School of Art - Theses
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ItemSupercharged paintings move towards light and space( 2018)This project considers certain connections between the so-called art world and global social mobility. Is the ubiquity of some universal aesthetic frameworks implicitly promoting the ever-expanding cultural class to become even more seduced by the forces of late-capitalism? The thesis, which comprises a dissertation presented in conjunction with a studio-based investigation, is centred around three distinct, but inter-related templates for display: the generic living room TV wall unit; the painted canvas; and the gallery. I consider how each format conditions our reception of cultural information by influencing our sense of individuality, whilst as the same time signalling our inclusion in a unified non-culturally specific world view that is rooted in western modernism. Significantly, these three selected display arenas all convey a sense of universality—not necessarily through specific content, but rather through their inherent structures. I argue that these successful systems of display potentially mask otherwise visible signs of power through implicit democratic ideologies disseminated via inspirational design trends. Considered together, I demonstrate that all three offer insights into the underlying function of international systems of cultural exchange. A substantial part of this research considers the homogenising effect of Internet image-searching, especially in relation to notions of class and sophistication at a time characterised by a global democratisation of desire and appreciation for ‘good’ design principles. The artworks I have produced in conjunction with this dissertation are designed to critically engage and antagonise the already fuzzy intersection of art, architecture and design. Accordingly, I have sought to produce works that are less distinguished by traditional art-making decisions but rather emphasise compositions, materials, and principles associated within modernist and minimalist infused trends in design and architecture. This strategy seeks to recode the sublime grandeur of late-formalist abstract paintings as a kind-of banal realism perhaps more associated with marketing and pop consumerism. The physical creation of individual artworks has taken place in accordance with two predominate modes of production. Firstly, and in reference to painting, wall mounted sculptural relief works incorporating materials such as Formica composite wood panelling, plywood, hardwood, acrylic paint, enamel paint, glass, vinyl flooring, composite stone samples, imitation plants, real-plants, pots, fluorescent lights, and found objects, were produced. The second mode of production is in the digital realm, and includes digital photographic montages (combining online images with my own photography), video (using online content and making interventions within it) and creating audio tracks (to accompany the video works). Considered together, these modes of production are used as tools to psychologically position the viewer in a space in which materials, surfaces and compositions, might trigger considerations of social mobility, our relationships to design, and finally, notions of personal intimacy and memory that are activated through smart-screen technologies.
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ItemInstalling and unsettling imaginaries: rehearsing the social within the self( 2018)The practice-led research outlined here explores ways of bringing attention to the mutual contingency of the self and the social through self-portraiture, culminating in a large multichannel projection and sound installation titled How to Deal with Difference (2018). In this thesis I discuss some of the formative influences on this work from various threads of social theory and contemporary installation practice. What we recognise as ourselves is deeply embedded in the social institutions we exist within. Drawing on Cornelius Castoriadis and others, I will use the term 'imaginary' as an articulation of the social constructions that both form and are formed by the individual. I also refer to the artworks created through this research as 'imaginaries', and through their installation have attempted to unsettle the solidity of various perceptions of the self, and the social. My studio practice is situated through analysis of related works by prominent contemporary artists, noting some of the similarities and differences to the approach I have taken. Works by William Kentridge, Camille Henrot, Pipliotti Rist and Lisa Reihana are discussed in some detail, my purpose here being both to acknowledge their influence and to articulate something of what is distinctive in the work I have created. Partly inspired by Judith Butler's account of performative identity and self-poesis, I filmed myself performing many varying and contradictory 'selves', in an exploration of my own relationality and self-formation. In imagining, performing and arranging these characters, I drew from social imaginaries I am implicitly involved in. By digitally compiling the footage, I composited myself into plural existence to disrupt the sense of singular coherence, although it is obvious that all characters are performed by me. I have positioned the performances as 'rehearsals' – they are not polished or complete, but iterative and partial. By trying on characters I do not think of as me, I seek to explore, through rehearsal, the social within myself. The result is an agonistic portrait of my own socially situated self, which is intended to allow multiple modes of engagement and space for self-reflection.
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ItemFinal room: encountering the body through absence( 2018)When I look at images of pain, my mind enters a nexus of complicated reactions. When met with images depicting bodily injuries, deformities, disease and open lacerations, my eyes wince - as if apprehending the amount of visual information travelling through my eye and into my brain and then into my body is too much. In the absence of implied physical danger to myself as the viewer, my mind plays out a psychological dread enabled by proprioception. Parts of my body that normally lie dormant of pain are suddenly awakened through empathy and metamorphoses, gauging how that pain might feel. These concepts are juxtaposed with an altogether different scenario, that of an emptied gallery space. When a viewer is faced with a bare room their desires are challenged. In place of objects and stimuli, my rooms ask that the viewer’s interaction with the work become the impetus of the work itself, activating the work. In this research project I wanted to bring two of the following two subjects together: I wanted to reconcile the situation of the viewer encountering a bare room inside a gallery. The characters here are the viewer and the empty space. The viewer brings their body in its physical and mental state. The bare room brings the semblance of a void, or a manufactured emptiness by means of a lack of objects or materials. This paper investigates the relationship between interior space and the body, seen through a lens of absence and loss. These installations pose a void that removes the art object as the primary focus, shifting the focus to the viewer. My art process incorporates a reductive approach, focusing on the minimal forces that space can exert upon the body to negotiate absence or loss. This paper documents this development through a series of three installation works primarily concerned with bare rooms, while exploring the deactivation of desire and mechanisms that can trigger proprioception. The final outcome of my research project was an immersive installation in a seemingly bare room. In this instance, the material gesture was contained to the locus of the walls. Hundreds of 23-gauge hypodermic needles were pinned into the walls like spines from a cactus. The needle tips were only visible from the wall when standing close within two metres from the wall.
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ItemTime after time: an exploration of lineages of social space and materiality( 2017)This practice-led research project is concerned with investigating lineages of social space and its associated materialities constituted by homosexual men of the past. The project, which is reflected on in the ensuing paper, was developed over two years and has taken form as an emergent sculptural and spatial investigation that considers how an artistic practice can constitute a form of materialist historiography. The final outcomes of this research are comprised of a written dissertation and an installation which includes prints, video and sculptural objects. Each element of the installation elaborates on a proposition reflected on through the dissertation to consider trans-historical relationality; the performative and ephemeral establishment of lineages in the present through installation; and the literary evocation of homosexual desire through abstraction and codes. The exploration of a series of ‘texts’ has informed the propositions that have been developed through the studio research to consider the question: if and or how can an artistic practice act as a materialist method for evoking lineages of homosexual social-space?
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ItemMishandling the human: virtual surveillance and actualised error( 2017)This project is a practiced-based inquiry into the relationship between physical reality and virtual worlds in a period where digital technology has substantially transformed how we interact with our surroundings. The research investigates this relationship with emphasis on the interdependent nature of neural networks, extended consciousness and online surveillance. The research explores the increasing use of digital surveillance and the potential for the surrounding world to be restructured on feedback derived from algorithms. As the neural networks filtering such data are programmed with values reflecting the ideology of liberal capitalism, the results will inevitably be skewed in favour of this perspective. As smart devices and their users are contained within this feedback loop the paper considers how these systems of surveillance influence the perception of human identity. The resulting work responds to the use of surveillance technology, focusing on gaps in information and distortions in representation that occur through this filtering and assumed information. The works question the nature of online surveillance from a posthuman perspective and explore the potential problems that can occur with the adoption of cavalier attitudes towards these technologies. I have created three systems to reproduce the human form based on the mishandling of data. The resulting forms echo the fundamental contradictions inherent in these systems. The artwork produced through this process draws from limitations common to neural networks that process collected data. By decontextualizing, filtering, fragmenting and reconstructing data to create distorted versions of the original, the resulting sculptures present a vision of how systems alter subject matter when rendering a model from reality.
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ItemPulse, chance, flux: the energetic image( 2015)Pulse, chance, flux: the energetic image is a practice-led research project which investigates the possibilities for extending analogue film and digital video projection beyond mere image reproduction, to become a transmission of embodied energy. The project is broken down into three key areas of investigation: pulse (vibration; frequency), chance (indeterminacy; synchronicity) and flux (the flow and transduction of energy). This project argues for the existence of a fundamental pulse to the world, or rather for millions of pulses, overlapping each other. From the addition of a multitude of pulses of information arises interference: the complexity of the world. Key works of vibration by Alvin Lucier, Tony Conrad and Bridget Riley are discussed. Artistic strategies of chance are investigated as a means to imbue works with the complex- ity of interference and to question how deeply relation really goes. Key time-based works by John Cage and David Tudor are compared for their strategic attempts to model the indeterminacy of the world in their very form. Flux is articulated as being the flow of energy. Douglas Kahn’s concept of the Aelectrosonic (the always-moving electromagnetic) is discussed and an argument is raised for its extension from sonic practices to include the luminous. In thinking about Kahn’s idea of transduction as the ‘locating moment’ of energy, a fundamental technical difficulty in working with light energy versus sound can be accounted for by abandoning literal transductions, instead turning to allusions. Three projection installation works, Modulations (2012–2015), Black Noise (2012) and Dark Matter (2015), were created, each comprising arrangements of projection devices, objects and images in relation. Flicker was used as a tactic to transmit an apparent embodied energy via the projection to the visitor. Decentralisation and dislocation were used strategically to continually shift attention from object to image to space to experience. The marriage of these theories and tactics is intended to create an energetic ‘noise’ in the space, in the projection machines and in the neurophysical of the viewer.
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ItemMatter & spirit: the syncretic drawing( 2015)Afloat comprises a series of drawings, installation and video that explore the correlative ideas of the body as the medium of incarnation and drawing as the medium to articulate existence. The research is a collection of poetic rules for the action of being in the studio. Afloat is constructed according to these rules which then investigates general principles for the poetics of the artwork. The poetics are thought of in this case articulated through what I have termed operational systems. The most significant operational system involves the individual Spirit-Body relationship and the way spirit and body operate syncretically. The research investigates the striving for a harmonious equilibrium within these operational systems when taken into the studio and therefore explores how the systems translate into the process of production and the art objects. A syncretic process of production explores and reflects the same kind of interdependent relationship that exists between matter and spirit. The language resulting from the impulse to equilibrium found in the interaction between the operational system spirit and matter raises the question of truth in art. What makes for creation of, what IS, a truthful artwork? The correlation that this research intends to establish between art and existence is translated by the metaphorical sensation of being afloat, which is also where the work finds its title. It is through this psychological and physical state that the parallel will be understood, using the specific studio scenario of the space of drawing and its extensions as it unfolds into other mediums in its syncretic ekstasis
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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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ItemObjects that generate performance and performance that generates objects( 2014)Unfolding from a series of succinct studio experiments that use objects as scores for action, this thesis addresses the use value of objects and the effects of brevity as an artistic strategy. The written component grounds this practice — which has a background in experimental music — in a field of practices that are directly and indirectly indebted to John Cage treating them as a shared body of knowledge between art and music. Cage’s written score for 4’33”, his silent work, is explored in the writing as a direct influence on the development of the Fluxus ‘event score’ – a short written instruction for creating artworks – and it is this type of score that is the starting point for my own studio experiments. The Works<30s is a diaristic series of short videos that explores simple, succinct actions allowing them to exist as discrete, singular events. As with the ‘event score’, the series imposes a simple constraint on its subject matter (a 30 second time limit) that rather than restricting the outcome results in a variety of effects on content, structure and narrative. The Works<30s series proved pivotal to the development of other works particularly through the evolution of my thinking on the object as score and the elaboration of strategies that hold coalescence at bay – two concepts shared by the works explored in this research thesis. The two other main works detailed in this thesis are Species of Spaces a five-channel audio/video work and Things That Fit Together a sculptural installation, developing from the Works<30s series they document small simple actions, but collate them into larger collections. These works attempt to allow their elements to remain discrete in order to emphasize the relationship between each object and the performance it generates. This written component reflects the concerns of the studio-based research in its form and structure and is comprised of observations that move back and forth between historical and material research.
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ItemDistributed mobility and space investigated( 2013)This research project considers the body's movement within built form. It takes a multidisciplinary approach embracing theories and practices of visual art, architecture and dance; it examines ideas of the 'latent' and architecture's power to modulate the body. The research ambition is to materialise that which is concealed so that forces within space can be articulated. The project investigates installation methodologies, and the specifics and generics of public spaces. The artists, architects and theorists discussed in this paper have been chosen for their relevance to a consideration of the generic body and its interaction with architectural space. In addition, the methods by which perception and comprehension are attained via experience, and how these modalities affect the awareness of self within a direct and expanded context will be examined. The major interests and techniques of this research investigate working in a site responsive way to built form, centering on the passage of the body through and in space, and ideas of articulation and intervention. Methodologies include phenomenological analysis, diagrammatic and three dimensional representations, and installation/de-installation strategies within public and private spaces. This paper is presented with a site specific installation work that spans two rooms and attempts to demarcate the bodily movements connecting and within these spaces. Ideas of surveillance, focusing on the passage between the rooms, are considered in the work as well as notions of the body traversing interior spaces. The installation investigates the questions: to what extent does the body pre-empt what will be experienced in moving between spaces within a built form; how present is the body's memory and vision of what has been passed through; and can this memory and vision be absorbed from one place and carried to another. Methods of installation, which include both the adding and subtracting of building elements as a means of attempting to reveal what is already within the built form are utlised in the work, as well as ideas of containment of the viewing access zone. This final work is a response to the omnipresent surveillance of the spaces we move in.