"Passage" presents a negotiation between the natural and the human-made realms and comments on the duality of perceptions and emotional responses associated with each. On the one hand, I aim to create a calm, quiet and peaceful environment offering a pleasant and meditative experience.  On the other hand, I offer the challenge of contemplation in a city-like space that evokes dense urban architecture in the process of decay. Both experiences draw on my personal histories of fact and fiction, reality and dream, hopefully resulting in evocative parallel experiences for those who encounter my exhibition space.

A corridor is a passage between two places, an empty space, that is neither here nor there. My exhibition, Corridor, is such a passage, a liminal space that plays with the boundaries of memory and perception. This immersive environment evolved through thinking about lightness; light as illumination and as the sensation of weightlessness.

This paper is intended to serve as a supporting document for the exhibition Collective Case Studies that was held in The Gallery, at Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. In Collective Case Studies, the head sculptures act as blank slates for my expression of personality archetypes. They embody a longstanding interest in the psyche, character and identity that continues to influence my art-making practice. These sculptures introduce a particular personality trait or present a case study to make human idiosyncrasies manifest in visual terms, both individually and relationally. Collectively, the works are inspired by psycho-social aspects of personality, including archetypes and stereotypes, in the past and present time. The leading sources for my work are psychological, cross-cultural and empirical.

This paper is intended to serve as a supporting document for the exhibition Collective Case Studies that was held in The Gallery, at Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. In Collective Case Studies, the head sculptures act as blank slates for my expression of personality archetypes. They embody a longstanding interest in the psyche, character and identity that continues to influence my art-making practice. These sculptures introduce a particular personality trait or present a case study to make human idiosyncrasies manifest in visual terms, both individually and relationally. Collectively, the works are inspired by psycho-social aspects of personality, including archetypes and stereotypes, in the past and present time. The leading sources for my work are psychological, cross-cultural and empirical.

A corridor is a passage between two places, an empty space, that is neither here nor there. My exhibition, Corridor, is such a passage, a liminal space that plays with the boundaries of memory and perception. This immersive environment evolved through thinking about lightness; light as illumination and as the sensation of weightlessness.

"Passage" presents a negotiation between the natural and the human-made realms and comments on the duality of perceptions and emotional responses associated with each. On the one hand, I aim to create a calm, quiet and peaceful environment offering a pleasant and meditative experience.  On the other hand, I offer the challenge of contemplation in a city-like space that evokes dense urban architecture in the process of decay. Both experiences draw on my personal histories of fact and fiction, reality and dream, hopefully resulting in evocative parallel experiences for those who encounter my exhibition space.

The Jackalope in the Room is an installation of sculptural and found objects that have been altered or contextualized in a way that conflates strangeness with normality. Many of the items in the installation were given as gifts or found in thrift stores, and have been modified to communicate a broader cultural or psychological meaning. Often this meaning is related to personal anecdotes and stereotypes attached to the objects that, in turn, seek to complicate popular narratives and cultural myths—many of which relate back to my experiences in northern Alberta. Northern Alberta is a liminal, near-mythical place where our ideas about remote environments collide with mass industrialization. These shibboleths have a pervasive quality that allows me to construct an uncanny web of associations using often banal source materials.

This thesis is concerned with architectural and design practitioners involved in areas outside of their training: specifically, with the way designers embrace a do-it-yourself or DIY ethic to create experimental, ephemeral, collaborative environments not usually considered “architecture” in the professional sense. This happens because they become directly involved with a variety of methods, construction activities, project types and materials normally associated with amateur building. The thesis does not aim to contribute to more comprehensive solutions for architectural production (say, commercial practice), but rather focuses on a particular production opportunity. It attempts to draw forth qualities of process, practice and conceptualisation that are of relevance to architecture and could be the basis of future exploration in architecture. With this intent, this thesis outlines a conceptual explanation for why these designers sometimes background their training in, and knowledge of, building procurement, in favour of amateur building activities. This design approach raises questions about the way architecture is understood, discussed and practiced. In philosophy and architectural theory, architecture is usually described as a device for ordering and framing the world, an opposition to the unfolding, unpredictable process of the evolving, natural world. Yet there are things that some designer-maker-inhabitants do in practice to thwart their environmental control and influence, thus introducing a degree of unpredictability into projects. This unusual design approach has the potential to inform discussions about architecture and architectural practice beyond this thesis. There is a plethora of technical information about DIY in the popular media, yet little investigation of how professionally-trained designers creatively engage with DIY. The experimental approach to building and space studied in this research is different to self-building or simple DIY because it does not adhere to a set of design plans or set approaches. This approach is also different to outsider architecture or vernacular building because it is initiated by people with design knowledge and training, even if they put aside some of their knowledge. To clarify this latter approach to architecture and space, the research describes a space of blurring between professional and non-professional building, architectural control and spontaneity; a space of germinant practice, based on the precepts and proposals manifest in germinant philosophy. The thesis includes speculations about ways to encourage germinancy in design practice. This practice-led study involved preliminary fieldwork studies through critical analysis of my own, and others, sitespecific installation art practice. These preliminary studies led to two major fieldwork projects in Brisbane: both are homes to artists and architecturally- trained designers working outside of commercial, professional practice.

This research project investigates factors contributing to what I consider to be an erosion within the contemporary culture of the imagination- crucial to the very concept of what it is to be human. It has been said that the 'civilising' of art within contemporary culture may have flogged the human imagination into retreat. If so what might be the best way for art to help us visualise more creative ways of living and being? This is the key question I have pursued in this research project, the main outcomes of which are a body of creative art works (presented for examination in the form of a site-specific installation, together with documentary archive of photographs and other interventions) and an exegesis which explores the critical context for these. In proposing site-specific installation art as a vital alternative to the over-commodification evident within much contemporary art, I also see repetition and play as being strategies with particular potential for encouraging active artist-participant dialogue on the subject of the poetico-ethical imagination- along lines suggested by thinkers such as Robert Kearney and Ken Wilbur. The artefacts and installations presented for examination are mostly devoid of textual explanation and commentary, with the aim of emphasising direct sensory experience. However, throughout the written component (exegesis) I have taken the creative liberty of including textual fragments and other visual elements as a means of suggesting that a form of disassociation, meandering or breakdown has occurred. The reader will also notice an absence of capitalisation in the titles of chapters (and certain works). In this I have sought to explore possibilities for undermining academic form through imaginative play.

This thesis explores the rich and provocative fields of interaction between Australian artists and museums from 1975 to 2002. Artists have investigated and engaged with museums of art, social history and natural science during this period. Despite the museum being a major source of exploration for artists, the subject has rarely been examined in the literature. This thesis redresses this gap. It identifies and examines four prevailing approaches of Australian contemporary art to museums in this period: oppositional critique, figurative representation, intervention and collaboration. / The study asserts that a general progression from oppositional critique in the seventies through to collaboration in the late nineties can be charted. It explores the work of three artists who have epitomised these approaches to the museum. Peter Cripps developed an oppositional critique of the museum and was intimately involved with the art museum politics in Melbourne during the mid-seventies. Fiona Hall figuratively represented the museum. Her approach documented and catalogued museum tropes of a bygone era. Narelle Jubelin’s work intervened with Australian museums. Her work has curatorial capacities and has had real effect within Australian museums. These differing artistic approaches to the museum have the effect of contesting history and expanding narrative within museums. / Curators collaborated with artists and used artistic methods to create exhibits in Australian museums during the 1990s. Artistic approaches are a major methodology of museums seeking to contest traditional modes of history and expand narrative in their exhibits. Contemporary art has played a vital, curatorial, role in the Hyde Park Barracks, Museum of Sydney, Melbourne Museum and Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, amongst other museums. While in earlier years artists were well known for their resistive approach to the art museum, this thesis shows that artists have increasingly participated in new forms of representation within art, social history, and natural history museums. I argue that the role of contemporary art within “new” museums is emblematic of new approaches to history, space, narrative and design within the museum. (For complete abstract open document)