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(2020)ThesisIn a rich and growing field of writing around socially engaged curatorial projects, the role and impact of these projects in rural and regional Australian communities remains under-examined. Australian research on creative activity in general has been characterised as susceptible to an “urban bias”, in which scholarship is dominated by a focus on work taking place in metropolitan contexts. This reflects the international discourse on socially engaged practice since the 1990s, which has highlighted its relationship to new genre public art and its ability to engage with urgent social issues or conditions, with attention primarily paid to urban contexts and communities. Curating socially engaged projects in regional or rural Australia necessitates a different kind of engagement, which offers rich possibilities for curatorial research. In this project, I have applied a model of ‘conversational curating’ to the decisions and processes of curatorial practice-based research in a regional Australian context. Conversational curating characterises the engagement between artist and curator, along with a spectrum of potential relationships, that include a network of locally embedded creative agents, which is crucial to curating in regional locations. My case study of Cementa 17 has helped illuminate the conditions for curating in rural and regional Australian contexts and inform key understandings brought into the practice component of my research. The practice component of my research consisted of a residency and exhibition, titled Sentient, at Murray Art Museum Albury; this project was realised with the Sydney- based artist James Nguyen and local communities living along the Murray River in the twin border cities of Albury- Wodonga. This project concerned people’s personal accounts of origins and migration, intertwined with the environmental and social complexities of the Murray River’s usage over time. Research in the process of curating Sentient has explored duration as a key part of the conditions of making; this allows for a cumulative and dynamic engagement with place and communities—a specific requirement of rural and regional curating. My research uncovers some of the specific challenges and opportunities of working in rural and regional settings and demonstrates an effective curatorial approach that prioritises collaboration and relationship building through dialogue.
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(2021)ThesisContemporary Muslim feminist artists, such as Cigdem Aydemir, Sarah Maple and Shirin Neshat, tackle the representation and misrepresentation of Muslim women, within both patriarchal Muslim cultures and the Islamophobic Global North. As this thesis shows, such artists often use the veil to perform Muslim womanhood and their unveiled bodies to claim agency both in and outside of Islamic countries. This practice-led research MFA, developed by Amber Hammad, positions itself in the field of veiling and unveiling Muslim woman’s bodies, building on the work of the aforementioned artists. Drawing on Hammad’s experiences of living in Pakistan and Australia, it analyses the politics of performing Muslim womanhood from a feminist standpoint, utilising strategies of the performance lecture and video art in particular. In the video work The Nude Dupatta — A Performance Lecture (2021) Hammad draws on the work of Hito Steyerl on the politics of images and Andrea Fraser’s work on gendered institutional critique to galvanise her agency as a Muslim female artist. In particular, the work examines the female nude in Islamic art history. In Lower the Gaze: Manuscript Page from خاتون نامه Khatoon Nama #1 (2021) Hammad builds on Shahzia Sikander’s techniques of animation and appropriation and Sara Ahmed’s intersectional feminist theories to connect ideas of visibility and invisibility with the sounds of the Quranic phrase “lower your gaze.” Through these works Hammad expands understandings of Muslim female artists’ engagements with hypervisibility and the politics of veiling.
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(2022)Thesis3D computer generated biomedical animations can help audiences understand and contextualise scientific information that can be challenging to communicate due to resolution and complexity. Biomedical animators bring together multiple sources of authentic scientific data, to translate abstract information into a visual form through storytelling and visualisation. The field of biomedical animation has emerged from a long history of science visualisation and science-art endeavours, and despite there being rich discourse in the fields of data visualisation and science communication, the academic literature in the field of biomedical animation is limited, and focussed on the technical methods for visualisation, or the role these animations play in scientific research, rather than the processes through which they are created. However, as the field matures, there is a need for a deeper understanding of the creative process, and the field is now poised to expose and characterise these aspects, particularly from the perspective of the practitioner. This practice-based research project aims to expose and characterise both the visible and invisible factors that influence my personal process of creating a biomedical animation, and the tacit dimensions that influence orchestrated design choices. This research project employs a multi-method and reflective practice approach with disciplined capture and documentation of critical moments of self-reflection, that ultimately comprise the data for analysis. Thematic analysis was then used to analyse the data, and to identify themes that could contribute to frameworks that represent my personal process(es) in creating 3D biomedical animations. This has allowed me to identify and contextualise my creative process both in terms of my personal and professional position as well as within the field more broadly. I am now able to better advocate for the intangible and often undervalued aspects of my creative practice, and can articulate how a hierarchical decision matrix that considers multiple inputs contributes to my creative process. These insights will also be relevant to others in the field of biomedical animation and in the field of design more broadly, who may gain a deeper insight into their own processes of working and ways of exploring creative practice.
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(2020)ThesisMy research concerns Queer Spectrality - a term that encapsulates the erasure and absence of queer people throughout history, culture, and society. Queer spectrality is derived from Jacques Derrida’s theory of hauntology first introduced in Spectres of Marx (1993). It looks at history through the figure of the ghost - an entity that challenges ontological notions of being and exists in a liminal space, traversing categorical distinctions. The ghost parallels the marginalisation experienced by queer people as well as the way queerness blurs rigid boundaries created by Western, colonial, patriarchal systems. Queer spectrality challenges the histories created by such systems and invites a reimagining of lost histories and voices in order to create alternative futures. Queer spectral disruptions challenge the perception that time is inherently “straight”, suggesting instead that it is non-linear, and multiple rather than fixed. Using experimental paranormal methodologies my practice is an attempt to resurrect one specific queer ghost whose trace I followed throughout Paris in 2019. Her name is Qiu Miaojin and she is a queer Taiwanese writer who lived in Paris during the early 90s. In 1995 Qiu committed suicide at the age of 26 leaving behind her final novel Last Words from Montmartre. The book is written as a series of letters and diary entries dated between April to June followed by her death on June 25th. During my residency in Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts I recreated a response to Qiu Miaojin’s novel through temporal, geographic, psychical and embodied practices. In 2019 I was also 26 and the residency took place at the same time as Qiu’s novel between April to June. In Paris I retraced her steps, reading and embodying her novel on the exact dates she wrote them. From this intensive three-month immersive performance I created video diaries relating to each letter by Qiu; the footage is taken from the specific places she visited or themes she wrote about on each day. Through this work I have attempted to place myself in her shoes and to act as a human mirror. My project involves a process of becoming a medium who has opened themself up to being haunted, allowing Qiu’s words to come alive again through my physical embodiment. These works explore the intermingling of our lives, the cyclical nature of history, and synchronicity. It is an attempt to reach back through time and through death to make connections with queer kin.
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(2020)ThesisWearable Assistive Technologies (WATs) have the capability to improve the quality of life of older adults. However, to realise their full potential, WATs must be designed properly for reliability, usability, and suitability for everyday use. To date, existing design strategies are not sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that WATs will be usable by older adults. In this regard, I propose 25 generally applicable interaction design guidelines for WATs. These guidelines are consolidated from more than 150 design recommendations from multiple sources and refined through a series of participatory design workshops with older participants. To illustrate their utility, I present a case study on the development of a WAT that enables older adults to utilise Mixed Reality (MR) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The proposed interaction design guidelines can serve as a resource to practitioners working to make WATs more accessible, and to researchers interested in the further development of interaction design guidelines for older adults.
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(2020)ThesisThis research project is a practice led investigation into the stress relieving benefits of haptic interaction with objects. This project offers alternate ways to address the physical manifestations of stress through handheld objects, objects for the body, and jewellery. The research question this project addresses is in what ways can haptic interaction with wearable and non-wearable artefacts produce stress relieving benefits for users? While this project acknowledges existing research surrounding the area of stress, it also provides critical insight into how I personally deal with stressful situations and how I found alternate therapies to deal with the physical manifestations of stress. The aim of my research project is to use scholarly research, personal reflection and iterative prototyping to create a series of haptic and interactive artefacts that aid in relieving stress. By developing a theoretical framework with a focus on stress, I am able to create a foundation for my project and through practical experimentation, implement this knowledge into my artefacts. To contextualise the research artefacts within the broader field of enquiry, research was conducted into relevant artists and designers and the concepts they explored, their fabrication processes and the materials used in their work. The artefacts allow viewers to see how I personally deal with stress and provide the viewers with alternate tangible solutions for coping with stress. This research projects utilises two research methodologies. The first is an autoethnographic approach to writing the thesis and the second is an iterative and reflective approach to the design of the artefacts. These research methodologies allow the artefacts to be informed by a combination of practice led and scholarly research. Through self-reflection and iterative prototyping of the research artefacts, the pieces have evolved from initial concepts to resolved objects.
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(2022)ThesisThe Kitsch Glitch is a personal investigation of the impact of cultural shame and stigmatisation on the lived experience of breast cancer. My point of departure was the apparent inability of my inherited (Russian-Jewish) culture to admit any discursive practices that would do justice to such a lived experience. Influenced by family history, kitsch aesthetics, and glitch theory, I sought to combine these components in order to produce a set of works that open a space in which the received cultural perceptions of cancer could be challenged. I refer to various aspects of “Soviet Kitsch” and Russian history to demonstrate that a restrictive and self-suppressing Stalinist mentality continues to pervade my culture, and even overdetermined my family’s perception of disability and illness. Utilizing a punk-luxe aesthetic, my artistic practice takes an experimental approach in presenting cancer as a bodily glitch, while critiquing what I have discovered about my Russian cultural heritage. This paper presents an empathetic perspective and eclectic iterations of medical and cultural aesthetics. This is articulated through a series of experimental digital and physical outputs. As a result, I argue that my work could be considered as a positive rendition of “cancerous propaganda”.
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(2021)ThesisConcepts and practices of spirituality have recently undergone significant shifts as they become increasingly incorporated into the homogenising and commodifying mechanisms of contemporary life. This has coincided with a renewed interest in esoteric practices, institutes, cultural products, and themes in contemporary art, with a range of contemporary artists using expanded sculptural practices to critically engage with the commodification of spirituality. Here, the visual language of ‘spirituality’ becomes a vehicle for artists to respond to commodification, through diverse approaches, including the adopted practices of shamanism, animism, Zen Buddhism, and the occult, to ritualising spaces and personal spiritual explorations. This research examines how key selected artists adopt and adapt the language of spirituality in contemporary art contexts. Using practice-led research, which resulted in a written thesis and body of artistic practice, this project argues that artists can engage, creatively and critically, with spiritual ways of understanding the world, to offer possible alternatives to the dominant narratives of contemporary life. Furthermore, this project charts how certain artistic strategies and tendencies in this field illustrate a renewed desire, not only for individual spiritual exploration, but also for social and cultural transformations that promote alternative narratives for possible futures.
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(2020)ThesisResearch Question: How have Australian women wearable art practitioners of the 1970s and 1980s experienced the field of wearable art? During the 1970s and 1980s, a diverse interconnected group of young avant-garde Australian women wearable art practitioners formed loosely connected network with likeminded colleagues who shared conventions and common interests in wearable art. They met regularly with their fellow colleagues, forged friendships, strong alliances, and collaborative partnerships. They shared histories, facilitated information between members of the network and established cooperative links with other organisations that hold common beliefs and interests. They curated exhibitions and provided educational opportunities through conferences, forums, workshops, and travelling suitcases designed to facilitate engagement with museum and gallery audiences and the general public. They worked independently from their studios in the suburbs or industrial warehouses and found opportunities to exhibit their work in community museums and galleries and endeavoured to establish themselves as professional artists. Some were amateur enthusiasts and others were trained artists. This influential group of practitioners witnessed pivotal moments in Australian cultural history during the 1970s and 1980s that changed the very fabric of society and the way that the body was dressed. They blurred the boundaries between art, craft and fashion and created a new language of clothes that became part of Australian fashion history. Their Australiana inspired wearable art reflected the spirit and vibrancy of Australia. This was an artform that knew no boundaries and challenged traditional fashion conventions. This research strategically focuses on the careers and aspirations of key women wearable art practitioners who have often been overlooked and underrepresented in museum and gallery collections and mainstream media. This research aims to uncover lost voices that would otherwise be missing from the narrative of Australian cultural history.
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(2021)ThesisDISRUPTING TRADITIONAL CARTOONING IN THE DIGITAL AGE This exegesis identifies the changing nature of political cartooning in the digital age, and specifically the Closed Gestalt confines of contemporary Opinion Page cartooning, a specific discipline that has been my practice for the last 32 years for the national newspaper, The Australian. The daily workload consists of creating a cartoon for a prescribed space on the page. The image coinhabits and illustrates a singular opinion piece of writing. With the advent of new technology, and the availability of improved digital drawing tools, my practice broadened to encompass the use of time-based digital animation. Consequently, to go beyond the limitations of the Opinion Page working model, I proposed to The Australian to experiment with a process described as an Open Gestalt. The project was aptly called Work-in-Progress (W-i-P). My working process was to solicit multiple ideas from readers online, through social media and the newspaper’s website, to grow an expanding collaborative picture based on a chosen weekly theme or topic. In addition, during the course of each week, an animated video would be produced of the growing big picture. This practice-led process attempted to explore the phenomenology of ideas via an Open Gestalt framework, employing new communication technology and utilising innovative digital drawing tools. A necessarily fast-paced heuristic research method was employed to synthesise ideas into images. While experimenting with digital cartooning, using the latest software and hardware, I investigated key artistic precedents and the work of cartoonists that I found to be inspirational. At the same time, there were controversies surrounding the nature and role of political cartooning. I therefore explored the work of Australian cartoonists, Bill Leak and Mark Knight, as well as that of the French, satirical weekly newspaper, Charlie Hebdo. I felt that my evolving concept of collaborative cartooning, incorporating many opinions, might point to a process that would result in a concept of ‘civil cartooning’, even democratic art practice. To explore this process of collaborative picture making further, I set up and carried out tests within a leadership institution: the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, Canberra, and within a cultural setting: the Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney.