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Art represents our culture, and our current culture is largely dependent on technology. However, artworks created and exhibited with digital technologies have not been as perceptible so far within contemporary arts institutions as traditional analogue art forms. This thesis instigates a critical investigation into the development and values of technology-based art works utilizing qualitative interpretations of the data. Whilst this rapidly changing field is problematic in terms of a conventional conclusion, the principle aim is to explore whether an improved understanding and awareness of new media art is required as a result of the paradigm shift caused via the permeation of digital technologies across art practices. The resulting new methods of production, distribution, and consumption within art require updated models of critical engagement. An appropriate paradigm shift in respect of institutions, curators, and artists will aid the integration and awareness of new media art into the broader art world. Whilst my hypothesis implies an argument for a greater presence of new media art in arts institutions, I conclude however that it is better suited to alternative modes of exhibition, such as festivals, craft labs, and workshops, as a shift from traditional art paradigms means they no longer require traditional structures of display. New media based art would truly benefit from greater awareness through a developed lexicon, education, and reportage. The balance between the institution, and growing trends such as festivals and commercial applications has been identified as key. If art forms utilising new technology do not also utilise the new expressive language it affords, then they will merely be seen as replicating old forms, rather than developing new and revolutionary ones. New media’s role within art is through a progressive discourse, which is still to fully reveal its place and relationship with mainstream contemporary arts. Based on an extensive critical survey and a probing investigation into the current parameters of new media arts this thesis seeks to contribute to that discourse.

This project is the first historical account of the emergence and development of Small Visual Arts Organisations (SVAOs) in various parts of the world from the 1990s to the present. I define SVAOs as structurally small, non-profit spaces that are dedicated both to the production and to the dissemination of contemporary art. They are characterised by their interest in the local community in which they are located, as well as in diverse urban issues ranging from new technologies to the social art practices in their cities. In spite of the potential practical and ideological similarities with artist-run spaces, community arts organisations, and New Institutions, I argue that SVAOs are a curatorial phenomenon in their own right and, as such, represent a missing piece in the recent history of exhibition making. Despite the diverse conditions of their emergence and the particular nature of the local situation to which they were responding, SVAOs have increasingly adopted curatorial strategies and methods of engagement with their publics that have been gaining popularity at a global scale since the 1990s, especially in larger arts institutions and mega-exhibitions. This project thus deals with both the global proliferation of this relatively homogenous curatorial language and with its internalisation by SVAOs, together with the problems inherent in this issue. Specifically, it is my intention to demonstrate how these spaces can give us new perspectives and insights in relation to contemporary exhibition making. I show how, in virtue of the distinctive relationships that some of them have built with their publics and their artists, these spaces have fostered a unique disposition toward contemporary art. SVAOs offer something different yet complementary to what museums and commercial galleries have to offer, making them a vital component of the arts ecology of our time.

The Sainsbury Wing, the National Gallery’s new extension, opened in July 1991. It had the primary aim of providing new galleries for the Early Renaissance collection. It was also intended to give a new outward-looking face for the Gallery with expanded public facilities, including a larger temporary exhibition space. However, this space has been much criticised for its basement location and resulting lack of natural light. The rooms are limited in size and some are irregular in shape which make it difficult to install larger works and to provide enough viewing space for visitors to popular shows. This thesis investigates why the Gallery decided to build this space, why the design was developed and what were the consequences. It looks at the history of temporary exhibitions - the spaces they need in London and abroad. Using archive material and conversations with participants, it pieces together the convoluted story of the building of the temporary exhibition galleries in the Sainsbury Wing. It examines the many briefs, the involvement of the architects, Venturi Scott Brown, and explains how the resulting design developed. It then relates how the Gallery used the space for its expanded exhibitions programme and considers its advantages and disadvantages. In the conclusion, it makes some recommendations for the best way to create new exhibition galleries for the future. The thesis sheds new light on an aspect of institutional history of the Gallery. It provides an original analysis of an area of the Sainsbury Wing which has been little discussed. As a case study for the design of facilities for temporary exhibitions, it underlines the importance of these spaces and analyses the specific needs and requirements.

This thesis explores Japanese influences on British Art and will focus on four artists working in Britain: the American James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), the Australian Mortimer Menpes (1855-1938), and two artists from the group known as the Glasgow Boys, George Henry (1858-1934) and Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864-1933). Whistler was one of the earliest figures who incorporated Japanese elements in his art but never visited Japan; Menpes visited the country and learned Japanese artistic methods from a Japanese artist; Henry and Hornel visited Japan and responded to Japanese photography mass-produced for foreign market. The purpose of this thesis is to consider how Western artists understood and accepted Japanese art as a source of inspiration. To emphasise and support my view that Japanese art was one of the sources of inspiration for the creation of European art, I will also discuss western influences on Japanese art in the second half of the nineteenth century since this movement, supported by the Japanese government, is a good comparison with Japonisme. The historical background of Japonisme will be discussed in chapter one with a variety of examples taken from decorative art, paintings and cartoons. These examples have been chosen from the works of artists who were associated with the Aesthetic Movement and interested in the improvement of Design, since the early stages Japonisme in Britain was developed by leading figures of these movements. The breadth of the phenomenon is too wide to be included in any one thesis so theatre, music, architecture, sculpture or photography are not included. I will examine the essence of Japonisme by making comparisons between Whistler, Menpes, and Henry and Hornel. For the sake of consistency in these comparisons, I am going to concentrate on pictorial art. However, Menpes' studio-house with its Japanese decoration is also going to be discussed since despite his wish to recreate an authentic Japanese interior, he did not understand the fundamental basis of Japanese architecture, so that the result was superficial. The artists have been chosen and discussed as follows.

I intend to examine the work of five practitioners who, in embracing the possibilities arising from a disruption of form, operate on the cusp between the modern and the postmodern. They generate work that must be understood, and can most usefully be experienced, as performative. The unitary form and anti form objects of sculptor Robert Morris are considered as differing ways of projecting object hood, provoking the beholder to address the total situation of the art work, including their participation, rather than the formal properties of the object. Allan Kaprow's progression from Assemblage through Environments to Happenings and beyond is regarded as an evolving process in which an antagonistic attitude toward the limitations of form is tempered by the emergence of performative circumstances that obviate the need to continually challenge the role of the object. The third section passes through the complex phenomenon of Joseph Beuys, identifying a practice that is performative, both because and in spite of the tension between the conception of art advocated by the artist and that within which he operates. Performance, in the interventions of Body Artist Chris Burden, is that which simultaneously allows for, being the justification for his presence amidst that of another individual, and is, the disruption of the normalising tendency of form. Finally, the 'operas' of Robert Wilson suggest ways in which work that is overtly theatrical in form can avail itself of the disruptive tendencies arising from fine art's adoption of a theatrical sensibility. In conclusion, it is argued that the performative work is inevitably formally diverse because its form arises from the encounter between thee beholder and the provocations of the artist, rather than being lodged within an immutable object.

The core research question is: Can an auto-ethnographic approach to inquiry inform a creative process leading to an addition to knowledge? My five case studies examine my work as an artist, auto-ethnographer and storyteller who, through a range of research processes and creative installations in non-art sites, makes visible cultural landscapes that are ordinarily hidden. These case studies reflect on practitioners such as Georges Perec, Walter Benjamin, the Arte Povera movement, The Artists Placement Group (APG) Cornelia Parker, Jannis Kounellis and Richard Wilson. The aims of my research practice are to: • produce art that brings apparently uneventful and overlooked aspects of lived experience into visibility. • record ordinary lives in their everyday places for people to see now and in the future. • excavate a site-specific place through its physical, historical, psychological, social, and political contexts taking into consideration the aspects of time within the minutiae of everyday life. • interrogate, examine and create ideas for artworks in places where art is not normally practiced or seen. Whilst my methodology of working within a site is often slow and undramatic, a meticulous approach is essential, in that it allows me as an artist to develop a respect for both people and place and to illuminate the realities of everyday experience. I use the word ‘palimpsest’ to describe my process of excavating and investigating multiple layers of a place over a significant period of time. The element of time in my work is crucial regarding the autobiographical; from the historical to the contemporary; researching a place; embedding myself within a place; making the work and writing about the work after it is completed. All these different elements, which I have a strong connection to are important to my work. Time and loss are key concepts in analysing and understanding the subtext of my research and outcomes. The thinking within this text draws upon theoretical sources including Lucy Lippard’s idea of ‘weaving lived experiences’ within the ‘subject of place’ Lippard (1997), Paul Virilio's study of the ‘infra-ordinary’ and Warwick’s reflections on artists engaged with communities and Goffman's ethnographic study of asylums. Certain aspects of my methodology are borrowed from the practice of auto-ethnographers who use personal experience to examine and critique life experiences that confront pressures that exist from both inside and outside standpoints. I also use the term ‘auto-ethnography’ throughout this essay because it is appropriate to how I am either pulled towards a specific place or the way in which I research within a place. My practice involves an on-going process of questioning: the social, how and in what way is a space used? the political, what are the ramifications and political complexities of a place? psychological, how does it makes me feel? the historical, what are the historical traces and their significance? the physical, what can be seen, found and accessed? The conclusion supports the idea that art can illuminate and make visible aspects of lived experience and histories that have been buried or lie hidden. The Case Studies evidence the value and significance of an artist’s examination of the infra-ordinary within complex layers of non-art places. From my research, I am confident that the case studies contained in this essay are not only original but have no real equivalent precedent. Evidence is provided in volume 2 from arts organisations, journals, conferences, and case studies on heritage and public art that clearly demonstrate that my published works have made an original contribution to knowledge. The supporting material also substantiates how various agencies think differently about artists engagement within the public realm and in the field of heritage conservation as a consequence of my work. I believe this is an important legacy of my work above and beyond their value as art projects. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my Director of Studies, Professor Caroline Wilkinson and co-supervisors, Professor Colin Fallows and Professor John Hyatt for their patient guidance, encouragement and advice. Similar gratitude to Sam Ainslie who has been a true friend and dedicated mentor. I am also grateful to my husband Tom for his moral support throughout. With special thanks to all the people with whom I have collaborated during these projects over the last twenty years. Finally, but by no means least, thanks go to my mother, who died 24th January 2017, whose strength of spirit was an inspiration to me. I dedicate this thesis to her.

The thesis provides a critical staging of the major themes and associated texts appearing in the American art journal October between 1976 and 1981. October's project is defined here as the conceptualization of a particular notion of the contemporary avant-garde to politics, and the bringing of European theory into the purview of American art practice. Such a complex weaving together of representation and discourse is interpreted as the formation of a destabilizing dialectic, understood as a succession of critical interventions that respond with varying degrees of continuity and disjunction, to a single ongoing problematic. This dialectic is linked to the writings of October as the journal shifts its rhetorical locations in an attempt to break down the normative pictorial and discursive frames of reference. The resulting process of re-interpretation attempts the undoing of the modernist visual stereotype, a stereotype that functions under the dominant social metaphors of plenitude, autonomy and harmony, rather than the subsequent metaphors of fragmentation, instability and dispossession. The thesis gives particular emphasis to this idea in relation to the changing conditions of art's reception, the journal's major themes and related texts and the nature and operation of the publication's critical practice. The body of the thesis is divided into three interrelated case studies that act to stage this problematic. These studies form the matrix of the thesis and present a combination of theoretical discourse, interviews, and a synthesis and summary together with ideas for further research. The cultural locations considered as case studies are: the first essay published in October's first issue, Michel Foucault's 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe', the interplay of Foucault's narrative combined with Magritte's picture, is interpreted as a metaphor for the mediations of post-structural visual criticism itself as its practitioners seek to institute language into the visual sign. Secondly, the Peircean index understood as a de-disciplinary principle, this case study discusses two related issues central to October's re-construction of the object of criticism. The first being to provide the photographic with an art-theoretical rationale that might be used to disassemble the high modernist aesthetic and its modes of representation; the second being associated with the journal's critique of the nature of the sign. And finally, the Pictures exhibition, organised at Artist's Space N ew York, in the fall of 1977. The combination of ideas about originality and appropriation represented by this exhibition-and its associated theoretical texts-have become emblematic of the vocabulary of a certain post-modem theory exemplified by October. Each of the case studies provides insight into a particular aesthetic issue and acts to refine a theoretical explanation. In this way the thesis traces October's role in the transition from a culture of autonomous art to a culture of the textual.

This thesis focuses on the relationship between film festivals and political activism by taking the International Istanbul Film Festival (IIFF) audience as a case study during the Gezi uprising. It is a study of a community’s political action hand in hand with their cosmopolitan imagination and nostalgic feelings in their engagement with the IIFF, when Turkey increasingly lurched towards authoritarianism in the 2010s. Through the increasing number of festival films and events that went against the dominant ideology in Turkey, this audience community embraced an activist cosmopolitanism which set the ground for political action. It scrutinises their formation of nostalgic feelings for the historical spaces in Beyoğlu, developed jointly by their anti-neoliberal discourses while also displaying their political action against the top-down urban regeneration programmes. In order to account for their political activism, revolving initially around festival spaces and then occupied parks, I conducted an ethnographic research at the festival and the Gezi uprising from 2013 to 2014. Employing participant observation, life histories and in-depth interviews, this research examines the intricacies of human relations with spaces, social movements and cultural events at an increasingly authoritarian regime. The rise of authoritarianism also implied a transformation in my methodology. This thesis offers a timely contribution to the relationship between neoliberalism and Islamic fundamentalism while pointing to people’s political use of cultural spaces. It also offers new insights on the phenomenon of film festivals by relating them to urban cultures and social movements in their hosting cities. It expands our knowledge on non-Western audiences’ engagement with a film festival, whilst providing an interpretation of social movement development attached to cultural spaces such as film festivals. More broadly, it gives new insights on the film and protest culture of a secular group within a predominantly Muslim culture in showing the ways in which they oppose Islamic fundamentalism and neoliberalism. It situates the Emek movement and the Gezi uprising, not only in their close affinity with Istanbul’s cityscape and Turkey’s political situation but also in their organic relationship with global social movements particularly the Occupy movements and the Arab Spring. Thus, this thesis makes a unique interdisciplinary contribution to II the existing literature on film festivals as well as urban research and social movements.

The relationship between ageing and theatre has received relatively little scholarly attention. This thesis focuses precisely on this intersection by investigating the relationship between theatre and the ageing process drawing on critical gerontology and literary theory. The research explores the documentary dramas of Peter Cheeseman by looking in detail at two of the documentaries, Fight for Shelton Bar! (1972) and Nice Girls (1993). The thesis uses a complex bricolage style of analysis to explore what narratives of the life-course reveal about ageing and intergenerational relations in Nice Girls and Fight for Shelton Bar!; as well as discovering what impacts being involved with the Vic/New Vic documentaries have on individuals’ lives and their engagement with their community. The research uses different types of narrative: narratives taken from a study of the documentaries themselves; narratives as seen through the archive, which include alternative stories and discourses to those which shaped the finished documentaries; and contemporary narratives gathered from performers and original participants from both documentaries. The thesis situates Cheeseman’s documentaries in the context of twentieth-century theatre history. In addition, it innovates methodologically by presenting the contemporary narratives in the form of dramatic scripts, with analytical commentaries. The source analyses are taken from an in-depth exploration of the Victoria theatre archive. The thesis argues that this archival material is a complex affective record of the community’s past feelings about ageing as part of the life-course. It is through this layering of analysis that the thesis draws together thematic threads relating to community, family, intergenerational relationships, representation, shifting forms of engagement and ageing, looked at from a life-course perspective. The thesis argues that the Vic/New Vic theatre is a space that licences affective engagement. Consequently, attitudes to ageing emerge through the documentaries even though that was not the pre-determined focus of Cheeseman’s work.