TrAIN - Directory - Completed PhDs

Dr. Raphael Jay Adjani F.R.S.A FHEA

Completed PhD - Towards a Deep Ecology of Art, Technology and Being - an ontological investigation with particular reference to the rock-cut edifices of Ellora, India, and Tadao Ando’s Water Temple.

Raphael Jay Adjani has been working as an artist and as an academic.
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Voon Pow Bartlett

Completed PhD - The relational and quotidian in contemporary urban China

My research addresses the work of contemporary Chinese artists based in Beijing, whose work is both formed in negotiation with a global audience and influenced by a historically and culturally specific form of urban development. The tide of economic progress in China has a direct impact on daily life and continues to fuel the art world, raising issues of authenticity, authority and ownership.
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Anna Basham

Completed PhD - From Victorian to Modernist: the changing perceptions of Japanese architecture encapsulated in Wells Coates’ Japonisme

This thesis chronicles the change in perception of Japanese architecture from the Victorian era, where it was little recognised, to its becoming an inspiration for inter-war modernist architecture and lifestyle; it aims to record how Japanese art, particularly the way in which it was displayed, underwent a similar renaissance, and the part played by architect-engineer, Wells Coates, in this reversal of opinion.
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Helena Capkova

Completed PhD - Interpreting Japan : Central European Architecture and Design 1920 – 1940

Central Europe has historically been an area with rich cultural networks and significant centres such as Prague, Berlin or Vienna. These centres were cultural melting pots with multilingual and multicultural environments accommodating a mixture of nationalities. The art conversations and exchanges there were transnational and even included non-European participants, such as the Chinese, Turkish, Indian and the Japanese. Helena`s preliminary study shows that Japan played one of the key roles as a source of inspiration for a large group of artists and theoreticians who took active part in international discourses.
Helena`s PhD. research focuses on the perception of Japanese art and aesthetics in Central Europe and on the incorporation of that perception in architecture and design during the period of 1920 – 1940. For this study the area of Central Europe covers mainly Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria. Her aim is to investigate the nature of the transnational dialogue between different cultures such as Japan and Central Europe and to examine the dynamics of its communication Also, the analysis of how the perception of Japanese art and aesthetics of the period was interpreted or translated into the architecture and design is included in this research. Helena`s PhD. project was recently awarded a full AHRC funding (2008 – 2011).
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Shu-fang Huang

Completed PhD - The Traces of a Traveller, Textile-Based Narrative

This research project is designed through the use of a metaphorical ‘traveller’, to record the readings of environment and the ‘traces’ of a traveller’s observations. It starts from the author’s own cultural context, and then crosses through the journey into a new cultural vision. By searching for clarification in fragmented thoughts and in exploring the concept of ‘the traces of a traveller’, the textile based narrative will be constructed through the shifting traces in the artist’s memories and her visual reading of the environment whilst travelling. Other travellers such as the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, Richard Long and Hamish Fulton will be discussed.
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Cindy Lisica

Completed PhD - Beyond Consumption: The Art, Merchandise and Global Impact of Takashi Murakami and a Superflat Generation

My research examines Superflat art and theory, conceived by Takashi Murakami (b. Tokyo, 1962), as a model for cross-cultural exchange via artists Chiho Aoshima, Takashi Murakami and Aya Takano. By merging Japanese and Western cultural concepts, the synthesis of ideas and layering of identities have produced a new form of hybrid and hyper Pop art. This investigation links Superflat to the work of American Pop and neo-Pop artists Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons and explores how Superflat art functions within and contributes to the already distorted area between parallel structures, such as high and low, art and commerce, or East and West.
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Jenny Lu

Completed PhD - Between Homes: Examining the notion of the unheimlich in art practice and its relationship to post-colonial identity and contemporary society in Taiwan

My research focuses on the notion of the ‘being not at home’ in relation to identity confusion, post-colonial society and artistic practice. Exploring Sigmund Freud’s concept of the ‘uncanny’ (unheimlich), I argue that in contemporary society, obtaining the feeling of ‘being at home’ is impossible, and the ‘unheimlich’ is therefore a common experience.
I consider how artists deliver a sense of the ‘unheimlich’ in their work and how this creates feelings of unease in the viewer. I examine work produced by contemporary artists, and focus especially on artists who live in Taiwan, including Chen Chieh-jen and Wu Mali.
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