Making beyond nothingness : an artistic challenge to the unaesthetic language of the public space

Abstract

This project constitutes a practice-based research enquiry of two interrelated components: an exhibition of creative work, Nothing Matters, and an accompanying exegesis. The creative work on exhibition comprises a range of small- and large-scale outputs that incorporate drawing, photography, sculptural work, and re-imagined ‘found’ objects, all produced between 2017-2021. The overall title of the project, Making Beyond Nothingness: An Artistic Challenge to the Unaesthetic Language of the Public Space, embodies the paradox at the heart of the pursuit. How to create ‘something’ of conceptual and aesthetic compulsion from a language of nothingness, whether it be ‘found’ in the surrounding temper of the public space or, in art, in various manifestations of the ‘dematerialised object’: the void; the empty canvas or gallery; the ‘invisible’ work; or the detritus of the everyday? The written component – the ‘dissertation’ – traces my style through points of reference in the development of Conceptual Art (Chapter 1) before turning, more generally, to examples of my previous work (Chapter 2) and, in Chapter 3, specifically to my reflections on the creative works that form the exhibition to be examined. To quote from the Institutional guideline preamble to the PhD in Visual and Performing Arts, “The body of applied creative work is formulated in relation to the research problem outlined in the dissertation; there can be no formal separation between the examination of the creative work and the dissertation.