Commentary on the visual arts in the past decades has noted a shift towards a 'return to narrative', particularly in relation to painting, photography and video, but also media where narrative concerns have perhaps been marginalised, namely contemporary installation and sculpture. Artists as diverse as Simon Starling, Mike Nelson, Tracey Emin, Robert Gober and Mariko Mori have been the subject of a general announcement of narrative as being at the forefront of international contemporary art practice. Closer to home, artist curator Richard Grayson's 2002 Sydney Biennale (The World May Be) Fantastic, has also examined this renewed interest in the possibilities of narrative for contemporary visual art. / In terms of sculpture, 'narrative' artworks can simply refer to the depiction of an action taking place, as in a tableau. Metaphorical, political, or other theoretical contextualising of a work can be another type of 'story', interpreting the otherwise pure materiality of an object. 'New narrative' might be seen as a development of postmodernist approaches of the 1980's, as exemplified say in the paintings of David Salle, wherein differing narrative styles, referents, and subject voices coexist simultaneously. It is perhaps not coincidental that the demise in the rigid orthodoxy of prescribed meta-narratives in politics would coincide with the rise of narrativity and fiction in contemporary visual art practice. What might be different today is the extent to which specifically personal, 'occult', or political discourses often appear instead of, or along side, early postmodern 'surface' readings of artworks. Indeed this new interest in narrative has been described as a 'gleefully regressive step', by one author. / This research project attempts to chart some possibilities for narrative within contemporary sculpture and installation through a complementary and reflective studio practice combined with writing, with particular reference to notions of non-dualistic, complex and personal perspectives on the reading of artworks. In particular, my research has been informed by my perspective on some critical debates relating to James Joyce's Ulysses, and the novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet. The creative outcomes of this research, together with this exegesis (which combined form the 'thesis'), suggest that an understanding of divergent relativist, structuralist, and 'surface' understandings of narrative literacy approaches since the start of the twentieth century might add to our reading of some important recent developments in the visual arts. / Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2004.