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.
