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This research addresses contemporary art practice and the monument in the 21st Century. In doing this, the notion of the monument in this research is considered to be an art object, conceived by artist(s) to memorialise, remind, instruct, or warn the public, as in the original derivation of the word ‘monument’. The late 20th Century started to see, in part, the democratisation of the monument. Here I propose that he traditional monument has always been political and a tool of the ruling elite. However, where previously the ‘Establishment’ influence was absolute, in recent times, some artists have sought creative space to place more controversial work in the public arena. Released from the restraints of authority, new monuments have been created that question the vicissitudes of our existence and it is this field of artistic practice that is the central issue in this research. Unlike monuments of the past, although they might have sprung from an historical event, these new monuments are less about memorial and more about the present. Often they ask demanding questions of our culture, our governments and of us, the people. Significantly, they are ‘monuments of dissent’ and because of their rejection of the status quo, it is proposed here that they should be termed ‘Neo-Monuments’. Whereas traditional monuments were normally to be found on the street, in the square or park, these spaces have now been augmented by an increasing number of publicly accessed galleries. We will see that there is now a more open-minded approach to critical, questioning even provocative monuments, and that we are seeing them both in galleries and in the public milieu. It will be argued that they are however still viable forms of communication. This research is informed by the creation, exploration, experimentation and analysis of my own art practice. Conclusions gained from this practice will be used to inform this research. Additionally, case studies of other artists engaged with the form and development of the neo-monument will be analysed to understand their rationale, and from this to determine what sets their work apart and allows them to be regarded as a neo-monument. This research will reflect on art-monuments created from the last quarter of the 20th Century until the present.

In this thesis I explore the contribution that my textile art and textile craft processes can contribute to an ethical dialogue through an emerging materiality. This contribution is distinctive because, by focussing on certain materials commonly thought of as ‘waste’, I am drawing attention to how the growth and acceptability of a disposable culture alienates us from both the material world and also from knowledge of ourselves. Through my practice and this thesis, and the interface between them, I explore how a recognition of this use, or rather mis-use, of resources can assist in better understanding the isolation and alienation that society is experiencing as noted for example by Bauman (2003). My current art practice and this research project seeks to uncover, reveal and deepen the connections with our material world; connections that are currently stretched and ruptured by the strictures of capitalism and the politics of neoliberalism. My work is about resources, the depletion of which impacts on the natural world and the biosphere. It seeks to bring about a reassessment of how we use, view and value ‘common’, everyday objects and materials in post-industrial societies, seeking to bring about and enable a less destructive and combative system of production and reproduction than currently exists. This work takes the form of an examination of materialism and materiality, less about its economic impact, but more as a search for a different materialism, a new materialism, a deep materialism, which will enable a reviewing and a reparation of the relationships between matter and materials and our (optional) need and desire for both. The materials I use in my practice have already passed through people's hands. They have been used fleetingly, are felt but not seen; consigned to their post-use phase. They are not broken, but our relationship with them is. I am re-working and re-presenting these materials so that they are seen as part of an integral and egalitarian 'whole', with no one material, human or otherwise, being seen as dominant or more important than the other. With recent developments in quantum physics showing us that matter we previously thought of as 'inert' is in fact made up of vibrating strands of energy and in a post-anthropocentric age of diminishing resources and an uncertain future, some may say an ecological crisis, it is crucial that we reassess and revise our relationship with the material world.

Through the practice of painting this research questions how geologically distinct earth colours that are constantly forming from coal mine water treatment waste in geographically varied landscapes across the UK can be used to re-view perceptions of colour, material, and connection with the contemporary landscape. If historical connections between colour and landscape have been expressed through the names of colours such as burnt sienna and, in the context of the UK, Oxford ochre, how can finding, naming and using new sources of earth colour re-establish links between colour and landscape? Over the course of several journeys across the UK, visiting 34 Mine Water Treatment Sites run by the Coal Authority, five previously un-used and un-named earth colours from different sites are selected and used here for the first time. What sets these new ochres apart is the quality of their colour and their formation processes inside the flooding cavities of former coal mines, inadvertently providing a sustainable source of earth colour at a time of increasingly scarce mineral resources that paradoxically point towards the causes of industrial pollution. The practice of making individual artworks reveal optical and material distinctions between the new colours while suggesting unexpected idiosyncratic connections between individual colours and the unique landscapes they belong to, further contributing to the discourse on contemporary landscape. This practice-led fine art research has inspired plans for the commercial production of a new paint made from these earth colours with AHRC collaborative partners Winsor & Newton. In addition, the informal partnership with the Coal Authority has laid foundations for a substantial collaboration that includes potentially naming and designating select Mine Water Treatment sites as new public artworks, with the possible formation of a pigment processing factory on one of these sites. These opportunities form the basis for further research.

This thesis presents an analysis of Höch’s work in relation to the idea of radical imagination. It proposes that Höch activated radical imagination in her work, aiming to transform perceptions of reality, in order to create social change. In pursuit of such change, Höch was influenced both by psychoanalysis and philosophy, in particular, by Salomo Friedländer’s concept of creative indifference. The target for radical imagination is the dismantlement and reconstruction of the prevailing moral, social and aesthetic order, from its root. This study argues that its effect derives from its rootedness in the perception of subjective realities. Beginning in the unconscious processes of looking and the construction of concepts of self and other, it is radical in means as well as in intention towards fundamental changes in values. While not directed at specific political aims, it is argued here that there is, nonetheless, an ethical and political imperative. The research has been carried out through an examination of Höch’s work in context, including by reference to Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud. Her work is also considered in relation to other Dada artists and the writer, Til Brugman. This study also uses art-practice to model, speculate and reflect on radical imagination. Both Friedländer and Höch develop their ideas through art: Höch in her varied practice and Friedländer through grotesque stories. Höch’s development of methods to enact radical imagination can be understood as akin to contemporary practice-based research. In foregrounding Höch’s ideas about imagination and reality, from her statements and the visual evidence of her work, this thesis aims to produce a new interpretation of Höch’s work, based on the attribution of agency to Höch as a pioneering cultural producer: her work contributing to a wider articulation of ideas about imagination with importance beyond the discipline of Fine Art.

Through building a taxonomy of drawing, and a set of four drawing research studies aimed at generating innovative cross-disciplinary practices, an argument will be developed that systematised drawings such as the music notation are hybrid representational environments, sufficiently different from other inscriptive practices as to merit a separate classification. The taxonomical model will decentralise specific modes of drawing, in favour of a multi-disciplinary view appropriate to the persistence of its subject as a deeply rooted strategic and executive practice, and the four studies will engage the time-factoring of notation systems as transductive environments, setting the conditions for innovative practices both in and outside of the frame of the inscription.

How might a photographic travelogue based upon personal first-hand experience and dialogic modes of self-representation actively embody and engage with the implications of whiteness as it impacts on racial hierarchies? And what ethical considerations should be taken into consideration when it is a white woman undertaking such research? The research was constructed through a field trip that followed loosely in the footsteps of an African man (Tete-Michel Kpomassie) from West Africa to Greenland. While undertaking this research, I made a visual diary of self-portraiture, documentary and auteur-style snapshots and portraits that mirrored points of encounter through the subjective gaze of my photographic practice and my own white female body. The photographic travelogue and the dialogue with Kpomassie framed the circumstances of the research, thus implicating my complicity as a white subject in a system organized by racial tenets. The methodology, which reflects my subjective as well as my categorical identity in different activities, such as middle-aged sex tourism, begs the question of what kinds of ethical factors and limitations need to be considered or transgressed when it is a white woman that is performing or conducting such research. These issues are examined in a discussion that juxtaposes the imagery with a selection of work around questions about racial/gendered and sexual identity, that has been carried out by other artists and academics in photographic, artistic and theoretical discourses, particularly Adrian Piper and Judith Butler.

Considerable research has emerged on the influences of the late Jerzy Grotowski, the eminent Polish theatre reformer who is famous for his ideas on the Poor Theatre. Among his many contributions to the theatre, his early focus on the primary importance of the actor - as opposed to the trappings of stage design - led him on a path of systematic transcultural experimentation and concentrated actor training using "source techniques" from ancient rituals to achieve "organicity" in his "Holy Actor" and his "Total Act". There has been some disagreement surrounding the extent of the inspiration he drew from particular traditions, including some Sufi orders, the form of esoteric Islamic mysticism practised in many of the regions he visited in Central Asia, India and Iran. This study provides a number of the Sufi-like elements of Grotowski's Productions and Post-Productions career phases, in parallel with a thorough examination of primary and secondary sources indicating both direct (Sufi) and indirect (Sufi-inspired) influences from his practices, studies, collaborators, and travels. A number of inferences are made based on historical and geographical clues, due to several factors underlying the incomplete records of his experiences. Findings include a number of robust similarities with Sufism and clear connections with both Sufi and Sufi-inspired people. This thesis contributes to studies on the broad range of cultural and ritual influences Grotowski drew from for his practices by compiling and highlighting their numerous references to Sufism, and it credits Sufism as one of his major sources of inspiration.

This practice-as-research project investigates the interrelations between performance, playfulness, and ecology, highlighting this as an important, though neglected, nexus of study in the current ecological context. I explore ways of performatively facilitating ludic interactions between people and their environments, investigate what benefits might accrue from doing so, examine the structure and significance of these interactions, and consider the role of performance training in their facilitation. Conducting practice-as-research 'in the wild' (cf. Hutchins, 1995) provides a unique and valuable perspective from which to interrogate current and historical thinking regarding play. The rigorous supporting rationale provided suggests potential areas of impact and value for the practice beyond the performances themselves and the qualitative evidence presented supports my argument that ludic (playful) performance can positively recalibrate participants' environmental attitudes and relations. In order to conduct this practical inquiry, I reflexively develop an original methodology: Popular Participatory Peripatetic Performance, or 4P for short. I fully integrate playfulness into three replicable models of practice, derived from 4P, each employing a different modality of peripatetic performance. They are: Perplexpedition - an intervention in public space; Wandercast - an audio-walk podcast; and Spinstallation - a performance workshop. Each of these forms a dynamic and responsive live artwork, enacted and documented in numerous iterations, allowing for reflexive development of the models themselves as well as the overarching 4P methodology; each constitutes research process and outcome. My aim in devising this tripartite approach has been to achieve significant comprehensiveness and also to render the project accessible and attractive to as wide a variety of participants as possible, thereby maximising its validity and the generalisability of its findings. Ecology is formulated here in line with Bateson's "ecology of mind" ([1972] 2000:xxiii), which seeks a holistic understanding of living systems through the recognition of far-reaching patterns and formal regularities. This project builds upon Bateson's notion that play constitutes one such pattern to develop the conceptual framework and practical approach that I term ludic ecology. I also employ Gibson's (1979) concept of affordance and draw on Kershaw's (2007) ecological approach to performance studies in ways which interdependently structure and support this project from both practical and theoretical perspectives. This project contributes primarily to three fields: ecological performance, through an original methodology and modes of practice; practice-as-research, through a novel theoretical stance and documentation techniques; and play-studies, by refining a distinction between play and playfulness and elucidating their philosophical status. This writing aims to clarify these contributions and thus position the project as "praxis" not only as "theory imbricated within practice" (Nelson, 2013:5), but also practice imbricated within theory.

Using the practical approaches developed for the research project, Imagining Autism, the PhD investigates whether engagement in a play-based drama environment can help aid the diagnostic process and understanding of autism. The research has used drama workshops to see if these can enhance the profile of strengths, difficulties and differences obtained in a more traditional clinical diagnostic assessment. The exploratory study also seeks to see whether the ADOS (the clinical assessment tool) can be completed in a different environment and if there is agreement between the two settings on these scores. In addition to this, what supplementary information may be provided about the individuals because of their engagement in this drama environment. Eight participants (aged 3 - 11 years) were recruited through the NHS and had gone through the clinical assessment. They engaged in the arctic environment twice, where they encountered puppets, props and full-body characters e.g. the slapstick snowman, in play-based interactions with trained practitioners. The sessions were documented and analysis occurred afterwards, using a novel coding framework, and additional information obtained from parents and practitioners. These were then compared to the clinical assessment scores and reports, to test the hypotheses. Both qualitative and quantitative analysis will compare the two sets of information from the different environments, seeking to present a more holistic and rounded view, focusing not only on the difficulties but also on the strengths of the individual.