School of Art - Theses
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ItemResisting representation: photographing diffractively( 2017)This research project begins by asking, “can a photograph resist its representationalist apparatus?” It proposes that if the mechanisms of photographic representation could be used against photography’s inherent representationalism, an alternative way of seeing and being in the world may be revealed. This question is approached through a material engagement with photographic processes that encompass studio and gallery situations. When difficulties were encountered attempting to overturn entrenched photographic representation, research led the project to adopt a diffractive methodology. First articulated by Karen Barad and Donna Haraway, a diffractive methodology is used to work with, instead of against, differences across disciplines. Key to this is an understanding of the constitutive role of the apparatus in the creation of knowledge including the performative role of the artist and viewer. Using the principles of this methodology I have devised a series of techniques aimed at disrupting and dispersing a photograph’s representational apparatus so that an alternative to representationalism may be revealed. These techniques are applied to the processes of studio based making as well as the presentation of photographs in a gallery.
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ItemThe Rigid and the Slack: photographic process in the pursuit of familial intimacy( 2016)The Rigid and the Slack: Photographic Process in the Pursuit of Familial Intimacy uses conditions of the photographic process, from the alchemical to Barthes’s ‘violence of capturing’ to pursue intimacy in familial relations - contained, measured and contingent upon ‘the everyday’ - to examine how a body of artwork may bridge the distancing paradox inherent in the photographic process to pull the subject close. My approach has been to visually and conceptually map the trace of the familial subject in their haptic actions and low-fi everyday setting alongside photographic picture making tools and approaches that aspire to ideal and hi-end production as a method to reflect both as intricately and intimately entwined and woven into the fabric of the artwork. My domestic setting is the studio and site where - as wife and mother - I experiment in the zone between control and disorder. The Rigid and the Slack: Photographic Process in the Pursuit of Familial Intimacy is informed by Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida alongside; Sally Mann’s approach to photography and her memoir Hold Still: a Memoir with Photographs and; Carol Mavor’s Blue Mythologies: Reflections on a Colour. The creative work comprises two projected videos and seven photographic prints, three of which are diptychs. Images of examined works are included in the appendix and two separate video files are available for viewing.
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ItemWhat lies buried will rise: exploring a story of violent crime, retribution and colonial memory( 2015)This thesis explores historical connections between colonial violence, memory and representations through art. It examines archival documentation and oral histories of an 1839 murder case in York; Sarah Cook and the hanging of Aboriginal men, Barrabong and Doodjeep. This case was the catalyst for the some of the worst massacres in WA. As an Aboriginal woman from York, I examine how art engages with story telling to investigate critical events in colonisation and imagine how what lies buried might rise.
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ItemOh the humanity! Humour and performance in a contemporary art practice( 2013)This Masters project discusses humour and performance through the use and presentation of a number of video and photographic artworks. Humour can be derived from the ability to imaginatively juxtapose imagery and ideas to create unexpected relationships and outcomes. Art and creativity can function in a similar manner. This MFA seeks to examine and develop a contemporary art practice, through contrasting imagery and ideas in a performative and humourous way. The project draws parallels between the strategies and functions of humour and art, exploring the possible relationships between the two. The thesis explores questions arising from the artworks produced resulting from an investigation of specific historical and contemporary artworks and a discourse around performance. Through consideration of art historical examples, some linages and links to ways of conceiving, thinking and discussing performance and humour are made. The research acknowledges the problems of taste and subjectivity as it applies to humour, in concert with art. The project reflects upon the role of the artist, his motivations and takes excursions into formal and material concerns of photography and performance to clarify their relevance and significance to contemporary art practice and this project. Themes and ideas brought to the surface are used as foils, something to defend or push against and experiment with. They sometimes act as shadowy motivations that assist in the production of artwork. These themes include mans’ relationship to the landscape, personal histories, digital and analogue photography in the age of technological convergence, the image, self and representation, notions of personhood, contemporary performance and art. Through discussion and uncovering the toil of artwork and ideas engaged with, the humanity of the project is revealed.
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ItemFraming the spectacle( 2011)My project Framing the Spectacle focuses on examining the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of the representation of crowd scenes. The aim of the project is to represent, through photography, a common humanity that knows no borders and presents no stereotypes of racial, sexual and religious division. In the paper I reflect on the influences that resonate in my work and which were formed by my experience in growing up in Poland. Formal and conceptual aspects of crowd scenes were investigated in the photographic material taken in a variety of confined and open spaces in Melbourne, Hong Kong and Macau. The crowds are unified by the urban context and their desire for entertainment - to escape from the everyday. This series arose in part from my initial interest in the abstract character of my carpet designs. The images of the crowds, in their very structure, in their ‘grids’, draw upon the notion of singularity within the mass, as well as continuity and the idea of ‘infiniteness’. In the works I attempt to refer to humanity that extends not only to the present but embraces as well the past; the absent crowd. In this thesis I have discussed the theoretical ideas of Rosalind Krauss1 and the notion of the grid within the context of my past artistic practice and the current photographic work. I examined how the grid evolved from the simple carpet designs and later, in the structure of the woven object to the more complex digitalized form of grid-matrix. The digital camera and the telephoto lens are critical to the development and to the visual character of my images. The final image is constructed out of a limited number of shots. It is flattened and abstracted; it moves away from the ‘reality’ to a constructed reality in which there is no hierarchy, and like the grid structure, has no beginning, no middle and no end. There are a number of Polish artists working across different media; film, theatre and sculpture, whose work has been influential in my development as an artist. Amongst them: film director Andrzej Wajda, sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor. Some of the contemporary photographers whose work I found useful to reflect on in my own work are: Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Gregory Crewdson and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Large, panoramic format digitally based prints were made in the studio. Digital marks were woven into the photographic surface of the printed canvas.