Fine Art

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Bronwen Findlay, Yinka Shonibare and Joanna Smart: Approaches to pattern and form in contemporary artists’ practice.
(2017) Smart, Joanna.; Spencer, Faye Julia.; Hall, Louise Gillian.
The purpose of this Master’s dissertation was to investigate the use of pattern and fabric in the artworks of contemporary artists Yinka Shonibare, Bronwen Findlay and the researcher, Joanna Smart. Through this enquiry the aim was to position her practice and approach with respect to pattern in the contemporary Fine Art context. This research intended to explore how pattern and textile is used to challenge the art and craft hierarchy within the art of a few contemporary artists. Further this research acknowledges a subjective element in these artists choice of pattern and fabric. The methodology used in this research is Practice-Based, which will reflect on how the researcher makes work through the painting process and the documentation of that process. The theoretical framework that underpinned the thesis is the art/craft debate. The researcher’s studio practice aimed to disrupt hierarchies of art and craft, and this dissertation explored how notions of art and craft have been interrogated in her painting. This dissertation discussed how the approaches of other artists has shifted the researcher’s work with regard to pattern and cloth. The researcher aimed to experiment with the different ways in which textiles and pattern can be used in the researcher’s paintings. Through a reflection of her painting practice and an examination of how other artists use pattern and cloth, the complexity of possible meaning inherent in pattern and fabric was explored. For example, the conceptual meaning of pattern and fabric in the researcher’s painting practice was encouraged by the research into other contemporary artists’ works. The researcher discovered a deeper appreciation for the way cloth and pattern challenges hierarchies within art and craft. Furthermore, the way in which pattern and cloth are often used as signifiers of culture and identity was explored. This dissertation explores how pattern and cloth reflects the researcher’s experiences. Importantly, the review of other artists’ work shifted how she uses fabric and pattern as a representation of culture and identity in her paintings. Additionally, her practice shifted visually with regards to diverse textures, colours and tones.
Can’t you see it is mine? A consideration of the appropriation of space through the use of building materials (earth, clay and bricks) in art making.
(2022) Gush, David Hofmeyr.; Hall, Louise Gillian.; Draper, Jessica Lindiwe.
The purpose of this dissertation is to consider the extent to which the materiality of an artist’s art making materials can demonstrate an appropriation of the space in which the work is exhibited. The specific medium I have considered is the use of earth, clay and/or bricks. The dissertation concentrates on artworks that are exhibited as installations. The research into this question considers particularly in what ways might artists appropriate the space purely through the use of their choice of materials. Is the appropriation dependent only upon the nature of the work, or does the materiality of the medium constitute an overt appropriation of a gallery space in which the artwork is exhibited? The dissertation examines and explores these issues through the application of research-led methodology and the consequential influence and application of the results of the practice-led research on my own work. In the course of considering this influence, this dissertation explores specific works by Dineo Bopape, Antony Gormley’s Field Series, Walter de Maria’s New York Earth Room, Jorge Mendez Blake’s The Castle and Charles Simonds’ New York Dwellings, all of whom have used earth, clay and/or bricks in their work. The dissertation includes a series of photographs and a video of the installation entitled somewhere between heaven and hell which forms the practical offering of this project. I conclude that while the materials contribute to the environment, it is the overall effect (the environment and atmosphere) of the installation that creates an appropriation for the viewer.
Pedestrian speech act: filmed landscape explored through stalking.
(2023) Croeser, Michael Alan Colvile.; Hall, Louise Gillian.
This study proposes that a landscape recorded by video while walking into it, or what I call stalking into it, enables the creation of a more profound self-reflection than a single isolated picture of the same landscape. My stalking, whose primary process is based on Debord’s subject-object model, is derived from several fields including, but not limited to, psychogeographic fiction and psychogeographic research. Stalking is an intensely self-focused way of moving through the landscape while filming it, that draws on the unconscious walking practice of deambulation, and the notion of “the signifying body” in relation to hand-held camera filmmaking, which encourages a kind of sensory and bodily hyperawareness. Based on Elder’s conviction that this signifying body can be reflected in film by catching changes in perception, movement and the body’s location in the moving image, a similar hypothesis is explored through stalking movements reflected in a series of films called Paths. These path films created through stalking are perceived as a kind of “in-between” space, as underexposed videos positioned between my inner space and the outer space of the woodland zone. This research project explores my stalking reflected in these paths as visual autobiographical traces, as pedestrian acts of speech, and as creating a certain experience and form of time defined within the uniquely positioned environment of the woodland zone. Furthermore this study investigates my stalking and filming actions as disrupting pictorial space, and as creating video labyrinths connecting past and present walking experiences within suburban hinterlands, furthering aiming to implicate the viewer through my simultaneous absence and presence in the image.
Poised in space: between mark and maker, investigating the effects of unknowing on my artistic practice.
(2018) Birch, Caroline Clare.; Hall, Louise Gillian.
The focus of this research is to investigate the effects of unknowing on my artistic practice. This encompasses finding ways to access unknowing, and ways of remaining open to unknowing. Profound uncertainty, which disrupted my artmaking practice, was initially perceived as an artist’s block. When the approach to this uncertainty was changed to one of curious enquiry, the close relationship between instability, uncertainty and transformation was revealed. This investigation unexpectedly found that the solution to this prohibitive uncertainty was not provided by knowledge but by deliberately turning away from knowledge (Morgan 2014: 111). Discovering ways to repudiate understanding or knowledge as a goal, revealed the generative potency of unknowing. Unknowing appears to be a ubiquitous yet indefinable presence, whose influence was felt in this study as instability, uncertainty, or disorientation. Practice-led research (PLR) proved an invaluable means of embedding these experiences in artmaking methods. ‘In-the-dark’ artmaking methods were developed from PLR interweaving of artmaking practice and theory. This provided a means of moving away from understanding (Morgan 2014: 111) and of cultivating uncertainty and instability. From ‘in-the-dark’ methods a new understanding emerged that artist, materials and unfolding interaction (Carter in Barrett & Bolt 2007: 21) together constitute a single artmaking intelligence. Referred to as energy density, this concept is underpinned by extended mind theory (Clark & Chalmers 1998), material thinking (Barrett & Bolt 2007: 19-20,30), Hannula’s (2009: 4-5 of 20) “democracy of experience” and physics. Energy density embodies the spacious structure of atoms and all matter (Eddington 1948: 2; Niaz 1998: 534-537), indicating the lack of physical impediments hindering the transformative influence of ‘spacious unknowing’. Additionally, this research demonstrates that prior knowledge of an action was not required to be able to act or make art. Action embodies the transformative quantum of action (Bohr 1958: 17-18; Eddington 1948: 180,185; Hilgevoord & Uffink rev. 2016: 11-12 of 25) and enabled the implementation of destabilising ‘in-the-dark’ methods. Instability and transformation are closely allied in this study. ‘In-the-dark’ methods, applied using PLR and “postmodern emergence” methodologies, have triggered radical change at all levels of my artistic practice.

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