This thesis deals with a collection of 300 preserved tattooed human skin fragments held in storage at the Science Museum, London. Historically part of the Wellcome medical collections, these skins are of European origin and date from c.1850-1920. The collection was purchased in 1929 on behalf of Sir Henry Wellcome from a Parisian physician, and is exemplary with respect to its size and coherence. The thesis argues for the significance of such collections for the understanding of the material culture of medicine. As little archival material relating to this particular collection survives, it is contextualised both in relation to the contemporary museum setting, and within nineteenth-century medical and criminological discourses surrounding the tattoo. Through the adoption of a combined auto-ethnographic and historiographical approach, this thesis sets out to explore all aspects of the collection. The structure of the thesis demonstrates this method and reflects my working process: The project is first situated within the contemporary museum context, and framed within an ethical and political field in which human remains have been problematised. This context underpins a theoretical approach that redefines these remains as hybrid entities, and informs a multi-sensory, auto-ethnographic working method within the museum environment. A close visio-material analysis of the tattooed skins then explores both their substance and iconography in some detail. The collection of skins is then situated within the broader historical contexts of flaying; nineteenth-century collecting practices and medical and criminological discourses on the tattoo; an analysis of historical procedures and contexts of skin preservation and display; and a visual analysis of the iconography of the tattoos and critical discussion of their reading. Through this approach, I demonstrate that the tattoo was a highly ambiguous and frequently stigmatised sign in the late nineteenth century, whose polysemic and fugitive meaning eluded criminologists who sought to assimilate them into taxonomies of deviance. Similarly, as contemporary museum artefacts, they resist simple categorisation and interpretation, necessitating an interdisciplinary, ethnographical-historical approach, which enables a multi-faceted understanding of their substance, significance and origins.

The thesis positions my practice led research within the context of the archive, asking if the documents and artefacts of process might remain as independent artworks in their own right. Focusing on practice as a temporal action through performance practice, research focuses on notion of the trace - those aspects of the archive which might be overlooked, or not conform to traditional notions of the document. By identifying a taxonomy of the performance archive elements such as mythology and repetition have been explored, expanding our consideration of the potential form that the archive may take. Using the methodology of triangulation, the study combines knowledge from contemporary performance practices, the professional practice of the archivist, and theoretical debate around the archival form. In writing the thesis and parallel body of practice led research I have employed selected techniques of the archivist, whilst allowing the voice of the practitioner within the academic structure of the thesis. The study builds on existing research into the archives of performance practice, as an area of artistic activity which has reflected upon its own documentation process. The research answers different questions from those studies which seek to archive contemporary performance in such a way to accurately represent the original, instead, it constructs an archival-artwork which exists as an independent and evolving body of practice. The research produced functions within this structure of the archive due to its fluid nature, just as the traces of a practice are uncertain and open to interpretation, so the body which houses them is one which may exist in multiple contexts. By working with artistic process, rather than only performance events, the research and findings are applicable to a range of interdisciplinary practices, instead of those only engaged in the live action. The study offers methods for approaching the remains of these practices and considering their function in relation to the archive.

Through a creative portfolio and critically reflective writing, this thesis explores how divergent sound-art practices can represent oral history narratives found in post-conflict societies, such as Northern Ireland and Bosnia. Recently collected interview materials have been transcribed, edited -and transformed through the application of a newly devised artistic methodology that draws on the field of verbatim theatre. This re-telling of personal narratives takes place through intertwining the practices of verbatim song-writing, sound design, live performance and installation art. The primary aim of this research is to increase access to the often forgotten knowledge found in individual experiences, thus augmenting more generalised historical narratives of marginalised communities.

This thesis addresses the question of how the natural environment figured in the neo‐avant‐garde practices of the generation of artists who around 1970 started to engage with the subject across the socialist states of Central Europe, where various degrees of communist control over society influenced not only artistic production, but also limited access to information about the state of the environment and ecological discourse. The study examines a historical period influenced by the aftermath of the social and political upheavals of 1968, one where art entered the natural environment and engaged with environmental problems, which corresponded to the moment when ecological crisis was first registered on a planetary scale. Individual chapters devote attention to detailed examination of the practices of the Pécs Workshop from Hungary, the OHO group from Slovenia, TOK from Croatia, Rudolf Sikora from Slovakia and Czech artist Petr Štembera, each of whom developed distinctive approaches to the environment through the investigation of process‐based works, land art, public art, conceptual practices or performances, motivated by the neo‐avant‐garde tendency to dematerialise the art object. By focusing on their diverse approaches to the environment, which included engaging with the problems of ecological crisis, raising environmental awareness among socialist citizens, and exploring non‐anthropocentric positions and cosmic perspectives, this comparative study analyses their practices in light of specific socio‐political and environmental circumstances, and reveals the complexity of art history as a discipline under socialism. Working from specific positions and with different artistic affinities, the artists considered here articulated a cosmopolitan voice which commented on the nationalist trespassing of nature, and the communist denial of the environmental crisis, and spoke about a burgeoning ecological imperative that spanned the globe and could not be confined within any imposed borders.

The British news media often describes Eastern European nationals coming to work in the UK as unskilled economic migrants, framed as ‘unwanted’ and as jeopardising British culture and economy. Often overlooked in news media and scholarship are alternative examples of human geographic mobilities out of and into Eastern Europe, such as individuals who are working in the cultural sector, namely, visual artists. Many artists from the Baltic States must go abroad in order to get onto the global art market; although, they stay connected or return to their homelands, shaping these art scenes through their cultural remittances and transnational networks. It is important to investigate the Baltic States, as it has been 26 years since their independence from the Soviet Union and 12 years since their accession into the EU. The Baltic States are now established members of the EU, after becoming members of the Eurozone and part of the Schengen Area. Visual artists from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are crisscrossing the EU, taking part in multi-directional routes and multi-cross-cultural connections for work. Often having multiple bases either at once or throughout their career, a lot of respondents’ feeling of home is spatial and mobile. The feelings of home are a mosaic, constutited by these factors of cross-border communications, regular travel, and having several bases for work. The meaning of home, then, is associated with their artistic practice and about relations to people rather than associated with a fixed, physical place. They are not an ethnic diaspora, as what holds them together is their art - it is about what they all ‘do’ in common. This provides a different understanding of the meaning of diaspora, as not defined only by ethnicity. Together, this study explores individuals who move regularly, working and communicating across territorial borders and across ethnic ‘borders’. In a multi-sited study across Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius and other EU cities, this research uses an ethnographic methodology in order to devise a multi-sited and multi-temporal approach for studying travelling individuals. This research uses in-depth interviews with artists and semi-structured interviews with arts professionals; participant observation with an artist in Vienna, at an art institution in Vilnius, and through communication with three artists online over three months; and a visual analysis of artworks.

During the last half of the nineteenth century, the Spanish central government undertook a series of reforms in the education, exhibition, and patronage of fine arts resulting in what may be considered the most prolific period of painting in Spain’s history. As a part of broad national educational reform, Spain’s independent regional art academies came under the management of the Central Academia de Bellas Artes in Madrid, which was dominated by Frencheducated artist administrators. Under their leadership, arts education changed dramatically though an increasing the number of fine art academies — including an academy in Rome for the most promising Spanish artists — establishing a uniform curriculum, and dramatically expanding arts educational to regional and poor students. Beginning in 1856, with the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes — the Spanish equivalent of the Paris Salon — Spanish artists competed with one another for the first time on a national stage. The eighteen Exposiciones Nacionales held in Madrid between 1856 and 1897 coincided with turbulent political and social changes. By examining key works submitted and awarded the Exposición Nacional, this study maps the changes in patronage and audiences for the fine arts in Spain during the last half of the nineteenth century; from Spanish-history paintings predominantly made for and sponsored by the government to paintings of contemporary subjects made for and purchased by a growing private market.

Reviewing Robert Morris’ 9 at Leo Castelli exhibition of December 1968, Max Kozloff used the terms volatility, liquidity and malleability. These physical characteristics suggest the precarious nature of the objects exhibited and are deployed throughout this thesis to explore the material, theoretical and ethical implications of sculpture replication in the twentieth century. A methodological approach that bridges art history and conservation-based perspectives will allow many of the current concerns surrounding replication to be expanded upon. The 1960s is seen as a key moment for the types of art objects being produced but also reproduced and a shift in practices and attitudes is traced. Issues of authenticity, materiality, authorship, historical narrative, conceptual intention and the various meanings ascribed to the term replica are considered. The purpose and status of the original or replica is scrutinised in the context of a history of replication. As a museum and artistic strategy, there are various motives for creating replicas. Here, a series of carefully selected historical case studies are used as test cases to draw attention to the acute problems posed when works are made from ephemeral or vulnerable materials, works that have to be performed, works that perform a process or behave naturally and works within a replicated exhibition enterprise. Concentrating on artworks produced in America and Europe, the thesis recasts artists and their works to highlight the precariousness of materials and meanings, documentation and actions, performativity and duration. A work’s inherent vice is seen in terms of what will be termed its ‘ephe-materiality’ and its replica as a re-action in the continuous present. The relationship of surface to support, materials that act out or perform their own instability, provides a platform from which to readdress the idea of a single, finished work and its exhibitable life and afterlife within a museum today.

My doctoral research aims to explore artistic obsession through repetitive documentation of the domestic and the everyday. Drawing upon the resources of my cultural heritage, I experiment with synthesizing cross-cultural and cross­ historical forms. Through theoretical research and creative practice, I use photography, large-scale installations, moving image projections and two­ dimensional visual images (paintings, drawings and prints) to articulate my relationship to family and memories. Starting with research into masters of the moving image such as Andrei Tarkovsky, photographers of the American 'underclass' Robert Franks, and installation artists Mona Hatoum and Yayoi Kusama, I articulate my own relationship to family and memory through various mediums in my practice. My varied cultural background - Taiwan, Japan, the US, the UK - as well as my personal experiences, are the basis of my exploration of still photography and the moving image, particularly as projected onto objects and environments, and my development of large-scale installations and two-dimensional works. Through further research into historical painting and printmaking traditions, and contemporary visual artist On Kawara, I explore the tensions and exchanges between the aesthetic concerns of 'east' and 'west' which became the most significant resource for my works. I take inspiration from my culture, background, memories, a traumatised childhood in Taiwan and Japan; my early adulthood in the US and this last decade in UK. These experiences and memories are the fertile ground for my art practice. Art practice allows me to bring new energy to the burden of memories and dealing with loss, to make sense of the world and of myself. Although the content of my work seems personal, loss is a universal human experience. Throughout the last two decades I have been writing, drawing and taking photos. These activities become my research tools for my practice. Like an archaeologist, I take inspiration directly from the accumulation of these primary research materials, I then develop them into projects with various mediums. I believe through the process of documenting life as it happens, new works will organically develop. I find narratives of human nature in these developed materials. I believe artists' ultimate responsibility is to reveal universal truths through exploring their lives and experiences.

This thesis considers the works of contemporary visual artists through the lens of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1896). I begin by arguing that the play marked a founding moment in the history of abstraction, one that cuts against the grain of convention and common sense. I relate this mode of abstraction to what Jarry calls phynance and argue that this category emerges in Ubu Roi as a material process that can be understood in psychic, physiological and economic terms. It is with this possibility in mind that the following chapters seek to challenge previous understandings of abstraction in the visual arts. In order to do so I analyse a condensed range of artistic practices from the contemporary moment. By paying close attention to the formal properties of the artwork, I attempt to demonstrate how the artwork can be understood as both an economic and pathological object, either neurotic, psychotic, perverted, paranoiac or hypochondriac.

The main concern of this thesis is the way in which a group of artists based in Rome made vision itself the primary tool through which they investigated the post-war visual landscape. Among them are Franco Angeli, Mario Ceroli, Tano Festa, Giosetta Fioroni, Jannis Kounellis, Pino Pascali, Mimmo Rotella, Mario Schifano and Cy Twombly. Over five chapters I will explore the way in which these artists engaged with the image culture engendered by the Italian ‘economic miracle’ (1958-1963). Fostering a multiplicity of visions the image culture under scrutiny here is rooted in a range of spheres, from advertisement to urban signage, passing through film and industrial design. These different fields inform my reading of the artists’ works and complicate the way they have usually been discussed. The city of Rome, constantly struggling between a laden past and a modern present, is also central to my study. With its norms and visual iconography, the cityscape acts as both referent and setting. Finally, my analysis of this period draws upon then contemporary writings of Italo Calvino, Gillo Dorfles and Umberto Eco. This broader critical approach will allow me to uncover the ambivalent attitude that Angeli, Ceroli, Festa, Fioroni, Kounellis, Pascali, Rotella, Schifano, and Twombly maintained towards an image culture that pervaded the city and its spaces, treading a fine line between symptom and diagnosis, as both subjects in thrall to and observers of it.