Home is where the stuff is: Framing life-worlds in domestic space

This PhD playfully employs visual arts as a means through which to explore concepts of gender, normative behaviour, play, humour, collecting and an intimate and idiosyncratic relationship with domestic space. This PhD seeks to: represent certain complexities of individual experience through theoretical frameworks of Gaston Bachelard, Michel de Certeau, Pierre Bourdieu and selected visual artists; use my art to elucidate the humour that exists in the mundane; and illustrate the construction of particular life-worlds using auto-ethnography and visual documentation. This is represented in a 50,000 word exegesis (50%) and a practice comprising of eight artist books (50%).

Terra Incognita: A symbolic mythical journey

This practice-led project is implemented in the context of rites of passage based on significant events in formative transitions of Self. It employs an intuitive methodology to examine and explore the 'Child archetype', mythos, symbolic imagination and self-narrative, through the manifestation of a visual symbolic language. The contexts, methods and processes enable empowerment, heightened awareness of personal and collective relationships, meaningful discovery and development of innovative ideas and forms. The implications for this project highlight the importance of intuition in creativity and innovation. Creative practice is a vehicle for personal and collective interconnectedness. I have discovered self-empowerment, meaningful learning and innovative forms of personal and collective communication as a way of enabling transition of a significant life event.

The drawer and the drawing

"The drawer and the drawing" is an installation that is a direct response to the Deakin artists books collection. Using original drawing, hand colouring, computer enhanced artwork, paper-cutouts, photographs, I created a glimpse of what the “book” tells me about the artist? I created "artworks, the books and the ephemera that was left over and behind when the “artbook” was taken away and placed in a gallery.

Microscopic / telescopic (universes unfold)

This exhibition was inspired by lens based observation; what is observed through the microscope – plankton and single cell organisms – finds its origin in what is observed through the telescope – stars and galaxies. The project explores two spatially divergent contexts. Artist, Melinda Capp explores the micro-scopic with porcelain objects, artist books and images derived microscopes and Daniel Armstrong references the macro-scopic with video, photography, lens based objects and installation of interactive sculpture / optical instruments to create an experiential connection between celestial phenomena/images and the viewer.

The enterprising artist and the arts entrepreneur : Emergent pedagogies for new disciplinary habits of mind

Traditional pedagogies in the arts in higher education focus largely on the studio experience in which a novice artist studies under one or more master teachers (e.g., Don, Garvey, & Sadeghpour, 2009). In more recent times, however, a shift in higher education curriculum and pedagogy in the arts has expanded this traditional conservatory model of training to include, among other components, career self-management and enterprise creation—in a word, entrepreneurship.This chapter examines the developing field of arts enterprise and arts entrepreneurship in higher education in a multinational context. The field is contextualized within the broader landscape of the creative industries and the consequential development of knowledge, skills, and the habits of mind necessary for artistic venture creation, sustainability, and success. Whereas the discourse about learning and teaching for business entrepreneurship is well established (e.g., Fiet, 2001), equivalent conversations about arts enterprise and entrepreneurship have only recently begun (Beckman, 2007, 2011; Essig, 2009). This chapter will address the contested definitions of key terms and concepts and also the question of how arts educators, although mindful of the pedagogic traditions of the arts school, are also drawing on the pedagogies of business entrepreneurship and cognitive theories of entrepreneurship to create innovative new transdisciplinary signature pedagogies for creative enterprise and entrepreneurship education in the arts.

The artist is a thief: A book review

Stephen Gray is a writer and law lecturer who has been living in Darwin since 1989. He started out writing formal legal pieces about how copyright law had unsuccessfully sought to accommodate Aboriginal art. Such work led him to further investigate the philosophical questions underlying the legal issues affecting both traditional and urban Indigenous people. Gray has also explored matters of bioprospecting in relation to Indigenous biological resources. He has investigated the introduction of a label of authenticity into Australia. Gray has also published a number of articles about other legal issues affecting Indigenous people. He has explored such topics as native title, customary law, alternative dispute resolution, and criminal law. Gray has recently been awarded The Australian/ Vogel Literary Award for his novel The Artist is a Thief. He was inspired to write a book after being sent out to a community on a possible copyright claim as part of his job in the law faculty of Northern Territory University: "I wrote an academic article and then a more philosophical piece talking about the copyright act and the way it doesn't really protect traditional artists who have a very different view of the place of their art. The pieces were interesting, but I felt there was something more there that needed a fictional expression as well." It is ironic that such a self-conscious and sophisticated meditation upon appropriation and authenticity should win The Australian/ Vogel Literary Award. The inaugural award in 1980 was won by Paul Radley, who later revealed his books were mostly written by his uncle, and in 1993 it was won by Helen Demidenko, aka Darville, who had lied about her Ukrainian background and family history.

Rethinking the identity artist-researcher, from the project “Dialogues with women art teachers”

The questioning of identity and the various roles that artists have begun to explore, from the last century, are fundamental aspects in this article. Today it is difficult to speak of the artist as individual isolated innate talent working in his studio, but the various social, political and cultural effects, have moved the artists to become part of the social world and to generate artistic practices that visualize and manifest critically these concerns. To explain these transits deeper, we will share part of the personal artistic practice and reflections, and how it has begun to intertwine with the doctoral research, through the art project “Dialogues with women art teachers”. From the experience as an artist and researcher in training, we will share what this project of artistic inquiry is about and reflect their points with the notion of `artistic practice as research´ developed by Graeme Sullivan (2010, 2011). On the other hand, we will seek to reflect how the identities of `artist´ and `academic´ are in constant dialogue. This art project seeks to show that these identities are not in a fixed position, but rather reflect, from the place of an artist, how through the various shifts in different disciplines, can conceive an identity ‘in-between’. The latter refers to the ability to understand the processes of being a woman, artist and researcher who travels and forms its identity among both disciplines.

Everything is about to happen: an ongoing archive of artists’ books

Group exhibition of artist's books including Frozen Tears I - III (2003-7) curated by Gregorio Magnani.

Unfolding projects: Afghan and Australian artist’s books collaborations

In August 2009 an email was circulated to a number of Australian women artists with an offer to participate in a project of dialogue with women in Afghanistan. The project grew as a response to the dire situation of many women in Afghanistan, particularly in relation to education; many women are illiterate because they were and often still are, forbidden, restricted, or discouraged from attending school. By April 2010, 53 artists’ books by 14 women artists from various parts of Australia were delivered to Afghanistan, thereby beginning a process of creative collaboration between women situated in different places, cultures, and languages, attempting a productive connection through image and text. Each artist had created a small series of concertinas of imagery consistent with her current studio practice, which were then delivered to Afghanistan and distributed amongst women participating in literacy education. The women were asked to relate to the images by writing their own words directly within. The general intent was for the concertinas to be sent back to Australia, then bound and exhibited to raise public awareness, and possibly sold to raise funds. The artistic intent, however, was not the fundraising aspect as much as to take part in a process of support and dialogue with women in Afghanistan. It was a manoeuvre that said 'you are not alone'. The aim was to mobilise a conversation of sorts through the visuality and materiality of the artist’s book, despite the limitations of cultural, experiential, and physical distance. Just over six months from their delivery to Afghanistan, 36 of the 53 books returned to Australia, each marked with handwritten stories and poems in Dari and Pashto. This paper discusses the processes and considerations involved in the project, and the partnership formed with SAWA-Australia (Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan).

Psalterium et cantica : some account of an illuminated psalter for the use of the convent of Saint Mary of the Virgins at Venice executed by a Venetian artist of the sixteenth century /

"One of fifty copies, privately printed."

"Her lively Looks a sprightly Mind disclose, Quick as her Eyes, and as unfix'd as those." - looking, fashion media, and risk culture

This chapter investigates the phenomenon of fashion from the perspective of ‘the look.’ This is achieved by the wearer (as opposed to the designer) and also forms the basis of fashion media, where it represents the ‘decisive moment’ of photography. The chapter argues that the evolving ‘look’ of fashion can be analysed to identify tensions between novelty and emulation, the unique and the universal, in contemporary consumer culture and status-based social-network markets. It explores the work of fashion photographer Corinne Day and artist Olga Tobreluts to identify the theme of ‘risk culture.’

The new Golden Legend: Patrick Nicholas's secular saints

The work of Italian-based photo-artist Patrick Nicholas is analysed to show how his re-workings of classic ‘old-master’ paintings can be seen as the art of ‘redaction,’ shedding new light on the relationship between originality and copying. I argue that redactional creativity is both highly productive of new meanings and a reinvention of the role of the medieval Golden Legend. (Lives of the Saints).

The influence of MTV

MTV has had a key impact on advertising, not only from the point of view that commercials are aired during its programmes, but also because videos themselves can be viewed as advertisements. Music videos came about as a result of the music industry being in a recession during the early eighties. Initially MTV’s incentive to develop music television was advertiser led (Goodwin, 1992, p.38). One needs to remember that television is in the business to make money - not to entertain (Allen, 1992); and that viewers are in effect sold to the advertisers (White, 1992), and MTV is an influential media forces on their targets audience of between the ages twelve and thirty-four, with a median age of twenty-three (Englis et al., 1994). The reason why MTV is such an effective advertising medium, is that it utilises music, mood, visual elements, popular culture and the socialising effect of television, to sell its message in a susceptible/ passive manner. Its primary goal is to promote the artist or band performing in the video clip, so that consumers will purchase their CDs, as well as other band related products. But more often than not, the video clip sells much more than just that. Lifestyles, fashion, cosmetics, cars, consumer and social behaviour are all promoted in an unsuspecting manner. Advertisers, as a result, have looked to MTV for ideas on how to better communicate with the youth market; adopting similar styles to get their message across. The following looks at how and why, the fusion of MTV and advertising works so well together by considering past research.