This dissertation explores the importance of narrative in Ardmore ceramic ware and determines how and to what effect ceramic narrative is used by Ardmore Ceramic Studio. It gives a historical overview of narrative in ceramic wares of English potteries from the eighteenth century to date, as a means of contextualising and locating the influences of Ardmore narrative ceramics. This paper examines selected narrative works, by artists such as Andrew Sokhela and Wonderboy Nxumalo, with reference to Noverino N. Canonici’s writings regarding Zulu oral literature. One of the intentions of this paper is to illustrate how the fundamental elements of Zulu storytelling play an influential role in Ardmore ceramic narratives. Narrative as a means of communication, education and entertainment is assessed with reference to Ardmore examples. This dissertation investigates the potential to use ceramic narratives as anthropological research tools. The focus of this paper is to investigate the use of ceramic narrative in disseminating information and creating social awareness. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

Born in 1938 in Poland, I epxperienced wartime Berlin and post-war Stalinism. My first job, at sixteen, was with the East Berlin States Opera and the Bertold Brecht's Berliner Ensemble. The play writes Betrtold Brecht and Buechner had the strongest influence on me. Brecht's play 'Mutter Courage and her children' and Georg Buechner's 'Woyzech' encapsulated the harsh realities of post-war Europe, and confirmed my desire for social justice and reform. Yet, the main influence on my work comes from my own life experience. My life in Australia has become a kind of exile-a deprivation of the origin of my culture and my cradle. After nearly forty years in Australia I feel a little displaced. Yet I left Europe voluntarily to escape from the very culture and history I now miss. I am experiencing a common dilemma of migration. I belong neither here nor there-a kind of dislocation. There exists a twilight zone in the in-between time-a discontinuity of my Berliner development. Artists such as Kaethe Kollwitz, John Heartfield, George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max Beckman influenced my teenage years. Later, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. I work with found objects, such as toys crafted by human hand. I am giving them a new meaning, a new being. They are meditations on the conflict of war, where women and children are the primary victims of political fragmentation. My sculptures evoke memories of a childhood stolen. They take on a menacing character reminding the viewer of the effects war has on humanity. But Art is the reflector and searcher; it is our way to enlightenment. Joseph Beuys introduced the concept of an expanded notion of art ("der erweiterte Kunstbegriff???) to surpass the boundaries of modernism with in art, science, spirituality, humanism and economics. He drew attention to the potential of human creativity. Art, against all odds, is poetry to life.

[Truncated abstract] This thesis explores the ways in which 'the secular' is represented in contemporary Australian participatory art, screen, and print cultures. Secularisms are currently the subject of analysis in a broad range of disciplines within the humanities, and this thesis intervenes upon the field by focusing on the cultural politics of representations of embodied, spatialized secularisms. The secular is commonly defined in opposition to the 'religious,' and can also be extrapolated to the division of public and private spaces. Thus, by considering the occlusions and violences inherent in the ways bodies negotiate and are constructed through space, this thesis argues for the fluidity and porosity of these oppositions. By drawing from Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini's notion of secularisms, understood as specific, situated narratives of the secular, as well as Talal Asad's and William E. Connolly's conceptions of the secular, this thesis identifies 'neutrality' and 'spirituality' as two key narratives of the secular around which questions of language, embodiment, affect, and subjectivity are set in motion. Here, a regime of representation that constructs 'religious' subjects as outsiders to an imagined Australian national identity is critiqued and reconsidered in terms of anxieties about remembering and living with difference and loss. Rather than defining 'the secular,' this thesis seeks to maintain focus on the context and contingencies of enunciation. Thus, firstly the conflation of secularism with 'neutrality' and 'objectivity' is explored through a discussion of 'defining' secularisms, alongside critique of representations of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). By identifying the ways in which this 'everyday' text signals exclusions through the privileging of British Protestant Christianity in its contents, colonial history and usage, I consider how 'neutrality' is made contextually and contingently. ... . Here, secular mourning is a suggestive concept that foregrounds 'affective economies' of loss, grief, and mourning alongside openness to the ways in which identity is made and lived relationally, and differently. Given that the representations of Australian secularisms I identify are made by locating 'the religious' elsewhere, this thesis reflects upon this process by including a contingent comparative study of representations of Canadian secularisms. Participatory art including the Secular Confession Booth (2007) in Toronto and The Booth (2008) in Perth, news media debates about secularism in Ontario and

This thesis will examine the practice of relational aesthetics as it involves the viewer, as well as the way in which it plays out within and outside of the institutional setting of the museum. I will focus primarily on two unique projects: that of The Machine Project Field Guide at Los Angeles County Museum of Art on November 15, 2008, produced by Machine Project, a social project operated out of a storefront gallery in Echo Park; and David Michalek's Slow Dancing at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City, July 12-29 2007.

South African photographer Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko and South African painter Tracy Payne explore different ways of communicating African realities. The visual imagery of these two artists focuses a lot on movement, challenging the rigidity of boundaries set by Western social constructs. In their work, Veleko and Payne critique the limitations of terms such as “authenticity.” It is extremely difficult to portray shifting notions of contemporary African identity in light of the stain of colonial philosophies which have, in times past, exoticised and appropriated the African body and ascribed conventions of “authenticity” to African representations. Undermining the burden of Western boundaries1, Veleko and Payne redefine what it means to operate in Africa today. Veleko seeks additional cultural realities to complicate her identity as a woman living in Africa while Payne uses concepts of movement to question the validity of structures which advocate an either/ or binary such as “East” and “West” and “masculinity” and “femininity”. By subtly merging aspects of these binaries in their representations, Veleko and Payne bring transnational possibilities to light by undermining the restrictions inscribed in the social and political history of (South) Africa with regard to collective and individual identities. Constructs of gender have contributed to a heightened sense of “African” “masculinity,” forming a stereotype of the African body which is difficult to break free from. Considering the notion of transnationalism and the issue of moving beyond boundaries, borrowing aspects of different cultures in attempt to better define a sense of self, Veleko and Payne engage in the sampling of different lifestyles and perspectives to better define their individualities. This thesis seeks to provide an analysis of the visual language used by Veleko and Payne to promote fluid “African” identities.

Essa pesquisa investiga o corpo humano na atualidade a partir de seu aspecto cultural. É analisado o corpo híbrido, resultado do encontro entre suas dimensões biológicas e tecnológicas. Através de um Essa pesquisa investiga o corpo humano na atualidade a partir de seu aspecto cultural. É analisado o corpo híbrido, resultado do encontro entre suas dimensões biológicas e tecnológicas. Através de um recorte histórico que busca alguns momentos onde o corpo humano interage direta ou indiretamente com criações tecnológicas, o corpo híbrido é evidenciado a partir da análise de algumas criações artísticas que utilizam em seus processos o corpo humano em interação com tecnologias. / This paper focus on the study of cultural aspects of the human body. The hybrid body is analysed as a result of the mixing of both biological and technological dimensions. Through a historical approach which points out some moments when the human body interacts implicitly or explicitly with technological creations, the hybrid body is put in evidence with the analyses of some artistic creations which include the human body as a way of interacting with new technologies.

M.Tech. (Fine Art) / The aim is to develop a sustainable sewing co-operative for Tshulu Trust, located in the Domboni village in the rural chieftaincy of HaMakuya, north-eastern Limpopo Province, South Africa. The development of the new sewing co-operative aims to address the extreme unemployment in HaMakuya, which is one of the main causes of poverty in the area. It is also a response to one of the primary objectives of Tshulu Trust, which is to create employment. The research study addresses the extent to which arts-based training interventions might ensure the sustainability of the new sewing co-operative. This study is a Participatory Action Research (PAR) training intervention that is Freirean in approach. I draw on the principles of Paulo Freire’s book Pedagogy of the oppressed (1995, 2008) to provide the theoretical framework that underpins the training envisaged in this study. Methodologically, this project and study involves four action research cycles with newlyrecruited members of the sewing co-operative. There is a final cycle which is my own selfreflexive cycle at the conclusion of the development project in HaMakuya. The cycles implemented with the members involve arts-based training approaches in design manufacture and embellishment, business training, and marketing of fashion and homeware products. In addition there is also training for enterprise development within the action cycles. Critical monitoring and reflection take place at the end of each cycle to inform action plans for the next cycles. The cycles of the development project end with a public showcase of the products manufactured and modeled by the participants. For my own self-reflections, I design and prototype my own designs for a fashion range inspired by my experience in HaMakuya. These prototypes as well as the products manufactured by the participants are included in a catalogue that supports this dissertation.

This study explores the way that visual culture and identity creates understanding about how the women in my family interact and teach each other. In the study issues of identity, liminality, border culture, are explored. The study examines how underrepresented groups, such as those represented by Latinas, can enter into and add to the discourses of art education because the women who participated have learned to maneuver through the world, passing what they have learned to one another, from one generation to the next. Furthermore, the study investigates ways in which visual cues offer a way for the women in my family to negotiate their identity. In the study the women see themselves in signs, magazines, television, dolls, clothing patterns, advertisements, and use these to find ways in which to negotiate the borderlands of the places in which they live. Although the education that occurred was informal, its importance is in creating a portal through which to self reflect on the cultural work of educating.

This diploma thesis addresses the topic of contemporary art in contemporary school. It deals with the relationship between contemporary art and contemporary school. The theoretical part of the thesis presents ideas and stimuli to think about contemporary art, which are based on people associated in the field of art, art theory and art pedagogy. Furthermore, the thesis pays attention to the relationship of contemporary art to the recipient and Czech education system. In the research part, the thesis focuses on five case studies of art teachers and their approaches to contemporary art in teaching. The next part of the diploma thesis presents a view of the artistic work of two Czech and two foreign contemporary artists. Their works are used in the didactic part for the didactic transformation of the content. Based on it, teaching units for teaching art education at secondary schools are created. Furthermore, this part presents reflections on lessons taught in the form of conceptual analysis. KEYWORDS contemporary art, postmodern society, art education, visual communication, the Framework Educational Programme

In this dissertation, I study the corpse as a material in Latin American art at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. On the one hand, I show that this is a social analyzer of the terrible consequences of dictatorships, neoliberal policies, and criminal violence on the continent. On the other hand, applying the theory of new materialism and focusing on the presence of the dead body -human or non-human- in the work of artists such as Nicola Costantino, José Antonio Hernández Díez, Teresa Margolles, María Fernanda Cardoso, Arturo Duclos, or Nicolás Lamas, among others, I develop what I call corpse art. As I argue, the impact of this art consists in challenging the limits of the body and its traditional binomials (surface-depth, organic-inorganic, living-dead) using the material capacities of skin, flesh, and bones. The material deployment of the corpse, as well as the re-appropriation of scientific and commercial techniques, put artistic media, their specificities, and their autonomies in crisis. But in addition, this corpse art allows also us to reflect on the manipulation of bodies and power ties that produce objects and merchandise of desire in the Latin American context.