This work is a confession in front of both myself and the one who reads my words and looks at my images. It is unusual to confess with images, because they uncover what we hide with words. Through a body of visual arts practice completed between 2000 and 2007 and its accompanying written commentary and critical account, I have attempted to address notions of the "unknown". In this enquiry, the "unknown" is understood to be hidden between "what I say and what I mean", where, for example, consciousness has no access between drawing and intention, or between prediction and intuition. This enquiry has proceeded through a multiplicity of media and modalities. In the - Personal Introduction - I describe some of the social, religious, political and artistic conditions of Poland in the 1980's and 90's, and the way this context has influenced my ideas and practice. In the early chapters- 'Beginnings'- 'Confessions'- 'Architectural Objects'- "Drawings on the Wall' - I trace the development of work between 1987 and the beginning of the research period in 2000. I identify the way that the making of these works enabled me to filter the major strands of concern that I later recognized as the fundamental conceptual and thematic elements of my current practice. In these chapters I describe the development of a sequence of works which lead from early interactive performances, installations, objects, through "altered" wardrobes, into architectural objects and wall drawings. I identify a number of key aspects emerging from these works to do with absence and presence explored through languages of light and darkness, spatial ambiguity, linear illusion, motion and trace. The central chapters are concerned with the work of the research period 2000 - 7. These chapter headings - 'Video' - 'Photographic Works' - 'Scores - the Drawing Concerts' - 'Obituaries' - 'The Unknown - Negatives - Black Light - are organized around the various modes of work that contribute to the research period. Although these modes might be seen as discrete they are in fact highly interwoven, dialogic and interdependent. Throughout, themes and concepts born in earlier work are identified and developed. In - 'Video' - relationships to drawing are identified, whilst repetition, looping and transposition open up questions of time, duration and eternity, thus initiating the discourse of the "unknown". 'Photographic Works' examines questions of the "still" and of "doubling" where both work to displace the human figure into hyper-natural environments where a meeting with the unknown might occur. 'Scores - Drawing Concerts' how these concerts are based on the power of line, as a consequence of honest, organic movement of hand and body in a response to kinetic impulsion and the rules of necessity in live action. Connections are made between this work and repetitive movement in the video works. The relationship between sound and the act of drawing is considered. 'Obituaries' describes a series of works in which death announcements, as they appear in a number countries and cultures, are put into a new context and transformed. With the destruction of the message of the obituary, the presence of the "unknown" is tested in both its personal and universal aspects. 'The Unknown - Negatives - Black Light' is a chapter that includes the most recent work. The work described in this chapter draws together multiple strands from across the whole body of previous work and is strongly related to other artists whose work deals with the absence of light. This work became the strongest bridge to the mystics who describe darkness as the most secure condition for a meeting with the "unknown". 'Mystics and Teaching' - examines the relationship between notions of mystics and my experience of what occurs between myself and students in a pedagogical context. It examines how procedures described by mystics, while facing the unknown, can be employed as methods to provoke appearance of the "unknown" for each individual in the creative process. 'Artists and Curatorial Work' attempts to locate my research in a wider context of artist's practice. In conclusion, the following text will seek to demonstrate how the body of work produced between 2000 and 2007 has engaged the viewer in a distinctive felt communion with the ineffable and the "unknown". This body of work has sought to visualize and manifest the "unknown" in a direct, physical and sensual engagement between artist, artwork, and viewer. In other words, the central premise of the work is set within a personalised relation to the "unknown" rather than an objectivised "understanding" of the "unknown".

This thesis and subsequent artworks present a critical examination into the degree to which public sphere theory can contribute to an expanded understanding of art and its publics. This research proposes that the notion of 'public' in the idiom 'public art' should be understood as a discursive construct as opposed to a physical, spatial understanding as in the term public realm. This revision considers the act of being public as a process, a series of inter-subjective temporal experiences, rather than a spatial condition. This helps expand art's role from an autonomous field of exhibition making into a position of publishing, thereby recognising art as a contributor to collective opinion formation. The thesis comes to a number of key conclusions. First, if we take into account that artworks are published as a consequence of being exhibited then we can understand art as part of the process of opinion (re)formation, thus contributing to a wider reflection upon art's social function. Second, by clarifying the distinctions between the terms public space, public good, and public sphere it is revealed that the use of the term 'public' in public art is heavily reliant upon the inherent physical, spatial differences between a primary and secondary audience. Third, by examining the traditionally accepted polarity between the street (public realm, open access) and the gallery (private, exclusive) it is determined that these spatial conditions are obsolete when establishing whether an artwork is considered public or not, as in the term public art. Finally, public sphere theory enables us to reconsider what constitute publics; members of the public are hereby declared as agents of opinion formation. In drawing these conclusions, this thesis (including artworks) argues for the validity and usefulness of Habermas' theory of the public sphere (and subsequent extensions of public sphere theory) both in an analysis of the function of art and its publics and in the production of artworks. I conclude that what public sphere theory ultimately provides us with is an alternative version of art and politics. As part of this analysis, the thesis develops a theoretical approach based on the work of Jurgen Habermas in order to contribute to and move beyond the existing understanding of the relation ship between art and its publics. The artworks function to demonstrate the distinctions between a physical, spatial use of the term public and a discursive use of the term public. The concepts and approaches embraced in the production of the artworks echo key ideas adopted from public sphere theory and operate as instances of publishing in themselves.

History of archaeology, not merely archaeology itself, has become an important subject in contemporary scholarship. An investigation of The Karlbeck Syndicate (1930-1934), a collector’s group that primarily focussed on the collecting and studying of early Chinese art, is based on primary archival research. The syndicate included some of Europe’s most prominent private collectors and significant national institutions at that time. This study analyses original, hitherto unpublished, archival data provided by a set of archives at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum. The mechanics of this interesting and some-what secretive collector’s group provides a contextual understanding of how Chinese collections were formed in this defined period in Western history and in the study of Chinese archaeology in Sweden and Britain. The syndicate is named after Orvar Karlbeck (1879-1967). This thesis focuses on his collecting method and pioneering scholarship in the then developing field of Chinese art and archaeology in Sweden. Together with Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874-1960) and Gustaf Adolf of Sweden (1882-1973) he played an undeniable role in the foundation of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. At the time a group of Bronze Age objects formed a novel collecting and study subject and also had just started to appear on the art market. This thesis examines the institutional and intellectual framing of these objects in the discipline of Chinese art and archaeology in Sweden and Britain. A close-knit group of Western specialists of Chinese art are deliberated. They were all connected to the Karlbeck Syndicate and its organisers; including Andersson and Karlbeck in Sweden and Perceval W. Yetts (1878- 1957), Robert L. Hobson (1872-1941) and Charles G. Seligman (1873-1940) in Britain. The aim of this study is not to provide an art historical but a historical analysis of the major players and theoretical orientations that they depended on. I will consider approaches on the evolution of stylistic development at that time and how this affected the display and institutionalisation of the objects. Moreover, it examines the different methodologies used to classify and categorise the non-Western objects within Western scholarship, including the so called comparative method. The intellectual background under which the syndicate operated was guided by some diffusionist concepts within the study of Chinese art and archaeology at that time. This debate is still playing a part in the current study of Chinese archaeology. Overall this study is based on the examination of archival material and will throw new light on a lesser known history of collecting and lay foundations to future research.

The qualitative assessment of image content and aesthetic impression is affected by various image attributes and relations between the attributes. Modelling of such assessments in the form of objective rankings and learning image representations based on them is not a straightforward problem. The criteria can be varied with different levels of complexity for various applications. A highly-complex problem could involve a large number of interrelated attributes and features alongside varied rules. An example of such an application is fashion-interpretation. In this case one can use attribute recognition to label different parts such as clothing and body shape automatically. Thus, the presence or absence of objects in the image is not ambiguous and a similarity measure can be established between images. It is however not clear how to establish such measure between the aesthetic impressions the images make. As a first contribution an approach for ranking images by pooling from the knowledge and experience of crowdsourced annotators is presented. Specifically, the highly subjective and complex problem of fashion interpretation and assessment of aesthetic qualities of images is addressed. To utilize the visual judgements, a novel dataset complete with labellings of various attributes of clothing and body shapes is introduced. Large scale pairwise comparisons of the order of tens of thousands are performed by annotators who follow fashion. Various consistency measures are then applied to verify agreement and correlation between the annotators to rule out inconsistencies amongst them. Based on the annotations, reliable rankings to automatically compare images according to fashion rules are established. Then, Bag of Visual Words object recognition is used to perform classification of the attributes. By incorporating annotator rankings from the first stage and these classification estimates in a lookup model for automatic assessment of images, pairwise comparisons can be automatically performed. Each visual attribute of clothing and body shape is represented within the rankings. Next, rankings obtained from the crowdsourcing procedure are included within several matching approaches to achieve a matching-based ranking. Nearest neighbour matches can be found for a pair of test images which can be compared with their rankings from the annotators. This can be utilized to establish which configuration is ranked better in an image pair. In particular, two prominent approaches of Bag of Visual Words and Local Descriptor Matching are employed to facilitate an evaluation. Several random splits of the dataset proposed in the first stage are used to form the training and test sets. Matches obtained are incorporated within an approach introduced to generate a global ranking. Evaluation from this stage is used as a comparative basis for the approach proposed next in which a learning procedure based on graphical modelling captures the annotator rankings. Finally, a novel approach for learning image representation based on qualitative assessments of visual aesthetics is proposed. It relies on a multi node multi-state model that represents image attributes and their relations. The model is learnt from pairwise image preferences provided by annotators. To demonstrate the effectiveness the approach is applied to fashion image rating, i.e., comparative assessment of aesthetic qualities. The attributes and their relations are assigned learnt potentials which are used to rate the images. Evaluation of the representation model has demonstrated a high performance rate in ranking fashion images.

The work examines the issue of displacement and migration through the notion of the 'ghost' and in the context of hauntology, that is 'a science of ghosts', a 'science of what returns', proposed by Jacques Derrida. Focussing on the complexities of haunting and the very particular condition of ghostliness, the arguments throughout the text are centred on the production of subjectivities on/through borders/boundaries, in reference to both contemporary art practices and materials circulated in contemporary visual cultures. In its broadest sense, the study addresses fundamental questions such as: What gives the movement its starts? How is it possible to consider the complexities embedded in migratory movements? The study takes up theoretical models, bodies of artistic practice, ethnographgic case studies of specific locations in Turkey and the broader geographical region, to produce an in-depth cross section of migratory effects and perceptions. The main argument in this study is that immigration is not a problem in itself; it is rather produced as a 'problem'. This concern is played out through the theme of haunting. The conditions of haunting emerge when the illusion of coherence, stability, homogeneity and permanence is faced with .t he shadowy realities of displacement, dislocation, unbelonging, with all the other layers of diasporic formations and migration flows, with the crossover and overlap of cultures, and with hybrid identities and new ethnicities that are constantly being formed. It sets up an inquiry into strategies of uncovering hidden structures embedded in the realities of displacement and migration rather than simply focussing on mapping the trajectories and consequences of human movement. In this instance, the' notion of the 'ghost' emerges as a strategic tool in an attempt to connect the past to the present, the living to the non-living, presence to absence, the visible to the invisible, the near to the far, the abstraction to the materialization.

This thesis explores the ways in which art practice can engage with science, and more precisely, how my own practice interacts with scientific knowledge. The theoretical underpinning and contextual position of the practice make it particularly suited to explore the concept of visuality, here deployed as a shared notion between scientific and artistic production. The artwork testifies to a deep interest in and fascination with the latest research in physics and the complex problems associated with the aesthetic visualisation of scientific concepts related to extreme scale, distance and mathematical abstraction. Through two volumes (a written thesis and supporting material) and an exhibition of artworks, the research asks: how can meaning be translated, transformed, and transfigured between one domain (science) and another (art), using the visual as its mode of mediation? Following an opening survey of the broader field of investigation, looking at past and present literature and practices in the realm of science and art, the thesis analyses my art practice (considered as a hybrid between graphic design, illustration and visual communication) in terms of its immediate context, underlying motivations and methods for the production of art. In its present form, my practice does not fit any of the current sub-domains identified in the landscape of contemporary art, and is often situated outside the dialogues and concerns of fellow practitioners. Nor does it fully belong to the realm of scientific visuality (or of an “aestheticised science”): the field has shown some limitations in relation to art’s own domain of images, where modes of practice are not shared. In this instance the art is often reduced to explaining and communicating science in visual form. In contrast, my practice deploys a more sophisticated engagement with its referent, which needs to be positioned in relation to other practices, and its wider field of enquiry. To address this issue, findings from the initial investigation are reintroduced in order to conduct a reflective analysis through which the practice – argued as distinctive, and yet related to other visual traditions – exposes the problems that exist in the loosely defined domain of “Art and Science”. Taking the position of the reflective practitioner, the thesis demonstrates how the notion of research is intrinsically embedded in the creative process; therefore the enquiry also argues for the production of artworks as artistic research. Through the formation of a three-fold proposition – a method-practice-discourse – the investigation shows how this body of work can participate in, and question, the dominant dialogues in Art and Science. Furthermore, it serves to revisit the conventional views in the study of visuality by articulating an alternative form of engagement between two otherwise specialist domains. Ultimately, the research presents its proposition as a contribution to knowledge by providing a model for both practitioners and scholars.

Audiobooks, although largely unexamined, should be perceived as the aural artefacts of a distinct artistic genre. It, in turn, should be identified as part of an interdisciplinary aesthetic category—one which has not been defined hitherto. To classify audiobooks as artworks, I turn to the New Institutional Theory of Art (NITA), which currently provides the most effective explanation available to determining not only what makes something into an artwork, but also whether or not a particular artwork can be deemed beautiful (i.e. aesthetically good). In utilizing NITA, instituting a context—a framework governing the artistic praxis of recording written texts and delivering them to a designated audience—I consequently create a unique aesthetic category. As an artistic institution in its own right, it determines the criteria for identifying aural performances as works of art, and, in effect, establishes audiobooks among all forms of aural performance. In rendering aesthetic evaluation and appreciation crucial aspects to defining art, the implied notion of internal logic—while not explicitly expressed—prevails as a core concept, inherent to a comprehensive understanding of NITA. In articulating its meaning, I suggest its association with the idea of informed intuition, thereby introducing them both as pivotal in illuminating the contribution of my expanded application of NITA. Effectively, in recognizing that to define art necessitates more than mere classification, one is able to employ an institutional analysis on different kinds of artistic case studies. By surveying three major case studies—all manifesting the first-person narrative as a fundamental aesthetic property of audiobooks—the concrete analysis of audiobooks as artworks proves essential to my methodology. Ultimately, by ascertaining their aesthetic quality, I propose to identify the manner in which the craft of casting aural performances necessarily, albeit unconsciously, consolidates aesthetic evaluation, and, effectively, illustrates how it pragmatically works in action.

Auto ethnographic research into personal artistic expression with regard to masculinity.

People with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) experience considerable difficulties communicating and develop idiosyncratic repertoires of communication that are understood and interpreted only by those closest to them. It is difficult to access their stories or to find out how they are living their lives via orthodox life story research practices and consequently their experiences remain hidden from history. This practice-led research was driven by the need to address a lack of methodological tools that enable the inclusion of people with PMLD as participants in life story work. The research sought to contribute to: 1. An understanding of the barriers, challenges and benefits of doing participatory life story work with people with PMLD. 2. The development of a range of methods that invite people with PMLD to participate in life story work, with specific, but not exclusive reference to rich media and digital tools. 3. A broader understanding of the every day social and cultural lives of three adults with PMLD. Researching alongside three adults with PMLD and their circles of support for an extended period of time using a qualitative mix of life history and ethnographic methods - including the shared examination of personal archive materials, participation in every day activities and interviews with close family and friends - revealed opportunities for them to engage in their pasts. Barriers of access and communication were identified and addressed. The deconstruction of narrative norms together with framing participatory life story work within a cultural, as opposed to an individual, context invited a reinterpretation of what it means to participate in life story work. Thematic analysis of the rich body of material generated by the project identified that opportunities to participate in life story work were dependent on particular qualities of people, time and environment. Participation in life story work was found to be beneficial to the participants with PMLD because it challenged perceptions, demonstrated their value as people living socially and culturally rich lives, provided a platform for shared remembering and was a catalyst for new narratives. The findings indicate possibilities for including people with PMLD as participants in other research areas including mental health and wellbeing.

This project, a thesis incorporating a 41,357 word textual commentary and related documentation of artwork, demonstrates and critically reflects upon a collaborative method of artmaking that addresses the following questions: Is it possible to reclaim communal space using trans-disciplinary art intervention and provide access for alternative contributors? How can temporary participatory art be used as an intervention into urban space and offer new forms of interactivity, engagement and critical awareness? These questions were addressed by critical reflection upon the development and outcomes of two projects that took place in Durban, South Africa and Turku, Finland. These cities were sites of global events, namely the FIFA World Cup in Durban, 2010, and the European Capital of Culture in 2011. These events and their branding facilitate unique forms of capital accumulation. I suggest that intervention at the site of these events is important in order to reclaim a temporary communal space for creative and critical inquiry. The artworks that I produced were temporary, site-specific urban interventions in public space using the insides and outsides of key buildings. The Durban projects were Street Child World Cup and Body Politic and, in Turku, Pallomeri and Meri Valvoo. The projects offered representation in public space in Durban for street children and, in Turku, experimental forms of engagement for the wider public. I argue that my method of participatory practice has wide-ranging potential for use by creative/scientific collaborations as an ethical/aesthetic model of temporary collaborative working. It effectively addresses problems around critical and creative access to urban public spaces outside of marketing/consumer discourses.