This body of work is composed of sculptural mixed media objects and scenes that heavily utilize cast glass. These pieces are physical representations of my quest to seek mental balance by focusing on what brings me happiness and comfort while still honoring mortality. Moldmaking and repetition of process innate within casting and other aspects of this work makes me focus and revisit an idea, repetitively, like a meditation or a prayer. The intense focus required helps combat my anxiety and translates anxious energy into more positive, productive, balanced way of living. Part of this balance requires the acknowledgment of the opposition. In this work, I confront some of these dualities by exploring my understanding and interpretation of life, death; beauty, grotesque; reality, fantasy; happiness, and depression. References to and use of ecology like the human form, animals, insects and flowers acknowledge the natural cycle of life. Peonies specifically symbolize my personal request for health and healing. Replicated items are used to honor the original object or memory and give figurative power to concepts I wish to emphasize. Some works resemble a memorial and become monuments to a memory or an emotion. When presented as a body of work, my intention is to create an experience and thus a memory for the viewer. A memory is more likely to be impactful and longer lasting when more than one sense is activated. With this in mind, a calming scent of peony is diffused throughout the area as the viewer navigates through the space and interprets anthropomorphic creatures, wilting flowers, and a vignette of metamorphosing butterflies. Viewer's memories are activated with my references, and a personal narrative manifests. It is my pleasure to share my experiences, understanding of life, and to create a new memory with them. Prevail: In the moment... is a story of resilience. It is a petition for balance, health, and healing. It is a remark of gratitude for the positive moments, and an honoring of mortality. It is the creation of a new memory and a manifestation of looking forward to the future.

Over the past several years I have been on a quest to locate a world beyond the one I’ve been presented. I am interested in the history of atomic particles - like everything that radiates off of a monument (both literally and those things that are metaphorically reified) - invisible things, and the ways in which these things insect beyond our knowledge systems. This inquiry takes many forms. Mine is a conceptually based practice linked to record keeping and time, and the ways in which these concepts find plurality within our culture; or more pointedly, the importance that we attach to “time” and “the record”, as they relate to our “legacies”, “cultures”, or “the canon”; our histories and the ahistorical, the prehistorical, fantasies, the things that never happened but could’ve, imagined futures and parallel universes.

O projeto analisa o impacto dos fluxos imateriais formados por infraestruturas de comunicação e conectividade na percepção dos lugares. A emergência de espaços informacionais nos centros urbanos vem mudando a noção do que é visível e não visível na sociedade e na arte. A abordagem considera o \"lugar\" como um campo afetado por questões socioeconômicas e tecnopolíticas, bem como por migrações semânticas, que ocorrem em função de deslocamentos culturais, operações linguísticas, licenças poéticas ou digressões teóricas. As especificidades de um espaço arquitetônico que inclui cada vez mais aspectos imateriais em sua constituição, como campos de radiofrequência (RF) e ondas eletromagnéticas (EMF) gerados por celulares, redes wi-fi, transmissões de TV, satélites e telefones sem fio são discutidas através de uma arte em constante atrito com elementos da comunicação, em relações que se intensificaram notavelmente desde o início dos anos 1990. Essas investigações buscam não apenas evidenciar o quanto o espaço pode ser de fato considerado pelo que não é visível, tendo em vista as progressivas novas apreensões do espaço diante de inovações tecnológicas, mas também discute recursos que permitem fazer ver componentes intrínsecos à sua constituição, apontando novas condições e formas da invisibilidade. Para tanto, o projeto parte inicialmente de considerações metafóricas e de conceitos que discutem o espaço informacional e os fluxos de comunicação imersos na sociedade (CASTELLS, SANTOS, VIRILIO, BEIGUELMAN, DI FELICE), com a intenção de investigar os três tópicos principais da pesquisa: a noção de lugar, carregado de informação e de aspectos imateriais (FOSTER, LIPPARD, DEUTSCHE, KWON, DIDI-HUBERMAN), incluindo a presença da infraestrutura de conectividade e sua ubiquidade (DUNNE, SAVIC, EASTERLING, GREENFIELD); as tecnologias, suas instabilidades e efeitos colaterais em formas ubíquas de modulação de subjetividade e de ideologias (AGAMBEN, FOUCAULT, ZUBOFF, BRUNO, CRARY, RANCIÈRE); as artes criadas sob novas especificidades de lugares e condições (CAUQUELAIN, FOSTER, ZANINI, MEDOSCH, Metodologicamente são abordados uma série de artistas que convergem esses conceitos em trabalhos que são tanto alusivos da ideia da suposição como um componente da arte como indutores de conscientização a respeito das invisibilidades, ideologias e políticas imersas no ambiente ao nosso redor. Em interlocução com obras próprias e de vários artistas, são discutidas formas de ativar uma percepção que considera o que não está explícito no espaço ao redor, em uma apreensão de fluxos de comunicação e campos eletromagnéticos cada vez mais ubíquos, intrusivos e determinantes de nossa participação e existência nas esferas culturais, sociais e políticas atuais. / The project analyses the impact of immaterial flows produced by the infrastructure of connectivity in the understanding of the concept of the site. The emergence of information spaces in urban centres changes the notion of what is visible and not visible in both society and in the arts. The approach taken considers the site as a field affected by socioeconomic and technopolitical issues, as well as by semantic migrations, which occur due to cultural displacements, linguistic operations, poetic licenses or theoretical digressions. The specificities of an architectural space that increasingly involves intangible aspects in its constitution, such as radiofrequency (RF) and electromagnetic fields (EMF) generated by cell phones, wi-fi networks, TV broadcasts, satellites and cordless phones are discussed through a series of art projects in constant friction with elements of communication, in relations that have intensified notably since the beginning of the 1990s. The investigations seek to inquire not only the extent to which the site can actually be constituted by nonvisible elements in view of the progressivelly new seizures of space in the face of technological innovations, but to point out political implications behind networking infrastructures. To do so, the project starts from metaphorical considerations and concepts discussing the notion of informational space and the communication flows immersed in society (CASTELLS, SANTOS, VIRILIO, BEIGUELMAN, DI FELICE), aiming to investigate three essential approaches in the research: the perception of the site, loaded with information and immaterial constituents (FOSTER, LIPPARD, DEUTSCHE, KWON, DIDI-HUBERMAN), including the presence of the infrastructure behind connectivity and its ubiquity (DUNNE, SAVIC, EASTERLING, GREENFIELD); the technologies, its instabilities and side effects on modulations of subjectivity and ideology (AGAMBEN, FOUCAULT, ZUBOFF, BRUNO, CRARY, RANCIÈRE); the arts created under new specific conditions and places (CAUQUELAIN, FOSTER, ZANINI, MEDOSCH). Concerning the methodology employed, the research comments on these theorethical concepts in relation to art projects that are both allusive to the idea of supposition as an art component as well as inductive of awareness about the invisibilities, ideologies and policies immersed in the environment. In a dialogue with artworks by several artists, including my own, the research seeks ways to activate perception in order to consider what is not explicit in the surrounding space, as an apprehension of communication flows and electromagnetic fields that are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, intrusive and determinant of our participation and existence in the current cultural, social and political spheres.

Realizada a partir de métodos e suportes diversificados, a produção de Gordon Matta-Clark desponta como um exemplo significativo no desenvolvimento da arte, sobretudo a partir da década de 1960/70 (momento caracterizado pela ampliação da atuação e direcionamento das pesquisas estéticas contemporâneas). Distante dos limites definidos pela prática artística institucional, o artista dedicou-se a investigar novas e inusuais formas de atuação, articulando processo e apropriação como estratégias de intervenção. Tensionando composição material e temporal do objeto/espaço, Matta-Clark expõe a relação entre constituição material e comportamento. Usando o edificado como matéria prima, lida com a dimensão discursiva do espaço evidenciando a imprescindível relação existente entre arquitetura, contexto e urbano. Das experimentações materiais e destaque do contexto social em Garbage Wall (1970); alteração da percepção sobre objeto arquitetônico e seu contexto em Splitting (1974); ao questionamento da limitada atuação do público frente à transformação urbana de Conical Intersect (1975); Matta-Clark opera em uma área de transição, mobilizando reflexões sobre estruturas (materiais, discursivas e simbólicas) fundamentais para a definição dos espaços e sociedade de seu tempo. Frente à atualidade e relevância de Gordon Matta-Clark, a presente dissertação propõe um estudo sobre sua a trajetória, partindo da relação entre esta e os campos da Arte e Arquitetura. / Made from diverse methods and supports, Matta-Clarks production emerges as a significant example in the development of contemporary art, especially since the 1960s and 1970s (moment characterized by the amplification of the activity and direction of contemporary aesthetic researches). Far from the limits defined by institutional artistic practice, the artist devoted himself to investigate new and unusual forms of action, articulating process and appropriation as intervention strategies. Tensioning the material and temporal composition of the object/space, Matta-Clark exposes the relation between material constitution and behavior. Using built as raw material, deals with the discursive dimension of space highlighting the essential relationship between architecture, context and the urban. From the material experiments and emphasis of the social context in Garbage Wall (1970); alteration of the perception about architectural object and its context in Splitting (1974); to the questioning of the limited action of the public in face of the urban transformation of Conical Intersect (1975); Matta- Clark operates in a transition area, mobilizing reflections about the structures (material, discursive and symbolic) fundamental for the definition of spaces and society of his time. In the view of the present and relevance of Gordon Matta- Clark, this dissertation proposes a study about his trajectory, starting from the relation between it and the fields of Art and Architecture.

Three major trends are evident in Chinese ink painting: academic reformism, modernism and neo-traditionalism. While reformists are calling for stylistic freedom and a return to humanism, modernists seek the adoption of Western modes of thought and practice to develop and reform Chinese tradition. The new literati painting which has seen a resurgence of innovative theory and technique of an indigenous Chinese painting tradition distinguishes neo-traditionalism. Many scholars believe that developments in Chinese painting represent a decline in the history of Chinese art but, in this authors’ opinion, this has been a period of transformation in aesthetic conception and expression. Chinese ink painting, which is still the dominant stream in twentieth century Chinese art and a continuation of its development, can be seen in the work of many contemporary artists. It is more than likely that the pluralism in contemporary Chinese art discussed in this thesis will continue although the forms it takes will to some extent be determined by political and economic factors. It is unlikely that contemporary Chinese art will totally reject the established cultural and aesthetic systems and establish a new one, based on the Western system. The traditions of Chinese culture remain strong, and it appears much more probable that an internal ‘re-shaping’ of both indigenous and imported elements will result in an artistic tradition that remains distinctively ‘Chinese’ as well as contemporary / Master of Arts (Hons)

This is a composite thesis realised in a sound installation titled Blitz: Discursive bombardments in ‘the war on terror’ with a supporting exegesis. The exegesis offers a context for the project in sound art theory and practice, focussing specifically on the history of experimental ‘electrovocal’ expressive forms. It provides an account of the artist’s perspectives on the topic itself: contemporary political discourse on themes of security and danger. The exegesis also defines the scope of the project and documents the creative process undergone to realise its outcome: an installation apparatus capable of folding visitors into a heightened sense of the zeitgeist of early 21st century Australia. The genealogy of the project is described in terms of pivotal decisions and insights, technologies and techniques used, and aesthetic and ethical concerns. The nexus of voice – its material and metaphorical resonances in public discourse – and technologies for recording, manipulating and circulating sound are central to the development of this apparatus. The core body of sounds used in the installation are the voices of politicians, media presenters, members of the public and ‘experts’ and are presented in the form of short sound bites. These were sampled from many hours of recordings of news and current affairs material captured from Australian public broadcasters (radio and television, the ABC and SBS) over the pre-election months of 2004. The voices extol and debate diverse ‘angles’ on the so-called ‘war on terror’ and its physical enactments and outcomes in the war on Iraq. Other sounds offset the voices to enhance a sense of surreal ambience and introduce meanings through metaphor; children’s voices; rhythmically dripping taps; footsteps; ticking clocks; the drone of planes overhead. Various sound processing techniques are applied to samples and a sonic montage iscreated through random juxtapositions of sounds played synchronously from an assemblage of iPods. The figure of the labyrinth is central to the work on many levels, materially and metaphorically. It is used to structure movement through the installation space, a dimly lit ‘black box’ studio of ten by eight metres. Against the traditional practice of silently ‘walking the labyrinth’ as metaphor for a ‘journey within’, the Blitz labyrinth invites walkers to fold themselves into a dynamic field of allusions and aural messages and thereby to warp and shift the emerging play of meanings. The walk wends in and out of proximity to seven iPods set in small portable speakers and dispersed around the floor of the installation space. The ‘pods’ broadcast playlists of sounds bites that play randomly in ‘shuffle’ mode – against one another and against silences – to convey a sense of immersion in the discursive blitz of messages about terrorism and war from the media. The labyrinth is drawn out across the floor in dashed lines – made from small reflective rectangles that light up as visitors move around the space with torches – and is designed to suggest the feel of a road or a landing ground at night. The meandering trajectory of walking bodies around the curves of the labyrinth creates a choreography of audition, of moving and listening strategically to a barrage of sound from ever shifting perspectives. It invites walkers to listen for possibilities that may lie between and beyond the dominant narratives of western political leaders, to locate the gaps and silences. Beyond the pervasive noise of discourse normalised by politicians and the media, what is it that we might otherwise wish to hear and to speak?

By the 1990's many modes of artwork incorporated the constructs of the museum. Art forms including, 'ethnographic art', 'museum interventions', 'museum fictions' and 'artist museums' were considered to be located in similar realms to each other. These investigations into this emerging 'genre' of collection-art have primarily focussed upon the critique of the public museum and its grand-narratives. This thesis will attempt to recognise that the critique of institutional hierarchical systems is now considered integral to much collection art and extends this enquiry to incorporate private collections which examine the narratives of everyday existence. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach to material culture and art criticism in examining everyday objects within contemporary collection-art. In this context, this paper argues that: the investigation of collection motivations (fetish, souvenir and system) as metaphor, process and imagery in conjunction with the mimicking of museology methodologies (classification, order and display) is an effective model for interpreting everyday objects within contemporary collection-art. In formulating this argument, this paper examines the ways in which artists emulate museology methodologies in order to convey cultural significance for everyday objects. This is explored in conjunction with the employment of collection motivations by artists as a device to understand elements of human/object relations. In doing so, it contemplates the convergence between the practices of museums and collection-artists. These issues are explored through the visual and analytic investigations of key artist case studies including: Damien Hirst, Sylvie Fleury, Mike Kelley, Christian Boltanski, On Kawara, Luke Roberts, Jason Rhoades, Karsten Bott and Elizabeth Gower. In doing so, this paper argues that the everyday objects of collection-art can represent a broad range of socio/cultural concerns, so delineating a closer relationship between collection-art and material culture.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / It is within the perception, the reality and the problematic of international air travel that this thesis is situated. It argues that a space has been created for international air travel, which is conceptually and physically demarcated from normative social space, the Transit Zone. The thesis examines four sites constituting the Transit Zone using both political and social theory and the analysis of performance and visual artworks that explore, explain or contest aspects of the sites. The first site is concerned with the construction of nation-state territory, population and legal movement. Its physical expression can be found at the border between the Transit Zone and the nation-state. However, its conceptual reach is much more extensive, appearing in immigration policy, national law, international covenants, data-sharing practices and the creation of a space external to, yet within, the nation-state system. This site creates the Transit Zone’s paradoxical position of being excluded from nation-state territory while simultaneously defining it. The second site is premised on the (in)security of civil aviation and explores the striving towards absolute security, and the unachievability of that goal. This is a reflection of the prevalence of (in)security discourses in contemporary society. The third site is created by corporate interest within the airport terminal and the aeroplane. It is the site of logistics and sales, of the passenger functioning both as an object or unit of movement and as a desiring purchasing subject. The fourth site is constructed through the imagination – it is made up of the ideas, cultural dreams and responses that have accreted around the site of the Transit Zone. These intimate and personal responses transform the Transit Zone from a site of function, profit and government control to a vehicle for the construction and realisation of fears, fantasies and rites of passage. This thesis demonstrates that many contemporary issues infuse and surround the Transit Zone. Immigration, national defence, international politics, logistics, social interaction and cultural fantasy all collide there. It explores the complexity of the Transit Zone’s paradoxical collection of sites and systems, which can not be reduced to one single reading. The Transit Zone has evolved, and continues to do so, in response to government and international demands, legal problems, technological advancements, logistical and commercial needs, and social changes. In doing so, its evolution redefines and articulates contemporary concerns. Additionally the thesis reveals an extensive artistic engagement with the Transit Zone and the contemporary concerns it articulates. Art is used as a designated imaginative space that challenges the established reality and the art works discussed change our understanding of the Transit Zone.

This research documentation explores representations of the Holocaust in the visual arts in relation to the post-Holocaust ??ripple effect????the impact of the Holocaust on the world today, in both the wider arena of global political conflicts and in the lives of individuals. In the following chapters, I address the complex ethical and political aspects of representations of the Holocaust in the context of the evolution of Holocaust awareness and memorialisation. I also investigate recent developments in art and theory that challenge prevailing conventions governing Holocaust representation, especially how the relationship between the perceived political exploitation of the Holocaust and the intergenerational effects of Holocaust trauma is addressed. Given these are sensitive and contentious issues I discuss my studio work in terms of how trauma affects the political rather than as an overt polemically/politically motivated art. I examine my attempts to bypass controversy (maintaining respect for victims and survivors), yet maintain engagement with these issues in my art. In doing this I aim to liberate both my art and the viewer from habits of perception in regard to the subject. From this principle I propose a ??strategic?? form of self-censorship that paradoxically gives me the freedom to do this. This strategy enables me to create an art of ambiguity, which exists in an amoral zone. The art evokes reflective thought, uncertainty and ambivalence, where references to the Holocaust or political content are often not explicit, leaving room for lateral and open readings. My work, which incorporates interdisciplinary methods, is often based on photographs from a variety of sources. I also create three dimensional constructions. The sourced images and the constructions are disguised, decontextualised, cropped, erased or digitally altered, and also experiment with optical illusion. Through transformative processes these images are changed into drawings, paintings, photographs. This research documentation acknowledges the gap between the gravitas of the subject with its ethical and geo-political complexities and my idiosyncratic, subjective, introverted approach to making art. I conclude that there is potential in the exploration of an ??anxiety of representation?? in relation to the Holocaust in the contemporary context.

The Screen Test (Americana/Australiana) project is a collection of works that re-makes selected fragments of film spanning cinema history. Through a process of selectively slowing and stilling this form, of what Laura Mulvey calls Delayed Cinema, opens up new possibilities for interpreting and understanding cinema and the photographic. The aesthetic qualities and repetition of the scene or shot are re-created and re-performed, allowing an alternate form of cinema to take place. This alternate cinema takes on the characteristic of the Hollywood screen test and thus we can see each piece as the artist performing the screen test for each film. However, over time the screen test becomes the site for shifting the aesthetic elements within the film and shaping the narrative as a form of aesthetic building block. The viewing of each fragment allows for a new reading of film that suspends or subverts the temporal narrative and allows the contained segment to exist outside of the film opening up the possibility of constructing and emphasizing new iconic images and meanings. Each video piece is supplemented with a photographic still in tableaux form that further explores the aesthetic material of the film or shot raising the aesthetic components of the film ( props, locations etc) to the level of fetishism that may have been missed in the original version. This photographic rendering of the film fragment rethinks the possibilities of photographic tableaux and its relation to the iconic and indexical of photomedia art practice. Similarly, each photographic work is informed by theories of film analysis and psychology that has examined the primacy of the film still with Freudian notions of the primal scene and the uncanny. We are after all bringing to life the graveyard of cinema history. These photographic qualities of the mis en scene and the indexical of metonymy allow a heightened aesthetic experience, which transforms itself into an aberration of the director’s intended meaning, thereby reconstructing this meaning within the context of camp humour and irony. The work also acts as a playful and absurd interpretation of the cult of celebrity within cinema and the art world, which frees up of the interpretation of the film’s meaning and becomes the site for contemporary re-readings of film culture. The juxtaposition of the American Hollywood film and its emphasis on studio lighting, props, character and dialogue against the outdoor location of the Australian films conflates the two cultural imperatives, allowing for the examination of cultural myth through cinema. American cinema is revealed as the dominant culture whose imperialism dogs Australian film and fosters a culture of low self-esteem. Further, the Americana works become the site for cultural examinations of gender, narcissism and war - both real and imagined – and Hollywood is explored in terms of its social imaginings and how they play into real life events. The Australiana component explores the mythology of the Australian landscape with an emphasis on the culture of masculinity and self-destructive violence. However, each work is the result of a conflation of both cultures and other films, or parts of the same film, shifted within the fragment. The production of each photographic and video piece requires the taking on of the role of director, cinematographer, actor and producer. Through the use of interactive technologies such as DVD and the Internet not only am I able to experience a new subjective relationship with the intricacies of cinema but also by recreating these cinematic fragments I am able to bring into being and transform the spectre of cinema into the realm of contemporary art practice.