Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-40). / Further Fictions mediates a particular visual system - that of the screen. I have tried to unravel and grant materiality to this contemporary virtual coding of images using a process of translation: by evoking the inherent nature of the cinematic image in the medium of print.We live in an analogue reality. There is always a shift between an idea and its translation into a model, between the photograph and the reality of the event it references, between the drawing on a matrix and the print of that drawing on paper. In this project I have set myself the task of the translator by grappling with the elements of an image that defy translation from one medium to another.

In my art making I use paper as a primary material. I erode its materiality, perforating the surface in anticipation of whatever may be revealed, searching for new ways of seeing. What emerge are contradictory concepts: reduction and accretion. These mechanisms exist in counterpoise with one another yet the boundaries are blurred – indefinable. The fragile balances that operate within the mechanisms of power are similarly contradictory. It is here that this exploration resides, moving away from what has gone before – as Merleau-Ponty proposes above – taking an ongoing 'route', anticipating the possibility of new developments. papers from industry) and the use of repetition, my concerns are different to those of prominent Minimalist artists. I was first attracted to the visual impact of Minimalist works – and particularly intrigued by Richard Serra's black oil-stick drawings. The extreme reduction of visual and narrative means and a strong emphasis on materiality are central interests. A Minimalist approach to art making allows for reduction of 'noise' and elimination of excess. It pushes me out of my comfort zone of working in mixed media and familiar methodologies. Limitations of media intensify my focus and therefore require me to delve deeper, continuously striving to find and develop new possibilities, leading to new insights and engaging in a process of ongoing incremental unfolding. Fragile equilibriums, operating within complex processes of unconscious and conscious awareness – constantly shifting, adjusting and readjusting. Charcoal is the material that provides a strong link to my childhood place, and establishes a point of reference and departure for the narrative of this study. During my childhood our home was threatened on several occasions by fires in the koppie behind the house. These events were always strangely unifying experiences for our family − we pulled together, as a family, to keep the fires away from our house. Our successful efforts were always accompanied by a sense of achievement and elation, in contrast to the tense undercurrent that existed in our household. Somehow, we performed a balancing act − a fragile equilibrium − between holding something together, and that something falling apart. Throughout my artistic process the challenges remain: How to manipulate and exploit materials, process and formal considerations to say what I want to communicate? How does one give form to traumatic experience? My method in response is 'filtering' − the term offers collectively a concept, structure and process of production. Filtering serves as my concept from which to develop artworks. My choice of materials − charcoal as 'filter' and various kinds of paper used as both surface and support – act as a limit, a controlled framework within which to operate. These self-imposed limitations, to me, symbolically link to the limitations of women in a patriarchal society and the limiting structures and mechanisms of power. Through this body of work, I hope to create a new context and a symbolic 'place' for resistance, setting up new balances for power relations towards fulfilment − unknowing the known − and in the process a reconstitution and a reimagining of the self, embracing the unknown − the possibilities of a new known.

. / Avant Lounge Exotica is a project that explores the poetics of interior living spaces, specifically in relation to print media and magazine imagery. Throughout this project I have engaged with ideas around intimacy and interiority, and the sensory experience within a space. By creating imaginary environments and presenting different iterations of these spaces, I try to acknowledge the personal, psychological experience in a private interior. This interior is one that exists as part of a larger sociological context that is based on consumerist aspirations and displays of wealth.

The body of photographs discussed in this document examine the way in which the landscape was constructed to enforce separation, in the form of separate amenities, during the time of apartheid in South Africa. This project is situated within the context of a long history of representation of the landscape, but I will position my practise within the more recent political history of apartheid during which separate amenities were created. Referring to David Goldblatt's interpretation of structures with regards to his representation of the South African landscape I will examine both the political and structural history of these locations.

Includes bibliographical references. / In this project I have attempted to determine and analyse my own "mechanisms of filtering, selecting and assembling" (Hoptman 2007: 128). The cannibals' banquet consists of a practical body of work and an artist's book. The function of the artist's book is to contextualise my creative practice within a theoretical and historical context. My area of interest is assemblage and its relation to consumption. A primary attribute of consumption is that it is premised upon the creation of a constant desire for new things. The corollary of this process is a mass of obsolete or 'dead' objects, which are discarded to make room for these recent acquisitions, ending up in scrap yards, second hand shops and flea markets. My interest is in what I perceive as an integral relationship between the origins and development of assemblage and that of a consumer society, since both function within object relations. With object relations I mean the interaction between people and objects as although objects themselves are lifeless, the relationship between an object and a person is animated through the assignment of meaning to an object by a person. In this sense the object stands in relation to the person who projects certain attributes onto it as the carrier of such meanings. The same object could conceivably hold completely different meanings assigned to it by different individuals at the same time.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-102). / The purpose of this document is the elaboration of a system of thought that sees art as an empty structure, in a way that is analogous to the conceptual mechanics of Buddhism. What is meant exactly by the term Buddhism will I hope, become clearer as the reader moves through it. Likewise, it is hoped that a perspective on art that sees it as sharing certain conceptual tendencies with Buddhism will emerge. What must be borne in mind for the meantime is the following; firstly, that the concept of emptiness in Buddhism is not nihilism, and this holds true for the system that I describe; it is my position that much art is empty (in a way) and necessarily so. Secondly, that both systems (though not exclusively), are ways of relating, rather than bodies of text or specific images. Wittgenstein's view of philosophy is analogous to this last point in that he insisted on seeing philosophy as a method rather than a science (Perloff 1996: 46). This tendency of mode over product, or way of relating over the thing made, is a critical underlying component of what follows in this document and in my practical production.

Includes bibliographical references. / This series of photographs were the initial process works for my project. I began photographing my body, predominately my legs, in personal spaces. These spaces included my family home and my studio and depicted performances of my interaction with these spaces and objects and elements from the home. This series of process works introduced to me to the idea of working within the home and photographing my performances. They differ from the main body of work, which was photographed in my mother's new home - the location that I chose for my photographs and performances, in that they were not remediated into collage works.

Includes bibliographical references. / Through this research I have endeavoured to unpack the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of my own obsession with collecting photographs, by relating it to a theoretical framework as well as to contemporary artistic practice. I further present here examples of my own body of work to show how I have given form to my concerns.

Also available online. / The key to understanding my project lies in the assumption that the task of representation for contemporary painting is different from that of newer media such as photography and film. I see the role of painting as being the representation of the past; an engagement with history. Many of the painters who have inspired my way of seeing are artists who re-imagined the role of pre-modernist narrative painting and re-asserted it in contemporary practice. Contemporary narrative painting occupies a different role from that of its pre-modernist predecessors, such as Romantic painting. It also occupies a different role in relation to dominant narrative media of photography and film.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-117). / At a dinner party in Durban after the opening of Come, a 2007 exhibition of Michaelis MFA students, a woman asked me about my work. When I told her it was "the bullets", by way of description (One Hundred Bullets With Your Name On Them), she said something along the lines of "oh, that's so fascinating, I really had thought a man had made them".