SHOW CASE: Abstracts - Issue 1, Vol. 1

The Empty Space in Abstract Photography: a psychoanalytical perspective

In my research I seek to explore the particular theoretical problems raised by dealing with the notion of abstraction in photography. Abstraction in photography is often considered to be inconceivable and to be antithetical to its very essence, which is built upon the imprint of the trace of a real object on the photosensitive surface and the creation of a strong bond between photography and reality. The theoretical problems associated with this consist in the relationship between the two semiotic categories of the photographic sign, whose status is challenged when it comes to discussion of the abstract image. The photographic sign oscillates between being an index in relation to the real, in terms of the objective world, and being an icon in relation to the representation of the real. Thus, an abstract image raises questions about the relationship between the formal elements of the pictorial space of the photograph as opposed to the relationship between the object-referents in the world. My research aims at examining and resolving, to a certain degree, the formal problem of abstraction as it emerges from the optical, abstract, empty photographic space in the images of my practice, leading to an understanding of the above more general problem of how the referent of photography as actual object shifts its meaning to become an abstract form.

         
Click images to see artwork enlarged.

Re-searching Ambivalence and Female Potters

As a researcher, I am compelled by Buckley's assertion of overlooked intersections in ceramics and feminism as well as Moira Vincentelli's (2000) comprehensive research and corresponding finding that histories of ceramics neglect gender issues. As a graduate student, I have been consistently intrigued by women's studies. As an artist, I have always been drawn to the clay medium. I am now faced with explaining my personal experience of the connections I propose between feminism and ceramics (a connection I have sensed and lived for a long time). Throughout my adult life, I have lamented the absence of female mentors. Encountering subtly gendered situations in art and teaching, I struggled with my own artistic ideas, my literary voice, and my teaching persona as a woman. I found myself wanting to connect with others who had the same struggles and joys about the constraints and uncertainties of being a female/ ceramic/ artist and educator. With a growing interest in feminism, I experienced a dual influence of art along with nourishing artistic/educative connections with other women artists that drove me professionally and personally.

In my experiences as well as my literature review, I have noticed and felt that women ceramicists (both potters and ceramic sculptors) are faced with a unique history and heritage. On the one hand, literature from archaeology, art history, and cultural/gender studies suggests that women were the first makers of clay objects and that females are often associated with nature, earth, and domesticity or the home (all features commonly linked with clay as a material). Simultaneously, there is also documentation of women's exclusion from glaze and kiln technologies, profit and credit for their own ceramic work, and acknowledgement as leaders of the field of studio ceramics. From my perspective, the nature of the exclusions along with the "femininity" and feminine quality of the clay medium and history of ceramics creates a unique set of experiences for women ceramicists. This literature review has suggested that women ceramicists may experience tensions of opposites within associations of the body in pottery, concepts of gendered touch in the ceramics processes, and notions of heritability in ceramics learning. In my observations and my own experience, the range of cultural and historical associations that impact gender often create tensions in identity that women ceramicists reconcile through the practice and documentation of their craft.

The Ideas We Bet On

Within the current constructs of Art and Art Education words and standardized documents of written explanations—of how to do things—have paved specific roads where the vehicles of inquiry cannot carry nonverbal visual elements, which are prevalent, and dominant, in an artistic practice. The creative flow and its visual communication lie ignored beyond and below the written language of most academic arguments. The dominant standards of knowledge mainly produce narratives of interpretation for understanding art and visuality as an event of signification. This reaffirms a modernist tradition of understanding and practicing art as abstract thought which is subsequently conceived in mostly linguistic forms. In my view, this attitude ignores intrinsic elements characteristic of artistic creation. In a natural stand to preserve an artwork's qualities and dynamics as the dominant features of research methodology, the artist searches for continuous difference and alterity of forms, which often does not sit well within homogenized academic structures. For the committed artist, the academia of art education is a new location where the experienced teaching artists trade and exchange, at speculative rates, practice and art objects for written explanations. This invariably provokes a strong intuitive opposition and a sense of misunderstanding of artistic creation and its research. There is a discrepancy that arises between the artist and the institution about how artistic practices might be seen as new areas of inquiry that generate content and structures different to those of conventional academic standards. When art is viewed and implemented, not as a concept, but as a multi-dimensional contextualized dynamic process of decision-making, media manipulation, and visual negotiation, the privileged position of the formally referenced written document is threatened. Under these circumstances, scholarly activity may be seen to be more like artistic practice if it can shift to become self-referential media assemblages that are loyal in language and structure to the event or phenomena under investigation.