Contemporary art practices that have most clearly been identified as ‘queer’ have tended to be figural representations of sexual bodies and sexual communities. This thesis argues that queer encounters with non-figurative art can occur through audience experiences of different modes of disorientation and uncertain re-orientation. The discussion presents and develops Sara Ahmed’s work on Queer Phenomenology (2006) and specifically investigates ideas of ‘orientation’, ‘disorientation’, ‘facing’ and ‘extension’ in art practice in order to theorise queer encounters with art. In doing so, the research develops an expanded notion of queer beyond lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans identities; not to exclude such identities but rather to add to existing queer art practices a further troubling of representation and bodily uncertainty that is focussed on experiencing art. The aims of this research are threefold: firstly, it is to investigate the value and limitations of representational ‘queer’ art. Secondly, it is to explore the possibility of creating queer art installations that do not contain overt representations of sexual bodies or sexual communities. The final aim is to examine how experiencing disorientating art practice might engender queer encounters. In the process of understanding experiential encounters the discussion critically explores the relationship between phenomenology and queer theory. The research aims are specifically explored through the making of five art installations. My first installation; Club Cave 27 was created with attention to stripping away overt representations of sexuality or sexual identity. The second and third installations Glitter and Scott Walker engage with troubling ideas of orientation and investigate the potentially queer materiality of glitter. The fourth show Desk Works was concerned with enacting disorientating encounters whilst the use of desks came about through my experience of feeling primarily orientated towards writing in a ‘practice-led’ Ph.D. My final installation queer:reading:room further enacts disorientating experiences through bodily uncertainty. Taken together, the five installations constitute a body of non-figurative queer art practice that is generated primarily through disorientating affects.

This thesis explores the significance of the female voice and silence in four artworks by contemporary Iranian women artists working during and in the immediate aftermath of the Reform period (1997-2005): Mandana Moghaddam (b. 1962), Samira Eskandarfar (b.1980), Newsha Tavakolian (b. 1981) and Neda Razavipour (b. 1969). While the politics of the cultural, social and creative representation of women in Iran has attracted much scholarly attention, there has been a tendency to focus on a very limited set of issues, most notably the veil as both object and practice. This thesis seeks to shift the emphasis away from the politics of the veil within the context of art, by analysing the presence and absence of the voice in the realm of visual representation, specifically installation, video and photography. Aspects of the historical roots of the debate concerning the female voice in non-religious, cultural and public contexts, particularly since the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, provide the framework for exploring how contemporary women artists engage with the regulation and ‘veiling’ of the female voice in their creative practice. By drawing on a range of theoretical materials and sources, including those within art history, cultural studies, ethnomusicology, feminism, psychoanalysis and political science, this thesis argues for an expanded way of looking and listening to Iranian women’s art, and demonstrates how the spaces of art become crucial sites where socially prescribed modes of representing women are powerfully interrogated and contested. By addressing the expressive qualities of audio-visual media, and the relationships between the visual, audible and aural, the aim of this thesis is to offer a new means of exploring the relationship between contemporary art and cultural politics in Iran, and to bring to light neglected works of art by contemporary Iranian women artists.

This practice-informed research is an exploration of the tension that exists between a representational image and the material of its construction in moving image art. In this thesis, I discuss the viewer's role in perceiving and sustaining the tension. In developing this research, I have created three moving image artworks in digital media. Inspired by Jackie Hatfield's statement that 'the ascendancy of any one theory, history or lineage ... is due to the scarcity of writing relative to other art forms' (Hatfield, 2004, p.14), I describe this tension in moving image art in relation to the art forms of sculpture and narrative. Contemplating the viewer's attempt to perceive an illusion despite an apparent awareness of a work's material form; and discussing the viewer's attempt to perceive/construct narrative from a restricted number of elements; has enabled me to establish a background to the research. It is reinforced with reference to Peter Gidal's Theory and Definition of Structural-Materialist Film (1976) and his statements such as 'the attempt to decipher the structure and anticipate/ re-correct it ... are the root concern' (Gidal, 1976, no page number). In further developing the viewer's role in perceiving and sustaining tension, I relate this concept to my own practice. As an artist, I am interested in the represented presence and absence of the human form. Inspired by my early practice as a sculptor, I discuss the viewer's perception of tension in relation to the tensions inherent in the materialist conception of being. I then develop this idea in relation to my three moving image artworks created to further this research. In this instance, I discuss the viewer's perception of tension in relation to the psychoanalytic process of 'projection' and discuss the conflict between what is seen and what is perceived. To conclude the research, I discuss how accepting different elements from different directions is part of the creative process. As a way of emphasizing the viewer's role in perceiving tension, I use the final chapter of this thesis 'Developments on the Research' to argue the persistence of tension in other artworks.

This thesis critically interrogates the concept and practice of l’écriture féminine as proposed by Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva to challenge phallocentric structures embedded in language and culture. It examines why abstraction has been so problematic for women and feminist artists and why, despite l’écriture féminine being utilised in art practice it came to a standstill in the mid-1990s, ceasing to provide possibilities for women’s abstract painting. By using l’écriture féminine as a ‘lens’ with which to see abstract painting, I have distilled particular aspects of it and put forward my own concept and practice of peinture féminine to move on from these problematics. I demonstrate that whilst the historicity of Modernist abstraction is embedded in abstract painting, it is not bound by rigid and fixed structures and conventions and these are not phallocentric per se. Peinture féminine as defined here reconceptualises abstract painting as a spatiality comprising multiple, shifting and heterogeneous spaces. In doing so, it expands abstract painting internally and opens up these conventions non-oppositionally. By elaborating on the ‘feminine’ in relation to current thinking about subjectivity, I argue that the unfolding of abstract painting through its ‘opening out’, enables an enfolding of difference within this spatiality. Peinture féminine offers new ways of understanding how difference can manifest through material production, rather than a focus on representing difference through a ‘feminine’ aesthetic. I draw on my own art practice and the work of other artists, locating this study as ‘art-practice-research’ through a ‘writing//painting’ approach which underpins my research; considering the textual as not being transposed into the painterly but as intertwined within this relation. This approach is productive to non-oppositional thinking and elaborates on the theory/practice relation as entangled, providing possibilities for ways of thinking about Fine Art doctoral research.

Playing On The Edge is an investigation into the practice of specific performance provocateurs and the wider nature of cultural provocation. It aims to articulate what occurs and argue that provocation can play an important function in the process of renewal, both for individuals and for societies. In particular it examines provocateurs who work in popular performance because the fine tuning of practice has to be more acute to be acceptable and because the effects are more wideranging. It refers to the work of Banksy, Sacha Baron Cohen and clown-activist Leo Bassi. It also draws on Mason's own work over twenty-five years as performer, teacher and creator. It explores different kinds of challenge and forms of popularity, the power negotiations involved in the relationship between a provocateur and those who are provoked and the implications of maintaining a position on an edge. It draws attention to similarities between complexity theories and cultural theories of play and risk, in so doing it argues for a correlation between the two approaches. Using this correlation it arrives at three, inter-related analogies of 'edge' which reveal an oscillation between structure and fluidity in practice, the ambivalent combinations of these in a single moment and the potential opportunities and problems these offer.

This thesis offers a feminist reading of women’s art in Britain and North America in the 1970s. Through archival research and interviews, I trace and elaborate the social and political context for a range of art-making practices. Prompted by the organisational ideals of the Women’s Liberation Movement, specifically decentralisation and anti-hierarchy, I focus on collaborations between women across four chapters populated by a number of case studies. With reference to the work of theorists and philosophers, including Juliet Mitchell, Hannah Arendt, and bell hooks, I analyse the ambivalences that can accompany working together, and the transformations that can arise from coming apart. In Chapter One, I look at how artists were influenced by the form of feminist consciousness raising sessions, both in their own activism and in their artworks. From the Rip-Off File (1973) to What is Feminist Art? (1977) along with work by Hannah Wilke and Howardena Pindell, I examine how feminist artists created a space for women’s art that was itself tested by dissensus and critique. Chapter Two focuses on collaboration at a distance, through the International Dinner Party by Suzanne Lacy and Linda Preuss (1979), the Women’s Postal Art Event (1975-7), and the work made by Cecilia Vicuña while in exile in London from her native Chile post-1973. In Chapter Three I examine how artists used the home as a site for political work within the context of feminist pedagogy in California, squatting in London, and racialized gentrification in New York. Chapter Four looks at feminist exhibition-making, specifically Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists organized Lucy R. Lippard in 1980 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. I examine the difficult relationship between socialist feminist politics and working-class women artists. My conclusion reflects on work of historical research in the context of recent feminist exhibitions and activism.

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My hypothesis is that colour as idea acts as a dynamic in the production of meaning and as such is part of what Le Doeuff (1991: 46-49) argues are deeply held epistemes that structure and govern our ways of thinking. I have dealt with the difficulties attendant on the analysis of a phenomenon as insubstantial as colour (as idea and as precept) by assuming Goethe's (1810: 305-323) concept of the enrobement of colour to objects without also attaching Goethe's theoretical hypothesis of moral associations to colour. Thus I combine four different methodologies to broadly related areas and cloak each in colour: the long cultural historical view, the statistical, a case study and an applied art historical comparison. In the first part I have constructed an alternative vision of the development of colour theory from Plato to now, its philosophical, psychological and mythological construction and the consequent framing of women as colour. I discuss how a constructed hierarchy of chromatic value has informed perceptions of gender, arguing that authoritative epistemologies such as colour theory have established fallacious belief systems of chromatic value that reinforce cultural perceptions of gender. In the second I have conducted a three-year perceptual psychology experiment designed to reveal the extent of stereotyped chromatic perceptions of gender in visual arts students at two institutions of Higher Education. The data and results are statistically analysed and the evidence of acculturated chromatic perception is discussed in relation to universal culturally patterned belief systems of chroma and gender. Thirdly I have taken 'yellow' as an epistemological and historical study that proposes and explores an underlying determined semiotic chroma that ensures normalising belief systems survive material and social change. I deconstruct some of the theological mythologising structures and meanings of 'Yellow' and discuss the implications for art history of racism and the recuperation of feminised colour as an adjunct of the phallus. Finally I discuss two women artists, Sonia Delaunay and Bridget Riley and the implications of the word 'colourist' for them as women in art practice. I argue that the general unconscious assumption is that colour originates in emotion instinct and ethnicity and equates women with colour at the level of the imaginary insisting that success for women artists is incumbent upon their colour being confined in a phallic symbolic framework of masculinity. I evidence how acculturated perceptions of 'woman' as colour naturalises and ensures the continuation and institutionalisation of cultural and social systems.

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