Visual Studies Commons^™

The Frescoes Of Castelseprio, John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Futurism: Movement And The Structure Of Reality, John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Michelangelo's Last Judgment And 'Le Segrete Cose', John Hatch, J. Curtis

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Giacomo Balla's Linea Di Velocita (1913), John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Julian Haladyn: Portable Tea Ceremony Performance At The University Of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, May 16, 2000, John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

A Legacy Of Persuasion: Japanese Photography And The Artful Politics Of Remembering Manchuria, Kari Shepherdson-Scott

Kari L Shepherdson-Scott

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Museum Pieces: Toward The Indigenization Of Canadian Museums, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Emerging Views On Making: Fibre Graduates Reflect On Their Practice, Kathleen Morris

Kathleen Morris

This narrative research examines the ways in which craft is conceptualized from the perspective of five recent graduates from the Material Art and Design Fibre Program at a prominent Canadian art and design university. Recognizing the cultural currents that have excised acts of making, including Western de-industrialization and abundant access to offshore labour markets, this research looks at the role of maker within a new societal context. A nascent theoretical platform for craft, shaped by artists and academics, counters a dearth of voices that has characterized the field’s history. Here, craft is posited as a methodology, characterized by embodiment, subjectivity, …

Heather Saunders: The "Freaky Friday" Series, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Desire and sex and lust. The conflation of signifiers of sensuality and femininity in female clothing points to a rigorous sexualization of the body beginning in girlhood, through their dress and the way it’s worn. Lace, fishnet, silk, leather, satin, chiffon and latex are shown in their various iterations in children’s fashion. The same materials, fabrics and the words used to describe them host different meanings and associations in adulthood. Yet, somewhere in this liminal divide, childhood and adulthood speak to each other, and the conversation is uncomfortable, like the first time you heard about the birds and the bees.

An Imaged Life. Wanda Wulz And The Familiar Archive, Silvia Valisa

Silvia Valisa

This essay reviews Italian photographer Wanda Wulz's (1903-1984) artistic production in light of the family archive it belongs to, and it proposes an in-depth reading of Wulz's most famous avant-garde photograph, "Io + gatto." The Trieste-based Wulz family -Wanda's grandfather Giuseppe, her father Carlo, sisters Marion and Wanda- produced an impressive body of work that crosses genres, generations and styles. In particular, Wanda Wulz, an established professional in an epoch in which women were most often only the targets of the photographic gaze, brought a new sensibility to Italian photography, and contributed some of the most original Italian photographs of …

Exhibition Review: Clive Holden: Media/Mediated, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

An approach to artmaking that is driven by the prospect of chance, by the accidental, is reliant upon the inherent rationale of the natural world. There, chaos constitutes change (or vice versa) and reveals new forms that displace and/or update the old. Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Clive Holden’s recent practice has manipulated the properties of the natural world into an aesthetic strategy. Utilizing the randomization and dynamism found in nature serves to unsettle and reconfigure his installations, transforming them into ever-evolving media.

Shapeshifting: Transformations In Native American Art, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Gary Wyatt: Seekers And Travellers Contemporary Art Of The Pacific Northwest Coast, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

White Snake, Black Snake Folk Narrative Meets Master Narrative In Qing Dynasty Sichuanese Cross-Stitch Medallions, Cory Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

The cross-stitch medallion in figure 1 was collected by my grandmother, Katherine Willmott, in the early 1920s when she was a missionary in Renshow, Sichuan Province, West China. Many years after I inherited it, I learned that it depicts a folk narrative called “White Snake; Black Snake” that was traditionally performed both on stage in the legitimate theaters and in Chinese shadow puppet dramas (Highbaugh n/d:6).

The story may be summarized as follows: There were two female snakes, White Snake and Black Snake, who were inseparable friends. They both changed into beautiful young women. White Snake got married and bore …

Some Things Last A Long Time, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Relational viewing is also linked to poststructuralist theory, which has provided a framework for shifting away from the idea that the author is the creator of meaning to instead consider how readers interact with texts to produce meaning. Some Things Last a Long Time considers the connections between autobiography and relational experience. With this exhibition, I propose that contemporary autobiographical art can operate as a site where social encounters are created and where self-discoveries become possible. I encourage viewers to use their own lived experiences and personal histories to interpret the artworks in the exhibition.

The Paradox Of Gender Among West China Missionary Collectors, 1920-1950, Cory A. Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

During the turbulent years between the Chinese nationalist revolution of 1911 and the communist victory of 1949, a group of missionaries lived and worked in West China whose social gospel theologies led to unusual identification with Chinese. Among the regular social actors in their lives were itinerant “curio men” who, amidst the chaos of feuding warlords, gathered up the heirlooms of the deposed Manchurian aristocracy and offered these wares for sale on the quiet and orderly verandahs of the mansions inside the missionary compounds of West China Union University. Although missionary men and women often collected the same types of …

The Participating Witness: A Conversation With Jaret Belliveau, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Jaret Belliveau is a Moncton-based photographer and filmmaker whose photographic work addresses illness and loss. Arguably, Belliveau is best known for his series Dominion Street (2003-2008), which began as a visual investigation into family dynamics and the hegemonic balances of power that maintain it. However, ten months into the project, Belliveau’s mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Soon after, the disease spread throughout the rest of her body and in time it took her life. Upon the recent staging of Dominion Street at Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Gallery (April 26, 2012 - June 10, 2012), I conducted an e-mail exchange with Belliveau …

Karin Doleske: The Drama Of Abstraction, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Karin Doleske’s most recent series Embedded Paintings from 2012 maintains a heightened interest in placing the viewer as an arbiter of knowledge. With these works, Doleske has manipulated poetic narrative for the visual sphere so that viewers may experience her paintings as they would written texts. However, in a twist of semiotic mischief, each painting formally characterizes an empty page to be filled by the viewer’s thoughts and imagination. For example, the horizontality of "Ten" subtly points to the lines of a written novel yet alphabetical letters are clearly absent. By doing so, it is as if Doleske has created …

Human Rights In Camera, Sharon Sliwinski

Sharon Sliwinski

Adel Abdessemed: The Future Of Décor, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Adel Abdessemed’s Future of Décor at OCAD’s Onsite Gallery is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada and is a testament to the university’s ‘Nomadic Residency’ programme, which has featured work and lectures from ORLAN, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Hal Foster. Some may find Abdessemed’s invitation by curator (and OCAD professor) Charles Reeve as a daring gesture considering the artist’s 2008 show in San Francisco was terminated after the artist received death threats over a video series that featured close-ups of six animals bludgeoned to death for food. That being said, Abdessemed moves in a different trajectory for Onsite. The work …

John Cushnie: Greying The Grey, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Paintings are not talking heads. They can produce a conversation, an interaction, an exchange. They ask us to listen with our eyes, to feel the space between us, to project ourselves. The paintings in Eidolon Prospects aim for a mutual exchange, a reciprocal relationship — they push us to face our uncertainty, to work at them, to reconsider their visuality, to tap into their manipulation of materials. Their material and pigment are rendered as voices, and in their silent speech, the paintings come to haunt us. John [Cushnie]’s paintings disturb, incite and ambiguate.

Autobiography And The Family Frame: Jaret Belliveau's “Dominion Street” At Gallery Tpw, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Documented over a period of five years, “Dominion Street” presents a visual narrative of love, loss, and life encapsulated within an East Coast milieu. Privy to the Belliveau family’s emotional and physical plights, the artist utilizes an autobiographic frame offering up strikingly informal glimpses of his family.

What Ever Happened To Ernst Barlach? East German Political Monuments And The Art Of Resistance, Kristine Nielsen

Kristine Nielsen

No abstract provided.

Politisk Ikonoklasme Og Idolatri I Den Moderne Visuelle Kultur, Kristine Nielsen

Kristine Nielsen

No abstract provided.

Diabolical Frivolity Of Neoliberal Fundamentalism, Sefik Tatlic

Sefik Tatlic

Today, we cannot talk just about plain control, but we must talk about the nature of the interaction of the one who is being controlled and the one who controls, an interaction where the one that is “controlled” is asking for more control over himself/herself while expecting to be compensated by a surplus of freedom to satisfy trivial needs and wishes. Such a liberty for the fulfillment of trivial needs is being declared as freedom. But this implies as well the freedom to choose not to be engaged in any kind of socially sensible or politically articulated struggle.

Internet Killed The Copyright Law: Perfect 10 V. Google And The Devastating Impact On The Exclusiive Right To Display, Deborah B. Morse

Deborah Brightman Morse

Never has the dissonance between copyright and innovation been so extreme. The Internet provides enormous economic growth due to the strength of e-commerce, and affords an avenue for creativity and the wide dissemination of information. Nevertheless, the Internet has become a plague on copyright law. The advent of the digital medium has made the unlawful reproduction, distribution, and display of copyrighted works essentially effortless. The law has been unable to keep pace with the rapid advance of technology. For the past decade, Congress has been actively attempting to draft comprehensible legislation in an effort to afford copyright owners more protection …

Where I Am, There (Sh)It Will Be, Melanie Mcdougald

Melanie E McDougald

No abstract provided.

Bibliografia De La Antoni Tapies, Armando Silva

armando silva

Exposición sobre el proyecto de imaginarios urbanos de armando silva en la fundación Antoni Tapies de Barcelona, mayo del 20007

Bibliografia De La Antoni Tapies, Armando Silva

armando silva

Exposición sobre el proyecto de imaginarios urbanos de armando silva en la fundación Antoni Tapies de Barcelona, mayo del 20007

Man In A Suitcase: Tulse Luper At Compton Verney, Anthony Purdy, Bridget Elliott

Anthony Purdy

Exploring in the gallery space the possibilities of an experimental intermediality, Luper at Compton Verney deploys the suitcase both as an emblem for key moments of twentieth-century history, including Auschwitz , and as a recurrent device in twentieth-century art. This essay examines the intersections of art and history in an exhibition space conceived as a complex heterotopian play of "other spaces," such as suitcase installations, vitrine displays, film projections, video screenings, drawings, and maps.