Revisioning boundaries : feminist theory and the space of abstract painting
Revisioning boundaries : feminist theory and the space of abstract painting
How is it possible for a boundary to be permeable, and how could one express such a concept in visual terms? This is the subject of my research, conducted primarily in studio practice, with a twenty-five percent element of written research. This thesis is an account of the theory and ideas that support and feed the practice, and a review of the studio work that both resulted from and contributed to the theoretical discussion.
The starting point of my research was to look at how a number of contemporary women painters sought to embody a philosophy that arose out of feminist theory within the medium of abstract painting. It revolves around the idea that the way in which difference is defined (in this instance, female difference) determines how difference is perceived. It investigates the idea, arising from feminist theory; that the boundaries that define identity – models of containment – are not immutable but open to change or transformation. Whilst a number of women painters explore this idea through abstract or non-figurative painting, there are debates about the necessity to make direct reference to the gender of the artists in order for the work to be theorised as feminist practice. My argument supports the idea that female difference – or differences – can be expressed in the work through the processes of making and viewing.
Working with the premise that the visual expression of a concept enriches and extends the understanding of that concept, I extend my search for the permeable boundary to the frame of painting and to the space outside the frame, namely the context in which painting is viewed. Returning to the model of visual perception of figure/ground relationships as a key, my projections of paintings on to – and through =- stretchers destabilise the reading of the boundaries of painting. The act of viewing is transformed into a physical experience that makes visible that act. The physicality of the tangible (the stretcher) within the illusory space of the intangible (the projection) creates a synthesis that can be understood as one way of representing a permeable boundary.
University of Southampton
2004
Bennett, Jane Andrea
(2004)
Revisioning boundaries : feminist theory and the space of abstract painting.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
How is it possible for a boundary to be permeable, and how could one express such a concept in visual terms? This is the subject of my research, conducted primarily in studio practice, with a twenty-five percent element of written research. This thesis is an account of the theory and ideas that support and feed the practice, and a review of the studio work that both resulted from and contributed to the theoretical discussion.
The starting point of my research was to look at how a number of contemporary women painters sought to embody a philosophy that arose out of feminist theory within the medium of abstract painting. It revolves around the idea that the way in which difference is defined (in this instance, female difference) determines how difference is perceived. It investigates the idea, arising from feminist theory; that the boundaries that define identity – models of containment – are not immutable but open to change or transformation. Whilst a number of women painters explore this idea through abstract or non-figurative painting, there are debates about the necessity to make direct reference to the gender of the artists in order for the work to be theorised as feminist practice. My argument supports the idea that female difference – or differences – can be expressed in the work through the processes of making and viewing.
Working with the premise that the visual expression of a concept enriches and extends the understanding of that concept, I extend my search for the permeable boundary to the frame of painting and to the space outside the frame, namely the context in which painting is viewed. Returning to the model of visual perception of figure/ground relationships as a key, my projections of paintings on to – and through =- stretchers destabilise the reading of the boundaries of painting. The act of viewing is transformed into a physical experience that makes visible that act. The physicality of the tangible (the stretcher) within the illusory space of the intangible (the projection) creates a synthesis that can be understood as one way of representing a permeable boundary.
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Published date: 2004
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Local EPrints ID: 466003
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/466003
PURE UUID: 5f8a7c56-a7d1-4e3e-bfc1-5a17ed882967
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Date deposited: 05 Jul 2022 03:56
Last modified: 05 Jul 2022 03:56
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Author:
Jane Andrea Bennett
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