In DAYS ENDING IN WHY, interdisciplinary artist Julia Martin identifies the schism of her autobiographical practice: deep melancholia and absurd irony. The fragmentation of the works presented knowingly resist cohesion, instead, through their arrangements and the potentials of space between them, they carry on conversations with one another. Rooted in the personal narrative, the works span across multiple mediums; photography, film, installation/sculpture, and literature. Martin emphasizes both the tragic and the comedic, pacing the show as a play between the two. Also, there are cats. So many cats.

The Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands constitute an interesting case for studying the function and symbolism of matrimony. This period marked an active time of change in the Low Countries: there was ongoing antagonism between the dukes of Burgundy and their Dutch subjects; shifts in the mercantile industry caused economic flux; the Reformation sparked religious tension; and the rapid expansion of the art market created a Europe-wide demand for Netherlandish fine and decorative art. In the face of upheaval, the act of marriage and the ideology surrounding it remained relatively consistent. Betrothal and marriage ceremonies in the Low Countries were quite formal compared to those in southern Europe; the quintessential northern ceremony customarily involved a priest, witnesses, and symbolic hand gestures. The images discussed in this thesis overwhelmingly reflect the importance of ritualistic behaviour in the late medieval Netherlands; the majority of them depict proper in facie ecclesiae unions, meaning “in the face of the Church.” These images of ideal marriage rituals were most commonly commissioned by members of the court or Church, and were used primarily to display wealth and power, to enhance the pageantry of court life, to draw connections with the mythic or biblical past, to promote canon law, and to reinforce cultural values. The fifty-three images studied in this thesis not only relate to discourses on medieval marriage and art history; they also fit into the larger narratives surrounding civic authority, religious tension, economic change, and social mores. In this thesis, I use an interdisciplinary approach to reveal the main functions of matrimonial ceremonies in Early Netherlandish art, and to examine the gap between image and reality. This thesis contributes to a better understanding of ritual and visual expression in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands.

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Arising from the complications of an underprivileged and impoverished background this thesis focuses on exposing the grotesque consequences of conflicting ideologies through personal and societal suffering while in search of universal connections to showcase the need for compassion and understanding. My artistic practice is utilized as an entry point to have difficult discussions, a tool for teaching themes of injustice, inequality, and mistreatment. The traumatizing experience of poverty or corruption has the potential to be transmuted into something beneficial. I utilize discarded, low valued, unwanted, and damaged materials in my artmaking to symbolize transfiguration, an advanced state of former self. What seems hideous has its own beauty. What seems rotten and ugly has the potential to be adapted into something beneficial, any suffering we have experienced should not and has not gone to waste. The wisdom and resilience that arose from the experience will serve you in the future. This attempt at an honest, unflinching exploration of self and society is to shift perspectives away from apathy, towards thoughtfulness for other's struggles.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the function of visual art in Torgny Lindgren's novels Till sanningens lov (1991), Dorés Bibel (2005) and Klingsor (2014) and the short story collection I Brokiga Blads vatten (1999). Visual art in Lindgren's prose is approached both as an instance of description and in terms of an activity and artefact to be viewed, created and interacted with. By studying ekphrases and "iconic projections" based on intermedial theory, the verbal descriptions of art are shown to have a narrative function, whereby the characters viewing or creating the artwork are reflected. A conspicuous trait of the ekphrases and iconic projections are their focus on details.  The area of creation as an activity relates visual art to crafts, cooking and alchemy, with an emphasis on its material aspects. The creation of art investigates the dualism of genuine versus fake, as well as the relationship between art and commerce. Lindgren's stories depict the market as an arbitrary yet powerful force, alongside individual creative forms of resistance to it.  The manner in which artefacts are described evokes the notion of an enchanted object, in accordance with research on the function of art-objects in contemporary fiction. Being able to discern enchantment in Lindgren's works is based on the conversion of one's vision, which in turn is related to one's view of the world as a whole. Conversion is engendered by methods of irony, ambiguity and the elevation of the humble.

Focusing on works between the 1960s and the early ’80s, this thesis sets the literature of Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) and J.G. Ballard (1930–2009) within the context of twentieth-century architectural theory and history (written), design (drawn), productions (built), professional practice (managed), and pedagogy (taught). The primary aim of this study is to explore the discursive exchange between literature and architecture, while probing the putative association between postmodernity and architecture. By introducing a broader set of social phenomena into debates about postmodernity, my thesis enables a revaluation of how the architectural idiom is interpreted in literature. Using textual and visual analysis, this thesis argues that Barthelme’s and Ballard’s literary works operate at an intersection of the visual arts and mass media. Responding to American and European twentieth-century visual avant-gardes and socio-cultural transformations, architecture participates in the formulation of avant-garde conceptual frameworks. Critically, architecture is not only an aesthetic discipline; it is also a social discourse. Through the discipline’s alignment with ‘new’ and ‘old’ avant-gardes, Barthelme and Ballard use architecture as a point of creative departure to undertake formal and thematic literary experiments. For both authors, contact with the architectural avant-garde has literary consequences. This thesis considers four interconnecting ways literature and architecture ‘speak’ to each other: representation, discourse, formal comparisons, and influence or inspiration. Within my study these topics are examined through critical meditations on architecture from geographical (Fredric Jameson, David Harvey), architectural (Robert Venturi, Charles Jencks) and visual cultural (W. J. T. Mitchell, Marshall McLuhan) sources. Also figuring prominently are epitextual materials, especially archival documentation from the Donald Barthelme Literary Papers at the University of Houston and the Papers of J. G. Ballard collection at the British Library. This thesis opens up new ways of understanding the interart pluralism that characterises the postmodern.

A Journey from the Wordless is a study of the development of the author’s own professional knowledge.  After an introductory chapter on theory and method, there are four chapters treating of the author`s academic training as an artist (Ch. 2), a presentation and analysis of his own exhibitions (Ch. 3), a chapter on a cooperative effort entitled Pompeii in Time and Space (Ch. 4), and a concluding discussion of the nature of personal knowledge (Ch. 5). Questions are addressed concerning artistic knowledge; how it is built and transferred and how it is developed and transformed. Since the author`s own professional knowledge is the object of the research, special perspectives on personal experience emerges that otherwise would be difficult to articulate. The thesis is also a contribution to the debate surrounding artistic research in the visual arts, focusing on the importance of reflection and analysis in art education and creative art work.