TrAIN

Completed PhDs

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  Ajaykumar

  Completed PhD - Technology, Art, and Being: an ontological investigation, with reference to the rock cut edifices of Ellora, Tadao Ando’s Water Temple, and contemporary technological practice

  My research and art work concerns not the art object primarily but the potential for creation of what might be described as a ‘sublime’ world that manifests in an ephemeral space between an art object and a spectator’s experiencing of it, where art works come into being through the ‘play’ of others. My research therefore concerns how we inter-act socially, with the world around us. I create little worlds – special spaces or places – to contact our playful nature, our imagination, and our feelings about the significance and the sacredness of our lives and our relationships, with our relationship with others as much as with objects and with ourselves.
  Find out more about Ajaykumar

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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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  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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  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.
  Find out more about Jenny Lu