically interrelated cognition within my practice. This has been facilitated by discussion of the dualistic thinking by which modern knowledge is produced, opening towards an understanding of non-dualistic knowledge formed within landscape. Weaving has precipitated this investigation and has become a sculptural and conceptual methodology that affords a comprehension of different knowledges co-existing as strands of vision contributing to this body of work.