The contemporary visual landscape can be seen as a continuously shifting experience of surfaces. Synthetic, glossy, reflective, transparent, flexible and colour saturated. We find them often in the form of architectural facades, automotive finishes, interior fabrications, printed materials and design objects. They are rich, seductive and desirable skins on the surface of everyday items. / Within recent contemporary visual art practice, and particularly certain nonobjective painting practices, there can be seen to be an engagement with the idea of surface as it relates to aspects of the 'everyday'. These artists are often incorporating 'new' materials and methods of making that actively respond to what is out there in our lived urban environment. They share a concern for rigorous play with an attention to surface quality, functionality, materiality and manipulability. Contemporary artists such as Thomas Rentmeister, Ian Davenport or Jessica Stockholder, to name just a few, could be seen to fit here. On the function of paint and surface Stockholder writes: The paint functions both to alter existing surfaces and as a very flat object in its own right placed over or alongside other objects. The surface of the object conceals the mass of the object from us; it is also the part of the object revealed to our sight, it is an area where we are vulnerable to deception and also a site poignantly ripe for the development of fiction. The surface becomes a tenuous site where fiction and reality struggle with notions of subjectivity and objectivity to find boundaries or to determine difference. / Stockholder talks here about the fundamental ability of paint to alter the visual and tactile characteristics of the 'thing' being painted, making its reality somewhat indeterminate by imposing a different quality. She speaks about paint in terms of surface substance, surface quality and surface manipulation. Paint is a substance separate from the object it is applied to; like a skin yet capable of transforming its visual and tactile presence in extreme ways, rendering the object less certain. It is this potential of paint as a plastic material capable of contradictory functions that underlies this research project and defines my use of the term 'uncertainty' in the title of my thesis. / Surface - as a kind of fluid, organic, and mobile skin applied over a structure or even as 'structure' itself - can be seen to be a key operative concern within several important architecture and design practices of the past ten years. This development is itself influenced largely by the potential of recent technological developments in software design tools and new materials and manufacturing techniques, which now enable complex, topographically located objects and structures to be readily designed and manufactured. / My research set out to focus mainly on recent comtemporary painting, sculpture and installation practices which, through the use of new materials and methods of making, engage primarily with the manipulation of a surface in a way that emphasises a largely visual engagement with the work. The exegesis will look at the historical relationship of such work to a largely modernist tradition of material-based practice, in an attempt to suggest there exists today a particular attitude that has a positive and openly indexical relationship to the surfaces of our everyday urban environment. This will be supported and extended by references made to particular contemporary design and architectural practices that share concerns for uncertain surfaces or surfaces that suggest ambiguity and flux. / The major focus of my research into this topic has been the development in the studio of a body of artefacts that have been exhibited at various points during my candidature. The written exegesis attempts to position these studio artefacts within a wider critical/cultural context, through discussion of the studio work as situated in relation to ideas and works developed largely by other visual artists, but also by designers and architects which share similar concerns and aesthetic sensibilities with the particular notion of surface that I am attempting to define. / Thesis (MVisualArts) - University of South Australia, 2004.

Thesis (M.A., Art History) -- University of Adelaide, 2003. / "November 2003" Bibliography: leaves 103-107.

Thesis (M.Visual Arts) -- La Trobe University, 2006. / Research. "An exegesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Visual Arts by Research, School of Visual Arts and Design, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora". Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-92). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Melbourne, 1982. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 360-384).

Thesis (MVis Arts) -- University of South Australia, 1997

What are the traces of culture left behind by children? What emotional significance so these material traces hold for those who elect to use them as inspiration within their own creative practice? The creative investigation of this project focuses upon 'child-made' artefacts produced during play rituals within the domestic environment. Through painting practice my project seeks to respond to and record these artefacts. I am particularly interested in how these artefacts, as emblems of desire and symbols of loss are transformed into a mother's memorabilia. / In researching this area I have adopted an interdisciplinary approach, taking inspiration from play theory, anthropology, sociology, feminist cultural theory, literature and psychoanalysis. / My project follows a self-reflexive approach that utilises auto-ethnography and action research as methodologies. This auto-ethnographic and personal approach reveals a number of complex issues that unfold between author and subject, regarding ethics and the power relationships between participants. The blurring of boundaries that occurs between academic and auto-ethnographic research is also examined within the exegesis. As mother and artist I have conducted my research using observation and transcribing practices that cross over between anthropology and the field of contemporary visual arts practice. Utilising transcription techniques of painting and writing, I have recorded the ephemeral artefacts of childhood play as well as the circumstances and even conversations surrounding their evolution. Discussed thematically rather than chronologically, the artefacts I have produced also investigate the capacity for creative works to evoke ideas of temporality and absorption, through representing moments of reverie and preoccupation that may correlate directly with the act of painting. Supporting the exhibition of paintings and objects, the exegesis interweaves academic and poetic writing, transcriptions and journal notes in a playful ensemble of texts and images that reveal a complex layering of ideas, thoughts, relationships and questions. / My creative investigation into the ephemeral traces left behind by children examines the role of play from two perspectives, that of the child as creative individual and that of myself as mother and artist. My intention has been to celebrate the creative practice and life of the individual child. Observing and recording the young child at play, in parallel with my own visual arts and writing practice, I recognise the cross-pollination that occurs, and the generative potential of this relationship. While this exhibition and exegesis brings to conclusion one body of research this project has opened up great possibilities, generating questions and new ideas for future consideration. / Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2007.

Painting, central to Western art for many centuries, became problematised to an unprecedented degree in the 1960's. From the early 1970's, many Western artists abandoned its forms and traditions and embraced alternative forms. However, painting returned, and it remains the medium of choice for many artists. Painting in the post-modern era of art differs from that of the modernist era. The reconsideration of painting was apparent internationally and throughout Australia. / In South Australia, painting began to change significantly around 1970, and this change had some unique local characteristics. In this thesis, I describe the change in painting in South Australia and identify the main themes and innovations that characterised it by examining the work of important painters working in South Australia in the period c1970 to 2003. While South Australian art has been strongly influenced by Australian and Western artisitic trends, these trends have manifested themselves locally in characteristic ways - shaped, for example, by local and national politics, a strong feminist movement, the role of government-funded exhibition spaces, and an active art press, as well as prominent local practitioners. / This thesis takes the form of an overview rather than an in-depth analysis of all painting in South Australia in this period. It identifies some of the main artists and many of the main themes but is not intended as an exhaustive description, which would be beyond the scope of such a thesis. The intention is to provide a broad historical picture that identifies the forms, styles and characteristics of the painting that developed and the context in which it developed in this important three-decade period. This historical picture will serve as a framework for further analysis of specific art and artists, and it provides a basis for the assessment of painting at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The thesis builds on and draws into the historical picture some existing literature on South Australian painting. / South Australia is chosen for this study partly because of its unique characteristics and partly because there are some significant South Australian artists whose work is under-acknowledged. In Australian art history, the emphasis is traditionally on developments in Sydney and Melbourne. This thesis shows that South Australian painting since the 1970s has been important and is worthy of consideration. / Chapter 1 briefly outlines the nature of South Australian modernism at the end of the 1960s. Chapter 2 details the revolution in South Australian painting of the 1970s: the changed political, educational and institutional environment for art, the rejection of painting in favour of alternative forms, and the politicisation of painting's subject matter. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 outline the impetus for the return to painting in South Australia, the development of post-modern painting in the 1980s and 1990s, and the principal concerns and attributes of the new painting. Chapter 6 briefly looks at South Australian Aboriginal painting, whose nature differed from that of the Northern Territory, but which has had a nationally significant impact. Chapter 7 examines a sample of the work of emerging painters around 2000, and the context in which they work, so as to identify the nature painting at the beginning of the twenty-first century. / Finally, the discussion of South Australian painting in this thesis informs the consideration of painting as an art form generally. It shows that painting today is very different from that of the modernist era, but that it retains significant power and appeal. / Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2004.

Thesis (M.V.A.)--University of Sydney, 2008. / Title from title screen (viewed 11 September, 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Visual Arts to the Sydney College of the Arts. Degree awarded 2008; thesis submitted 2007. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MA (Hons.)) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1998. / Bibliography : leaves 63-65.

The autobiographical nature of my work deals with the space between the innocence of childhood and the wisdom of adulthood. I explore the complexities of personal experience, old and new landscapes and the scar tissue of memory. The work deals with beginnings and departures, relationships and conflict of power and vulnerability in the quest to make sense of life. My work connects with moments of childhood that I try to retain as a touchstone for authentic experience. The images are derived from personal and familial experiences, moving through to the universal to tell the human tale, using the human body as a metaphor. The body becomes the subject matter for expressing ideas about our universal and personal concerns. I explore the gulf between the real and the unreal through examining themes such as identity, vulnerability, anxiety, fear, alienation, abandonment, loss, corruption of innocence, love and death within a contemporary urban framework. These emotions are played out against the backdrop of daily domesticity and reflect the physical reality of the world around us, often exposing the contrast between the orderly veneer of our daily lives and our emotional reality. My work methodology uses narrative found in books, films, fairy tales or fables to explore the conflicting emotions which structure human identity and interaction. I use the stories as a way of approaching ideas or emotions and exploiting the story as a focus of cultural knowledge. In the search for emotional truth I draw parallels between my art practice and the search for authenticity within the theatre. My work is an attempt to explain my own creative process in relation to the artists who have influenced me, my childhood, its rich tradition of storytelling and my passion for theatre and literature as well as a search for meaning in my own relationships and life's journey. This is conveyed through a series of paintings and works on paper.