Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Installations (Art) Australia'

A small number of framed prints can be seen on approach to the exhibition. They are black and white — the predominant colours of the entire exhibition. Viewers will walk into a dimly lit room and see a frail, house-shaped structure made out of Perspex plates. The plates have images scratched into them, some with the residue of ink. Inside the house is an old iron rabbit trap as well as lighting which casts imprecise shadows into the surroundings. Around the walls are a series of charcoal drawings on paper. Most of the images are of a single object or figure. Circling around the room and weaving in and out of the viewers will be Pam on an old pushbike.

The project aims to produce an immersive video installation titled 'The Glittering City???. This project investigates contemporary cultural issues within the context of critical/specific geographical sites. These locations are the Australian coastal border, and a refugee camp near the Kenyan/Sudanese border, known as Kakuma. 'The Glittering City'is an installation that incorporates elements of video, sculpture, sound and electronics in a kinetic 2 channel immersive video and (multi-channel) audio installation. The key aims for the project are to raise awareness of the issues facing refugees and asylum seekers in relation to their sense of home. In order to accomplish this aim the research will extend upon prior research into embedded video sculptures. A subset of the key aim is to seek funding for the project. The installation is the third and final work from a trilogy of works that explores the themes journey, arrival and departure, respectively. The Glittering City is contextualised within four key areas inherent within the research practice. These key elements are 1. hybrid documentary art, 2. expanded cinema, 3. Technology and art, 4. culture and identity. Key outcomes of the research are the production and installation of The Glittering City at Campbelltown Arts Centre, May 2007. An educational program also took place at the Centre to raise awareness of the themes the installation poses. The production of a catalogue for The Glittering City is an important device for disseminating the core concepts. For the costs of making the multi-channel production, the project successfully sought grant funding from Arts NSW. This resulted in a grant through their Western Sydney I Artists' Fellowship program. The Glittering City used further funding from the Campbelltown Arts Centre to cover catalogue production, invitation design, mail out and installation costs.

This paper is conceived of as an overview and a discussion positing that there is inherent uncertainty in the subject, and that installation art can act as a revelatory agent in the viewer’s understanding of this uncertainty. This - the recognition of uncertainty - can be achieved through the inclusion of uncertainty itself as a trope in artwork. The self and subjectivity are open to a myriad of speculation and theory. Informing my discussion are theories of the uncanny, the abject and Buddhist discourse of the misapprehension of self. In this paper, I will focus on the concept of uncertainty in relation to subjectivity and suggest the existence of the narratizing process that determines the individual’s sense of self and perception of the world. This proposes an idea of the ‘self’ as a fiction, and includes discussions surrounding narcissism (the shoring up of identity), anxiety (existential fear), certainty (misguided search for solidity of self), imagination (the fictionalising process and the amelioration of anxiety), the interstice (breaks in the cognitive narrative). As well as my own work, 1 am focussing on artists whoutilize elements of fantasy and the uncanny in their work, namely Mike Nelson, et a1., Gregor Schneider, Eija- Liisa Ahtila and Gregory Crewdson.

This exegesis frames my studio thesis, which explores whether visual art can be a site for reconciliation, a tool for healing, an educational experience and a political act. It details how my art work evolved as a series of cycles and stages, as a systematic engagement with people, involving them in a process of investigating 'their' own realities - both the stories of their inner worlds and the community story framework of their outer conditions. It reveals how for my ongoing work as an indigenous artist, I became the learner and the teacher, the subject and the object. Of central importance for my exploration was the concept and methodology of bothways. As a social process, bothways action-learning methodology was found to incorporate the needs, motivations and cultural values of the learner through negotiated learning. Discussion of bothways methodology and disciplinary context demonstrated the relationships, connections and disjunctions shared by both Aboriginal and Western domains and informed the processes and techniques to position visual art as an educational experience and a tool for healing. From this emerged a range of ARTsongs - installations which reveal possible new alternatives sites for reconciliation, spaces and frames of reference to 'open our minds, heart and spirit so we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions, transgressions - a movement against and beyond boundaries' (hooks, 1994 p.12). Central to studio production was bricolage as an artistic strategy and my commitment to praxis - to weaving together my art practice with hands-on political action and direct involvement with my communities. I refer to this as the trial and feedback process or SIDEtracks. These were documented acts of personal empowerment, which led to a more activist role in the political struggle of reconciliation. I conclude that, as aboriginal people, we can provide a leadership role, and in so doing, we can demonstrate to the wider community how to move beyond a state of apathy.

This exegesis frames my studio thesis, which explores whether visual art can be a site for reconciliation, a tool for healing, an educational experience and a political act. It details how my art work evolved as a series of cycles and stages, as a systematic engagement with people, involving them in a process of investigating 'their' own realities - both the stories of their inner worlds and the community story framework of their outer conditions. It reveals how for my ongoing work as an indigenous artist, I became the learner and the teacher, the subject and the object. Of central importance for my exploration was the concept and methodology of bothways. As a social process, bothways action-learning methodology was found to incorporate the needs, motivations and cultural values of the learner through negotiated learning. Discussion of bothways methodology and disciplinary context demonstrated the relationships, connections and disjunctions shared by both Aboriginal and Western domains and informed the processes and techniques to position visual art as an educational experience and a tool for healing. From this emerged a range of ARTsongs - installations which reveal possible new alternatives sites for reconciliation, spaces and frames of reference to 'open our minds, heart and spirit so we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions, transgressions - a movement against and beyond boundaries' (hooks, 1994 p.12). Central to studio production was bricolage as an artistic strategy and my commitment to praxis - to weaving together my art practice with hands-on political action and direct involvement with my communities. I refer to this as the trial and feedback process or SIDEtracks. These were documented acts of personal empowerment, which led to a more activist role in the political struggle of reconciliation. I conclude that, as aboriginal people, we can provide a leadership role, and in so doing, we can demonstrate to the wider community how to move beyond a state of apathy.
Thesis (Professional Doctorate)
Doctor of Visual Arts (DVA)
Queensland College of Art
Queensland College of Art
Full Text

The work being considered for examination will be my gallery installation Affliction. Consisting of approximately six hundred digitally printed and hand constructed three dimensional models, it will be installed on the gallery floor as a part of the Postgraduate Degree show at Sydney College of the Arts (Tuesday December 9th through to Wednesday December 17th). My masters project explores the isolation and dislocation experienced in the urban environment and situates un-commissioned street art as a construct that potentially generates modes of plurality through immediate encounter, collaboration and intervention. My work explores the inter-activity of street art. This is done through a reading of Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics - a theory of art that takes as its theoretical horizon the realm of human inter-actions in social spaces. 1 demonstrate the inter-activity of street art through a discussion of my work as well as the work of three other street artists. In doing so, 1 also draw attention to the virtual characteristics of the anonymous urban environment by locating street art as a virtual representation of the art world, the street artist as an avatar and the city surface as an online blog.

Scenario House, a gallery based installation, is comprised of a room constructed as a ???family room??? within a domestic space, a television with a looped video work and a sound componant played through a 5.1 sound system. The paper is intended to give my work context in relation to the processes leading up to its completion. This is achieved through clarification of the basis for the installation including previous socio-political discourses within my art practice. It then focuses on ways that the installation Scenario House is based on gun practice facilities such as the Valhalla Shooting Club. Further it gives an explanation of the actual production, in context with other art practices. It was found that distinctions between ???war as a game??? and the actual event are being lost within ???simulation revenge scenarios??? where the borders distinguishing gaming violence, television violence and revenge scenarios are increasingly indefinable. War can then be viewed a spectacle where the actual event is lost in a simplified simulation. Scenario House as installation allows audience immersion through sound spatialisation and physical devices. Sound is achieved by design of a 5.1 system played through a domestic home theatre system. The physical design incorporates the dual aspect of a gun shooting club and a lounge room. Further a film loop is shown on the television monitor as part of the domestic space ??? it is non-narrative and semi-documentary in style. The film loop represents the mediation of the representation of fear where there is an exclusion of ???the other??? from the social body. When considering this installation it is important to note that politics and art need not be considered as representing two separate and permanent realities. Conversely there is a need to distance politicised art production from any direct political campaign work in so far as the notion of a campaign constitutes a fixed and inflexible space for intellectual and cultural production. Finally this paper expresses the need to maintain a critical openness to media cultures that dominate political discourse. Art practices such as those of Martha Rosler, Haacke and Paul McCarthy are presented as effective strategies for this form of production.

This paper explores the relationship between place in installation art and its relevance to the practice of placemaking in a hospital setting. The discussion draws on phenomenology, psychodynamic theory and contemporary art, in particular the author's art experience of places, their formal qualities and potential meanings, along with, an examination of what creates an embodied sense of being contained at home ( emotionally and physically). Some of the questions posed for discussion include; what is it about places that becomes inherent to memory and shapes its form? How do places impact on what we do there and who we are? Is place more significant in memory for a young child or someone in a vulnerable state of being (as in the hospital setting)? Process issues, along with physical outcomes, in installations and in the hospital projects are discussed.

Thesis (M.V.A.)--University of Sydney, 2008.
Title from title screen (viewed 11 September, 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Visual Arts to the Sydney College of the Arts. Degree awarded 2008; thesis submitted 2007. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis seeks to examine the concept of the corroded memory, an idea that has driven the development of a large body of original creative work which includes performances, compact disk recordings, audio walks and video installations. I have completed this work during the last four years of part time study as a Master of Arts - Research student, enrolled at the University of Wollongong, Faculty of Creative Arts.In this thesis I examine, analyse and provide a context for a variety of publicly presented sound andvideo works. The conceptual framework and intent, together with the compositional techniques employed in each work are documented along with a self-evaluation of the various failures and successes of these works. Where necessary I will allude to references of work and ideas by other artists, composers and musicians who have influenced my work.This thesis was written to clarify ideas that are central to my folio of creative and curatorial work. My folio can be found on companion music CDs and DVDs. The text of the thesis which includes five appendices with a more detailed description of each work will have most significance for those readers who refer to the documented performances supplied on recorded media.

Addressing possibilities for authentic combinations of diverse media within an installation setting, this research tested hybrid blends of the physical, digital and temporal to explore liminal space and image. The practice led research reflected on creation of artworks from three perspectives – material, immaterial and hybrid – and in doing so, developed a new methodological structure that extends conventional forms of triangulation. This study explored how physical and digital elements each sought hierarchical presence, yet simultaneously coexisted, thereby extending the visual and conceptual potential of the work. Outcomes demonstrated how utilising and recording transitional processes of hybrid imagery achieved a convergence of diverse, experiential forms. "Hybrid authority" – an authentic convergence of disparate elements – was articulated in the creation and public sharing of processual works and the creation of an innovative framework for hybrid art practice.

Working primarily within the natural landscape, this practice-led research project explored connections between the artist's visual and perceptual experience of a journey or place while simultaneously emphasizing the capacity for digital media to create a perceptual dissonance. By exploring concepts of time, viewpoint, duration of sequences and the manipulation of traditional constructs of stop-frame animation, the practical work created a cognitive awareness of the elements of the journey through optical sensations. The work allowed an opportunity to reflect on the nature of visual experience and its mediation through images. The project recontextualized the selected mediums of still photography, animation and projection within contemporary display modes of multiple screen installations by analysing relationships between the experienced and the perceived. The resulting works added to current discourse on the interstices between still and moving imagery in a digital world.

This exegesis examines the context of my studio work submitted for the degree of Doctor of Visual Art at Griffith University in 2004. My art practice reflects my identity, which is complex and many-stranded, but at its core is my identity as a 21st century woman of Torres Strait Islander descent. I also acknowledge multiple heritages and, like many of my contemporaries, I am a descendant of those two thirds of the Torres Strait population who now live on the Australian mainland. Having been born and brought up on the mainland also means that I am connected to, and have been affected by, wider Australian Indigenous issues, particularly those resulting from the alienation and dislocation which stem from colonialism. Therefore, as I draw from both traditional and contemporary modes and theory to explore the appropriateness of my art practice, this exegesis centres on the question: What constitutes culturally appropriate practice for me as a contemporary Torres Strait Island woman?

This exegesis examines the context of my studio work submitted for the degree of Doctor of Visual Art at Griffith University in 2004. My art practice reflects my identity, which is complex and many-stranded, but at its core is my identity as a 21st century woman of Torres Strait Islander descent. I also acknowledge multiple heritages and, like many of my contemporaries, I am a descendant of those two thirds of the Torres Strait population who now live on the Australian mainland. Having been born and brought up on the mainland also means that I am connected to, and have been affected by, wider Australian Indigenous issues, particularly those resulting from the alienation and dislocation which stem from colonialism. Therefore, as I draw from both traditional and contemporary modes and theory to explore the appropriateness of my art practice, this exegesis centres on the question: What constitutes culturally appropriate practice for me as a contemporary Torres Strait Island woman?
Thesis (Professional Doctorate)
Doctor of Visual Arts (DVA)
Queensland College of Art
Full Text

Thesis (M.V.A.)--University of Sydney, 2009.
Title from title screen (viewed November 26, 2009) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Visual Arts to the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. Degree awarded 2009; thesis submitted 2008. Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction: I find myself in the pantry, cleaning shelves, in the laundry, water slopping around my elbows, at the washing line, pegging clothes. I watch myself clean shelves, wash, peg clothes. These are the rhythms that comfort. That postpone. (The Painted Woman, Sue Woolfe, p. 170) As a marginalised group in Australian art history and society, women artists possess a valuable and vital craft tradition which inevitably influences all aspects of their arts practice. Installation art, which has its origins in the craft tradition, has only been acknowledged in the art mainstream this decade; yet evolved in the home of the 1950s. The social policies of this era are well documented for their insistence on women remaining in the home in order to achieve personal success in their lives. This cultural oppressiveness paradoxically resulted in a revolution in women's art in the environment to which they were confined. Women's creative energies were diverted and sublimated into the home, resulting in aesthetic statements of individuality in home decoration. As an art movement, women's installation art in the home provided the similar structures to formally recognised art schools in the mainstream, and include: informal networks and training (schools); matriarchs within the community who were knowledgable in craft traditions and techniques and shared these with younger women (mentorships); visiting other homes and providing constructive advice (critiques); and women's magazines and glory boxes (art journals and sketch books). A re-examination of this vital period in women's art history will reveal the social policies and cultural influences which insidiously undermined women's art, which was based on craft traditions.

This research advocates a multi-method approach to bioarts praxis, reflexively and critically questioning the contemporary contexts that frame our engagement with nonhuman life. In doing so, the research aims to generate further community engagement with nonhuman life and the environment, and engender critical discourse on the implications of developing biotechnologies. Hegemonic institutions influence the way culture is produced and how information is constructed and understood. Habermas (1987) suggests that these institutions will inevitably influence the individual’s lifeworld as they shape lived experience through the process of systemic colonisation. I assert that this process also shapes how individuals engage with or understand nonhuman life. Through the implementation of three major projects the research aims to develop the capacity of bioarts in challenging such institutions by providing the opportunity for hands-on life science activities and real-time interactions with nonhuman life. The research by employing such methods aims to counter-act the impact of urbanised living and indifference to environmental conservation. Each aspect of the creative praxis provides a reflexive case study to establish the research aims and answer the research agenda. This includes my creative bioartworks, an art-science secondary educational course and a curated group exhibition, symposium and workshop. This research provides an alternative communicative approach to hegemonic institutions such as the mass media, scientific biotechnological industries and traditional gallery spaces (Shanken, 2011).

This exegesis examines the theoretical concept of contemporary kitsch within a creative practice that incorporates sculptural and installation art. Kitsch is a distinct aesthetic style. Once designated to the rubbish bin of culture, kitsch was considered to be low class, bad taste cheap fakes and copies (Greenberg, 1961; Adorno & Horkheimer, 1991; Calinescu, 1987; Dorfles, 1969). I argue, however, that this is no longer the case. This research critically examines the way in which contemporary kitsch now plays a vital and positive role in social and individual aesthetic life. Although there are conflicting points of view and distinct variations between recent cultural commentators (Olalquiaga, 1992; Binkley, 2000; Attfield, 2006) on what kitsch is, there is a common sentiment that “the repetitive qualities of kitsch address . . . a general problem of modernity” (Binkley, p. 131). The research aligns the repetitive qualities to what sociologist Anthony Giddens (1991) refers to as “dissembeddedness” (1991) or “the undermining of personal horizons of social and cosmic security” (Binkley, 1991, p.131). The research investigates: how the sensory affect of sentimentality imbued in the kitsch experiences, possessions and material objects people covet and collect, offer a way of the individual moving from disembeddedness to a state of being re-embedded; and locates the ways in which the artist can facilitate the re-embedding experience. Through this lens it is demonstrated that kitsch has become firmly rooted in our “lifeworlds” (Habermas, 1971), as an aesthetic that reveals “how people make sense of the world through artefacts” (Attfield, 2006, p. 201) and everyday objects; that the sensory affect of sentimentality on connections to possessions and material objects that contemporary kitsch offers is shared across cultures and societies

This research is an investigation into a visual language as my response and reading of the narrative related to a sense of place in an altered landscape: a space where humans have carved their autobiography into the earth. Robert Smithson, in the 1960s characterised regions like these as the edges of post-industrialism or Nonspaces. They also exist as communities, holding onto an identity forged by their definitive history and cultural influences. Incorporated in the research is the exploration of ordinary or everyday landscapes within the context of Cultural Landscape studies. In focussing on the 'shaping' of the town and environs of Zeehan, a once burgeoning mining settlement on the West Coast mining strip of Tasmania, history, industrial archaeology and the impact on the natural environment are taken into account. Zeehan is a shadow of its dynamic past, a boom and bust story that is now enshrined in a local museum, and evident in the relics adorning the main street and surrounding countryside. It is a place of hidden history inextricably linked to the development of Tasmania. However in the new millennium the underground continues to be the lifeblood of this former silver boomtown. Seeking an appropriate format of presentation of this cultural landscape resulted in the development of installation-based artwork: an intersection between digital media, large-scale drawing and sculptural concepts. Re-interpreting and re-presenting the spirit of nature and technological interaction in the so-called Nonspace incorporates the exploration of a phenomenological approach as well as more formal methodologies. The research also examined the concept of the Nonsite. According to Smithson, the Nonsite was a representation or interpretation of a particular site: an abstract three-dimensional logical picture. With its integration of diverse media, the project relates to a field of artists and filmmakers working within the themes of Cultural Landscape (Jan Senbergs, Susan Norrie and Jem Cohen), Museum Strategy/Archaeology as Myth (Mark Dion, Alan McCollum), and The Grand Narrative (Joan Jonas, Kutlag Ataman and Bill Viola). I discuss their works in relation to matters concerning landscape and human intervention, historical discourse, fragmentation of time, the blurring of boundaries and the overlapping of genres. My original contribution to the field is to extend the presentation of the documentary film/video genre from an ostensibly two-dimensional medium to an installation based artwork within an art gallery space utilising the seemingly incongruent mediums of large-scale drawings and sculptural elements. Within this context the resulting narrative creates an environment, which both immerses the viewer and provides contemplation, presenting a re-interpretation of the Nonsite as reading of the Nonspace.

This paper explores the relationship between place in installation art and its relevance to the practice of placemaking in a hospital setting. The discussion draws on phenomenology, psychodynamic theory and contemporary art, in particular the author's art experience of places, their formal qualities and potential meanings, along with, an examination of what creates an embodied sense of being contained at home ( emotionally and physically). Some of the questions posed for discussion include; what is it about places that becomes inherent to memory and shapes its form? How do places impact on what we do there and who we are? Is place more significant in memory for a young child or someone in a vulnerable state of being (as in the hospital setting)? Process issues, along with physical outcomes, in installations and in the hospital projects are discussed.
Master of Arts (Hons)

There is a keen interest in spirituality today - a new search for meaning. As Tacey (2003, p.2) comments; “We are caught in a difficult moment in history, stuck between a secular system we have out-grown, and a religious system we cannot fully embrace. “Clearly, a spirituality exists in Australia that is no longer associated with religion.” I believe the starting point for this spirituality is in the everyday. Evidence of spirituality exists in families, a microcosm of society, and in family homes. This is where life’s ultimate questions seem to be answered – Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? As a visual artist doing a Creative PhD, my thesis follows my own journey as an immigrant finding place and space, which I call ‘splace’, in Australia. Being a mother, I have attempted to locate my children in a community and religious landscape foreign to me. The resulting fine art exhibition at Span Galleries, Melbourne, uses the familiar geography of the church building as a framework to explore aspects of spirituality in four galleries named: VIRTUAL NARTHEX - The spiritual self’s recognition of self CHAPEL – the spiritual self’s space/place within the family NAVE – the spiritual self’s relationship to community SANCTUARY – the spiritual self’s life journey ‘from here to eternity’ The concurrent community art exhibition, ‘CHISHOLM’S HOMES: Shaking Down the Miracle’, at the Migration Museum, Adelaide, augments the chosen themes and their creative processes. My art as visual theology, places spirituality within the grasp of the everyday, a holy pilgrimage through the ever changing, ever challenging passage called ‘family’. Using installation, it incorporates fabric, found objects, wood, styrofoam, tapestry, text, movement, digital composition and soundscape, to deconstruct fixed, preconceived family and spiritual references. September 11th has increased a fear of other cultures. There has never been a better time to globally effect much more than tolerance but to reflect common values and visions; discovering a universal search for meaning as transferred through families and community. Beyond imagery and words, I explore the expression of spirituality in building a harmonious multicultural society. To me, all this is the art of seeking the immortal now.

This thesis critically examines site-specific art projects in Australian museums from the late 1960s onwards. Despite the fact that site-specific art practice is relatively widespread, there have been few in-depth or systematic studies published on this subject, particularly in terms of its historical and theoretical foundations. More importantly, there have been no in-depth studies explicitly on Australian site-specific art, and so my research aims to extend the existing knowledge on this art form while applying it to an Australian context. Because the site-specific field is vast, I narrowed my research to focus on artworks located in museums, including art, natural history, cultural history museums, historic houses and sites, and botanic gardens. The inclusion of such a wide range of museums is in part due to the fact that the artistic projects in these institutions vary greatly. Additionally, the comparisons between art museums, and those in which art is a (usually) temporary visitor reveal certain aspects of Australian culture, values and colonial history, than discussing art museums alone. The title, 'the museum as art', refers to the role of the museum as site, subject and medium in the site-specific works of art under examination. It reinforces the significant relationship and dialogue with the museum in question- the museum is an integral part of the artwork. The key aim of this thesis is to identify and critically analyse significant site-specific art projects undertaken in Australian museums by both local and international artists. I also critique existing theoretical writings about site-specific art, particularly the paradigms established by Miwon Kwon and James Meyer and devise my own working models as applicable to museum-based site-specific art. The aim is not to replace these paradigms, but to expand on existing models using local and more recent examples. Although this thesis focuses on Australian site specific art practice, and the way in which Australian museums construct knowledge and reflect national values, my models are equally relevant to international museums. The chapters in this thesis are arranged thematically, centred around significant art examples which are in turn used to illustrate wider issues relating to site-specific art practice. In analysing a large number of art projects, I have observed a range of strategies used by artists working in museums. Firstly, an artwork may respond to the physical or spatial aspects of the museum. Artworks also frequently interact with a museum's collection or archives, or question the institution's representation of history or social constructions of nature. Others mimic museum classification strategies or highlight ingrained display methods that have become normalised, almost invisible, to the average visitor. More functionally, the work might be used by curators to enliven tired museum spaces or communicate aspects of history poetically, allowing for speculative histories or subjective responses - methods unavailable to regular historians. Lastly, an artwork may seek to preserve intangible heritage or highlight gaps in knowledge or history, particularly when it comes to the representation of Aboriginal Australians or women. I argue that current site-specific art practice reflects a move away from the Modernist frame, illustrated by the growing popularity of non-art museum sites and converted ex-industrial 'raw' spaces, particularly since the mid-1990s. Theorists such as Kwon and Meyer tend to ignore the pre-Modernist philosophy towards art, where art frequently sat in dialogue with the site. However, contemporary site-specific art practice, although distinctly different to the pre-Modern site/art relationship, indicates an acknowledgment and celebration of the unavoidable influence of exhibition environments on works of art. At the start of this research, I questioned the notion of an 'Australian art'; however, I can now demonstrate that site-specific art, more than any other art form, has the ability to address distinctly Australian concerns. It can reveal how a nation's museums not only reflect, but also develop and promote particular values and knowledge. The very marginality of art practice makes it an ideal method in which to critically examine cultural assumptions and norms, and despite the risk of site-form of institutionalised institutional critique, I have demonstrated how artworks can question institutional authority and highlight gaps in knowledge in a way that curators, historians and museum directors simply cannot. By recording a range of artistic interventions in Australia's public museums, and analysing them in relation to both existing site-specific theories as well as my new extended models, this thesis demonstrates not only the complexities of site-specific art practice, but also the role that art can play in interpreting, challenging and re-presenting existing knowledge as mediated by the museum.

This research considers the performance of situated subjectivity where the state and the individual vie for dominion over the drives that construct the body as what one has (the body as object), as what one is (the body as subject), and as what one becomes (the absent body). To turn power into pain, the State prospects the body of the subject to anchor its power through abjection. In so doing, it compels that body to channel the abject as a power to be wielded as a weapon of the weak, thus forcing into view the true interior of the State. Sections I and II position a discourse of trauma in Singapore using a parenthetical framework that is constructed by and mediated through the criminalized and punishable bodies of two young Asian males. The first discusses the carefully constructed ob-scene (off-stage) nature of the obscene (abhorrent) execution of convicted drug trafficker Van Nguyen in 2005 (the body as object); the second examines its inverse – the public spectacle of creative ‘death’ imposed upon artist Josef Ng (the body as subject) through government condemnation and expulsion for an alleged obscene (immoral) performance at 5th Passage in 1994. To do this, the thesis engages with the enforced interchangeable processes of disembodiment (for the display of symbolic violence) and embodiment (for the exertion of physical violence). Comparisons are also made of the way the State demonstrates its preparedness to turn the display of power into a process of exacting the ultimate pain from the punishable body. This is perpetrated on the one hand via a spectacle of invisibility that keeps the mandatory death penalty a secretive process, and on the other, its inverse, the publicly staged media spectacle of persecuting performance artist/s and 5th Passage. The events that follow led to the defacto banning of performance art and 5th Passage’s demise in 1994, ending my role as its artistic director. By relocating the performance of death from the high courts and offices of Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry (the site of symbolic violence) and Changi Prison (site of physical violence) into plain sight in the Australian media, the press is discussed as an instrumental force in deploying a penal counter-aesthetic to pierce through Singapore’s veil of secrecy surrounding its executions. The thesis demonstrates how this engendered a ‘seeing through’ that galvanized acts of intersubjectivity and the performance of social witnessing in Australia as an attempt to save Van Nguyen from the gallows. The institutional censorship of an artwork about the execution in 2005 is discussed to show how signifying practices such as visual art continued to agitate the state’s performance to construct itself as a “global city for arts and culture” on one hand while crushing artistic subjectivity when it is perceived as dissent on the other. This glimpse into the fragility of the Singapore nation’s divergent desires, where one performance portrays the disintegration of another, recalled the originary cultural rupture at 5th Passage in 1994 when artists engaged in performance were sensationalized in the Singapore media as social deviants. As an extension of state apparatus, the media is shown to repress artistic subjectivity through its creation of a controversy that led to the illegitimization of scriptless performance art, thus producing a distinctively Singaporean cultural artefact – the absent body. Out of the personal and social trauma framed by this confrontation with the state, Section III presents a body of visual work that I have since produced in the period marked by these two events (between 1994 to 2008) as a reply to the state. From this place of banishment, the thesis traces its evolvement into the body machine (Rich Manoeuvre series) as part of a practice that sees it for what it is within the paternal order, to locate the points where fragility occur.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Blender Studios is a hybrid cultural and commercial hub for Australian street art and fine art, operating both as a collaborative studio space for artists and as a base for a range of collective art endeavours. Utilising ‘Blender Studios’ as a case study, this research is based on the proposition that it has played a pivotal role in establishing a new aesthetic through the rise of street art. The practice-based creative component of the project takes the form of an exhibition and installation. The research period is inclusive of a two-year corporate residency undertaken at The District shopping centre in Melbourne’s Docklands precinct. This corporate residency, and other Blender activities, raise questions such as: Does the radical street artist in a corporate/commercialised structure become, utilising Berlin-based writer Elvia Wilk’s term, like an ‘artist as consultant’? The research undertaken for this project will highlight the paradigms and tensions between notions of both the urban art aesthetic and fine art frameworks. Furthermore, the research will reveal the manner in which cultural activity is sustained and valued through the lens of ‘the Blender’ and provide a potential blueprint for artistic endeavour of the future.

This research considers the performance of situated subjectivity where the state and the individual vie for dominion over the drives that construct the body as what one has (the body as object), as what one is (the body as subject), and as what one becomes (the absent body). To turn power into pain, the State prospects the body of the subject to anchor its power through abjection. In so doing, it compels that body to channel the abject as a power to be wielded as a weapon of the weak, thus forcing into view the true interior of the State. Sections I and II position a discourse of trauma in Singapore using a parenthetical framework that is constructed by and mediated through the criminalized and punishable bodies of two young Asian males. The first discusses the carefully constructed ob-scene (off-stage) nature of the obscene (abhorrent) execution of convicted drug trafficker Van Nguyen in 2005 (the body as object); the second examines its inverse – the public spectacle of creative ‘death’ imposed upon artist Josef Ng (the body as subject) through government condemnation and expulsion for an alleged obscene (immoral) performance at 5th Passage in 1994. To do this, the thesis engages with the enforced interchangeable processes of disembodiment (for the display of symbolic violence) and embodiment (for the exertion of physical violence). Comparisons are also made of the way the State demonstrates its preparedness to turn the display of power into a process of exacting the ultimate pain from the punishable body. This is perpetrated on the one hand via a spectacle of invisibility that keeps the mandatory death penalty a secretive process, and on the other, its inverse, the publicly staged media spectacle of persecuting performance artist/s and 5th Passage. The events that follow led to the defacto banning of performance art and 5th Passage’s demise in 1994, ending my role as its artistic director. By relocating the performance of death from the high courts and offices of Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry (the site of symbolic violence) and Changi Prison (site of physical violence) into plain sight in the Australian media, the press is discussed as an instrumental force in deploying a penal counter-aesthetic to pierce through Singapore’s veil of secrecy surrounding its executions. The thesis demonstrates how this engendered a ‘seeing through’ that galvanized acts of intersubjectivity and the performance of social witnessing in Australia as an attempt to save Van Nguyen from the gallows. The institutional censorship of an artwork about the execution in 2005 is discussed to show how signifying practices such as visual art continued to agitate the state’s performance to construct itself as a “global city for arts and culture” on one hand while crushing artistic subjectivity when it is perceived as dissent on the other. This glimpse into the fragility of the Singapore nation’s divergent desires, where one performance portrays the disintegration of another, recalled the originary cultural rupture at 5th Passage in 1994 when artists engaged in performance were sensationalized in the Singapore media as social deviants. As an extension of state apparatus, the media is shown to repress artistic subjectivity through its creation of a controversy that led to the illegitimization of scriptless performance art, thus producing a distinctively Singaporean cultural artefact – the absent body. Out of the personal and social trauma framed by this confrontation with the state, Section III presents a body of visual work that I have since produced in the period marked by these two events (between 1994 to 2008) as a reply to the state. From this place of banishment, the thesis traces its evolvement into the body machine (Rich Manoeuvre series) as part of a practice that sees it for what it is within the paternal order, to locate the points where fragility occur.