This project considers the potential impact of learning relations between hobby craft makers and formally educated makers. It questions how the craft based relationship of a formally educated artist and a self taught/amatuer maker can be renegotiated and implemented in a broader learning context. The artistic research aims to propose that a facet of ‘new knowledge’ in the field and future of contemporary art and craft production is one of togetherness; by embracing discomfort and the unfamiliar to affirm and reveal the knowns and unknowns of one's own practice and field. The question is considered in discussion with social/relational art practices, amatuer craft theory and gift theory. The project culminates both in this paper and an exhibition piece as part of Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design Spring Exhibition 2016.

The main purpose of this research is to examine artistic thinking processes from my practical experience as an artist. This thinking process is discussed through my term: 似藝術-art-like in the context of 'practice-based research'. '似藝術-art-like' is an amalgamated form of Mandarin characters with English words; it is both a picture and a word that serves as a temporary conceptual framework that aims to keep possibility open and meaning mobile.' Significantly,似藝術-art-like is addressed through language and artworks together with an attempt to reinterpret the relation between thinking, outcomes of thinking, and the complexity of meaning in relation to art. 似藝術-art-like operates as a temporary conceptual framework for discussing the thinking process and demonstrating the problems and contradictions in art research. This is a practice-based study so that visual and written elements and the structure of the thesis are each approached as a form of 'practice'. In addressing 似藝術-art-like in the written elements of the thesis, a series of stratagems or gambits are employed that attempt to explain or find formulation for the developing thinking process in art research. Each gambit is a form of artifice that serves to demonstrate the pursuit of addressing thinking through language as an impossible task, and functions as a manoeuvre for opening a conversation in understanding the thinking process in art. To facilitate my understanding, I explore my questioning of thinking in relation to Jacques Derrida's supplement and différance, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's rhizome, Mieke Bal's, framing, Susanne Langer's distinction between art and language, and Immanuel Kant's disinterestedness and aesthetic idea. It becomes apparent that no one theory satisfactorily explains what happens; it is too complex. Presentation of the inadequateness and contradictions in my developing process provides an examination of there being no specific answer. As a result, I conclude that utilising written words and artworks in my thinking processes and demonstrating them as physical outcomes is a process of constant confrontation with contradictions. It is a provocation that makes an artist-based researcher/research-based artist, re-think, re-disturb, re-articulate, and re-consider the conceptual frameworks in relation to developing artistic research. Ultimately, this research responds to the problems surrounding the relationship between thinking and the outcomes of thinking and meaning in relation to art. It demonstrates the difficulties and complications for seeking mobile thinking and for exploring the possibilities of artistic research. As a whole, the research points out the complexity of the process in terms of employing thinking through artworks and written words together. This invites a suspension of preconceived concepts and questions what knowledge mightbe in the context of an art enquiry.

This thesis adopts a primarily process-based methodology to put a museum in its place as a site of knowledge-making. It examines the practices of space which were productive of a government-funded (‘national’) museum in Edinburgh. Taking a spatial perspective, and recognising that place is both material and metaphorical, the thesis explores how the Museum’s material and intellectual architectures were produced over the period 1854-1939. The thesis is concerned to bring into focus the dynamic processes by which the Museum was in a continual state of becoming; a constellation of tangible and intangible objects constantly being produced and reproduced through mobility of objects, people and ideas. Its concern is to chart the flows through space which produced the Museum. The thesis comprises nine chapters. An introduction and a literature review are followed by chapters concerned, respectively, with the built space of the museum and with the people who worked there. A further three chapters consider the nature of that work and the practices of space which constituted the processes of collecting, displaying, and educating, whilst another focuses on visiting. The final chapter discusses how the analysis has constructed the museum as constituted through a complex diversity of material and metaphorical settings on a variety of geographical scales. This critical scrutiny of the museum has, in turn, brought to the fore the place of the Museum in contributing to civic and national identity. Through a case-study of a particular museum, the concern has been to explore how critical geographies of science may be applied to the examination of a museum. In particular the thesis examines how contextual concepts developed largely in conscribed sites such as laboratories apply to a public site such as a museum. The thesis suggests that the ordering terms ‘space’ and ‘place’, combined with a focus on practice and performance, may have more general application in constructing an historical geography of museums as sites of production and consumption of scientific knowledge.

As an artist, I am interested in understanding how and why humans interact with the natural world. I examine my own individual behaviors and practices and research impacts made on nature by humans as a whole. I am drawn to nature for a multitude of reasons, including aesthetic beauty, psychological wellness, unraveling the mysteries of the universe and trying to understand the origins of life. As an artist I explore the dialectic relationship between everything we perceive outside of ourselves as the environment, and the way we think of ourselves in relation to that environment. I believe in the interconnectedness of all living things and I am interested in understanding why humans are the only species which act against their best interests in preserving the habitat that is necessary for survival. These questions bring me to address the issues of greed, consumption, and control over resources in my art practice.

Chance and the found object set the stage for artworks that illustrate the clash between the everyman, popular culture and high art. The investigation of my process, surroundings and interests leads to an infinite amount of possibilities in a process that is beginning to eat itself.

This paper establishes the pivotal role and irreplaceable value of painting in the technology-driven, image-saturated contemporary culture today. Particularly in my work, painting old childhood photographs creates a contemplative platform where I can deconstruct and reconstruct relics of my formative past as means of better understanding my multicultural upbringing. Inspired by both Chinese Communist propaganda posters and the ’85 New Wave Contemporary Chinese Art Movement, my senior project confronts the façade of perfection staged in Chinese family portraits through convoluted layers of imagery and Chinese text that build up the painting. The amalgamation of bold outlines, expressive brushstrokes, and disciplined grids, challenges the stifling values of discipline, order, and homogeneity in traditional Chinese culture.

This is a series of daily writings. Each day consists of a new topic and is closed at the end of the day. The ideas presented are philosophical, humorous, rambling, lamentations, incantations, doubt-ridden, aesthetic pep talks which combine into an affective representation of my studio practice’s becoming. There will be little congruency, some stories, and a lot of parallels because that is who I am.

In my studio practice I attempt to create sensual experiences from which nothing is learned and lack resolution; this thesis is an attempt to find ways to outline these experiences. However, this attempt will eventually lead to something entirely different, for these experiences are undefinable and impossible to investigate. I will try to show how the components of the work, rather than forming a direct link to a chain of thoughts or associations, summon an experience that is derived only from the encounter itself.

My art explores my attraction and repulsion to a commodity driven society. Paint Thing and Saint Thing are characters that I created to push my boundaries as a painter and question my process within painting. Working through my agitation, feeling of loss and confusion, I find that two parts need to be present: a belief in the process and the fear of it coming undone. I use painting, sculpture and video to question the materiality of canvas and paint. I incorporate plastic objects, glittery materials, and things that have ephemeral qualities. I am attracted to synthetic forms and objects when arranging them in my compositions. In my work I look closely at the social constructs and systems that bind us to the commodity driven market. I feel if we are to understand our current conditions, we must also include the impact and importance of things in our material world.

How a person is treated because of their gender is potentially very frustrating. I use bird plumage patterns to illustrate humans as animals and idioms in language to illustrate these ideas. The artworks by Natalie McLaurin mentioned in the paper are You didn’t see me, Untitled. Nancy Horne, Don’t be such a Nostradamus Wild Beast, Don’t be such a Nostradamus Man Beast, Don’t be such a Nostradamus Air Beast, Don’t be such a Nostradamus Domesticated Beast, Ballet Lessons, Throwing a Fit and Falling in it, Gravel Kick, Cocksure, Peckerhead, Mockery, Naked as a Jaybird, Naked as a Jaybird too, Naked as a Jaybird as well,Tennessee Trash, Tennessee Trash State Animal, the Raccoon, Beard Measuring Contest, Cockery Mockery, He needs me, Chaka Kahn thinks she is the mocking bird of babes, Territorial Peckerhead, Tennessee, Territorial Peckerhead, Bed-Stuy, and Territorial Peckerhead, 7th Ward.