Un-framing: towards repeated acts of deferral and fracture in fine art practice, production & consumption

This paper considers the repeated blurring of the distinction between artwork and display setting, between the ‘pictured space’ and that of the spectator in my practice as an artist. Examples of ‘visual disturbances’ of existing conventions of art production, reception and consumption, through processes of repeated deferral and fracture are discussed. The paper also explores problem finding and delayed closure and reflects on the following issues arising from the practice: • The temporary suspension or ‘short circuit’ of conventions of studio methodology and practice. • The conceptualisation of a ‘ruined, pictured space’ and repeated deferral of ‘outcome’. • The disembodiment of divisions between: object and space; literal concealment and project fantasy; settled comfort and lurking dread (Melville, H. in Vidler, A. 1999, p.57). • The problematisation of perceived physical and conceptual boundaries between art & ‘life’. • The production and consumption of a body of work that speaks to notions ‘ruin’ and catastrophe. The paper shows various attempts to engage with (work in) ‘that place’ described by Buren and Phillipson; to disturb the conventions of production and consumption; to problematise the notion of the art object as a commodity; to work towards a ‘delayed gaze’

My road to ruin: the studio without walls

This paper considers examples of ‘ruin’ in contemporary visual art and examines fracture, fragmentation and provisionality in contemporary installation art practice. Areas of commonality and difference are explored within a critical framework of concepts. The paper contributes towards the creation of a taxonomy of potential source material for the study of ruin in visual art

The Cauchy problem for a fourth order parabolic equation by difference methods

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityThis paper deals with the solution of parabolic partial differential equations by difference methods. It is first concerned with obtaining certain basic results for the nth order equation... This enables one to exhibit a stable difference equation compatible with (5). Once assured of the existence of such an equation, it is employed in proving an existence theorem for a solution of the differential equation. The theorem states that if the coefficients a;(x,t) and the function d(x, t) in (5), and the function f(x) in:(2) possess a sufficient number of uniformly continuous and bounded derivatives in R, and a0(x,t) is negative and bounded away from zero, then there exists a solution of (5), (2) possessing a certain number of uniformly continuous and bounded derivatives. [TRUNCATED

A place of impossibility

This was a speculative artwork for an imaginary urban development and was included alongside some 26 artists, designers, architects from all around the world within the international exhibition 'New Models for Common Ground' at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi in January/February 2014. This exhibition at IGNCA formed a significant part of the much larger international arts project in Delhi called 'INSERT2014' which was curated by the Raqs Media Collective. The work was accepted after an international call for speculations from Raqs in the autumn of 2014 from artists, curators, scholars, writers & poets, architects, cultural practitioners, activists, culture researchers, critics, media practitioners and engaged art enthusiasts for the re-­imagination of art spaces and cultural infrastructure in Delhi

Evaluating Awareness of Horticulture Therapy in the Omaha Area

Horticulture therapy, where gardens, landscapes, and other plant materials are used to increase overall wellness or reach defined therapeutic goals, has a body of research which supports its effectiveness. To assess potential clients\u27 knowledge and interest in utilizing horticulture therapy, a survey was conducted. UNO college students were asked for their input for these questions. Furthermore, businesses that were potential horticulture therapy providers were contacted and asked six questions regarding any current or future horticulture therapy programs offered at their facilities. Afterwards, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension office of Douglas-Sarpy County was contacted and asked about any involvement in horticulture therapy programs in the Omaha area. Most surveyed students expressed interest in horticulture therapy while businesses had a few common obstacles to providing this service

Site drawing: drawing site

This exhibition, held at the Stella Elkins Galleries, Philadelphia in September 2010, comprised 24 drawings and an accompanying publication. Stella Elkins Galleries, part of a the Temple Gallery programs, connects Philadelphia to new artists and important conversations about art that circulate internationally and has recently shown work by Cory Arcangel, Phil Collins, Paul Chan, Jesper Just, Kalup Linzy, Seth Price, Anri Sala, Berni Searle and Althea Thauberger, among many others. Through this curatorial policy, British artist and academic Alec Shepley, was invited to show drawings that were specially selected to demonstrate a particular function within his creative practice. The drawings in this show provided 'book ends' to ten years' studio practice investigating notions of the 'unfinished work' and forming a procedural part of the 'making' involved in his larger scale installational projects e.g. 'A site for un-building' 2004-05 and others (see: http://alecshepley.org.uk/) In this sense the drawings are 'site drawings' and they play an important and dynamic role on the development and final execution of a project. The subjects of these drawings i.e. tableaux, installations, are manipulated like collages - cut up and moved around, inverted etc, and similarly the drawings, especially the earlier ones are manipulated in this way and can be initially understood as 'drawing sites' exploring the 'un-making' and the 'unfinished' nature of the work (see - http://www.cpara.co.uk/events/repeatrepeat/embodiment.html and http://sensuousknowledge.org/2008/05/alec-shepley/ ). The drawings function as a reflective tool in the dynamics of any given project and are the fragile precipitants or by-products of the often volatile interaction between artist and material

Mediation in the planning system

An Australian report on mediation in planning disputes (known as the Keaney Report) gives a useful definition: An understanding by parties to a dispute to enter into discussions so that those parties, with the assistance of two impartial persons, can agree to resolve the dispute themselves. It is a voluntary system and entirely ‘without prejudice’. If a party decides to withdraw from mediation and go to another forum they are entirely free to do so. No rights are forfeited by choosing mediation as an option. The process is entirely confidential. There are a number of things to note about this definition. The first is that mediation is voluntary; I do not think that in any country mediation is forced upon parties, and I do not think it would work if parties did not take part of their own volition

Dependency Politics in a South African Bantustan: The National Party, Inkatha, and the Zulu People, 1975-1990

By the late 1980s, the apartheid structures of the racially segregated Republic of South Africa were fracturing. The ruling National Party’s Bantustan system, whereby the living spaces of the majority African population were restricted to discrete zones according to their ethnic subgroup, had been failing for decades. In order to understand the outbreak of violence that took place in South Africa’s townships in the midst of this breakdown of apartheid society, the relationships that developed within these Bantustans must first be addressed. The most consequential of these relationships developed within KwaZulu, the “homeland” of Zulu Africans, beginning in the early 1970s when Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi began to formulate his own cultural and political organization: Inkatha. As Inkatha gained national popularity as a liberation group within KwaZulu, it economically enmeshed itself with both the Afrikaner National Party as well as its own Zulu support base. This paper examines the township violence of the 1980s and 90s in eastern South Africa as a result of the economically interdependent relationship that formed between these three groups

'... but the steady renegotiation of small realities'

This solo exhibition was held at the Vanguard Gallery in the Moganshan District of Shanghai, November 2010. The Gallery, founded in 2004 specialises in showing Asian artists who are working in diverse media, but the gallery's curatorial policy includes an invited show from a European artist. This is the second time Alec has been invited to produce an installation at Vanguard, the first time being in 2006 in a two-man showing called 'Seeing Walls' (see: http://alecshepley.org.uk/) The show '......but the steady renegotiation of small realities', accompanied by a publication in the form of a limited edition book, contributed to an ongoing investigation into notions of the unfinished or incomplete project. Referencing often broken and damaged structures associated with architecture and painting, the exhibition represented a 'paused project' and comprised a number of provisionalised audience engagements seemingly by several different artists. A wall-based grid work with enough spaces to show one hundred drawings of small piles of debris, but actually only showing fifty drawings and fifty empty spaces, appeared to be a work in progress. The drawings, each measuring 50cm x 20cm, were etched onto glass and had been made on a laser cutter. The glass was set 5mm above the back board of the frame and so the actual ‘drawing’ appeared as a transient shadow on the back panel of the frame. The drawings drifted in and out of view with any changes to the light levels in the gallery space. The ephemeral shadows alluded to the absence of drawings in the gaps in the grid. The suite of drawings also echoed a pile of broken model houses in the form of a tableau, on the opposite side of the gallery. This tableau was reminiscent of a traditional still life that comprised broken model houses and four light boxes, each of which contained computer generated architectural form with a distinctive and celestial ‘skin’. Also included was a video loop of a woodland glade in early evening which was evocative of a painting by Poussin or Claude – but uninhabited. On the opposite wall hung a 10m x 1m banner showing 375 photographs. The photographs were the results of another strand of the broader research project exploring notions of fragility – especially with reference to the first and second frame (Kosuth) and ‘parergon’ (Derrida) and ensuing investigations of non-spaces or ‘liminal’ spaces (Matta-Clark). See: http://www.cpara.co.uk/events/repeatrepeat/embodiment.html The photographic piece was accompanied (although not overtly in a literal/physical sense) by a two track video installation in the adjoining gallery space. The two video pieces were filmed in the late afternoon/early evening at two different municipal recycling centres at two different geographical locations. These centres are often found on so-called brownfield sites or ‘unwanted’ land in and around urban/suburban centres. The looped films showed a continuous engagement with unwanted material and objects associated with domestic living