Department of Visual Arts

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Browsing Department of Visual Arts by browse.metadata.advisor "Bull, Katherine"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Performing the self : autobiography, narrative, image and text in self-representations
    (Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2007-03) Jacobs, Ilene; Bull, Katherine; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    This research follows the assumption that the notion of performativity can be applied to the visual construction of identity within art-making discourse in order to explore the contingent and mutable nature of identity in representation. My interest in performativity, defined as the active, repetitive and ritualistic processes responsible for the construction of subjectivities, lies within the process of production. I indicate how this notion, within the context of self-representation, can provide the possibility for performing identity as a process. I investigate the extent to which gender, the gaze, memory and narrative contribute to the performative construction of self-representations and reveal, through the exploration of my practical research, that these concepts are themselves performative. Although agency to construct the self can be regarded as problematic, considering the role of language and discourse in determining subjectivities, this research suggests that it is possible to perform interventions from within language. I suggest that the notion of inscription provides a means through which identity constructions can be performed differently; and that my art-making process of repetitive inscription, erasure and re-inscription of image and text and the layering of paint not only reflect the notion of performativity, but also enable me to expose the multiple and fragmented nature of identities.
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    Shape me into your idea of home : representations of longing in contemporary photography and video practice
    (Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2011-03) Harmsen, Corlia; Bull, Katherine; Smith, Kathryn; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study is motivated by an interest in a host of idiosyncratically interrelated phenomena that can be understood, in my view, as symptomatic of a primary interest in representing experiences of affect, loss, alienation and objectification of an “other”, which in turn, necessitates a critical interrogation of the notion of self. These phenomena include notions of the body (animal and human), private and public spaces, voyeurism, transgression, desire, fetishization, sentimentality and most critically, nostalgia as understood through experiences of homesickness and heimwee. My focus is on the affective potential of contemporary lens-based (photographic and video) art. I approach this study by way of three central ideas: the longing for home (the relationship between self/space); the longing for the body (the relationship between body/self); and the longing for the other (the relationship between self/other). I make use of psychoanalytic and feminist theory, as well as theoretical interpretations of photography and screen-based media, in the broader context of visual art and culture, to frame my discussion. As such, this study draws on the theoretical work of Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag to introduce basic concepts such as the relationship between photography and memory, and develops these to include ideas of the gaze, self and alientation from the self read through Judith Butler and Jacques Lacan’s image of the mirror phase; home and homesickness read through Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud’s notion of das unheimlich (uncanny) and Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection; and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s objectification of the animal-other. This study is intimately linked with, and critically informed by my personal artistic practice, which focuses specifically on the photographic or filmic representation (projection) of separation, displacement and longing for an absent other (home, partner & domestic animal). I discuss my own work relation to selected examples by artists including Shizuka Yokomizo, Sophie Calle, Penny Siopis and Jo Ractliffe, among others, framing the art object and related processes as cathartic, mnemonic and talismanic; acknowledging the paradoxical aspect of photography as simultaneously distancing and acting as a trace of the real; and analysing the evocative (metaphorical or conceptual) allusions made possible by lens-based processes and their presentation as print and projection, image and screen.
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    This little chicken went to Africa : a historical survey into the development of narrative structures within relief printmaking in community centres in South Africa and a formal analysis of the relevance of the medium in contemporary children's picture book illustration
    (Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2009-03) Johnson, Shelley; Bull, Katherine; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    When dealing with emergent literacy in South Africa, the didactic aspects of picture books are often privileged over their aesthetic quality and the idea of reading for pleasure. The themes of the books are not always locally relevant and for economic reasons, they often fail to reach the communities that need them the most. By looking at the history of relief printing within a community environment, I hope to highlight how communities themselves may be able to develop locally relevant children’s picture books, instituting a ‘grassroots’ approach rather than the paternalistic ‘top down’ approach of the past. I will also be looking at the narrative and stylistic elements of relief printing that are complimentary to the picture book genre and how these can be utilised for a pleasurable rather than didactic approach to the narratives.
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    The visualization of sound : an investigation into the interplay of the senses in artmaking
    (Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2008-03) Smuts, Lyn; Kaden, Marthie; Bull, Katherine; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    This thesis is informed by the assumption that the senses, in their manner of functioning, may have much to teach us about creativity and the dangers of categorization. Sound, as component of at least one of our senses, hearing, the only sense with an executive component, the voice, offers a particularly rich source for theoretical investigation. Western culture has, since the Renaissance, been dominated by the sense of vision as the distancing agent that enables the objectification that has resulted in scientific advances to our benefit, but also to our detriment in its constant reductionist impulse. This western history, dominated by the eye, must be acknowledged by us as visual artists, but, in our current globalized era, sound and hearing may possibly suggest an extended paradigm more appropriate for us to function in. Sound, through movement, is proposed as a medium that shapes the structure of materials, including the earth, by that means linking it to visual art and the ways in which it has dealt with earth and landscape throughout the centuries. Sound is also proposed as an inherently relational and social phenomenon able to be incorporated into the work of visual artists to great effect in an age moving toward intersubjectivity. Sound contributes also its other side, silence, which I present as an active space of co-existence, in which gathering may take place and through which a more subtle understanding of dialogue may be achieved.