School of Art - Theses
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ItemLand( 2010)My research investigates how landscape can be interpreted within a contemporary context and the ways in which it has been interpreted and investigated with particular reference to the painting medium. This research defines the relevance of the landscape motif and the need to gain perceptual understanding via first-hand experience. I have examined how attitudes developed in which the Australian landscape was being perceived as parochial and retrograde within the contemporary context as Australian artists began to see themselves as being considered ‘international’ artists, and how appropriated experience became a replacement for actual experience in the post-modern era. My thesis explores the search for perceptual and conceptual discovery of the landscape from the viewpoint of an Australian Eurocentric background, how it has impacted as a motif within the painting medium and how it is regarded within a contemporary context. Whist the history of Australian landscape painting is littered with heroic narratives of the explorer taming or enduring the frontier, this research searches for the narratives contained within the landscape as opposed to narratives intentionally placed upon the landscape. The private experience of being in the landscape and the subjective response attained from that experience is what I am examining. Rather than deconstructing the landscape or the history of the landscape motif, I am searching for a personal dialogue, understanding and aesthetic response to an individual space and place. Although the concept of en plein air painting has not been considered in most contemporary circles as acceptable, my research demonstrates the importance that the en plein air perceptual experience has in order to understand the conceptual frameworks of a space. In so doing I have examined the work of artists who have ventured out and uncovered a new understanding of the subject and a new aesthetic response. I have examined how artists have ventured into uninhabited terrain, lived there, examined the life forms there, and preserved and interpreted these landscapes into their work. The genesis of this research was a trip to the Daintree Rainforest in 2006 and my reaction to this experience. My work investigates and interprets the Daintree Rainforest and the interrelationships and constructs contained within this subject and the narratives that are uncovered within my investigations. These investigations examine the ecosystems, biology, geology and topography of the landscape and the ways of interpreting those ecosystems and the narratives that can be read into them. Through my investigations I have uncovered a new set of aesthetic dimensions and possibilities within the landscape and my work as evident in a series of paintings and watercolours I have produced on this subject for my final presentation.