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This doctoral research project aims to conceptualise the role of curatorial practice in addressing sociopolitical and environmental urgencies within a specific institutional framework. The study develops a theoretical analysis of the concept of the Anthropocene/Capitalocene as a contemporary condition and proposes that the role of the art institution is instrumental in shaping society through active engagement with current urgencies. This thesis is the result of a Collaborative Doctoral Award programme between the Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester School of Art and the CFCCA through which I conducted practice-based curatorial research. I consider this thesis' contribution to knowledge as twofold. Firstly, through investigating the interconnection between theory and practice, it provides a different theory of curating associated to the Anthropocene/Capitalocene as a conceptual framework for developing an original curatorial research-led project concerned with global ecological and sociopolitical impacts of digital technology. Secondly, the thesis considers this praxis as a mode of knowledge production within CFCCA's institutional operations that brings new perspectives in the way the art institution regards research within the curatorial but also its role as a critical institutional space. The PhD project consists of both theoretical and practical elements as shown below: Part I: A critical examination of CFCCA's institutional history born out of the multicultural debate of the 1980s and 1990s. This analysis of its history, institutional shifts and associations within a wider historical, social and political context is examined through the lenses of the curatorial and sets out the parameters within which changes can be introduced. Part II: A theoretical examination that contextualises and problematizes the concept of the Anthropocene as a means to inform curatorial thinking and practice. Part III: A practice-based curatorial research project titled Digital Matters: The Earth Behind the Screen, realised in the process of the doctoral study, which was informed by the theoretical explorations and operated as a testing ground (a model) of curatorial thinking within CFCCA's institutional framework. This final part also includes an evaluation of the curatorial project and examines its expediency and limitations in the context of the institution, concluding that any fundamental shift in the curatorial operation must be associated with a relevant revision of the institutional framework.

From the informational to the informal, the practical to the performative, what a contemporary art institution's public programme includes is seemingly limitless. Despite the increasing visibility of this practice, it remains side-lined in institutions and discourse. Yet, I argue it offers a unique vantage point from which to explore publicness, as it is produced by the art museum and its extended spaces - the contemporary art institution, art school and performance festival - in a manner distinct from exhibition making and other forms of the curatorial. I ask in this thesis: what can the space of the public programme tell us about what it means to become public in the contemporary art institution? It is my contention that publicness is both spatially and temporally constructed; we must observe and quantify the feelings, responses, actions of ourselves and others to truly understand it. Through a combination of queer theory, theatre and performance studies, I attend more fully to the sensuous, affective and felt dimensions of publicness, and trouble the abstract, singular public found in the construction 'public programme'. Challenging pervasive spatial metaphors of publicness that curatorial discourses often have recourse to, I then argue for an alternative understanding of publicness as an emergent becoming. My understanding of 'becoming public(s)' emerges from the art museum and how it has been tied to publicness in rather uncomfortable ways, alongside close readings of specific moments during events I have programmed or attended that left me feeling uncomfortable, awkward, or uncertain how to respond. My findings are taken back into practice in a series called That Awkward Stage: Private Workshops for Public Programmers (2018-19). Inviting participants to share moments of discomfort in their double role as programmer and audience, I analyse anecdotes shared to answer my final research question: what could reframing publicness as a process of becoming do to our understanding of the public programme in the contemporary art institution? This thesis argues for embracing the discomfort around publicness as a way to rethink the space of the public programme in ways that no longer take becoming public for granted.

'Curating' has evolved to reflect changing artistic practice. Having worked as a curator, which means operating in a complicated network of roles as a producer, mediator and translator, I think critically about the limitations and challenges of curatorial practice through the representation of Korean art. This research focuses on the subject of historical trauma and asks how historical amnesia can be brought to the surface through the mediation of the curatorial project. It examines this by asking how artists have revealed conditions of collective trauma in their work. Artists turning to historical subjects have periodically encountered, and often opposed, the complex network of institutional efforts to enforce nationalistic narratives. Although the level of representations that artwork should be accompanied by is a contentious issue, I argue that context and history are essential to understand the fuller meaning of an artwork. Thus, I have paid attention to the 1990s in Korea, which revealed ruptures and the suppression of Korean tradition and historiography. The thesis thus questions how a generation of Korean artists emerging in the 1990s was the result of generations of oppression, and how they were different from earlier generations. I look closely at the work of artists Choi Jeong Hwa (b.1961), Park Chankyong (b.1965) and Jia Chang (b.1971) and suggest a paradigm of 'suppression' to interpret both their work and representations of their work. Their work is contextualised by historical interviews with witnesses and influential figures of the time. I have interwoven diverse materials, findings and theories into what I call 'a curator's film'. This research problematises the fact that there is not sufficient context available to apprehend contemporary Korean art in international exhibitions. Concurrently, the research asks whether historical amnesia is caused by privileging the art and history of the West. While the research reveals art emanating from various traumas caused by multifaceted suppression, this contextualisation with curators exposes the limitations of conventional curatorial formats. This process enables me to propose a new curatorial method by observing how different generations of artists from Korea emerged and internalised artistic strategies as methods. This exploration of 'what it means to curate exhibitions on historical subjects' was prompted by experiences of working as the founding curator of the Korean Cultural Centre UK; and as an independent curator working internationally for 15 years. For more than 80 exhibitions, I worked with over 485 artists in international settings. These experiences allowed transnational discussions but also made me feel limited when explaining complex meanings to the public. Not only did the public have much less knowledge about non-Western art and philosophy, but there were also fewer chances to get to know the context. The artists concerned have tackled such complexities through artistic strategies, and I apply the skills learned from artists to the practice part of this research. In other words, artists' strategies of self-reflexivity, autoethnography and the mixing of personal/public memory are learned, and Fragments interweaves interviews, archives, audio-visual materials, artworks and new commissions to elucidate the entangled memories. I used an interpretative model designed as a 'Deck of Cards' for Fragments. These cards were visual symbolic cues, defined by me, and designed by an illustrator to work within Fragments. The cards punctuated points beyond words, using visuals coupled with numbers and symbols. The cards link the film to the thesis, which is divided into 'Introduction, 'History', 'Context', 'Medium' and 'Conclusion'. 'History' narrates the history of suppression (in the film, it is signalled by a card showing a broken bridge); 'Context' places my research within a curatorial context (an Island card); and 'Medium' demonstrates how my film becomes a new proposal for a curatorial method (a Memory card). Meanings of multiplicities and mystery are signified by the Maze card, the leitmotif of the film. And, finally, the introduction and conclusion are connected to the 13 numbers. This Deck of Cards is my curatorial rendition. Collaboration with musicians and editors became an expanded form of curatorial practice. Eight original soundtracks were composed for the film, and the editing went through several phases to create Fragments - an amalgamation of theory, storytelling and conceptualisation. Through Fragments and the corresponding thesis, the research argues how historical amnesia can be brought to the surface through a research-based curatorial strategy and method. It provokes the further question: as artists are shaped by history, in what ways do artists become narrators of history and reveal the collectively forgotten past?

The following PhD. thesis focuses on Internet art-based artist-led curatorial initiatives and the exhibition or artwork development process that takes place within this type of art organisation. The main concern of this investigation is the understanding of creative effect on contemporary Internet practice by an artist-led initiative through the development of an online multi-platform artwork, and or, exhibition. The research builds on an inter-disciplinary body of discourse, which encompasses the field of curating, critical coding studies and artistic practice. The topics discussed in connection to these fields are the distributive exhibition model, and curatorial modes of practice; research on system theory and aesthetics within artistic and curatorial practice; discourse around the expansion of space, the online art platform, and the site of art (and by extension the site of the exhibition) In combination with the rise of mobile technology; finally, coding studies and design philosophy platform building such as Internet protocol are covered. The research carried out for this PhD. thesis consists of a practice-led methodology that utilised researcher Alejandro Daniel Ball's own practice as a system maker within two artist-led initiatives: PILproject, and Agorama, where a chronology of artist-led artistic and curator projects was developed and realised by the researcher and his collaborators during the period between 2015 to 2018. Each project during this period are analysed through three system-based parameters: The project's multiple interfaces, using the critical perspective of the interface being an effect between the frontend and backend, i.e., the implementation of the platforms HTML, CSS and JavaScript architecture; The project's distributive network, i.e., the tangible hyperlinks and social media links each platform uses to interconnect with the wider exhibition system and external social media platforms; the final aspect centres on the protocological effect and system evaluation of each exhibition and, or, artworks presented. The essential findings and outcome of this research reveal the possible technological effects artist-led curatorial initiatives can enact with an embedded system maker practice, such as propagating open-source protocols and protocological objects. Additionally, a further outcome of this research is the development of workable web architecture frameworks, which can be used to create distributive sites for art and the exhibition.

This thesis examines the process of institutional change in the field of art museums in two countries, the United Kingdom and France, using an institutional logics perspective. Art museums have gone through significant changes due to cultural policies, pressures from the institutional environment and demands by stakeholders. This study seeks to reveal the role and interrelationship between cognitive micro-level mechanisms in the emergence of macro-level practices. Through a comparative case study analysis, the findings show that three cognitive micro-level mechanisms are operational in institutional logics emergence that influenced institutional change outcomes, which are sensemaking, collective mobilisation and decision-making. The process of change is non-linear with mutual interrelationships between cognitive mechanisms in a continuous process until major and influential stakeholders are satisfied. The process starts by decision-making from external stakeholders who put pressures on organisations in a field to change. Through sensemaking, organisational actors identify circumstances, interpret them to generate possible options and take action. Taking action is in the form of decision-making whereby actors enact new practices that either satisfy major stakeholders to end change or trigger collective mobilisation by dissatisfied stakeholders to oppose change. Organisational actors respond through sensemaking and decision-making to enact different practices that satisfy the opposition. The study focuses on the outcome of hybridity to illustrate that a hybrid logic may emerge unintentionally. As organisational actors attempt to accommodate conflicting demands, organisations innovate practices that combine competing logics in novel ways. The emerged hybridity is not a goal, but a resort by which it is intended to cope with institutional pressures, but is not optimal for competitiveness and sustainability. An emergent insight from the study is utilising digitisation by organisations to hybridise by first using digital to pursue the old logic and meet its demands, and then figure creative ways to combine the new logic that create a synergy between conflicting activities. This research makes several contributions to institutional logics, institutional change, and hybrid organisations literatures. First, it demonstrates the process of institutional change in the context of art museums, including causes, outcomes and effects. Second, it shows the role and interrelationship between cognitive micro-level mechanisms in the emergence of institutional logics at the organisational level. Third, it highlights that low power stakeholders can influence institutional change by mobilising collectively and using digital tools to disrupt organisations and diminish legitimacy. Fourth, it identifies factors that influence change and the unintentional rise of hybridity. Conflicting demands from the institutional environment combined with creative utilisation of digitisation enabled the emergence of a hybrid logic.

This thesis investigates the creation, early history and development of the permanent collection of the Laing Art Gallery - the first public art museum in Newcastle upon Tyne - between its opening in 1904 and the death of its first and perhaps most emblematic curator, C. Bernard Stevenson (1874-1957). The Laing arrived late in comparison to the Victorian boom of 'civic pride' which motivated the creation of most regional art galleries in Britain during that period. Besides this belated opening, the gallery faced additional problems: it was built on an inadequate and awkward site which constrained its ability to function properly and to expand its permanent collection, and it carried a starting debt. Moreover, it possessed no nucleus collection, nor funds to purchase one. This thesis analyses the way in which Stevenson succeeded in overcoming these adverse opening conditions, managing to put together three quarters of the Laing's current collection and undertaking 'the work of two lives' to build up a comprehensive and diverse display of British painting. The thesis also reveals the impact of the main historical events of the first half of the twentieth century upon the early history of the gallery and in the creation of its collections. It studies the relationship of the Laing with collectors and dealers, artists, and other regional art galleries, as well as management details such as financing, acquisition policies, and the connexion established with its audiences and with public powers. Beyond the local relevance of the Laing as the flagship venue of Tyneside museums, the significant contribution to scholarship of this thesis is the light it sheds on the unique way in which this permanent collection was formed. Moreover, the investigation enhances knowledge of British provincial art galleries at a more general level: because the Laing's history mirrors the evolution of other local authority museums at the time, this thesis provides an extensive case study which helps to establish the singular importance of regional art galleries to British cultural history during the first half of the twentieth century.

Building on Tara McDowell’s (2016) understanding of the current 'post occupational condition', this practice-based thesis considers the agency of 'the curatorial' within the work of artists, curators and other cultural workers in the contemporary art field. This is developed from, but contrasts with, proposals that ‘the curatorial’ is an aspirational phenomenon in positive, yet often opaque, explanations; for example, ‘the curatorial’ as a form of philosophy, radical politics, critical thought or a gift. Action research methods examine how structural and material conditions have been absorbed into my own curatorial practice. The thesis reveals drivers behind a desire to become more ‘curatorial’ that are linked to both the expansion of curatorial studies in postgraduate education, and the pressure — harnessed by creative industries policy — on individuals to formulate dynamic creative identities in order to self-generate work. Two case studies - Chapter Thirteen and Curatorial Studio - are drawn from the breadth of my work as an ‘independent’ curator. They demonstrate new forms of cooperation that resist the pressure to compete within a field of low-paid and under-paid curatorial work. Proposed as 'emergent' forms rather than new institutional models, they adopt Raymond Williams’ (1977) understanding of the ‘emergent’ as a constant process of creating new meaning and values through cultural practices and social relations. As small ‘situated’ entities, these projects mirror the unsustainable working life of the ‘independent’ curator herself. This thesis presents new understanding of international discourse on ‘the curatorial’ alongside analysis of the visual arts infrastructure in Scotland, to examine its influence on practice, institutional models and working conditions. It concludes that the present funding landscape gives preference to specific curatorial methods that are often out of sync with the challenges faced by the majority of those working in the sector today.

This thesis investigates the potential for practice-based research to impact and challenge current discourses surrounding contemporary curating. Current curatorial practice frequently focuses on socio-economic political ideologies (Althusser). By focusing on the ideological discourse concerning curating, what other dialogs, discussions, or forms of knowledge are excluded or suppressed? Can a diffractive (Haraway) approach to research be applied to curatorial practice? If so, how would a diffractive curatorial practice function? My thesis asks the question, “Can curatorial practice offer opportunities for increased capacities to act outside of ideological limitations?” Drawing on the theoretical traditions of Spinoza, Deleuze, Haraway, Barad, and Braidotti among others, this thesis is based in a relational ontology that questions the premise that the roles in a curated exhibition are clearly defined and immutable. Can curatorial practice be viewed as an assemblage where the boundaries of the elements of an exhibition are constantly erased, re-drawn, re/de-territorialized and can fluidly mix with each other? This thesis asks if practice-based research can be analyzed both reflectively and diffractively in order to include marginalized, situated, and partial knowledges. Can embodied research methods (such as affect theory that can involve using sensations in the body) be used as methods to collect and analyze data? Can curatorial practice deploy a concept of distributed agency that acknowledges the agency of all participants of an exhibition, both human and non-human, and not just the curator? What is the role of technology in diffractive curatorial research? What is the “matter” of curatorial practice and how does a practice-based curatorial researcher engage with matter? The conclusion of my thesis brings together my research into all of these questions to develop an “onto-ethico-curology” (in resonance with Barad) that creates a method to evaluate curatorial practice outside of a specific ideological framework.

This thesis defines art museums' online resources as narratives in response to the following question: How can online resources, such as online exhibitions, online publications, and similar resources, be accurately and systematically defined? The aim of this definition is to provide a detailed, clear, and critical understanding of certain types of online resources, namely online exhibitions and online publications, that share attributes and functions. The two types of online resources contain and display exhibitions and artworks information, use similar interfaces and media, can serve similar audiences, and narrate the stories of the artworks. Based on the narrative character of both types, the definition comprehensively examines the spectrum of attributes online resources have and the implications of such attributes. Thus, the definition not only indicates what are online resources and their characteristics but also explains why online resources are the way they are and have certain characteristics, and how they function as narratives. These attributes are authorship, readership, temporality, spatiality, and mediality. In order to construct the definition, a systematic review of narratology and museum studies literature on narratives was pursued. The review of the literature was key to develop a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon. Moreover, the methodology used in this thesis revised the traditional usage of narratology in museum studies research integrating empirical evidence. In this way, the narratological analysis moves away from the narrative text itself and also considers the production and consumption mechanisms of the narrative. The thesis employs six art museums' online resources from Spain, the United States, and the United Kingdom as sources for the research. Data from seven museum professionals involved in the creation of those resources was collected with interviews. In the case of the scholarly audience, twenty scholars performed think-aloud protocol sessions while visiting the online resources.

This thesis investigates the political, philosophical and aesthetic trajectories of collective curating in Southeast Europe. It is developed from a theoretical and philosophical standpoint that focuses on four key curatorial collectives and their interventionist reconfigurations of the region’s socialist past: Kiosk (Belgrade), Multidisciplinary Arts Movements (Tirana), Kontekst Collective (Belgrade), and Kooperacija (Skopje). Responding to a gap in previous literature and focusing on more underrepresented practices from the region, the thesis argues that a younger generation of artists and curators have employed infrastructures of collectivity and self-organisation to reclaim public spaces that were predominantly defined by discourses of trauma, nostalgia, and the distinct failure produced by ideologies of both communist regimes and neoliberalism. In so doing, the thesis is centralised around analysing the key notions of memory and affect, transition, post-socialism, self-organisation and commoning. The research commences with a historic approach and critical reflection on the ways “Eastern Europe” appeared as a specific category in practices of exhibition-making after 1989. This is put into dialogue with the practice of self-organisation in the 1990s and the ways it allowed art groups to obtain political agency. Using Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History (1942) and Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (1994) as a critical entry point, the thesis explores the multiple temporalities of memory as well as the post-communist conditions and the potentialities of revising the socialist past after socialism via the curatorial. The thesis proposes the term “affective commoning” as a concept-tool to describe an emerging body of curatorial practices that raise collectivity and self-organisation as an important element of affective political action by revisiting spaces and temporalities of ruination.

It is understood that language is a powerful mediator of social hierarchy with great influence to emancipate, educate or exclude. Meanwhile, discourses centred on expertise, representation and authorship have re-emerged as priorities in collections of contemporary art due to pressures for them to be reinstated as dialogical resources. This is especially true for those where participatory practices are being challenged due to their failure to prioritise public discourse over dominant, institutional ones. Even after attempts to democratise collections via processes to co-write interpretation, they struggle to represent community co-authors ethically and transparently. This thesis argues that language use and misrepresentation prevent publics from using collections of contemporary art and feeling like they belong in them. Using discourse theory and participatory action research, this study interrogates the processes used by collections to co-author the interpretation of artworks to create ‘equitable plurality’ and offers up a toolkit of arts-based practices to engender usership. Drawn from dialogic practices and qualitative research, the investigation examines the politics of discourse and plurality of speech – spoken and written – to contribute a unique focus on language generated and used by publics to create a common language. Undertaken with multiple communities of practice associated with Tate Liverpool’s collection ‘Constellations’, this research concludes in the production of a crowd-sourced digital resource titled The People’s Glossary. By revisiting and reinterpreting keywords with publics as a dialogic practice, this body of work contributes processes and research to embed plurality in collections of contemporary art.

My project explores the history and contemporary significance of the observatory through curatorial and artistic research, principally commissions for a thematic exhibition and an artist book. The key question guiding my research asked: What could an observatory be in the 21st century, in particular, one sited within a public gallery or imagined through an artist book? This research question was investigated via archive-based enquiry into the historic Liverpool Observatory, the co-curation of an observatory themed exhibition at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool, and the production an artist book. The key objective of my project was to establish a practice-based enquiry, employing both curatorial and artistic modes of investigation, into the observatory and associated contexts of observational technoscience. By researching these subjects, moving from a situated analysis of Liverpool Observatory to the observatory’s contemporary global significance, my project makes evident that the observatory, and specialised observational techniques and instruments more broadly, have become increasingly prevalent part of everyday life across the earth, and demand artistic engagement and reimagining. Furthermore, the project posits the observatory as an important touchstone and unique microcosm for our contemporary technologically mediated condition. Through practice-based research I demonstrate how the observatory’s history is one of continual change and proliferation, shifting from assemblages of instruments primarily contained within a specific site, toward an exploded form, ever more distributed, networked, and enmeshed with human sensesand nature. My research, particularly through commissioned artwork and the artist book, focuses in on the degree to which the observatory and observational technoscience is now embodied at societal, community, and individual levels. I argue that developing and manifesting an ‘old/new’ observatory within a public art gallery, of the kind produced at FACT, entitled The New Observatory, functions as a useful method to simultaneously subvert and reflect upon the historic precedents and contemporary conditions of observation. The project explores how locally embedded and situated research, employing the tools of archival research, media archaeology, and the framework of new materialism, can bring forth what may be called anachronisms of the contemporary. The New Observatory exhibition’s inherent fixity compared to the contemporary distributed character of observation is anachronistic, a contemporary chronological inconsistency, but this renders it with a peculiarly timely and subversive agency. Equally, the artist book I produced, inspired by study of observational notebooks and composed of a narrative drawn from historical and modern observational science, traditionally printed and bound, is an analogous act of contemporary anachronism. Accordingly, the project across book and exhibition, proffers itself as a method or case study for how alternative and anachronistic, yet nonetheless contemporary, observatories and analogous observational practices, may be brought forth and developed, through interactions between historical observatories and artistic practice in collaboration with socio-technical communities. I propose the subject and history of observation as a key bridge between the arts and sciences, through an enquiry employing artistic and curatorial methods. In particular I utilise the public gallery and the medium of the artist book, to examine how the gallery and artist publishing poses unique affinities with the observatory and processes of observational inscription, rendering them useful methods to engage one another. Furthermore, the book and commissions in the exhibition, investigates how observational inscription, measurements, and data, are real in themselves, constitute phenomena in their own terms, and are not simply defined by that which they represent, value, or sense. The results and practices employed in my project suggests that a practice-based enquiry of the observatory is aided by a transdisciplinary theoretical framework, which combines new materialism with the history and philosophy of science and technology. In turn, I articulate how this theoretical framework supports a practice-based study of the observatory, and how collectively they offer a useful means to explore a fundamental challenge at the heart of new materialist and posthumanist philosophy; how to move beyond singular subject-object relations and anthropocentric viewpoints. Finally, I demonstrate how the dual practices of artist and curator may cross fertilise one another, and aforementioned theoretical frameworks, which in turn catalyse the spaces of the gallery, the book, and the observatory, with a lively materiality.

This practice-based research project investigates the production, distribution and reception of network art practice before and after globalisation. It does so to engage with the Internet as 'the most material and visible sign of globalisation' (Manovich 2001) whose emergence as the pre-eminent network technology arrives concurrently with the disappearance of its utopian promise. Taking Robert Filliou's 1968 conception of The Eternal Network as a starting point, the research seeks to understand the opportunities and limitations of network art practice through identifying and developing a range of curatorial and artistic methods in practice. Methodologically, it presents the researcher as an artist-curator-performer. Doing so enables 'inhabitation' (rather than 're-enactment') of the concepts and principles of Filliou's work. Filliou thus becomes a medium of research for the development of network art practice after the Net and vice versa. Curating only the second edition of The Art-of-Peace Biennale becomes the primary output of the research. Filliou conceived of the Biennale in 1970, proposed it in 1982 and René Block organised the first edition at the Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany, in 1985. The contemporary edition, The Next Art-of-Peace Biennale 2015-17, occurred mainly but not exclusively through the online platform, www.peacebiennale.info. It did so to respond to the radical shift in modes of online production, distribution and reception since the first edition. The research describes, contextualises and reflects on the emergence of The Next Art-of-Peace Biennale 2015-2017 and describes a final exhibition, What is Peace? (Answer Here), held in 2018. It presents a contribution to knowledge through artistic and curatorial practice exploring online and offline exhibition-making, video, performance, correspondence art and writing. Through developing an ontology of 'curatorial behaviour' exploring the 'locations', 'durations', 'materialities' and 'interactions' of network art practice, the research identifies artistic and curatorial principles able to withstand the 'high-tech gloom' (Thompson 2011, p. 49) of mendacious globalisation in a late Web 2.0, postmedium condition.

This thesis investigates the impact feminist art histories have had on mainstream art museums. The key finding of this thesis is that masculinity, or the traditional heteromasculine box, continues to impact the mainstream art museum. The research is approached through two case studies: Tate Modern, London, and the National Portrait Gallery, also in London. Each case study is conceptualised as comprising three, interconnecting and overlapping spheres: the organisational sphere, the curatorial sphere and the physical sphere. This thesis finds that, alongside the overwhelming impact of masculinity, structural faults in the collection, caused by historic bias, have created obstacles for curators. However, feminist art historical approaches are being implemented within the curatorial sphere in order to attempt to fill gaps and to correct biases. Although within the organisational sphere there is evidence of a feminist legacy, masculinity continues to have a large impact on experiences within physical art spaces, leading to questions about whether the actions museums are taking to diversify their collections is enough. The thesis argues that as some gaps in collections are addressed, others are being ignored and continue to grow. This is most evident in the case of transgender narratives. Despite the rise in the number of women artists and/or artists of colour, these artists are not given the same space as artists accepted within the art historical canon. This causes a lack of equivalency of scale between artists. Additionally, there are often specific spaces and times given to the display of marginalised artists. For example, the thesis finds that often the interpretation of an artist's queerness is limited to certain spaces within the gallery, or confined to special events and displays. Ultimately this thesis contributes to the growing field of queer feminist art histories as well as a queer reading of museums, while also exploring transgender and gender nonconforming narratives in art spaces.

This thesis constitutes the first comparative study of the phenomenon of alternative art galleries functioning during the 1970s in two neighbouring state socialist regimes, namely, the German Democratic Republic and the People's Republic of Poland. Firmly contextualised in the cultural-political climate of Honecker's and Gierek's quasi-liberalisation, it examines the socio-cultural function of non-conformist exhibition spaces and focuses, specifically, on two case studies: Galerie Arkade in East Berlin and Galeria/Repassage in Warsaw. By looking at a wide variety of practices produced in those spaces, this thesis investigates the commonalities and differences in how the galleries operated and how they related to the divergent post-Stalinist conditions. For instance, due to more repressive cultural-politics in the GDR, it proved more difficult to accommodate experimental practices in Arkade, since even exhibiting abstract art was problematic for the East German officials. Conversely, in Poland Gierek's liberalisation resulted in the state's limited acceptance of radical artistic practices such as performance and conceptual art but only in the marginal spaces of artist-run galleries. Despite their alternative status, the galleries were, to a certain degree, dependent administratively and financially on these socialist institutions and were at the same time exposed to surveillance by the state security services. These aspects of galleries' activities are often neglected and so to remedy this lack this thesis offers new perspectives on and insights into various aspects of the functioning of alternative culture in this region. The originality of this research lies also in its references to new archival material which has not been published, nor interpreted before. The interpretation of these rich primary sources makes use of a new theoretical framework that combines Michel Foucault's theory of heterotopia in a macro-level analysis and Henri Lefebvre's ideas on the social production of space in a micro-level analysis. In particular, the galleries' histories are seen in this thesis as intertwined with the advancing process of disintegration of state socialism in the Eastern Bloc as this was perceptible to varying degree in different socialist states. Accordingly, it argues that the galleries were symptomatic of and, simultaneously, contributed through various practices to the 'post-socialist condition'.

Exploring a distinctive archival turn in art, this study investigates where the archival impulse comes from and why and how artists, as performative researchers, are obsessed with issues relating to the archive. In order to answer for these questions, this thesis displays a dynamic geography of archival/anarchival performativity in contemporary archival art since, primarily, the 1960s. The artist as Sisyphus detects the aporia of the archival impulse being simultaneously archival and anarchival and activates a Sisyphean loop of repetition and failure in their own artistic archives. Inspired by the myth of Sisyphus, this project is therefore given the title “mapping the Sisyphean archives”. Using a methodology of mapping, diverse case studies of archival art are interwoven to unveil the reconfiguration of the physical and conceptual conditions of the archive. The meaning of mapping here is varied – doing, undoing, performing, failing, and queering, polymorphously facilitated by two key wheels of Sisyphean performativity. A critical capacity of repetition and failure is thus crucially credited as it brings resistant and alternative modes of being, thinking, and knowing to undermine any idealisation and totalitarianism embedded in normative archives. Referring to Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive reading of the archive and Gilles Deleuze’s thoughts on rhizomatic creativity, the first half of the thesis examines multifaceted aspects of repetition as being pathological, self-evolving, creative, and differentiated each time. In the second half, with reference to Aaron Williamson’s performance, The Collapsing Lecture, staging the idea of failure, polyphonic potentiality of failure is addressed as a particular attitude of Sisyphean artists to experiment with unusual, irregular, fallible, and purposeless yet permissive, rebellious, and emancipatory rhythms from within the archive. Such a destructive yet generative force of Sisyphean performativity ultimately contributes to subverting the negative connotation of repetition and failure against the ideas of banal sameness and of success. Above all, a performative and processual multiplicity that Sisyphean archival art maps out demonstrates how any overdetermined social consensus and power inscribed in archives can be dismantled and how the stagnant site of archives can be transformed into an imaginative, fluctuating platform for infinite future stories to come.

This thesis explores female authorship, friendship and knowledge-making within collecting practices in the mid-to-late eighteenth century. Applying methodologies from the history of collecting, gender and material culture studies, it contextualises practices of collecting, museum-making, crafting, and art criticism within Bluestocking culture and takes as its focus the vast collection of antiquities and natural history specimens assembled by Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, duchess of Portland (1715-1785) at Bulstrode Park, Buckinghamshire, and Privy Gardens, Whitehall. It answers historians' claims of the Portland Museum as a chaotic and ill-informed collection, famous only for its dispersal at auction in 1786. Uncovering evidence from a number of case studies drawn from the duchess's circle, this study returns to the museum pre-sale, revealing a rich and diverse community of female contributors whose labours there had important broader cultural, connoisseurial and authorial impact. I gather together a spectrum of individual and collective women's texts, objects and voices, showing how they sustained what I term the 'museum-salon'.

While some research has focused on what happens 'behind the scenes' in art museums and how this relates to 'front stage' museum representations, little has been written about how this relates to what happens 'centre stage': in other words, how the organisational structure and culture of an institution influence the art historical knowledges constructed and presented through display. While much work has been done on the relationship between collecting, collections and display, little has been done to examine interpretation practices in museums of art. This thesis attempts to address this gap in order to better understand the importance of the role of interpretation in the construction of art and art history. This thesis presents the results of research into the production of knowledge, understood as modes of representation, at three museums of art: the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Tate Britain in London, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The research focuses on the relationship between changing organisational structures and interpretive practices in these institutions, with a focus on how the traditional divide between 'educators' and 'curators' is being blurred - suggesting a reinvention of the purpose and function of museums of art. Each case study institution had recently undergone (or was in the process of undergoing) significant organisational change, providing a chance to map out or reflect upon changes to interpretation over time. Combining qualitative, ethnographic methods and display analysis, the research attempts to trace the internal, social workings of each institution with the statements of position communicated to visitors. Proceeding from a social constructionist viewpoint that museum displays are a type of embodied theory, and that museums are not merely 'reflective' (Macdonald 1996), the research argues that the structural and cultural dynamics of organisations influence the knowledges communicated to visitors. The research argues that staffing structures (and the power and politics that exist within these structures) not only influence the content of exhibitions and displays, but are capable of altering museum representations. In revealing these connections and examining production practices, this research opens up new thinking about the significance of organisational structures in the production of museum knowledges. This thinking challenges naturalised assumptions about the nature of art and its histories, presenting new possibilities for representation, understanding and the experience of visiting exhibitions.

This PhD research emerges from an on-going discussion in museum studies, which recognises the effect of digital technologies on the practices of contemporary museums and on the processes of knowledge production. It is the result of a collaborative study between London South Bank University and Tate, which examines how the contemporary art museum perceives digital culture and understands its audiences under networked conditions. The research departed from a recognition that Tate's practices of video production provide an access point to examine how the museum creates and shares cultural knowledge. By distributing its video content through online channels, the museum also participates in a digital and networked landscape and thereby connects with its audiences. In an effort to adhere to this constantly growing and evolving landscape, Tate has been exploring different ways of expanding its production and programming practices in online spaces and engaging with the audiences that inhabit these spaces. The research regarded this point of exploration as an opportunity to examine the institutional perceptions and ideas that guide this process. The core research question that the research addresses therefore is: How does the use and production of video content at Tate reflect the contemporary art museum's understanding of digital culture and the way that it perceives its audience? This question was addressed through situated empirical fieldwork in the organisation and particularly through the observation of the BMW Tate Live: Performance Room programme. Following the processes of the production of this series of live online performances, it was possible to trace the complexities that arose in Tate's encounter with the structures and the audience of the network. The study of these complexities reflected the museum's difficulty in embracing with unfamiliar elements of display and participation that the network proposed and unveiled processes of moderation and editorial control that aimed to contain the programme in the protected territory of the institution and its brand. The value of the present work lies in its focus on the processes where institutional ideas and politics are enacted as a way to understand the museum's complex structure. This research contributes to museum studies and media and cultural studies research by employing an interdisciplinary and reflexive method embedded in the museum practices in order to bring to light problems that are not new yet they are present and require attention. These problems pertain to the museum's relation to technology and they affect the museum's relationship with its audiences. The exploration of processes of production that this thesis suggests is considered a fundamental step in order to understand what knowledge the art museum produces in its encounter with the digital, how and for whom.

The research project documented in this thesis sought to explore the contemporaneity of digital decay. The main research question of this practice-based PhD - how can the curatorial explore the contemporaneity of digital decay? - is articulated in three main aims. The first aim - to curate the research exhibition machines will watch us die and integrate it with a symposium, an artist talk and screening and an exhibition tour - demonstrates that the curatorial is the most appropriate set of methods to answer the research question. The second aim - to develop a post-medium approach as a means to comprehensively explore digital decay's contemporaneity - shows that this study distinguishes itself from curatorial strategies based on medium-based immaterial behaviours. The radicant was embedded into the curatorial to comprehensively address artworks that critically explore digital materiality beyond the myth of immateriality, which has shaped most discourses on curating digital art. This step was also fundamental in terms of rethinking curatorial strategies for digital art after the material turn. The third aim - to develop a temporal notion of digital materiality - enables the research project to address decay through the various materialities and temporalities of digital culture. In machines will watch us die, digital decay emerged through the multi-temporalities embedded in the artworks' materialities. The idea of contemporaneity, also rooted within the set of methods, was crucial in defining materiality. This temporal notion of digital materiality was developed by incorporating insights from the field of media archaeology (medianatures, deep time, zombie media), new materialism (vibrant matter and intra-action) and exhibition practice (Les Immatériaux) into the research exhibition, which is here intended as the space where contemporaneity can be experienced. By rethinking and testing out curatorial strategies for art embedded with digital materialities under the framework of the material turn, digital decay was revealed through the material limitations of digital culture. The catalogue, the artist talk and screening, the symposium, and the exhibition tour are also part of the curatorial set and support the contribution to knowledge as well as contextualising it beyond the field of curating. As the catalogue and the events expand the research beyond the curatorial, the theoretical framework of the exhibition and the findings of this study have been opened up for discussion within a variety of fields, such as media archaeology, science fiction, art practice and new materialism. The documentation of the exhibition, the events, the rationale, the exhibition guide and the catalogue (a copy of which is also included in the appendix), can be found in the online portfolio at www.patrizia-costantin.com. The portfolio provides a useful resource and should be looked at before reading this thesis. As it includes both a visual documentation and a supporting writing material, the portfolio supports a thorough examination of this study and should also be consulted throughout the reading of the chapters.

The practice-led research submitted for the PhD submission is evidence of my investigation into aspirational relationships to material and form. This is evidenced in a curated exhibition series titled U N N A W A Y which contextualises the 'politics of wanting things' critical to understanding aspirational material and formal considerations of the artists manifest in the exhibitions. The ambitious project presented artworks that engaged with historical sculptural forms though created using cheap, foraged materials. The precarity of the materials used revealed the economic precarity in which they were created. This inversion of materials produced an aspirational use of materials which brought a socially working-class aesthetic into the art works. The exhibitions developed from the same aspirational relationship to material and form, contextualised through a unique site of a disused ballet studio in the town centre of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. U N N A W A Y was affectively informed by the precarious conditions of its production. The thesis contextualises this practice historically through examples of organisation by artists in the UK, the Artist Placement Group (Steveni et all, 1966 -89) and The Shop (Emin & Lucas, 1993). The thesis then discusses artist-led curatorial projects in relation to how they are being affected economically in contemporary Britain. The art movements of Minimalism, Anti-Form and Arte Povera and the exhibition Eccentric Abstraction curated by Lucy Lippard will inform an historical underpinning to the formal considerations of the art works presented in the practice led research. The Young British Artists (1990's) made sculpture with socially working-class materials that have the same significance of the traditional modernist sculpture they reference. This is exemplified in the work of Sarah Lucas; Lucas' art work understands and reworks sculptural histories using cheap foraged materials which is able to say something about her class position. This material understanding will position the historical use of cheap, make shift materials in British sculpture. Cruel Optimism (Berlant, 2011)and Landscape for a Good Woman: A Tale of Two Lives (Steedman, 1989) articulate different forms of classed aspiration. The importance of this text in relation to my own practical research in the UNNAWAY curatorial project resides in what Steedman names her mother's 'proper envy' of those who have the material possessions she desires associated with a socially middle-class life as she understands it. In a contemporary US context, cultural theorist Lauren Berlant has named this longing, 'Cruel Optimism'. These two articulations of what I will refer to as 'the politics of wanting things' underpin this critical reflection on the four U N N A W A Y exhibitions that form this practice led PhD submission.

This research examined perceptions of knowledge about art in the gallery and explored the potential of co-creation as a possible model with which to genuinely learn with our audience. Data for the study was generated at a gallery I have been based at throughout the period of undertaking the research. Participants were recruited from this gallery from groups implicated in knowledge co-creation: educators, curators, gallery assistants and audience members. Participants took part in a group workshop at the gallery facilitated by an artist educator, designed to provide opportunities to develop new knowledge together. Following the workshop, participants were interviewed and their experiences analysed. Other data generated through the workshop, as well as analysis of organisational documentation, and reflection on my own practice as a gallery educator, have been drawn together through a bricolage approach. Through analysis of data, I have constructed a situated taxonomy of knowledge types in the gallery and a conceptual model of co-creation. Key paradigms of knowledge have been identified, and the issues associated with the authoritative nature of institutional knowledge presented as a significant barrier to co-creation. Findings indicate that a fundamental shift in the epistemological stance of the gallery is required. A new not-knowing paradigm has been constructed to accommodate models of co-creation shown to be successful in generating a collaborative learning experience, which I have termed ‘learning-with’.The material being presented for examination is my own work and has not been submitted for an award of this or another HEI except in minor particulars which are explicitly noted in the body of the thesis. Where research pertaining to the thesis was undertaken collaboratively, the nature and extent of my individual contribution has been made explicit.

This thesis explores the development of artistic interest among gallery visitors in Taipei and London through qualitative research methods. The research focuses on the developmental trajectories of the artistic interest of 28 art enthusiasts - gallery visitors with a self-defined interest in visual arts - and how those visitors perceive the roles of museums in relation to the development of their interests. The thesis first establishes the theoretical framework for studying the development of artistic interest through a review of literature on interest development, motivation, leisure and cultural participation, and interest-driven pursuits. Art enthusiasts' pathways to art - the developmental trajectories of artistic interest - are then analyzed through three developmental dynamics of interest: pivotal influences, interest-related resources, and perceived values and roles, drawing on semi-structured interviews and gallery observations. The research identifies a number of settings which are influential in sparking or sustaining artistic interest, and finds interest-related resources to be in active dialogue with these settings. The roles of museums, despite being reflected within the contexts of influences and resources, are perceived in wider contexts, e.g. education, social interaction, evoking authentic experiences, or identity building. The research identifies two general patterns: early pathways and late pathways. Artistic interest is found to develop through the following phases: an initiating phase, 'a-ha moment' (reflective awareness), maintaining phase, and stabilizing phase. A cross-group, comparative analysis is also presented, revealing some culturally specific observations of interest development among art enthusiasts in Taipei and London. The thesis concludes with a reflection on key findings regarding the development of pathways to art, and the roles museums play in the cultivation of artistic interest. I highlight, in particular, the cross-boundary nature of interest development, in which museums play a crucial role in nurturing early interest as well as forging late phase interest. Based on the research findings, I suggest that museums develop programs with individuals' needs at different phases of interest development in mind.

This Ph.D. by Published Work examines five projects that took place over ten years, between 2007 and 2016, that were curated as part of the artistic programme of Arts Catalyst,an independent interdisciplinary arts commissioning organisation of which the author is the founding director. This programme of work sought to understand what form of curatorial model and interpretative framework could generate new artworks and co-produce interdisciplinary knowledge across areas of specialist research and geopolitical urgency. The projects take the form of exhibitions, texts and edited books, which are presented as the portfolio of work. The selected projects are: Malamp UK, Brandon Ballengée (2007-2010); Arctic Perspective Initiative (2009-2011); ITACCUS – IAF Technical Activities Committee on the Cultural Utilisation of Space – and associated activities (2007-2014); Holoturian, Ariel Guzik (2013-2015); and Wrecked on the Intertidal Zone, YoHa, Critical Art Ensemble, et al. (2013-2016). Through analysis of and reflection on the projects, this commentary proposes a curatorial model of interdisciplinary co-inquiry, which can foster an ecology of practices, enabling curators, artists, scientists, specialist experts and people with situated expertise to coproduce knowledge around matters of concern, particularly relating to human environment interaction and common and extraterritorial spaces. It examines the roles of the curator in this model and how these might differ from those commonly understood as established curatorial practice. The commentary further presents an interpretative and tactical framework of the planetary commons for curating art-led projects in the realm of ecopolitical concerns, that can engage audiences and publics with the art and ideas emerging from this coinquiry approach. The combination of curatorial model and interpretative and tactical framework contribute to discourses on both inter/trans-disciplinarity and the role of art in relation to the politics of ecology. The Ph.D. contributes to the field on several levels. Within curatorial studies, the interdisciplinary co-inquiry model reconfigures curatorial practice as a collective, inquiry3 driven, knowledge-producing practice, and provides a useful methodology for inter- /trans-disciplinary artistic practice in relation to the politics of ecology, while the framework of the planetary commons proposes direction and allows for investment in reciprocity through commoning practices. Beyond contemporary art, a curatorial coinquiry model deepens and alters existing approaches for listening to, valuing, and synthesising different types of knowledge and expertise around current environmental and related social concerns. While the commentary argues for the planetary commons framework within the contemporary art space, there are wider implications for it as a complement and alternative to the dominant interpretative framework of the Anthropocene.

Through this research I set out to highlight and address the absence of community participant voice in the analysis and critique of socially engaged art, mediated through the gallery. I bring into question bold assertions of positive and beneficial individual and communal experiences resulting from engagement in such practice when, without hearing from all involved, we are unable to fully comprehend its potential. It seems inexplicable that a practice based on the premise of dialogue, which claims to be striving for equitable relations and talks of collaboration, does not give equal weighting to participants’ points of view. This deficiency perpetuates unbalanced power relations between gallery, artist, and community, and may also lead to disingenuous collaborative experiences and unethical practice. Amplifying the voices of individual community members involved in Open House, a three-year community engagement programme initiated by Kettle’s Yard working in collaboration with artist Emma Smith, and considering these perspectives through a critical research lens, I set out to develop and present a more nuanced understanding of the value of socially engaged art practices to community participants. Furthermore, through genuinely listening to concerns voiced by individual community members, I consider the ethical implications for the gallery and artist. My analysis and critique of Open House, alongside the responses and reflections of community participants, are used as a springboard from which to consider broader issues affecting the fields of socially engaged art and galleries. Through this research I hope to inform and enrich the work of galleries mediating socially engaged art.

The thesis critically investigates the ways in which art museums in Britain evolved their curatorial techniques in the first half of the twentieth century, and it specifically charts the career of the scholar and museum director Philip Hendy (1900-1980), by focusing on the three museums under his care: Leeds City Art Gallery (1934-1945); Temple Newsam, Leeds (1938-1945); and the National Gallery, London (1946-1967). Through these case-studies, the thesis explores Hendy’s scheme to modernise these institutions during the interwar, wartime and post-war periods (1934-1956), and locates this reform in the context of changing discourses within the museum profession about the purpose of art museums in Britain. Specifically, the investigation is concerned with the duality that was implicated in this agenda of modernisation, as museums aimed to democratise access to their collections with new display strategies and amenities for visitors, but whose efforts were at the same time characterised by a specialisation of curatorial practice which led to concerns about the status of the profession and the improvement of museum standards. The thesis thus articulates the increasingly professionalised endeavours in the museums under study, and examines how these informed, but also competed with, the concrete methods by which these galleries sought to open their doors to the interests of larger publics. The focus of the investigation is on museum presentation - encompassing both architecture and display - which acted as a site of mediation between these professional and public spheres and shaped visitor engagement. As the thesis demonstrates, the curatorial techniques in the museums under review emphasised the need for museums to adapt to the demands of the present by updating their methods of exhibition, and secondly, they intended to make the collections visible to visitors qua viewers, in the belief that this would also make the museum more open and accessible.

Over the past 40 years within the UK the concept of self-advocacy has gained momentum by enabling learning disabled people to speak out in order to affect change. In the same period, inclusive approaches have been taken up both in research and in the arts, reflecting a growing recognition of learning disabled people as researchers, artists, performers and communicators. Yet curation has rarely been used as an inclusive practice and then principally in museums dealing with history rather than in the context of art galleries. Via a practice-led research approach, Art as Advocacy addressed this gap by exploring the potential for curatorial practice by learning disabled artists to act as a site for self-advocacy. It brought together members of self-advocacy group Halton Speak Out and members of Bluecoat's inclusive arts project Blue Room, to curate a visual arts exhibition titled Auto Agents. These curators developed an exhibition theme, collaborated with artists, commissioned new artwork and designed accessible interpretation for audiences. Through curating Auto Agents, the purpose of this research has been to produce a rich account of the ways in which curatorial and self-advocacy practices intersect. This intersection, whereby tools found in self-advocacy were carried over into curatorship, provided new methodologies that enabled curating to become an inclusive practice. This attention to process results not only in curating becoming more usable by more people, but also more transparent and rigorous. By achieving this, this research delineates to understanding the processes and practices by which our cultural spaces can become democratised.

This thesis identifies and responds to a contemporary impasse in the curatorial, which is thought of as the realm that encompasses curating as a complex action and interaction; a verb that includes the conceiving, organising and executing of exhibitions as well as critical thinking around curation as a discipline. The current impasse in curation the thesis responds to is caused, on the one hand, through its rapid expansion since the late 1980s and, on the other, through its mainstream and populist appropriation, which confuses understandings of it. The thesis proposes a strategy for the recovery for curating’s most basic work of ‘taking care’ and situates the curatorial as a creative act. It adopts Duchamp’s inframince as an artistic concept, and uses it as a lens to reveal the role of the speculative, poetic and absurd, the personal and subjective and the instant of emergence of creativity in curatorial practice. This facilitates an essentially diffractive methodology as well as a textual method of ‘an imaginative leap’ through friction, rhythm and repetition, building on Whitehead and Barad, (among others) to connect ideas of non-linearity and relay in (art) history. Opening up this rich meshwork thus allows for a reconnection of the curatorial to its original provenance and connoisseurship. The poetic investigation of an invisible force, the inframince, which is seen as instrumental to the curatorial and meaning making in general, is underpinned by the investigation of two other major, intertwining narratives – laughter and cybernetics. This liberates the inframince’s versatility and makes it potentially an operative tool, following Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming minor and O’Sullivan’s interpretation, within a wider trans-disciplinary framework of art-science collaborations. Through this discussion, the thesis then reaffirms the curatorial (as it is intended here) as a practice that shapes the collaboration between specific human and nonhuman elements: the curator, and the artist (and/or scientist) and texts, artefacts, spaces and time.

This thesis explores changing curatorial strategies at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. This is preceded by an assessment of the Museum of Modern Art’s earlier role in systematizing and defining this field throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Three exhibitions of art from Latin America and Latino art will illustrate how the MFAH contributed to shifts in this field proposing parallel and expanded readings to those first introduced at MoMA. Firstly, the Gulf-Caribbean Art Exhibition (1956) was a collaboration with the Pan American Union. This exhibition was framed by Cold War modernist approaches and a re-imagined geographical conception of the Gulf region. Secondly, Hispanic Art in the United States- Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors (1987) sought to include Latino art and reflect the community in Houston within this mainstream institution. This lead to traditional museum practices emphasising the quality of artworks, while the criteria for selection was based on the ethnicity of the artists. Finally, Inverted Utopias- Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (2004) revised curatorial structures that were based upon the geographical and national survey format. Six constellations emphasising nodal connections between movements from Latin America disrupted established narratives of this field. The extensive use of archival documents further aided this historical review. I will answer how political, diplomatic, social, and art historical contexts have influenced the curation of these exhibitions and the outcomes of each. I will argue that through the location of the MFAH in the south of the United States, this institution is able to experiment with curatorial approaches and contribute to reviewed readings of art and art history in the United States.

The Sainsbury Wing, the National Gallery’s new extension, opened in July 1991. It had the primary aim of providing new galleries for the Early Renaissance collection. It was also intended to give a new outward-looking face for the Gallery with expanded public facilities, including a larger temporary exhibition space. However, this space has been much criticised for its basement location and resulting lack of natural light. The rooms are limited in size and some are irregular in shape which make it difficult to install larger works and to provide enough viewing space for visitors to popular shows. This thesis investigates why the Gallery decided to build this space, why the design was developed and what were the consequences. It looks at the history of temporary exhibitions - the spaces they need in London and abroad. Using archive material and conversations with participants, it pieces together the convoluted story of the building of the temporary exhibition galleries in the Sainsbury Wing. It examines the many briefs, the involvement of the architects, Venturi Scott Brown, and explains how the resulting design developed. It then relates how the Gallery used the space for its expanded exhibitions programme and considers its advantages and disadvantages. In the conclusion, it makes some recommendations for the best way to create new exhibition galleries for the future. The thesis sheds new light on an aspect of institutional history of the Gallery. It provides an original analysis of an area of the Sainsbury Wing which has been little discussed. As a case study for the design of facilities for temporary exhibitions, it underlines the importance of these spaces and analyses the specific needs and requirements.

This research examines how the practice of curating has been used to further counter-hegemonic agendas in public art institutions since 1989. The central aim is to provide a fuller, contextualised, and medium specific understanding of the how the institutional exhibition might be used to challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism and the post-political consensus politics that sustains its dominance. It provides insights, through both historic case studies and reflective practice, that problematise the idea that the institutional art exhibition is a viable medium for counter-hegemonic critique, or represents the ideal space for the development of an agonistic public discourse. This thesis presents collaborative research undertaken with Tate Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. The research presented both extrapolated from, and contributed to, the development of an exhibition, co-curated with Tate Liverpool, entitled Art Turning Left (8 November 2013 – 2 February 2014) and a supplementary publication of the same name. The first section investigates how the idea that curators can counter neoliberal dominance, through institutional exhibition-making, developed. It draws from analyses of previous exhibitions, and the theory of Chantal Mouffe, in order to critically evaluate the curatorial application of counter-hegemonic critique and agonistic practice. It also provides a review of how exhibitions (held in major art institutions since 1989) have articulated politics, in order to determine their relationship to neoliberal dominance, and to identify significant gaps in the dialogue facilitated by these institutions. These analyses provides the theoretical and contextual grounding for the final two chapters, which provide a rationale and critical evaluation of my own attempt to develop an alternative counter-hegemonic curatorial strategy for the exhibition at Tate Liverpool. They document, and analyse, the areas of dissensus, and the ideological and pragmatic limitations that emerged, in trying to realise these theoretical propositions (in practice) in a public art museum. The thesis therefore provides a critical framework for the development of an alternative practice that positions the exhibition as a form of post-political critique and specifically targets the hegemonic role that institutional exhibitions play in reinforcing class distinctions and devaluing nonprofessional creativity.

The ideas proposed in this thesis emerged out of a practice based interdisciplinary curatorial research project titled Thin Place, which was installed at Oriel Myrddin, Carmarthen in early 2015. Fully funded by Arts Council Wales, the exhibition, education programme, publication and symposium aimed to dissolve boundaries that separate fields of knowledge and in so doing, attempted to create a metaphysical ‘thin place’ within the gallery. In ancient times it was believed that the delineation between worlds was more permeable in certain anomalous areas in a landscape; these areas were known as ‘thin places’ and were sometimes signified by burial mounds or standing stones. The five exhibiting artists and the many other contributors to the project produced work that was concerned with or responded to two particular locations: West Wales and the West of Ireland. These were locations where, it was believed, souls could easily enter Otherworlds. Building upon this notion of a ‘thin place’, this practice based doctoral project addresses the ways in which we value our relationship with Place, particularly in landscapes where animism was once a well established world-view, and where ambiguities in liminal spaces were embraced. By attending to these archaic ideas through contemporary curatorial practice, Thin Place questions current socio-political and socio-ecological paradigms and proposes new modes of ecological/environmental knowing through alternative forms of curating.

This thesis constitutes a new approach to contemporary exhibition studies, a field of research that has until now dedicated little attention to connections between exhibitions of contemporary art and those of architecture. The late 1970s saw a 'historical turn' in the architectural discourse, which alluded to the rediscovery of history, after its abandonment by all the Modern masters, and developed in close alignment with architecture’s project of autonomy. This thesis proposes a reading of this period in relation to the formative moment for contemporary curatorial practices that brought art and architecture together in unprecedented ways. It takes its starting point from the coexisting and often contradictory spatial representations of art and architecture that occur in exhibitions, which constitute the inherently paradoxical foundations – and legacy – of today’s curatorial discourse. The timeframe of the late 1970s, which is this study’s primary focus, marks the beginning of the institutionalisation of the architecture exhibition: The opening of the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1977), the founding of ICAM in Helsinki (1979), and the first official International Architecture Biennale in Venice (1980), all of which promoted architecture within the museum. This period also saw the idealism of the social, political and artistic revolutions of 1968 finally dissipate, marking the emergence of a new conservatism. The concurrent postmodernisation of the cultural discourse, together with the post- industrial era’s changing economic climate, prompted a need to redefine the purpose and position of the architectural profession. The resulting new architecture not only developed within the space of art, but also substantially reshaped it, provoking numerous artistic and curatorial responses, which continue to this day. In order to explore and elucidate the connections between the fields of architecture, contemporary art and curatorial practices, the chapters consider the often-overlapping notions of architecture as object, concept, process, media and context through period case studies, including examples of the ‘void shows’ and artist museums, Ungers’ building of the DAM, Friedman’s Street Museum, Frankfurt’s Museumsufer, Matta-Clark’s and Kabakov’s respective practices and Portoghesi’s ‘Strada Novissima’ at the first Venice Biennale of Architecture. Surveying the separate models of architectural displays, drawn from different institutional and disciplinary contexts of the late 1970s and early 1980s, this thesis questions how these different exhibition typologies have expanded the definition of architecture. It also investigates the ways in which contemporary curatorial and art practices have been informed and shaped by architecture, and, how these curatorial representations of architecture adhere to the wider cultural, political and economic contexts. Ultimately, the thesis reconsiders the past as a way to grasp the present, and, through the analysis of the socio-political and economic contexts of the case studies, it builds a critique of the globalised hyper-acceleration of contemporary curatorial production.

In the UK, over the past two decades, participatory art practices – particularly those funded by Government/Local Authorities – have been employed to address issues such as community cohesion, social inclusion, or to assist groups perceived as marginalised. This has created an over-arching impetus for this kind of work to be ameliorative, seek consensus and eradicate conflict. The public sphere, however, is an inherently conflictual zone, constructed of debate, discourse and difference, and this creates a disjuncture between the intention of commissioning participatory practices and what these practices can feasibly achieve. This research examines the place of conflict in institutionally commissioned participatory art projects. Defining ‘conflict’ as the iterations of power that challenge the certainty of our hegemonies and/or our place within the world, it aims to address the instrumentalisation of the practice and asks: how can conflict be productive in participatory art practices? Through practice-led research enacted through a series of carefully considered residencies in institutions which influence or enact participative arts practices (for example, a local authority, museum, and educational establishment), the research introduces the notion of conflict to problematise the discourse around institutionallyenacted participative projects and, in particular, the intent of the institutions and/or its underlying policy. Moreover, the adopted methodology of physicality operates as a material “that does not intimidate” (Thomas Hirschhorn, 2000) and one which can act as both a mechanism of engagement to reach a wide cross-section of the public(s), but also a form through which to ground discourse in the very embodied nature of participatory work. The research is significant as the vast majority of participatory artworks now occur within institutionally-supported contexts via funding from arts-council and trusts, or through educational/outreach remits. It draws on Chantal Mouffe’s notion of agonistic pluralism to inquire into the relationship between institution, artist and public. It reveals that conflictual participatory artworks are able to not only uncover, but also challenge, the (often hidden) instrumentalised approaches of institutions. This agonistic conflict is productive in ensuring the agency of all participants (including those within the institution), but also in exploring the critical, ethical and political potentials of this way of working. The unique contribution to the field lies in the development of productive relationships with institutions, and this approach stands apart from the traditional activist and/or political works that seek an ‘exodus’ from pre-existing systems. Additionally, it unravels the critical discourse on the practice currently dominated by the almost binary opposition from critics Grant Kester and Claire Bishop and presents a novel synthesis of their thinking in the form of a ‘conflictually dialogic’ approach. The aim of the research is to provide new ethical and political understandings of the emancipatory possibilities of participatory practices. Standing in contrast to ameliorative approaches, this work reveals conflict to be an inerasable yet productive element of the social realm, and advocates practitioners, publics and institutions embrace its productive aspects. These include fostering multiple – and egalitarian – perspectives, an ability to resist an “oppressive consensus” (Rancière, 2004) of inclusion, proposing new productive relationships with institutions and publics, as well as developing critical art. It demonstrates how conflict can provide the ‘potential for transformation’ that does not defer to specific formulations of politics, but rather reveals new subjectivities and makes visible the smooth functioning of dominant hegemonies. Finally, it presents physical methodologies as an integral aspect of participatory practices. These findings are significant in contributing to a professional, critical and academic re-conceptualisation of participatory practices.

Over the last thirty years there has been a proliferation in the number and diversity of privately- funded exhibition spaces for contemporary art in Mexico. Driving this development is a new generation of art collectors and my research project is concerned with how collector-led models of patronage have influenced the recognition, impact and public display of contemporary art in Mexico. My thesis begins by exploring what constitutes an art collection, the significance of a museum, and what motivates a collector. I then present an overview of the historical relationship between state and private art collections in Mexico, followed by a critique of landmark events in the genesis of the Mexican art market. In the second part of my research project I identify a group of influential mid-twentieth century collectors who established their own exhibition spaces in order to share their collections with the public, followed by an analysis of their legacy through the activity of the current generation of collectors, whose efforts to promote contemporary art within Mexico and abroad have spawned a new climate of creative enterprise and collaboration. This thesis seeks to present a survey of the evolution of the private exhibition space in Mexico by examining independent cultural initiatives whose ambition is to change the way the public engages with contemporary art. In my findings I examine how collectors’ objectives manifest a vision for the museum visitor experience and the impact of these privately-funded institutions on Mexico’s cultural identity.

The written thesis is presented in conjunction with a documented body of curatorial practice that together seek to examine and develop a proposed notion of ‘the island’ as a conceptual model for the staging and analysis of exhibitions of art beyond a gallery setting. The initial conception of ‘the island’ as model follows from a discussion of the function of the setting of islands in literature that identifies and abstracts their unique spatial and structural properties before reapplying them in a different context. On both a practical and discursive level, the ensuing research arrives at a thesis that puts forward the island model as an innovative and productive tool for contemporary curatorial practice. The initial research presents the literary island as a contained site where subversive, fantastical or critical alternatives to a dominant norm are enacted. Appearing unexpectedly through the event of storm, shipwreck or loss at sea, the literary island interrupts the intended trajectory of the castaway who finds himself severed from the customs and routines associated with a homeland. In doing so, the setting of the island in literature often comes to figure as a test-site for new possibilities upon which a blurring between the real and the imaginary readily occurs. Retaining the identified properties of the literary island but divorcing it from its geographical setting, the proposed notion of the island as curatorial model conceives a space located within, yet always at the slightest remove from, the everyday itself – disrupting the familiar to facilitate a playful or subversive alternative to the status quo. Here, the structural effect of the island no longer depends on its physical distance to a ‘mainland’, but describes a spatial practice that facilitates a process of distancing from familiar norms. Occurring outside of the confines of a gallery, the presented curatorial practice stages artworks that are physically situated within a given location whilst simultaneously providing an experience of the virtual possibilities for its transformation. In so doing, the thesis argues, these and similar artworks invite a re-imagination of familiar and everyday culture by blurring the distinction between the real and the imaginary in a manner that reflects - and can thus be productively modelled upon - the function of the literary island. In proposing an alternative strategy for the discussion and development of curatorial practices beyond the gallery, as well as putting into play a new mode of analysis and an innovative space of discourse, the thesis presents an original framework for contemporary curatorial practice.

Since the 1990s, a trend in the UK museum sector for developing community partnerships has witnessed a ‘participatory drive’ that aims to embrace social diversity by engaging communities in the co-creation of exhibitions and other museum work. In this context, the Internet broadly, and social media in particular, are seen as complementary to museum processes of reciprocal exchange and public access. However, as this thesis stresses, treating the Internet and social media as complementary and convergent with the participatory drive in museums is assumptive and has been under-analysed, and its difficulties and complexities understated. In this context, this practice-based research carefully unpicks and critically analyses naturalised assumptions about online resources and social media practices in museums by tracing the cultural history through which the participatory museum has developed and contrasting it with the much later sociology of the Internet. The participatory drive is seen to be mediated through society’s agencies for local governance, healthcare and education services, as well as neighbourhood groups and families. These structures act then as a bridge organising people in space and time. In turn, museums’ digital practices often assume similar social organisation in their approach towards public engagement. However, the distributed architecture of the Internet has the effect of compressing time with space, enabling group organisation and public spaces to bypass society’s structures and instead place the individual at the centre of a network of relationships that self-organises according to the social capital displayed in online behaviour. Accordingly, the thesis argues, there is anapparent mis-match between museums on the Web and the online public, which affects negatively public engagement online. By bringing Bourdieu’s theories of social space and social capital into the realm of the Internet, drawing on cultural historical activity theory and reflecting on a research residency at the Whitworth Art Gallery, this thesis goes on to examine why museums find it challenging to engage with online publics. Its research practice aimed to ‘open’ the digital collections of the participating museum into the same time and space as the online public. This included triggering, following, documenting and critically reflecting upon processes, challenges and actions of digital engagement and the people involved in them. The thesis reflects on the research practice’s organisational and cultural challenges, which relate to the fact that it contradicted the museum’s existing departmental organisation and symbolic representation of public access and engagement. It goes on to argue that when digital practices of museums are attuned to the ecology and spatial structure of the online public, the outcomes are misrecognised as unrelated to museums’ core practices of social inclusivity. Instead, the argument continues, museums need to open up to emerging concepts of digital public space and publicness, in order for their digital practices to be relevant to online publics.

This research aims to redefine the role of the curator in relation to the development of new communication technologies, examining the ways in which they have influenced the frameworks of Curatorial Practice in terms of production, distribution and communication mechanisms. This change can be summarized briefly as an alteration in the way human culture perceives geographical space, time, history, identity and, more importantly, objects, as fluid and non-absolute notions. In an attempt to contribute to the investigation of such changes, this research aims to broaden the definition of the profession beyond its current historical and theoretical scope, taking the view that curating has been part of cultural activity since prehistoric times, in parallel with, and related to, the development of other disciplines with which it is associated: namely, collectable objects, art and space. As such, it is defined as an independent and autonumous practice, for which a theoretical framework needs to be developed. The notion of the curatorial as introduced by Maria Lind (Lind, 2010) is used as a means to separate the operational and methodological aspects of Curatorial Practice from its raison d’être or ontology in order to delve into the motivational roots of the practice. This separation leads to an understanding of a proposed theoretical ground for curating, which is independent of the frameworks in which it currently operates. Through the juxtaposition of curating and chosen adjucent fields (collecting, art and physical space), spaces in which the curatorial appears are exposed and examined. This re-thinking of the curatorial seeks to contribute to an expansion of the understanding of the role of the curator in contemporary culture, particularly with the development of new communication models. Being a practice-based study, the research will also examine spaces of the curatorial within the writer’s own practice through critically examining projects in which she was involved as a curator.

My research explores whether and in what ways curatorial practices assume a social function. By analysing how artistic and curatorial practices can activate processes and generate structures that facilitate dialogical spaces of negotiation between curators, artists and their publics, this research argues for an intrinsic social dimension to forms of knowledge production in the curated encounter. Point of departure for my research are the following examples: (1) Michael Fullerton’s exhibition Columbia (2010), Chisenhale Gallery, London; (2) The Potosí Principle (2010), HKW, Berlin; (3) Unitednationsplaza (2006-2007), a discursive art project organised by Anton Vidokle; (4) Former West (2008-2016), a multidimensional art research project coordinated by BAK, Utrecht. These examples are discussed on the backdrop of the continuous dematerialisation of practices in the expanded field of the curatorial. Rather than furthering the construction of an opposition between the “curatorial” and curating as exhibition-making, my research elaborates on the differences of exhibitionary, discursive, and performative forms of engagement arguing for a diversification of the exhibition as a medium of practice, not its dismissal. A central claim of this thesis is to perceive the exhibition as a space of action for public engagement beyond spectatorship and the production of sociality beyond hosting relations. Contextualised by a discussion of terminologies in social theory, such as communication, practice and sociality, this thesis develops a model of practice applicable to curating that operates self-reflexively with regard to the social, political and cultural conditions it is formed by. My research argues against an understanding of curatorial practices as a form of exhibiting and collecting the views and values belonging to a particular society, but claims a notion of practice that fosters the creation of sociality as an embodied form of knowledge production whose material quality is as important as its discursive capacity for emergence and enquiry.

This research explores how queer culture and theory can be communicated through crafted objects and curated exhibitions. It interrogates whether it is possible to identify queer characteristics, aesthetics and themes in crafted objects and develops the idea of visual polari – based on Polari, the slang language used by gay men in England predominantly in the mid twentieth century – as a methodology. The research then examines how art related to queer lives has been curated in art organisations and how different curators have approached creating queer taxonomies. It also examines the use of craft techniques by artists addressing queer topics and argues that the marginalised positions of craft – the decorative and the domestic – have been adopted by queer practitioners. Marginalised groups can often be excluded from representation in cultural organisations, and museums and galleries have traditionally shied away from the emerging discipline of queer theory. Although Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Month acts as a focus for queer recognition in museums and galleries, many organisations are unsure how to explore or tackle the subject. The core of this research examines practical case studies that explore how this can be achieved. The research was informed by four exhibitions where I was both the artist and curator. The first – Queering the Museum at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery – drew on artist intervention methodologies that had been used to address race within museums, but had not been applied to marginalised sexualities. The second was Other Stories: Queering the University Art Collection at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds and used oral histories from gay men and women to reposition objects in the art gallery collection. The last two installations were at National Trust properties – Nymans House and Gardens and The Vyne – and examined the queer lives of their former occupants. The exhibitions used artist interventions to disrupt any single interpretive narrative and move away from the centring of the houses’ histories on heteronormative family trees. Queer is a contested term and LGBT encompasses a wide variety of experiences. Although the research strives for inclusion, not all experiences that come under the banner term LGBT are explored equally. Rather, this research aims to move the ideas about how cultural organisations can represent queer lives and to generate debate in the fields of museums, galleries and historic houses.

'Institutional critique' is a term that refers to a range of diverse artistic practices and discourses that emerged at the end of the 1960s and that continue in the present. In spite of their differences, they all share a concern with the institutional conditioning of artists and artworks. Various historicizations of institutional critique (Alberro and Stimson, 2009; Raunig and Ray, 2009; Welchman, 2006) concur that one could distinguish two 'phases': artists of the 1960s and 1970s allegedly investigated the possibilities of an escape towards an 'outside' of the art institution, whereas those of the 1990s analysed the ways in which the artistic subject reproduced the structures of the art institution. Since the beginning of the 2000s various artists and authors have revisited the histories and legacies of institutional critique. This growing interest was triggered by the perceived intensification of a process that began at the end of the 1960s; it refers to the recuperation and neutralization of artistic types of critique by what Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) have called the 'new spirit' of capitalism. In this context, the Austrian philosopher Gerald Raunig and the members of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies have proposed the hypothesis that 'a new phase' of institutional critique was to emerge. However, this proposition was based less on empirical evidence, than on a 'political and theoretical necessity to be found in the logic of institutional critique' (Raunig, 2009, 3). This thesis is a response to this set of circumstances. By asking 'what are the conditions and possibilities of institutional critique?' it investigates the categories of institutional critique's logic. My main argument is that a 'phase change' of institutional critique could and should be understood through the apparatus of Derridean deconstruction. This implies a criticism of the idea that one needs to escape the art institution in order to respond to urgencies stemming from the social, economic, and political realms (Truth Is Concrete Platform, 2012). At the same time, I will also refute the idea that institutional critique is trapped in the art institution (Fraser, 2009a). Institutional critique works on the remainder and rest that necessarily escapes the instituting will and intention of defining and describing in an exhaustive manner the whatness of what (art) is (Boltanski, 2011). I show that between critique and the art institution there is an irreducible relation of symbiosis and cohabitation, and that the deconstructive logic of institutional critique allows it to be both partner and adversary, at the same time, of the art institution.

This thesis is concerned with the spatial contingencies which affect the production and reception of art. The initial argument is premised on 19th century museum architecture and its role in the aesthetic judgement and containment of art. As an idealist formation, the art museum has survived to this day. However, the thesis claims that art is an immanent space which makes sense of the contingencies it contains, and not the other way round. Since the late 1960s, then, artists such as Robert Smithson and Donald Judd have recovered what they term 'architectural afterthought' and 'space as a main aspect of art'. Building on Miwon Kwon's and James Meyer's theories on site-specificity, it is shown that today, the force of this impulse has given way to spatial dispersal, institutional immersion and corporate assimilation. Museums, in turn, have changed with these developments and have incorporated them accordingly. After a short discussion of relevant philosophical spatial concepts, it is further assessed how contemporary art practices make sense of their own space today. It is found, that artists as diverse as Gerhard Richter, James Turrell and Andrea Zittel have set up architectural sites which imbue their constructions with affective contingencies such as analogy, atmosphere and relation. The agency of these works thus furthers the impulse of Smithson and Judd and embodies an immanence of ideal and contingent space. The practice section, finally, stands on its own. It explores experimental sites which exemplify their process, economy of labour and the site-specific or -responsive nature of their display. Their formal configuration is re-organised in the event of each categorical site. In keeping with the claim of the thesis, the forms and (re-)presentations of the work are not awaiting or finalising content but become active productions in themselves.

Established accounts of institutional critique either turn it into an art historical genre that is past and finished, or suggest that it is pointless because it is always co-opted by the institution. This thesis contests the canonisation of institutional critique by positing that there has been a change in the agents of critique from the academic critic, to the artist, to the curator. The research also argues against the supposed futility of institutional critique by drawing on Foucault to consider critique in particular instances rather than in general. Thus each case study considers whether or not a particular artwork or project was understood as critical at the time and, if so, in what capacity. In the course of examining the shifts in the critical agent from artist to curator, I also identify a sequence of correlative changes. First there is an expansion in the location of critique from mainstream USA museums to a wide range of art institutions globally, including biennials. Second there is a change of focus in the objects of critique, from the physical attributes of the exhibition spaces to modes of display, museum processes, and the politicisation of content. Third there are different strategies of critique, as artists and curators variously pursue mimetic, subversive and symbolic strategies in their institutional investigations, and develop new ones. Overall, the research demonstrates that institutional critique moves progressively inside the institution, and becomes an embedded activity, particularly when independent curators take up positions as directors of experimental institutions. The thesis concludes that institutional critique has become more politicised and more complex and that some of its strategies and practices have helped to re-function institutions.

Abstract: This project seeks to determine the factors that make rural visual creative communities successful. The work examines distinctive trends evident in rural creative communities. It further investigates the contribution visual creative industries based businesses have on the local economy. The project seeks to determine if the characteristics that have made these communities successful can be laid out to aid other rural communities. Two case study sights were chosen: The Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland and The Central Texas Hill Country. Visual creative industries based businesses, educational facilities, museums and support organizations were interviewed. A result of this investigation shows that regionalism is a strong factor in the creation and sale of work. Products are both unique and follow local tradition. A further result confirms that economically these regions rely both on local trade, as well as outside buyers to sustain the large numbers of businesses that form creative clusters in these regions. A final result reveals that the development of these creative communities happened graduall y. They utilized their existing traditions while growing in a modem way allowing for a diversification of the economy, a building of both private and public bodies that help support the creative community and, importantly, harnessed the foresight of local visionaries to develop.

The once distinct roles of artist and curator have blurred dramatically in recent decades owing to a blending process in both directions, which has led to a turn towards the concept of the curator as producer and author, and the development of the hybridised figure of the ‘artist-curator’. Within my practice-based curatorial research at Meter Room and Grey Area, the 'artist-run space', as both form and content of space, is used as a critical framework for artist-curatorship. Artist-run spaces play a significant role in the cultural ecology of the UK, and this project explores the power relations involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of work within the field, in terms of both a cause and effect of a contested relationship with institutions and commercial galleries. Artist-run spaces are initiated for a number of reasons, but this project specifically focuses upon those spaces that identify with terms such as ‘independent’, 'alternative', ‘not-for-profit’, ‘DIY’, ‘self-organised’, and ‘critically engaged’. Using strategies for the development of a critical practice, such as Chantal Mouffe’s theories on ‘counter-hegemony’ and ‘agonistic space’ (2007), and Gerald Raunig's concept of 'instituent practice' (2009), this project explores how curatorial practices within artist-curator-run spaces might offer different ways of working, and be used to contest hegemonic structures within the field. I explore the role of critique within curatorial practice, specifically in relation to the struggle for autonomy, the production of subjectivity, and strategies for negating or resisting cooption by the New Institutions of post-Fordist neoliberalism. Three curatorial strategies were developed from experimental projects at both spaces, and then explored at Meter Room over a 2-year period. These strategies sought to occupy institutional structures in new ways: through the re-functioning of 'void' space, blending studio and gallery functions within a Curatorial Studio, developing a paracuratorial practice referred to as Caretaking, and re-approaching the concept of a collection-based institution through processes of layering works and their vestiges within an Artist-run Collection. The practice-based research culminated in a 5-month durational project in collaboration with five other artist-run spaces based in the West Midlands region, which explored a strategy for the creation of a new speculative artist-run institution as a dialogical process of instituting values through a critical curatorial practice.

This thesis investigates the negative affect of ‘spectatorial embarrassment’, a feeling of exposure and discomfort sometimes experienced when looking at art. Two particular characteristics of embarrassment figure in the methodology and the outcome of this enquiry; firstly that embarrassment is marginal, of little orthodox value, and secondly, it is a personal experience of aversive self-consciousness. The experiential nature of embarrassment has been adopted throughout as a methodology and the embarrassments analysed are, for the most part, my own and based on ‘true’ experience. Precedent for this is drawn from ‘anecdotal theory’, which uses event and occasion in the origination of a counter-theory that values minor narratives of personal experience in place of the generalising and abstract tendencies of theory-proper. The context is a series of encounters with artworks by Gilbert & George, Jemima Stehli, Franko B, Adrian Howells, and Sarah Lucas. They are connected by their contemporaneity, their ‘British-ness’, and that they allow the spectator no comfortable position to look from. This enquiry engages with theories of ‘the gaze’ (as both aesthetic disinterest and a dubious sign of cultural competence) and the challenge to aesthetic disinterest made by ‘transgressive art’ which may provoke a more engaged, even embodied response. Each encounter sparks consideration of differing causes and outcomes of embarrassment that resonate beyond art to broader sociocultural territories particularly in terms of gender and class. The approach taken is inherently interdisciplinary, situated within the affective turn, and engaging with feminist and queer discourses. Moments of embarrassment as ‘thinking-feeling’ are finally configured as a critical epistemology, or a ‘body of knowledge’ offering the opportunity to value the singular truth of embarrassment as an embodied criticality that is critical of coercive patterns of social ‘okayness’ and belonging.

The objective of this thesis is to challenge the patriarchal traditions of Surrealism by examining the topic from the perspective of its women practitioners. Unlike past research, which often focuses on the biographical details of women artists, this thesis provides a case study of a select group of women Surrealists – chosen for the variety of their artistic practice and creativity – based on the close textual analysis of selected works. Specifically, this study will deal with names that are familiar (Lee Miller, Meret Oppenheim, Frida Kahlo), marginal (Elsa Schiaparelli) or simply ignored or dismissed within existing critical analyses (Alice Rahon). The focus of individual chapters will range from photography and sculpture to fashion, alchemy and folklore. By exploring subjects neglected in much orthodox male Surrealist practice, it will become evident that the women artists discussed here created their own form of Surrealism, one that was respectful and loyal to the movement’s founding principles even while it playfully and provocatively transformed them.

This thesis explores the epistemic structures of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century migrating image-makers with a particular regard for producers of sculpture. By means of an analysis of journals written by the sculptor Franz Ertinger (1669 – 1747) and the glazier Jacques-Louis Ménétra (1738-c.1803) this thesis identifies an epistemic order which was contingent on the worlds of mobility of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century craftsmen. In order to advance the understanding of how artisan image-makers of this period acquired, organised and developed knowledge, the concept of a cognitive tool-box is introduced. Examining a number of cognitive tools, i. e. epistemic strategies, the thesis constructs an interpretative framework through which itinerant artisans were potentially able to derive meanings from situations, objects and communities which were unfamiliar or culturally different in some ways. Due to the emphasis on cognitive aspects, the thesis‟s principal method can be described as an epistemological history of art, taking into consideration historically specific mechanisms of interpretation, exchange and knowledge organisation, such as the building of unwritten archives of artisan histories. The thesis also addresses questions surrounding the identities of migrating craftsmen and suggests the existence of a “Republic of Tools”, tracing the career of one of its highly mobile citizens, the sculptor Johann Eckstein (1735-1817).

This thesis examines pieces of visual art that are untraced, stolen or otherwise understood as lost. It conceptualises how this alters artworks. Are they still ‘objects' in ‘visual' culture? Might they become literature? Lost works continue to be circulated and interpreted through practices of remembrance, narrative and often through visual reproductions. These become extraordinarily overdetermined once a work vanishes. I investigate this process in four critical case studies and a novella. The first study looks at Vanessa Bell's painting The Nursery (1930-32), a major work which has been critically neglected because unavailable. I ask what this can tell us about memory and nostalgia, and explore the ghostliness of visual representations. The second study examines Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa in the period after it was stolen (1911-13). I closely read some startling journalistic responses to this and to earlier, Victorian thefts. Through these writings there emerges a new kind of ekphrasis and a new conception of the museum. My third study builds on these readings of visual and literary restitutions to consider how lost art could inspire a corresponding critical methodology. With reference to writings on aesthetics by Burke and Derrida, I look at William Blake's Virgil woodcuts, reading them through their missing parts, including chopped-off edges. The fourth study explores how lost works can be restituted creatively as well as critically. I analyse missing episodes of Doctor Who, which have inspired reconstructions from fans – an active audience of lost art. Finally, my novella tells the story of a curator of an illicit museum; it uses the epistolary form, which has a history of creating drama through lost letters. My conclusion suggests how, using evidence to feel for what cannot be seen, a focus on lost art can spark unique ways of thinking about vision, writing and criticism.

The thesis uses a feminist approach to explore the representation of the cyborg in Japanese film and animation in relation to gender, the body, and national identity. Whereas the figure of the cyborg is predominantly pervasive in cinematic science fiction, the Japanese popular imagination of cyborgs not only crosses cinematic genre boundaries between monster, disaster, horror, science fiction, and fantasy but also crosses over to the medium of animation. In regard to the academic research on Japanese cinema and animation, there is a serious gap in articulating concepts such as live-action film, animation, gender, and the cyborg. This thesis, therefore, intends to fill the gap by investigating the gendered cyborg through a feminist lens to understand the interplay between gender, the body and the cyborg within historical-social contexts. Consequently, the questions proposed below are the starting point to reassess the relationship between Japanese cinema, animation, and the cyborg. How has Japanese popular culture been obsessed with the figure of the cyborg? What is the relationship between Japanese live-action film and Japanese animation in terms of the popular imagination of the cyborg? In particular, how might we discuss the representation of the cyborg in relation to the concept of national identity and the associated ideology of “Japaneseness”, within the framework of Donna Haraway's influential cyborg theory and feminist theory? The questions are addressed in the four sections of the thesis to explore the representation of the gendered cyborg. First, I outline the concept of the cyborg as it has been developed in relation to notions of gender and the ‘cyborg' in Western theory. Secondly, I explore the issues in theorising the science fiction genre in Japanese cinema and animation and then address the problem of defining science fiction in relation to the phenomenon of the cyborg's genre-crossing. Finally, I provide a contextualising discussion of gender politics and gender roles in Japan in order to justify my use of Western feminist theory as well as discuss the strengths and limitations of such an approach before moving, in the remainder of the thesis, to an examination of a number of case studies drawn from Japanese cinema and animation.