Painting and Materiality: Three Creative Strategies for Transformation

This thesis proposes potential material devices to transform the concerns of painting within an expanded field. It suggests that new knowledge is produced in material and subjective relationships. The research began with a propensity towards the subject of drapery and evolved into finding other material conditions that could create a new space for painting. This investigation is conducted through three distinct Creative Strategies, where each one informs methods of thinking for practice. The overarching themes of the individual strategies are: Creative Strategy 1: proposes a new theory of prosthetics to transform the physical constraints of painting. I argue that the frame is the crux for expansion and physical transformation. It is achieved through a reductive approach to the physical and material elements of painting within a spatial context. Creative Strategy 2: explores the material agency of fetish and fabric in making processes and uncovers the underlying fetishistic meaning of the materials associated with my practice. Creative Strategy 3: reveals the cultural and social significance of drapery in contemporary painting. Significantly, that desire can instigate politicised transformation in painting. The Creative Strategies provoke a series of linkages between subject and object, which progress through specific analysis on fetishism, femininity, desire and materiality. These explorations advance through the transformative effects of hybridity and multiplicity on expanded painting practices. Crucially, Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt’s concepts concerning material practice and emergent methodologies underpin the practice-led research. Bolt’s idea of a double articulation between practice and theory (2002), is further amplified through the addition of feminist empiricism and feminist autoethnographic methods. These methods are critical lenses in which to examine the research. Moreover, Elizabeth Grosz’ notions on materiality structure the philosophical foundation, which evolved from an initial investigation into Gilles Deleuze’s theories on non-linear thinking. These approaches allow generative and additive challenges to the construction, assumptions and principal forms of painting. Through the three Creative Strategies, this PhD delivers a progression of material thinking that will impact upon knowledge around critical modes of enquiry in relation to expanded painting. As an in-depth study of the significance of purposeful tools to enable transformations, the research examines, clarifies and highlights agency in processes and practices. While significant studies have been carried out on materiality, there are few empirical investigations from within the medium of painting with a focus on drapery and that of an expanded field. Therefore, to summarise, this research contributes to current discourse on material thinking by synthesizing three distinct modes of enquiry, which propose a new approach to contemporary painting

Whereabouts you are

•‘Whereabouts you are’ was an exhibition of work by ten Glasgow School of Art PhD Researchers, curated by Allyson Keehan (Glasgow School of Art) and guest curator Viviana Checchia (Centre for Contemporary Arts) • The exhibition ran from Saturday 15th October to Thursday 10th November in The Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art ‘Whereabouts you are’ explored the diverse research practices of the Glasgow School of Art PhD cohort. Bringing together researchers from disciplines across the fields of Fine Art and Design, the exhibition posed a number of questions about the role of arts practice in academic research, its unique character, and its particular challenges. For the exhibiting researchers, pinpointing whereabouts you are is about marking a particular moment in the research process, pausing to reflect and take stock of their individual journey so far and to consider the next steps. In that spirit, rather than deferring the questions posed by the exhibition, they tackled them head-on through accompanying events organised in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Arts. By bringing their work out of the studio, the group hoped to not only shed light on the thought-provoking and innovative research undertaken at Glasgow School of Art, but to enliven the research through conversation with its new audience. The exhibiting researchers were: • Eszter Biró (School of Fine Art) • Jacqueline Butler (School of Fine Art) • Mirian Calvo (Institute for Design Innovation) • Inês Bento Coelho (School of Fine Art) • Allyson Keehan (School of Fine Art) • Fiona Jane MacLellan (Institute for Design Innovation) • Catherine M. Weir (School of Fine Art) • Dawn Worsley (School of Fine Art) • Hanan Makki Zakari (School of Simulation and Visualisation) • Polina Zioga (School of Simulation and Visualisation). Curated by Allyson Keehan (Glasgow School of Art) and guest curator Viviana Checchia (Centre for Contemporary Arts)

Whereabouts you are

'Whereabouts you are' was an exhibition of work by ten Glasgow School of Art Ph.D. Researchers, curated by Allyson Keehan (Glasgow School of Art) and guest curator Viviana Checchia (Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow). The exhibition ran from Saturday 15th October to Thursday 10th November 2016 in The Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art. 'Whereabouts you are' explored the diverse research practices of the Glasgow School of Art Ph.D. cohort. Bringing together researchers from disciplines across the fields of Fine Art and Design, the exhibition posed a number of questions about the role of arts practice in academic research, its unique character, and its particular challenges. For the exhibiting researchers, pinpointing 'whereabouts you are' is about marking a particular moment in the research process, pausing to reflect and take stock of their individual journey so far and to consider the next steps. In that spirit, rather than deferring the questions posed by the exhibition, they tackled them head-on through accompanying events organised in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow. By bringing their work out of the studio, the group hoped to not only shed light on the thought-provoking and innovative research undertaken at Glasgow School of Art, but to enliven the research through conversation with its new audience. The exhibiting researchers were: • Eszter Biró (School of Fine Art) • Jacqueline Butler (School of Fine Art) • Mirian Calvo (Institute for Design Innovation) • Inês Bento Coelho (School of Fine Art) • Allyson Keehan (School of Fine Art) • Fiona Jane MacLellan (Institute for Design Innovation) • Catherine M. Weir (School of Fine Art) • Dawn Worsley (School of Fine Art) • Hanan Makki Zakari (School of Simulation and Visualisation) • Polina Zioga (School of Simulation and Visualisation)

Propositions for Prosthetics and Painting

This essay considers how the prosthetic as a concept can transform thinking relating to painting