An investigation into painting's transformation and regeneration through post-photographic intervention in the digital archive

This PhD practice-led research inquiry sets out to examine and describe how the fluid interactions between memory and time can be rendered via the remediation of my painting and the construction of a digital image archive. My abstract digital art and handcrafted practice is informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomics of becoming. I aim to show that the technological mobility of my creative strategies produce new conditions of artistic possibility through the mobile principles of rhizomic interconnection, multiplicity and diversity. Subsequently through the ongoing modification of past painting I map how emergent forms and ideas open up new and incisive engagements with the experience of a ‘continual present’. The deployment of new media and cross media processes in my art also deterritorialises the modernist notion of painting as a static and two dimensional spatial object. Instead, it shows painting in a postmodern field of dynamic and transformative intermediality through digital formats of still and moving images that re-imagines the relationship between memory, time and creative practice.

Abstraction : on ambiguity and semiosis in abstract painting

Drawing on the fields of philosophy, phenomenology, art history and theory as well as the candidate's own painting practice, this PhD explores the nature of ambiguity and semiosis in contemporary abstract painting. The thesis demonstrates how the aesthetic qualities of pause and rupture, transition and slippage work emergently to break established clichés, habits and intentions in the experiencing of abstract painting and artistic practice.

Painting anatase (TiO2) nanocrystals on long nanofibers to prepare photocatalysts with large active surface for dye degradation and organic synthesis

Anatase TiO2 nanocrystals were painted on H-titanate nanofibers by using an aqueous solution of titanyl sulfate. The anatase nanocrystals were bonded solidly onto the titanate fibers through formation of coherent interfaces at which the oxygen atoms were shared by the nanocrystals and the fiber. This approach allowed us to create large anatase surfaces on the nanofibers, which are active in photocatalytic reactions. This method was also applied successfully to coat anatase nanocrystals on surfaces of fly ash and layered clay. The painted nanofibers exhibited a much higher catalytic activity for the photocatalytic degradation of sulforhodamine B and the selective oxidation of benzylamine to the corresponding imine (with a product selectivity >99%) under UV irradiation than both the parent H-titanate nanofibers and a commercial TiO2 powder, P25. We found that gold nanoparticles supported on H-titanate nanofibers showed no catalytic activity for the reduction of nitrobenzene to azoxybenzene, whereas the gold nanoparticles supported on the painted nanofibers and P25 could efficiently reduce nitrobenzene to azoxybenzene as the sole product under visible light irradiation. These results were different from those from the reduction on the gold nanoparticles photocatalyst on ZrO2, in which the azoxybenzene was the intermediate and converted to azobenzene quickly. Evidently, the support materials significantly affect the product selectivity of the nitrobenzene reduction. Finally, the new photocatalysts could be easily dispersed into and separated from a liquid because of their fibril morphology, which is an important advantage for practical applications.

An ancient duplication of apple MYB transcription factors is responsible for novel red fruit-flesh phenotyp

Anthocyanin accumulation is coordinated in plants by a number of conserved transcription factors. In apple (Malus × domestica), an R2R3 MYB transcription factor has been shown to control fruit flesh and foliage anthocyanin pigmentation (MYB10) and fruit skin color (MYB1). However, the pattern of expression and allelic variation at these loci does not explain all anthocyanin-related apple phenotypes. One such example is an open-pollinated seedling of cv Sangrado that has green foliage and develops red flesh in the fruit cortex late in maturity. We used methods that combine plant breeding, molecular biology, and genomics to identify duplicated MYB transcription factors that could control this phenotype. We then demonstrated that the red-flesh cortex phenotype is associated with enhanced expression of MYB110a, a paralog of MYB10. Functional characterization of MYB110a showed that it was able to up-regulate anthocyanin biosynthesis in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). The chromosomal location of MYB110a is consistent with a whole-genome duplication event that occurred during the evolution of apple within the Maloideae family. Both MYB10 and MYB110a have conserved function in some cultivars, but they differ in their expression pattern and response to fruit maturity.

Analysis of ancient pottery and ceramic objects using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry

Archaeology has been called 'the science of the artefact' and nothing demonstrates this point better than the current interest displayed in provenance studies of archaeological objects. In theory, every vessel carries a chemical compositional pattern or 'fingerprint' identical with the clay from which it was made and this relationship is basic to provenance studies. The reasoning behind provenance or sourcing studies is to probe into this past and attempt to re-create prehistory by obtaining information on exchange and social interaction. This paper discusses the use of XRF spectrometry for the analysis of ancient pottery and ceramics to examine whether it is possible to predict prehictoric cultural exchanges.

The function of the RNA-binding protein TEL1 in moss reveals ancient regulatory mechanisms of shoot development

The shoot represents the basic body plan in land plants. It consists of a repeated structure composed of stems and leaves. Whereas vascular plants generate a shoot in their diploid phase, non-vascular plants such as mosses form a shoot (called the gametophore) in their haploid generation. The evolution of regulatory mechanisms or genetic networks used in the development of these two kinds of shoots is unclear. TERMINAL EAR1-like genes have been involved in diploid shoot development in vascular plants. Here, we show that disruption of PpTEL1 from the moss Physcomitrella patens, causes reduced protonema growth and gametophore initiation, as well as defects in gametophore development. Leafy shoots formed on ΔTEL1 mutants exhibit shorter stems with more leaves per shoot, suggesting an accelerated leaf initiation (shortened plastochron), a phenotype shared with the Poaceae vascular plants TE1 and PLA2/LHD2 mutants. Moreover, the positive correlation between plastochron length and leaf size observed in ΔTEL1 mutants suggests a conserved compensatory mechanism correlating leaf growth and leaf initiation rate that would minimize overall changes in plant biomass. The RNA-binding protein encoded by PpTEL1 contains two N-terminus RNA-recognition motifs, and a third C-terminus non-canonical RRM, specific to TEL proteins. Removal of the PpTEL1 C-terminus (including this third RRM) or only 16–18 amino acids within it seriously impairs PpTEL1 function, suggesting a critical role for this third RRM. These results show a conserved function of the RNA-binding PpTEL1 protein in the regulation of shoot development, from early ancestors to vascular plants, that depends on the third TEL-specific RRM.

Telling tales and painting pictures: A narrative inquiry into the professional learning of Northern Territory primary teachers

This thesis narrates the professional learning experiences of seven Northern Territory teachers. It outlines the evolution from traditional professional development in schools to an active, responsive professional learning agenda. With increasing demands on teachers, standardisation and the quest for improved student outcomes, key themes in the re-storied narrative emerge about the definition and role of professional learning in complex conditions, effective teaching, quality programmes, and teacher agency. This thesis contributes to knowledge about the characteristics that teachers value in their professional learning experiences. An Ongoing Professional Enhancement Model (OPE) is proposed, highlighting directions in this field for key stakeholders.

Landscape painting

The images in this exhibition were based on questioning relationships between the histories of painting and photography, which helped to establish the indexical references that became both photography’s most powerful attribute and most subtle illusion. Debates over the objectivity or subjectivity of the photograph and the uneasy relationship between painting and photography, as played out in the history of art, have been brought into sharp relief with the contemporary proliferation of digital images. The digital realm of photography gives rise to a general and relative skepticism of verity, but it can be argued that to artist/photographers, this representational malleability is precisely what their purpose becomes. In researching current issues of the indexical in photographic practice, landscape provides a potent vehicle for exploring issues of representation and illusion, the nexus of painting and photography, and the digital realm. One of contemporary photography’s most resonant themes is a return to pictorial subjects and methods, including a renewed interest in floribunda, still life and landscape. The resulting deconstruction and reconstruction of landscape ‘painting’ in this body of work- the monochrome, linear abstraction, painterly representationalsism and pictorialist detail is presented as a perceptual, aesthetic and digital act. The exhibition incorporates landscape painting’s simplicity and complexity, photography’s significance of representation and minimalist aesthetics in an over-mediated world.