The archive is widely understood to be an ordered keeper of factual truth and a solid foundation of historical accuracy. However, the inherent lacunae within the archive can render this assumed accuracy fallible. This thesis questions the potential of such gaps and absences to impact on the understanding of objects in archives. An archive is defined as any collection of material which has been withdrawn from its normal circulation and stored for potential future reference.

The lived experience of grief is a universal phenomenon that is both a psychological and embodied experience; it finds expression in varying art forms and is considered in multiple discourses, including psychoanalysis. This project identifies a range of responses to loss and grief and critically reflects on their value and efficacy. Through the use of a phenomenological research process, that results in the production of filmworks, the value of using film as a way of managing and processing loss is considered. The notion of a self-relfexive pilgimage is adopted as a mode of engagement with the liminal experience of grief.

This practice-based thesis is a study of the uneven geographical development of Chilean copper mining industry and the circulation of copper in Britain. My research examines three key historical moments in a pattern of ‘denationalisation,’ a term identified by Sassen (2003), of the copper resources of Chile: (1) 1840–1880; (2) 1904–1969; and (3) 1981–today, in which resources have been transferred from public to private management. In my research, I use a combination of photographic and historical methodologies to explore the impact of those processes on the extractive ecologies of Chile and to connect them to the global geographies of London, Liverpool and Swansea. My thesis considers how photography can be used to propose a re-mapping of the relationship between the global and the local, the national and the transnational, making visible the hidden geopolitical forces that shape the mobile and unequal geographies of copper. My doctoral investigation explores the global circulation of copper and its agency to produce geographical and political change. With the aim of revealing their close connections and networks, it examines the notion of ‘unequal geography’ established by Baran (1957) and the newer ‘mobility paradigm’ proposed by Sheller and Urry (2006). I follow the flow of copper, in Held’s words, ‘across space and time’ (1999), creating a constellation of photographs and texts about the transformation and mutation of copper as it traverses the world, exploring traces of extraction, smelting, manufacture, transport and trade processes across geographies. In doing so, I open ways of thinking about how landscape carries traces of those processes, bringing to the fore the significance of photographic intervention in highlighting them. The photographic research conducted during this investigation is organised in three lines of inquiry: Global mobility of copper; Post-industrial landscapes; and Contemporary mining industry and its relation to London. The first, Global mobility of copper comprises four visual essays presented together this written thesis: Sulphiric Acid Route (2012), Metallic Threads (2010-2015), High Rise (2012) and Hidden Circuits (2015). These works explore the mutation and transformation of hard-rock mining, back and forth from Chile to Britain from raw material to capital; through ore, smelted commodity, stock market exchanged value, assembled material and waste. The second, Post industrial landscapes, is explored through two case studies. The first of these is Coquimbo & Swansea (2014), which studies forgotten historical mining connections between Coquimbo, Chile and the Lower Swansea Valley, Wales between 1840 and 1880. This is followed by Miss Chuquicamata, the Slag (2012), which examines the Chuquicamata corporate town, Antofagasta Region, Chile and its contested history. The third line of inquiry, Contemporary mining industry and its relation to London involves two case studies. It opens with Antofagasta plc, Stop Abuses! (2010–14), which connects contemporary struggles of the inhabitants of Pupio Valley with the City of London, the world’s centre for mining investment. This line of investigation concludes with the site-specific studies LME Invisible Corporate Network (2011–15), which examines the London Metal Exchange within the City of London, using mapping methodologies. These case studies can also be used to map the three periods of denationalisation of copper resources in Chile. My photographic work is based on extensive photographic fieldwork in each geographical location, conducted over the last four years, as well as my two years as an activist photographer. Through my written thesis I seek to make visible the historical conditions that are central to the formation of the geographies of copper. Both aspects of my work are informed by the notion of ‘critical realism’ coined by Georg Lukács (1963) and developed later by Allan Sekula (1984). Alongside these case studies, my written thesis contains photographic examples of my practice so as to give insight into my research process. This thesis has been produced as part of Traces of Nitrate: Mining history and photography between Britain and Chile, a research project developed in collabotation with Art and Design historian Louise Purbrick and photographer Xavier Ribas, based at the University of Brighton and funded with the generous support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

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This practice-based thesis examines ways in which the cultural patterning of greetings can be understood through their visualisation. The graphic design practice uses a range of digital tools and software to develop an animated graphic notation system for analysing nonverbal aspects of greetings both within and across cultures. The thesis explicates the process of this development and outlines its context and significance. Previous systems of visualisation devised by anthropologists for the study of greetings have stopped short of using contemporary digital technology. Further, although intercultural contact has increased, most existing greetings studies still focus on intracultural greetings.

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This research project examines the language of grief in textile art practice. It takes as its starting point the idea that, as individuals with experience of bereavement, we may carry with us an element of unresolved mourning. This is not the pathological condition of melancholia or complicated mourning, nor the fully resolved, completed state where mourning is over, but is a space between; a set of emotions which continue to be felt and may be brought to the surface by an event, situation, set of circumstances or encounter with, for example, artwork which may bring back feelings of grief and loss long after the death of someone close. This project investigates how cloth can be used in textile artwork to make a connection with this unresolved mourning and thereby contribute to the progression of the viewer’s work of mourning. The aims of the research are to explore how textile art can be used as a metaphor for grief and mourning and to consider how the staining and mending of cloth in contemporary art practice has been used in my studio practice as a way of understanding and expressing mourning. This is a practice based research project, the outcomes of which consist of a written thesis and a body of artworks created through studio practice. The dialogic relationship between the practice and the written research is integral to the outcomes of both the written work and in the studio practice. The written thesis builds on existing research into the psychoanalytical interpretation of mourning and melancholia; the development of the understanding of the process of mourning, trauma theory and the material culture of mourning to establish a rationale for the use of cloth in textile art practice to materialise the work of mourning. The thesis and body of studio practice make an original contribution to knowledge by bringing together the sociological and cultural use of cloth with psychoanalytical theory and the consideration of the affectivity of artwork. The overarching approach of the thesis is a two-part focus on the use of cloth and how it can be used in textile artwork. The first chapter sets out the context of the research both in terms of previously published written work and the studio practice of other artists. Chapter 2 examines the methodology of the research and how the work has been shown to viewers and the means by which any responses have been obtained. Both written and verbal responses to the work by viewers have been used to substantiate the proposal that textile artwork can connect with the viewer in such a way as to allow a progression of their work of mourning. Chapter 3 considers the materiality of cloth; its manipulation and transformation using processes such as staining and mending, and the utilisation of metaphor and metonymy in the creation of artworks in cloth. The final chapter ‘Connecting with the Viewer’ explores the affectivity of artwork and how it is able to facilitate an emotional connection with the audience.

The thesis explores the uneven distribution of power between and of the black/white female dichotomy and, while using them as a strategic tool within the visual work, questions the implications of skin colour in constructions of femininity within visual representations. Historically as a marker of skin colour, white women and those with a lighter skin complexion have taken the role of the feminine, in comparison to the black woman and those with darker skin tones, who traditionally occupy a space of the nonfeminine. Within the thesis, this privileging of lighter and white skin, based on white aesthetics and beauty value judgments, has been named as colourism. The body of practice based work, produced as an intrinsic part of the thesis, will attempt to develop and explore this issue and develop a particularly black aesthetic response to the cultural construct of the ‘feminine’. Through researching contextual material made up of other artist’s images and films, that challenge traditions of the gaze, the thesis develops visual strategies to help re-position black, and thereby white, women’s place in visual representations, and further questions gender and identity. In approaching these questions, the thesis draws from various discourses, such as cultural studies, feminist film theory, visual cultures and fine art practice and theory. The thesis argues for new ways of constructing visual pleasures within looking relations, which go beyond the visual, which call for a conscious process of breaking away from a representational language based on the phallocentric. The presented image-making strategies aim to destroy the normative understandings of visual pleasure, using colour and the belief in the power of the erotic (Audre Lorde 1984), to enable new ways of thinking through black and white women’s positions within these debates. This thesis uses the processes of personal image-making practice within a body of original artworks using video and photography, to direct towards the 3 theoretical fields in which this research is positioned. It uses a practice leading the theory methodology.

This thesis, Nibbling at clouds: the visual artist encounters adventitious blindness, examines how visual artists who have come to lose all or most of their eyesight in later life continue to engage with their art practice. This relates directly to my own conditio, where vision has deteriorated in recent years to a point where my visual acuity stands at a tenth of normal vision, and as a consequence I am registered blind. The condition and art practices are in many ways inseparable, as behavioural changes in response to the deterioration of vision are largely unavoidable due to powerful physical, social and psychological influences. The research draws on the personal experience of the author as well as an analysis of phenomena experienced by the adventitiously blind artists interviewed: Sargy Mann, Keith Salmon, Sally Booth and Jane Phillips. There are several pressing factors which impact on artistic practice following the loss of eyesight. These include mental health issues, physical rehabilitation, subject or modal choices in the studio, declaring one's condition (or not) particularly in terms of exhibition and more broadly, regarding the contemporary social understanding of blindness, particularly in the field of visual arts. Because of my subjective experienc of loss of vision, part of the thesis takes the form of a self-interview serving as a 'narrative washing line'. The self-interview acts as a continuous narrative throughout the document, and is punctuated by several 'volumes' addressing the above-mentioned disparate and more formal factors. Exploring the extent of my own 'making' capabilities, the research process involved working with methods and materials which were new to me including film, photography and bronze sculpture. Because of the lack of literature in the field, my use of other artists' testimonies has been emphatic. Methodologically the artwork draws on literary work, including Joyce and Borges, in conjunction with personal experience to provide the option for multiple possible readings. My resulting artworks and works by the artists interviewed are documented and discussed throughout the body of the text in the context of blindness as contributing force in making and articulating the artists' ideas, rather than being only a detrimental influence. The work's primary contribution to knowledge is through providing an account of how a visual artist renegotiated his beliefs, emotions and goals following the breakdown in self and environment caused by the onset of adventitious blindness. It also points to the value of various practices of reflective examination in the process.