<i>In the Stillness of Your Presence</i> is an installation that explores how embodiment can function in creating meditative states and how non-cognitive powers of knowing might lead to a sort of consciousness of a different order. This work brings together poetic contemplation, sensorial knowledge and visuality.

This Master’s Thesis Report is a chronological investigation into the ideas and processes that I have researched and explored during the last three years at the University of Texas at Austin. This exploration has led to a body of work that examines material culture and the way that historical context affects the understanding of the objects and environments of our culture. / text

Sunyata: Transfigurations in Silk was a live-process art event featuring silk painting, costume creation and dance. The event took place in the B. Iden Payne Theatre Lobby on the University of Texas at Austin campus over the course of a week, during which I endeavored to paint 560 square feet of white silk suspended in the space. The images I painted formed a personal creation narrative, inspired by the lived experience creating and archetypical themes from creation mythology, cosmogony and human development. Throughout the event, a steady stream of visitors passed through the installation, contributing inspiration to the process in the form of images, ideas, quotes and stories, and witnessed the active creating unfold over time. On the seventh day of the event, upon the completion of the painting process, the silk was cut into pieces and transformed into costumes on live dancer’s bodies. Inspired by ritual wall painting and sand painting from Indian, Tibetan and Navaho cultures and the temporally bound work of contemporary action-based artists, the project was an assay into the transitory nature of the artistic process and an exploration of transformative properties of silk (a material that is central to my work as textile artist and costume designer). The event also explores how a personal creative process can become public, performative and participatory. / text

This analysis explores the progression of my work over the past three years of study. My initial pursuits involved ideas that revolved around contemporary feminism, however, with time I expanded upon those ideas by exploring other subjects. I realized the connection in all of my work lies in the use of manipulated found imagery, and the desire to release this imagery from the confines of traditional pictorial space. With this discovery, I became free to utilize any manner of subjects, as the subject matter relied heavily on the finding and re-interpreting of these disparate images into the language of paint. Moreover, specific modes of thought, such as Feminism, were allowed to become single threads in a diverse, complex tapestry.

The procession is an exhibition of sculpture which expresses the birth and continuity of life. It uses mixed material such as cloting, balloon, latex, epoxy, nylon and oil paint. The writen project is part of the exhibition.

This project involves the examination of abstract, geometric paintings, kinetic sculptures, electronic art and installations that use opticality, perspectival space and colour relationships that destabilise compositional cohesion. Works made between 1964 and 1980, particularly those by Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley are referenced in the determination of how geometric forms, colour transitions, interactions and juxtapositions have been used to suggest movement. This enquiry includes a review of the usage of planar space and the creation of optical effects. Artworks such as Bridget Riley's Chant 2, (1967) inform new works in which available digital technological processes are utilised. These new works consist mainly of compositions of line and coloured forms and are created in response to the outcomes of the research into the selected works. For example, static works that create movement through the use of colour and geometric form inform the creation of new w ork in media that uses motion. The artworks produced are installation-based works. The works include digital projections and static images that use painting processes as well as digital media. The objective of the project is to produce artworks that reference painting processes and extend explorations into colour usage designed to maximise optical effects and spatial disorientation. The artworks are intended to reflect elements researched whilst maximising the potential for using new media.

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This paper examines the history of installation art and explains the concept and themes within my installation component of the studio art major. It details how readymades, site-specificity, and an emphasis on experiential work all contributed to the creation of installation art as a medium. Next, I turn to my own work, exploring the theme of representing time and altering the perceptions of the viewer. Through a web of fishing line and tempered glass, the installation visually imitates a single, frozen moment of an explosion that the viewer can walk into and explore. The paper continues with a discussion of relevant themes in the work by contemporary artists Ori Gerst, Heide Fasnacht, Cornelia Parker, E.V. Day, Lee Bontecou, and James Turrell, and concludes with ideas for the continuation of the project in the spring 2014 semester.

In this research I explore my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and make manifest equivalent experiences of it through art practice. I investigate my OCD through artistic enactments and test my equivalence of the framework obsessioncompulsion using installation art – an equivalence, which I suggest is a relationship between my embodied perception and my memory. My interpretation of equivalence contains characteristics that arguably align with common emotions of control and doubt, inflated sense of responsibility and fear of disaster, which, I suggest are accessible to an audience other than myself. As such, my artwork proposes that a viewer can experience my equivalence to some degree. I refer to writer David Batchelor's (1997) definition of equivalence as a starting point for this research, and question how my OCD reveals itself through memory and perception, by referring to Richard Shusterman's ideas regarding somaesthetic reflection (2008), Bergson's description of the structure of memory (2004), Paul Ricouer's link between memory and imagination (2006) and Gilles Deleuze's ideas regarding difference and repetition (2013). I also refer to theoretician Estelle Barrett and her ideas regarding “situated knowledge” (2010: 4-5) as a way to frame the subjective and personal nature of my artistic enquiry, regarding my equivalence of OCD. Within this thesis I place emphasis on art practice as a method of research and describe the processes I have used to explore my OCD and make manifest my equivalence. I refer to Clare Bishop’s (2005) phenomenological description of installation art and mimetic engulfment within this process as I consider them methods to reveal my equivalence, by making manifest the relationship between my memory and my perception, both of which are embodied experiences within my OCD. I discuss Ross G. Menzies and Padmal de Silva’s (2004) clinical definitions and descriptions of obsession, compulsion, memory deficit and checking, in addition to phenomenological and pragmatic ideas, regarding memory and perception, as a way to articulate my proposition that equivalence of my OCD is constructed of a interdependent relationship between two embodied experiences, which can be revealed through art practice. My research contributes to new knowledge as it suggests a new way of understanding OCD by employing a multi-disciplined approach to practice-led research.

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