The research problem to be explored in this study is to what extent colonial ideologies continue to influence museum society and contemporary museum practices. The museological display of non-Western, and specifically African material cultures will be investigated. This study will enter into a dialogue with the construction of the ‘Other’, both in a colonial context and within museological paradigms. The evolutionary nature of culture and heritage will be emphasized, with particular prominence given to the dangers of exhibiting cultures as static and objectified. The Exhibitions Congo. The Colonial Era (Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren) and Zulu heritage: the history and culture of the Zulu people (Msunduzi Museum, Pietermaritzburg) are used as case studies, as both displays raise questions of appropriation and the display of ‘Other’. These exhibitions are analysed and then contextualized within existing museological research. Current debates located in post-colonial discourse, notably those of Edward Said, are discussed in relation to the display of African material culture. In discussing museum exhibitions and readership, the writings of Hooper-Greenhill and Kaplan are considered. An understanding of heritage is generated in relation to the theories of Lowenthal. The paper concludes that by combining a ‘contrapuntal’ (Said) view of the histories surrounding an artefact, with the acknowledgment of the viewer’s lived experience in accordance with Reader-Response criticism, one would create a basis from which the viewer could begin to question and engage with cultural representations of the ‘Other’. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

This study is a practice-led research project in the field of studio ceramics. It focuses on the materials and processes of making vessels and hollow sculptural forms by Kim Bagley, in partial fulfilment of the MAFA degree. The study is an examination of an intuitive approach to ceramic production expressing the chosen theme: clay-earth-skin. This theme is metaphorically linked to the physical origin (the earth) and skin-like quality of plastic clay and some hollow ceramic forms. The theme is also linked to the concept of materiality and the ideas of Claude Lévi-Strauss, concerning nature and culture, and Philip Rawson’s ‘potter’s space’. These theoretical ideas are explored in terms of an intuitive, empirical approach to ceramic materials. The working process and finished works are contextualised in terms of the historical production of Peter Voulkos and the contemporary practice of Gareth Mason and Yo Akiyama whose work can be read as related to the researcher’s through a common use of the clay-earth-skin theme in some form. This dissertation posits and elucidates the relationship between theory and studio practice. It takes the form of an exegesis, that is, a contextual translation, which seeks to both record and reflect on the making process, and what it reveals, using digital photographs and reflective writings. These tools facilitated the recognition that conceptual, theoretical ideas reoccur in the moments of making, within the studio context, which results in an integrated relationship between theory and practice. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

In this dissertation Transformation, as understood in South Africa, is investigated in the ‘Natal Museum’ and the ‘Msunduzi Museum Incorporating the Voortrekker Complex’ in terms of socio-political structures, the museum as a place, its collections and displays. I have emphasised the ethnographical perspective and analysed it by using key concepts such as new museology, time, space and place. My research focuses on the perception and mediation by museum staff-members of Transformation which is compared and positioned against South African and international museological theoretical discourses. I further explore the political backdrop to Transformation of South African museums and discuss related problems and aspects such as reconciliation, nation-building and the African Renaissance. Socio-political structures, acts, reports and policy documents are analysed over a long temporal sequence, but focus on the period 1980-2007. The long temporal sequence is a tool to capture the development connected to the museums in space and time and aims to compare and present previous developments in order to investigate how Transformation positioned itself as against the past. I hold that Transformation should be treated as an ongoing process connected to other transformation processes across time. I also propose that Transformation started earlier than previously suggested and that it is not a question of one Transformation but of many transformation processes. The urban landscape and the concept of place and name are explored. My research examines the urban landscape from the establishment of Pietermaritzburg to study how the museums were positioned in the landscape and how this has contributed to associated meanings. The museums are treated as demarcated places in the urban landscape which are named and infused with meaning and ownership. The museums are constituted and acted out within specific socio-political structures. The dissertation suggests that the objectives of Transformation reveal themselves through negotiation and alteration of place and name. My research explores the history of the museum collections – how objects were acquired, classified and used to materialise the museums´ institutionalisation of time and what this brought about for heritage production. I investigate what did and did not change when the museums transformed and I deconstruct the new and old objectives and socio-political ideas of collections. I analyse displays as socio-political spaces, the agent’s appropriation, and the discrepancies within dominant socio-political structures. When Transformation materialises in displays it becomes visible for the public to see. The negotiated displays show how the museum tries to visualise Transformation to the public. The discussion analyses the discussed concepts of Transformation, the structures, place, name, display and collection, and relates these to the concept of time, and to how agents create time and make it visual. I also discuss how museological writing and political speeches shape and negotiate Transformation through their articulation and how they sometimes constrain and form discrepancies to actual reality. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

The candidate's investigation of Hilda Ditchburn (nee Rose) (1917 - 1986) attempts to historically place the subject as a teacher and pioneer of stoneware ceramics within the context of studio ceramics in South Africa in the second half of the 20th Century. Through an analysis, discussion and documentation of Ditchburn's life and works on a personal, technical and professional level, her discoveries and advances in studio ceramics in South Africa in the 1950's and 60's will be determined. In the light of Ditchburn's ceramic background, I shall discuss the ceramic pieces she made from the 1940's to late 1970's, focusing on selected stoneware pieces, and including examples of her earthenware and porcelain pieces. I shall discuss her experiments and discoveries with glaze chemistry and clay bodies as well as their different firing methods. I shall highlight her achievement in being the first studio potter in South Africa to design and build an oil fired kiln for high fired stoneware. This kiln was successfully fired in 1954, a time when stoneware was not being made in South Africa, thus predating any stoneware kiln made by a studio potter in the country and pioneering the growth of stoneware ceramics in South Africa. This dissertation is divided into four chapters, each with sub-headings pertaining to the information contained. The first and second chapters give background and foundational information for placing Hilda in context. The third and fourth chapters map out Hilda's personal, academic and professional information. This includes archival material and Hilda's works of art. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, 1975.

This dissertation explores the gendered division of childcare in terms of concepts of the father and examines how these concepts have impacted on the production of women artists in the history of western art. The survey is restricted to western culture and is subdivided, according to changes in concepts of the father, into roughly three periods: the era of the pre-modern father, the era of the modern ideology regarding the mother, and the postmodern era, in which a new concept of the father was articulated. / Thesis (M.A.F.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2003.

This dissertation consists of two components. Firstly, a documentation of the production of Zulu beer ceramics by the Magwaza potters of Mpabelane, using the medium of documentary film; secondly, a written consideration of issues of representation, in relation to the documentary film, regarding the ceramists and the ceramics. In October 1994 I stayed with the Magwaza family for 5 days. During this time 12 of the Magwaza women produced vessels. They were Khulumeleni Magwaza, Shongaziphi Magwaza, Thandiwe Magwaza, Bonisiwe Magwaza, Esther (also called Buyaphi) Magwaza, Sholoni Magwaza, Buzephi Magwaza, Sindisiwe Magwaza, Mkoso Magwaza, Thuleleni Magwaza, Konzeni Magwaza, Qikiza Magwaza and Mancani Magwaza. The vessels were produced over four days. The potters each individually produced a vessel using the coiling method. On the first day the vessels were formed using the coiling method. Decoration was done on the second day. The vessels were decorated with either scraffito or applied amasumpa (little nodes or warts), or a combination of both methods. On the third day fat (vegetable oil or soap) was applied to the vessels and they were burnished with river stones. At sunrise of the forth day the vessels were fired. Dried aloe was packed below and around the vessels. A small pile of dried grass was packed on top of the aloe kiln. This was lit and the flames spread from the top down, burning for 25 minutes. After this the pots were blackened by various means. This process was filmed and edited. A year after the filming an interview was conducted with Khulumeleni, Shongaziphi and Thandiwe Magwaza to clarify some of the production methods that they used. The paper considers issues of representation prior to filming and editing the documentary, as well as post-production considerations of these same issues. The pre-production consideration section is based on various extracts from texts on representation, particularly of a cultural other. The postproduction analysis reconsiders these notions of representation in the light of what occurred during filming and editing. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

This thesis begins with a consideration of the contributions of modem and contemporary ideas to the field of aesthetics. Out of these contributions, selected theorists from the Independent School of British Psychoanalysis are applied as a contemporary understanding of the practice and intent of Modernist art as seen in the work of the New York School of painters and specifically to the paintings 'On the Theme of Woman' by Willem de Kooning exhibited in 1953. More recent psychoanalytic formulations of aggression, self and subjectivity are put forward as a reinterpretation of the issues surrounding these selected works. The main focus here is on the role of aggression which is reformulated as a search for subjectivity and separateness. In offering these reinterpretations, this thesis draws on the theories of Donald Winnicott and Christopher Bollas. Bollas' notion of the 'transformational object', the work of the unconscious, which he terms 'cracking up' and the idiom of the self in process, is used as a basis for a newer understanding of Modernist art's methodology and interest in the unconscious and self. The final chapter applies Winnicott's concepts of maternal functions and 'object usage' to de Kooning's 1953 Woman paintings. This reinterpretation is offered as an alternative to the more negative interpretations that prevailed at the time of this exhibition which emphasised a negative approach to the female as subject. Instead, it is argued that these works offered the artist a creative arena in which to explore psychological struggles involving self and other in a safe and adaptive way. / Thesis (M. Fine Art)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

Drawing in the Visual Arts has been subject of scrutiny, fragmentation, and interpretation. Whether viewed as an objective academic pursuit or subjective experimental and explorative act, drawing can be perceived as largely changeable and mutable. In reflection on art history and art practice, it would seem drawing has been relegated to an unseen space in Visual Art, its role defined by purposes other than those that lead to drawing for drawing’s sake. The aim of this dissertation is to reaffirm the notion that drawing, with all its breadth and influence, is pivotal to the understanding of art-making. This dissertation examines drawing employed by artists following a historically Western discourse of art-making. From an initial look at Renaissance art practice around drawing, this examination tracks the characterisation of drawing to where its newfound status emerges in the 21st century. As a background to this research is established, reference is made to contemporary artists who have enlisted drawing as a contributing factor in their art practice. I then analyse my own art practice in relation to these artists and themes which I have discussed. Drawing has rarely been subjected to theoretical discourse. This dissertation, through an inherent narrative, aims to acknowledge and identify hidden discourses around drawing with reference to authors such as Phillip Rawson, John Elderfield, and Johanna Burton. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

The central premise of this research is the paradox between idealism and realism in the visual arts in the context of the themes of maturation, old age and mortality. Throughout the history of art there have been artworks that feature the realistic representation of this theme in contrast to traditional idealistic trends. Selected artworks are highlighted from different art-historical periods in western art history dating from antiquity to contemporary times. These dates include artworks from the Hellenistic art of ancient Greece, Roman art and some examples from the middle ages. This theme flourished in the early modern period and in the 17th century, resulting in some artworks only being mentioned. The 19th and 20l centuries show less interest in this subject, therefore the examples are rare. Finally I examine my own art and my interest in the theme of old age in relation to a few examples of contemporary South African art. Old age is a social and cultural phenomenon, therefore the socio-political, anthropological, philosophical and cultural influences in each period are briefly investigated. The manifestation of this theme is initially concurrent with the development of realism in art history and the changes in art theory and criticism, but other factors are revealed in the course of this research which indicate that this subject has a bearing on moral and spiritual enquiry. In conclusion, it is anticipated that this discourse will enlighten the reader to the mysterious workings of the human creative nature and psyche that are stimulated by such topics as old age and mortality. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.