Art Practice Commons^™

Confined By Darkness, Alyssa C. Sweeney

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In addition to my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, this dossier is arranged with an extended artist statement, documentation of a photographic series, a case study on artist Brian Ulrich, and a curriculum vitae. These portions of the thesis exhibit the themes and pursuit that inform my studio practice in photography. The comprehensive artist statement describes the attachments and personal background that informs my overall approach. The second chapter consists of a series of images titled, Confined by Darkness, which is an archive of significant spaces documented at night that evoke nostalgia or are prominent in my everyday …

Sweeping The Forest Floor Of Frequencies, Maria A. Kouznetsova

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

sweeping the forest floor of frequencies is a Master of Fine Art thesis project comprised of the dossier and the exhibition presented at the Artlab Gallery July 27 - August 11, 2023. My writing and multidisciplinary work foreground sonic, visual, and imperceptible signals as search modes for grounding and interconnectedness. The Comprehensive Artist Statement is the first chapter of the dossier and focuses on drawing, listening, and exploring forms of language as three dominant modes of my practice that reflect my fragmented life between three countries. In its form, the writing embraces fragmentation and iterative growth through refragmentation, drawing on …

Creative Common Worlding With Research Creation In Early Childhood Education, Sarah M. Hennessy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Creative Common worlding with research-creation in early childhood education engages with provocations that disrupt dominant understandings of children and their relations with more-than-human and human others. Reconceptualizing alternatives through art, this dissertation contemplates the potent possibilities beyond human stewardship, underscores the influence of an uncommoning lens, and emphasizes the difficulties with humancentric notions of research. If, by disrupting how we understand ourselves and our role in place, we modify our actions and change our habits, then perhaps we can live differently and contribute differently to the planet. Through a common worlds framework together with research-creation, this dissertation considers climate education …

Credulous Escapism, Brianne C. Casey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My Master of Fine Arts (MFA), explores the world of toys. I do so following the Thesis Dossier Stream, which is paired with a Thesis Exhibition Credulous Escapism (2022). My program of research reflects on the psychological impact of toys on myself and individuals. I have sought to create a series of works that express childhood wonderment and awe through paintings and installation works. The paintings depict apocalyptic landscapes in which toys explore an alternate universe which allude to a foreboding entity: the reality of adulthood. To contextualize my work, I examine the works of Marcel Duchamp, Diana Thorneycroft, Melanie …

The Other Neighbour Of El Otro Lado, Anahi Gonzalez Teran

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This written thesis is in support of a Master’s of Fine Arts degree at Western University. The thesis dossier explores themes of Mexican migration in Canada engaging with ideas of human labour and various indexes of Mexican culture, trade, and economic exchange. The thesis also consists of documentation of public exhibitions and other various creative production components including videos, photography and multi-media installations. This thesis is separated into three major sections. The first is an extended artist statement which outlines my artistic research and my creative process as an artist. The second is a portfolio of photographic documentation of artworks …

Pharmakon: From Body To Being, Jérôme Y. C. Conquy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis dossier is separated into the following distinct sections: an extended artist statement; a portfolio documenting artworks made during my MFA candidacy and my exhibit Pharmakon: Acts, Traces, and Maps; and a case study of artist Tony Oursler, whose video and multimedia installations explore the psychological and social relationships between individuals and technologies. Together, they present my exploration of the body’s ‘power of acting,’ or potentia agendi, in relation to the modificatory capacity of technology, or affectus, on the human body. In particular, I investigate the body’s habits, or capacity for habit-building, what Bourdieu calls habitus, and the interconnection …

Cyber Souls And Second Selves, Yas Nikpour Khoshgrudi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project explores the relationship between the real self and digital identity (mostly in the form of avatars in life simulation video games) and how these two states of being could possibly merge and act as one. This dossier consists of three chapters. The first chapter is an extended artist statement and a summary of influences in my work. There I explore the tangible relationship between player and avatar and how digital experiences affect our psyches in various contexts where this relationship is developed and maintained. The second chapter is an interview with Mohawk multimedia artist, Skawennati, who discusses how …

Collaborative Listening And Cultural Difference In Contemporary Art, Santiago Ulises Unda Lara

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research represented in this thesis has a relationship with my sustained interest in the subject of cultural difference that typified my earlier artistic practice. During my Ph.D. studies in Art and Visual Culture at Western University, I have advanced new perspectives on this problematic by elaborating on the potentialities of listening in dialogic and collaborative artistic practice. It comprises the discussion about the projects and activities developed within my doctoral studies, according to two main and related purposes. The first is the examination of hegemonic practices of production of meaning regarding cultural difference with a backdrop of the social, …

Affective And Sensuous Critique In The Undergraduate Art Classroom, Claire Bartleman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Drawing on the ways that art history, art theory, and art criticism have used affect theory, I ask how an affective approach can align the undergraduate classroom art critique with the historical definition of aesthetics, or aesthesis, and create a space for sense and feeling. The first chapter reviews literature in the field and demonstrates the perceived benefits and drawbacks of current critique models. In the second chapter, I consider how affect has the potential to disrupt traditional approaches to critique in order to assist in rethinking stated goals, disrupt power dynamics in the classroom, and generate transformative knowledge. In …

Spanning, Mary Katherine Carder-Thompson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 is a comprehensive artist statement describing my system for spirit communication that leverages the latent power of wool processing tools. This system borrows strategies from varied sources including living history, paraconceptualism, and bricolage. Chapter 2 visually documents my studio practice over the two years of my MFA candidacy at Western University. Chapter 3 is a case study of Luanne Martineau’s 2009 drawing, Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you. This case study addresses Martineau’s engagement with Modernism’s legacy and discusses how her work builds an equitable …

Philosophical Archeology In Theoretical And Artistic Practice, Ido Govrin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The aim of this thesis is to examine philosophical archeology and the feasibility of knowledge that derives from researching it simultaneously through theoretical and artistic practice.

Philosophical archeology essentially embodies one’s relation to history and historiographic research—a research methodology at the core of which lies a “historical a priori”, that which a priori conditions the historical development of a phenomenon. However, this research conceives of philosophical archeology more broadly, as a multifaceted term that traverses the discourse of the humanities at large.

By pursuing this doctoral research, my original contribution to knowledge is twofold: (1) I historicize philosophical archeology—a …

Supernova: Performing Race, Hybridity And Expanding The Geographical Imagination, Raheleh Saneie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis attempts to explore the many socio-political, temporal and spatial factors that contribute to the formation of cultural identity. Through my video work, SuperNova, I examine how race is performed and the discursive structures that contribute to the process of racialization. The core question that is central to this thesis is how race is performed and the potential benefits and drawbacks of this performance. In chapter one, I explore how whiteness is performed and how racial hierarchies are maintained through performance. I critique the Aryan race discourse that is a part pf Iranian nationalist discourse of identity. In …

Hand-Eye, Michael S. Pszczonak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This integrated article thesis has two distinct chapters: The first chapter is a case study on a selection of works by German artist Sigmar Polke using Hal Fosters writing on the historical and neo-avant-gardes. The study traces the way Polke revisits the first avant-garde project and comprehends its attempted traumatic rift from dominant ideologies for the first time. The second chapter is a comprehensive artist statement which simultaneously outlines the theoretical underpinnings of my work as well as the process leading to the body of work on display at McIntosh Gallery. The research sets out to answer the following question: …

Tangled Hair: Uncertain Fluid Identity, Niloufar Salimi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier consists of three chapters. Chapter one is an extended artist statement within which I discuss a very particular notion of identity that acknowledges its fluidity and ever-shifting qualities. Further in this chapter, I address my studio practice processes and its overall development, as well as making a detailed comparison with Roni Horn’s drawings and also Mona Hatoum’s artwork. Chapter two is a documentation of selected works that I have made in the studio during my two-year candidacy at Western University. Each work is accompanied by a brief description. Chapter three is a case study on Shirin Neshat’s photography …

From Dust To Dust, Lynette M. De Montreuil

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This integrated article thesis includes three components: an extended artist’s statement, documentation of my artwork, and an interview with artist Aganetha Dyck. Through these three formats, this document explores the ways in which art can break down human vs. nonhuman binaries, thereby highlighting the agency of nonhuman materials. Theorist Jane Bennett proposes that seeing all matter as being ‘vibrant’ would shift our relationship with non-human materials whereby creating more sustainable practices. Vibrant matter would ask us to consider more deeply the origins, propensities and disposability of all material bodies. I seek to have a sustainable practice and work collaboratively with …

Turning To See Otherwise, Jennifer L. Martin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis dossier, in combination with an exhibition at the McIntosh Gallery, considers whether an archival collection can generate an alternative narrative other than that which may already exist in the original film and photographic documents. Rather than represent a singular truth, I seek to articulate the transformative realities of collective memory by re-orienting the material for broader viewer identification. I have mined photographic and filmic materials from a personal family archive to focus fragments that specifically record the gesture of the turning face—the turning towards the observer. This “turn” then includes both the turn towards the initial film-maker embedded …

Liquidation, Amanda A. Oppedisano

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier is an accompanying document to my MFA thesis exhibition, Liquidation (2014). Within my dossier, I articulate the formal and material considerations of my art making practice in which everyday household goods acquired primarily from the dollar store are manipulated in order to consider the “abject” qualities inherent to these items. Observed through the theoretical work of Julia Kristeva in her essay, Powers of Horror, the “abject” as a term is critically and historically applied to the art objects I create in order to explore the dollar store as the basis for my material selection, but also as a …

Communicative Methodologies And Mechanisms In Public Art, Jeremy P. Jeresky

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Communicative Methodologies and Mechanisms in Public Art articulates my community based public art practice and MFA research based in London, Ontario. This dossier of research includes: a comprehensive artist statement, a case study and a documentation of artistic practice and development; in Chapters 1, 2, and 3 respectively. This written and photographic documentation is intended to represent my thesis exhibition. In the body of the thesis I look to my artist statement as a method and means to establish a framework in order to understand, analyze and evaluate public art. I feel that developing a framework that is in concert …

Following The Turn: Mapping As Material Art Practice, Kyla Christine Brown

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Following the Turn: Mapping As Material Art Practice investigates my artistic practice and MFA research based in London, Ontario. This dossier of research elements includes: an extended artist’s statement, a documentation of artistic practice and development, and a selection of in-process and published exhibition reviews of contemporary artists’ work; in Chapters 1, 2, and 3 respectively. This written document is in part intended to work as a specific accompaniment to my thesis exhibition. In the body of the thesis I propose that a project-based and embodied material art practice can perform mapping of negotiated experiences of the city. Dealing with …

"A Painter's Brush That Also Makes Poems": Contemporary Painting After Northern Song Calligraphy, Andy J. Patton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

There is no Western equivalent to the practice of calligraphy in pre-modern China, an aesthetic form which does not resolve itself into a literary object or a visual one. Calligraphy was sustained by a rich and complex body of thought that can fully rival art criticism and theory in the West. To undertake this project, I immersed myself in the study of both key works of calligraphy and the aesthetic that sustained it during the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) in China—not in order to practice calligraphy but to transform my own understanding of art and make contemporary Western paintings out …

Relational Viewing: Affect, Trauma And The Viewer In Contemporary Autobiographical Art, Matthew Ryan Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the communicative relationship between contemporary autobiographical art and the viewer. By analyzing the work of six artists, Richard Billingham, Jaret Belliveau, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Lisa Steele and Bas Jan Ader, I maintain that lived experience and personal history condition the way viewers respond to autobiographical art. I turn to literary theory as a critical methodology to argue that autobiographical art operates as a catalyst for identification, memory and self-discovery. I use affect and trauma theory to demonstrate how artwork produces meaning and discourse through the viewer’s feelings, emotions and bodily sensations. Consequently, I survey the importance …