The point of departure of this dissertation is a few words extracted from “Agesilaus Santander,” an autobiographical fragment Walter Benjamin wrote in 1933 while in exile on Ibiza. The first version reads: “...I came into the world under the sign of Saturn, the star of hesitation and delay ...” He later revised the latter clause to: “the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays...” Through processes of suspension, obstruction and potentiality implied by ‘delay,’ ‘hesitation,’ and ‘detour’ as ‘methods’ of thinking through art, this thesis revisits aspects of Benjamin’s understanding of time, history, origin and the artwork through conditional readings of selected contemporary artworks. Specifically, I am interested in understanding certain contemporary art and theoretical practices as modalities of resistance to modernist art historical and critical frameworks. In this tactical resistance, immanent in Benjamin’s reading of modernity, ‘delay,’ ‘hesitation’ and ‘detour’ are seen as characteristic of a form of critical thinking through and about art and history. ‘Hesitation,’ ‘delay’ and ‘detour’ are then understood as unconventional ‘methods’ that seek to break away from prescribed, or disciplinary, pathways of reading and interpreting works of art. In order to explore these general issues, I sketch out critical constellations for three artworks, each of which both engages and resists pedagogical structures and processes. This underlying pedagogical theme is signposted by the titles of the three chapters: I. “Lecture: ... of delay in Robert Morris’s 21.3, (1964/1994)”; II. “Study: ...of hesitation in Bethan Huws’s Origin and Source I-VI, (1997)”; and III. “Essay: ...of detour in The Otilith Group’s Otilith III, (2009).” I offer ‘slow,’ conditional readings of the particularities and relational contexts of these works, re-inscribing Benjamin’s creative approach to critical research work embedded in the processes of both making and writing through art. Since my approach is tempered by structures of incompletion and indeterminacy embodied by delay, hesitation and detour, I address questions concerning the borders of the process of ‘reading’ artworks and of categorizing both the ‘artwork’ and the ‘artist’ as bounded conceptual unities. My engagement with these questions signifies both a resistance to and an opening out of the limits of representation.

Through a new idea of ‘the art of decolonisation’, this thesis explores the possibility of socially engaged art in the postcolonial context of East Asia. Japan, throughout its national history as an expanding empire from the late 19th century to the Second World War, has left a large number of unresolved legacies of colonialism in East Asia. These problematic legacies had remained almost intact within the architecture of Cold War, the bipolar confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, formed immediately following WWII. After the collapse of the Cold War structure in the late 1980s, then, the task of ‘decolonisation’ has become extremely pressing in East Asia. This thesis aims to unearth the potential contribution of art to the incomplete project of decolonisation, with its emphasis on, first, its visual and sensory nature and, second, the significance of ‘participation’ and ‘collaboration’ as method. The first part of this thesis is an art-historical and cultural studies investigation of discursive practices of decolonisation in East Asia and Britain. It accompanies a theoretical reconsideration of the concept of ‘decolonisation’ and a historical reflection of the postcolonial statuses of these regions. The second part is a practice-based investigation on art’s potentiality in tackling postcolonial issues in East Asia. It discusses and analyses my own art projects conducted in Japan and Korea between 2014 and 2016. ii This thesis will help advance decolonisation of knowledge in two directions. The contribution to knowledge of this thesis is twofold. First, it expands the notion of ‘socially engaged art’ theorised in the West by examining works and projects in East Asia in conjunction with a geo-historical setting of the non-Western world. This will contribute to the development of the scholarship critical to Euro-American centrism, dominant in Cultural Studies, in understanding non-Western art. Second, it proposes applied methods integrating artistic practice for addressing the contentious agendas that stem from colonial historiography of East Asia. This will lead us to a viable methodology that might open up alternative pathways toward more reconciled postcolonial relations among East Asian countries and regions.

This dissertation traces the substantial expansion of Western interest in contemporary Iranian art over the past two decades. In reading Iranian artifacts, it argues that Western disciplinary frames, most specifically art history and criticism, circumscribe the heterogeneity of Iranian contemporary art. Submitted to Western frames of legibility, the multivalent aesthetic properties of contemporary Iranian art is reduced to readily consumable social, political, and ethical messages. Burdened by the need to speak for Iranian society as a whole, the diverse aesthetic economies of Iranian artifacts are curtailed and reconfigured so that they align with Euro–American understandings of meaning, value, aspiration, and desire.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

By the 20th Century, tax codes made a distinction between for-profit and not-for-profit organisations. The distinction was that not-for- profits were to supply a service to society like hospitals, churches and museums. The distinctions are no longer clear. There is a demand for 'new breed' or hybrid directors in an environment favoring economic capital and searching for people who can be champions for social capital. This international cross-disciplinary research explores the leadership challenge through personal interviews and survey feedback with 72 museum directors or associate directors across Australia, the United States, England and Canada. Organisation psychology and management theory is brought to the field of art history. Art history is the traditional breeding ground for museum directors. In concluding, the thesis argues for a range of propositions to address the current leadership crisis in art museums based on a new understanding of leadership and leadership development / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Light Intensity and Surface is the title of this PhD art exhibition where I explore through paintings, the world of my own encounter with the radiant light of the Linear Accelerator used in treatment of women with breast cancer. This engagement with the world of light technology encompasses oncologists, physicists and women who extended their personal experience to inform my artwork and contribute to the theoretical connections made in this thesis. The contribution of this thesis lies in how the lecture The Origin of the Work of Art by philosopher Martin Heidegger can be applied to a reading of great artworks that are separated in time, space and culture but connected in their subject: Light. It was his philosophy that helped shape the connections between where art originates and what springs from the artwork itself. The concept of light in the title of this thesis refers to Heidegger’s notion of the clearing seins Lichtung-the lighting centre- the medium that holds one being to another from where the idea for an artwork springs in the artist. Surface relates to the attunement of artists throughout history to the new particularly in the science of controlling light which influences the way artists achieve the material appearance of their artwork. Intensity refers to the level of openness to the mystery of light in both physicists and artists to create and control some thing that stabilises a community and remains a source of wonder. This thesis demonstrated how artists have responded to the new light technology with a way of seeing that created a depth dimension that bridges cultural worlds to unearth the breath of something often most effectively communicated by being silent / Doctor of Philosophy(PhD)

In respect to the nature and development of scientific knowledge and issues of abstraction and irrationality in science, there is evidence that the fundamental forms of inspiration and origins of methodology are common to both scientific and artistic research. Also, the results of artistic practice, although far more culturally specific and subjective, are arguably complementary to those of scientific research. What are then the methods used and results obtained when one makes art about scientific theories, using technologies derived from the results of scientific research? Furthermore, how does this 'art about science' affect our understanding of the relationship between art and science? These are some of the issues and ideas which I explored in my MA research project works between 2000 and 2005, and which I discuss in this exegesis. Through my research, I constructed a series of works which focused increasingly upon theories in physics and mathematics not only in an attempt to understand and communicate the theories to a wider audience, but also to communicate the historical and philosophical frameworks such theories were based upon. Through this I developed a working methodology which took inspiration from, but also subverted and critiqued the scientific theories and methodologies I was examining. The digital media tools I used, such as video, audio and programmed interactivity, opened up a line of communication between the disparate fields of artistic and scientific inquiry. The result was a series of interactive digital media and installation art pieces that explored various aspects of science, which were exhibited in both art and science spaces, and drew a wide range of responses from the scientific and general community.

Thesis.

Swell Art Exibition In Gordon Snelgrove Gallery

Swell Art Exibition In Gordon Snelgrove Gallery