Solo Show

Solo Show is a to-scale model Metro Arts’ gallery, in which it was exhibited. Set upon a timber frame, the model depicts a miniature ‘installation’ within the ‘space’: a foam block that obstructs one of the gallery’s walkways. Developed and produced for a group exhibition that explored the relationship between humour and art, this work explores and pokes fun at ideas of the institution, scale and the artist ego as well as communicating feelings of emergence, insecurity and hesitancy. The work was included in the group show 'Lean Towards Indifference!' at MetroArts, Brisbane, curated by art collective No Frills.

Multicultural melting pot : painting for the planet

This brief paper gives an outline of a series of painting workshops held over a two year period (2010 and 2011) with the principal aim of raising the awareness of University students to human impact on the planet and on its biodiversity. The workshops were part of a Post-graduate research students' network engagement programme instigated and supported by a number of staff in Counselling Services and International Student Services. Two of the United Nations International years were celebrated and student engagement in practical painting workshops had many benefits that are discussed in the body of the paper.

Provisionality and the impossible task of painting

This thesis explores Raphael Rubinstein’s notion of provisionality as detailed in his influential article from 2009, Provisional Painting and his subsequent exhibition of the same name from 2011. Rubenstein’s writing is discussed in relation to modern art’s rhetoric around the many ‘deaths’ or ‘ends’ of painting as a contemporary art‐making medium, particularly in reference to Yve‐Alain Bois’ 1986 article, Painting: the task of mourning. While Rubenstein predominantly views the provisional via an abstract lens, it is through the work of Sigmar Polke and then Luc Tuymans, Peter Doig and Daniel Richter, that I build an argument to include the work of contemporary representational painters within his notion of provisionality. These new ideas of provisionality are then examined in the context of my recent paintings, which are viewed as contemporary examples of provisionality extended into the representational.

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.

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.

Miniature cone tip resistance of sand with fly ash using triaxial setup

In a continuation of the authors' recent work, the ultimate tip resistance of a miniature cone using triaxial equipment was determined for samples of dry sand mixed with dry fly ash. The effect of (i) the proportion of fly ash, (ii) the relative density of samples, and (iii) the vertical overburden pressure was examined. It was noted that an addition of fly ash in sand for the same range of relative density leads to a significant reduction in the ultimate tip resistance of the cone (q(cu)). This occurs due to a decrease in the friction angle (phi) of the sample with an increase in the fly ash content for a given relative density. For phi greater than about 30 degrees, two widely used correlation curves from published literature, providing the relationships between q(cu) and phi for cohesionless soils, were found to provide satisfactory predictions, even for sand - fly ash mixtures. As was expected, the values of qcu increase continuously with an increase in the relative density of the soil mass and the vertical effective ( overburden) stress on the sample.

"Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal": Cultural practices of repetition in visual social media

Looping media are recurring components of online content, from gifs to Vine videos, in addition to the conceptual repetition of memes and related practices. This paper analyses practices around looping visual media as examples of vernacular creativity, social media literacies, and internet culture, especially for irreverent and playful purposes. Focusing on the LGBTQ digital cultural context as a pilot study, this research examines multi-platform uses of looping media, including personal narratives through Vine videos and animated gifs on Tumblr. In addition to textual analysis of LGBTQ looping visual social media content, the study will further explore the platform context as part of the experience of looped media. The research will address how these factors may also contribute to practices of irreverence and play, both within the specific case of LGBTQ culture and internet culture more generally.

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.

Penetration Rate Effect on Miniature Cone Tip Resistance for Different Cohesionless Materials

Cone penetrometer tests were carried out in a 140 mm diameter triaxial chamber by using a miniature cone of diameter 19.5 mm. The rate of cone penetration was varied from 0.01 mm/s to 0.1 mm/s. Tests were performed in (i) clean sand, (ii) silty sand, and (iii) sand added with fly ash. Two different effective vertical pressures (sigma(nu)), 100 kPa and 300 kPa, were employed. It was noted that for clean and silty sand, the effect of penetration rate on the ultimate tip resistance (q(cu)) of the cone was found to remain only marginal. On the other hand, for sand added with 30% fly ash, the variation in q(cu) values with penetration rate was found to become quite significant. The effect of penetratio rate on q(cu) in all the cases was found to increase with a decrease in the rate of cone penetration. It was noted that with an increase in sigma(nu), the effect of penetration rate on q(cu) was found to become smaller. The effect of the cone penetration rate on q(cu) generally reduces with an increase in the relative density of the material.

Painting of Albert Einstein Portraits; Men

Digital Image

Artist Rafaello Busoni painting a portrait of his daughter Kiki.

Digital Image