RICHMOND
THE AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL
UNIVERSITY
IN LONDON
DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES,
SOCIAL SCIENCES & COMMUNICATIONS
MA Art History Thesis Conference 2010
3.30pm, Friday 13th June
Room 305, Asa Briggs Hall, Kensington Campus
Presentations are 10 minutes, followed by Q&A. In order of appearance:
Where are the girls?: Identity and place in the photography of Sarah Jones, Tom Hunter and
Hannah Starkey
Laura Barone
Although contemporary British photographers Sarah Jones and Tom Hunter’s photographic
practices embrace many themes, their work strongly converges in the locations and the subjects that
they choose to depict. These contemporary spaces of the everyday - bedrooms, dining rooms, and
gardens - are most often occupied by girls or women. However, the great divide between the two
artists is the social class that they photograph; for Jones, this is the well-groomed and carefully
decorated spaces of the rich, inhabited by terribly bored adolescents and for Hunter this is the
community of squatters and marginalized people in Hackney. Although the three spaces
are photographed in everyday experience for both the rich and the poor, they are often overlooked as
places of identity construction. My thesis seeks to examine how the spaces of the bedroom, the
dining room/living room and the garden - carefully chosen as entry points which offer the most
interesting and fruitful discussions relating to my theoretical approaches of feminism and social art
history - are the formative places of identity-making within the familial and domestic sphere,
particularly for girls and women. I will conclude by examining a public space, the café/restaurant, as
depicted in the work of a contemporary and peer of Jones and Hunter’s, Hannah Starkey, and how
the figure of the adolescent and young woman is problematized in this kind of public urban space,
even in the twenty-first century. By carefully examining each space and contrasting how Jones,
Hunter, and Starkey depict their subjects within them, this thesis will examine the interrelating power
relations and specific role that photography and space play in creating gendered and classed
identities.
How Sweet it Could Be: The Possibility of Droit de Suite in the International Art Markets of
the USA, Europe and China
Kelley Gordon
This thesis is designed to examine the repercussions of implementing droit de suite in different
countries across the world. Concerns in various countries that already have some form of the law
enacted, specifically the United Kingdom and the United States, maintain to be what – if at all – the
impact of enacting artist resale rights into law will have and have had on the global art market.
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Additionally, laws in these countries may differ in regards to whether droit de suite applies strictly to
public or private sales, the minimum sale amount to be taxed, and the cap amount available to be
awarded to the artist. The implications of these differences between countries will be examined in
addition to reasons as to why countries, which have recently implemented droit de suite, previously
hesitated to do so. Details on which party (i.e. the buyer or seller) involved in transactions subject to
droit de suite benefit the most will be established and how this may also effect where art is bought or
sold across the world. As a result, the possibility of enacting a universal artist resale right or droit de
suite, specifically in the US, UK, and China, will be determined through analysis of ethical, economic,
and political incentives.
Graphically Exposed: Revisiting the Changes which Influenced British Graphic Design in
the 1950s and 1960s
Lisa Hon
This thesis will argue how and why British graphic design changed so radically in
the late 1950s and early 1960s. The design world changed when a few key ingredients came together.
These ingredients will be exemplified through discussion of an Americanization of British graphics
and the key individuals that were influenced by the American style design agencies which then shifted
to their British counterparts. This shift will be illustrated by the style of graphics produced in design
agencies in the late 1940s and early 1950s contrasted by those produced by the design agencies of the
late 1950s and early 1960s. The historical survey that this will produce will bridge the designers and
highlight the transatlantic link, of people as well as designs, that connects the ‘old’ British advertising
to that which had radically altered. Special attention will be focused on Alan Fletcher to discuss what
influenced individual designers to establish a design aesthetic that was specifically British during this
period. Known as the ‘father of design’, Alan Fletcher is an important figure in the founding of
Fletcher, Forbes & Gill advertising agency. Foundation of this particular design agency will prove to
be the culmination and the product of the social and cultural ingredients that came together to create
what was considered to be a radical shift in British graphic design.
Installation Art
Tiffany Jow
Despite its prominence in institutions worldwide, installation art has emerged as a vessel embodying
among the most difficult, problematic issues facing art historians today. Not only is its definition
notoriously ambiguous, its ability to be commodified, made mobile, re-installed or re-created is
constantly changing, most often at the direction of the museum or other governing body in lieu of
the artist. Richard Wilson's site-specific 20:50 exemplifies the matter, as the waist-high reflective pool
of recycled sump oil has been bought, moved and re-fabricated several times since its 1987 debut.
Informed by Minimalism, participatory and performance art and the rejection of the museum frame,
the multi-faceted backbone of installation art suggests reason for its ever-bewildering nature. Using
20:50 as a case study, my thesis will chronicle the central obstacles installation art in a gallery context
poses to its site, viewer and artist, ultimately providing suggestions for how this ill-defined genre can
most effectively exist within an institution in the face of a contemporary hunger for authentic user
experience.
Charles Avery & The Islanders project: The ongoing questioning and creation of
paradoxical subjects in contemporary art
Kara Magid
This thesis will consider the reception of Charles Avery’s project begun in 2004 that is entitled ‘The
Islanders.’ In this project, the artist has created the topology, cosmology, inhabitants, and principles
of an island community. While Avery is both the artist and hunter of this island, his project is the
combination of an array of different materials and ideologies. In this thesis, I will discuss the
different forms that have been created within the framework of this island and argue that these forms
are interrelated and connected due to the structure of this project that I suggest is parallel to the
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structure of the rhizome, a postmodern concept that was formulated by Deleuze and Guattari. One
way in which the different forms of this project are interrelated is that I suggest all of their subjects
have to do with the idea of the paradox. I argue that Avery gives the concept of the paradox physical
form throughout the framework of his ‘Islanders’ project. This thesis will consider the participation
that is required from viewers that encounter Avery’s work. I will describe how the experience of
viewing this project is then followed by an open discussion in which the subject would likely be the
paradox itself. It seems that many of the paradoxes that are posed by Avery challenge issues that
relate to globalization and technology. It is likely that the open discussions that are made possible by
this project result from the unfinished qualities that are inherent in the works and concepts of the
island.
The Art of Leonora Carrington: A Reaction to the Male Surrealist Portrayal of Women
Mallory Nanny
This paper addresses Leonora Carrington’s de-eroticized and magical representations of the woman
as a reaction against the sexualized female body depicted by her male Surrealist counterparts.
Through visual comparison and Freudian analysis of the work produced by both genders, it becomes
apparent how women were made to feel objectified, degraded, and marginalized. A discussion
connecting Carrington’s artistic imagery with her literary work conceptualizes her feelings about the
Surrealist movement, as well as her growing feminist awareness. The shift in her subject matter over
time communicates her individual response to the misogynistic images of women in the male-
dominated Surrealist field, as well as it marks a directional change in her artistic vision.
Rethinking Africa through the work of El Anatsui, Romauld Hazoume and Ndary Lo
Sarah Richter
For my thesis I want to examine the way that contemporary African artists navigate the
misconceptions about what art from Africa is set against issues of identity that were created by
colonialism. Contemporary West African Artists, Ndary Lo, El Anatsui and Romauld Hazoume all
attempt to address the issues through a variety of artistic mediums, most notably by incorporating
found objects from their environment. In addition to dealing with these prominent issues, they
address consumerism through materials used as well as attempt to peacefully reconcile themselves
with the past.
Just What is it that Makes Tate Modern so Different, so Appealing?
A Study of the Changing Function of Architecture
Emily Sack
Around the turn of the millennium, from the 1990s through the early years of the 2000s, museum
architecture became a focal point of the museum experience, almost more than the collections
housed within. The emergence of “starchitects” accompanied this rise in cutting-edge museum
design, but there were also a significant number of disused sites transformed for cultural purposes,
Tate Modern among them. This development of a museum culture is a product of its time, which
this work plans to discuss though the case study of the expansion of the Tate Gallery. Tate Modern
is currently recognized as one of London’s leading tourist attractions, but what is it that brings over
four million visitors per year through the door? The redesign of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s derelict
Bankside Power Station redefined the museum experience in the twenty-first century, which is to be
continued with the new extension currently under construction. The collection is organized
thematically and is subject to much criticism, but it is the innovative design of architects Herzog and
de Mueron that served as a catalyst for new life in the Southbank area of London. Inspired by the
Modernist ideal of function determining aesthetic, it is the changing function of the structure from
an industrial building to a cultural icon that is of interest to this thesis. This work is not meant to be
a discussion of museum practice, but rather a study of the influence of architecture on visitor
experience, the acquired landmark status, and the continued success of the museum.
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Edwin Smith: A Very English Photographer
James Saul
This thesis is a focused and detailed art historical study of a specific English photographer Edwin
Smith and a group of postwar English artists who were concerned with the preservation and
celebration of English cultural, historical, and social heritage or Englishness that they thought was
steadily disappearing after the Second World War.
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