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This thesis examines the ways in which the conception of colour in ancient Greek society differed from our modern understanding, and how a deeper investigation of the theoretical structure of ancient cognition of colour can affect and enhance our interaction with the art and literature of ancient Greece. Previous scholarship rarely focuses on polychromy as its primary study, though discrepancies and subtleties in the handling of colour terminology in literature, or the complex nature of colour used on surviving examples of material culture have been noted. This study places the intrinsic relationship ancient Greek society had with colour at its forefront, and constructs a framework through which we might understand the different connections and associations that they built. In scope, within the bounds of surviving material, this thesis aims to focus on evidence from both the art and text of the Archaic and Classical periods, and upon the societies of mainland Greece, predominantly that of Athens. Source material has been used beyond these delineations as necessary to provide both a richer understanding of the main focus and relevant comparanda. Colour conception is explored in three ways. The first investigates the relationship between colours and the physical commodity used to produce them. This detaches our modern understanding of colour as contiguous and infinitely varied, and investigates colours that are tethered to their source material. In contrast, the second section explores terms which are not attached to any colourant, nor, in fact, any hue. This offers a theoretical explanation for why this structure of designating colours chromatically, intrinsic to modern conception, was not compulsory, necessary, nor often used in the Greek lexicon. Finally, the third approach takes this further, to dig into the fundamental conception of how colours and the world around them were constructed, and the ways in which that understanding affected the ancient Greek approach to the theory of colour. At its conclusion, this thesis argues that not just an appreciation of the existence of colour, but an understanding of the structure of the cognition of ancient polychromy can enhance our understanding of this visual language, a means of communication through a complex web of associations and connotations built up by shared cultural memory and graphic tradition.

The purpose of this thesis is to propose that there is a new way in which the iconography of the Julio-Claudian dynasty can be read by historians. I propose that the mechanism which can be applied to the iconography of the Julio-Claudians is that of the 'doctrine of capacities'. The 'doctrine of capacities' suggests that a ruler has 'two bodies', that of their physical, natural body and their 'political' body, or the image which represents the political position they held. Reading the iconography of the Julio-Claudians using this prism suggests that they were adept at using their public image to display a 'political' body. That is, a public image which reflected the manner in which they wished to be portray themselves to those they ruled. Through careful examination of the literary and material evidence available, it is clear that not all of the members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty possessed 'political' bodies, and of those who did, it is clear that each member of the dynasty amended or adapted the 'political' body for their own benefit and to meet their own political needs. This thesis also suggests that the 'doctrine of capacities' is both flexible and adaptable when the images of the Julio-Claudians are examined, not only does the concept allow rulers to deal with a range of issues. Those assessed in this thesis are age, disability, gender and political inexperience. In order to bring this fully to the fore, I have made comparisons to more modern political leaders and, in this way, hope to show the effectiveness to the 'political' body which the Julio-Claudians were able to fashion.

This thesis considers the role of mixed reality in the culturally consumptive context of a contemporary outdoor sculpture park. It grounds the discussion of an augmented mode of experience by utilising a philosophical framework, derived from Henri Bergson and Francisco Varela, which distinguishes between two different senses of virtuality. The first of these is focussed on technology, whilst the second addresses issues of temporality and the specious present. These senses of virtuality are then applied to the development of a mediated mode of ocular and auditory experience, in an attempt to construct a syncretic experiential archive of subjective artistic encounters, that take place in the context of the park. Consideration of a syncretic mixed reality setting facilitates a need for a mode of design which can accommodate issues of embodiment alongside our sense of lived time. In this sense the thesis pushes against the abstracted and reduced forms of time and space that typically result from their technological representation or mediation. Precedents for understanding this mode of embodied temporal experience are seen in the works of Keiichi Matsuda, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Paul Trillo, and Tacita Dean. Underlying this technologically virtual structure is a more encompassing sense of temporality that likewise conditions our more subjective and ever-evolving durational experience. The thesis claims that our subjective sense of time is itself subject to variance via a myriad of factors affecting perception and cognition. This complex scenario is investigated via a practice-research mode of enquiry and incorporated into the simulated and speculative design outcomes that together constitute the thesis's more practical dimension. The thesis's speculative design artefacts are intended to provide a less authoritarian form of cultural commentary and contextualisation and are developed by a mode of selection and actualisation that is facilitated by Dunne and Raby's adoption of Hancock and Bezold's 'cone of futures'. As a part of its enquiry, the thesis develops a novel methodology that combines a cybernetic enquiry system with more speculative cycles of making. This methodology is intended to be positioned as one of the study's outcomes, and to be applicable in a wider context. The methodological cycles in question look to overcome the various obstacles that present themselves within the study's technically challenging scenario. This is achieved through the development and adoption of a novel search strategy which is informed by a mode of abductive reasoning. By utilising the process of abduction, a series of artefacts are produced which gradually inculcate the notion that modes of technological virtuality can affect our sense of temporal virtuality in so far as the mediation of embodied experience, via modes of augmentation, can influence, interrupt, and affect our subjective experience of lived time. Ultimately, it is intended that the study's methodology and its focus on speculatively designed outcomes, might be applied more broadly in the context of artistic research, as well as providing a layered system of enquiry that could be usefully adopted in the context of design for both the cultural and heritage industries.

This thesis offers the first synthetic evaluation of Byzantine stucco between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries. It brings together the results of disparate studies, with new material and textual evidence, to write, for the first time, a coherent narrative of the history of Byzantine stucco during the Middle and the Late Byzantine periods. This thesis demonstrates the uninterrupted use of stucco in Byzantine architecture from the Late Antique period onwards. It sheds light on the techniques used by Byzantine artisans to work stucco and examines their social and legal status in Byzantine society, providing a nuanced vision of both the skills and incomes of people in this period. A wide range of Byzantine patrons chose to decorate their buildings with stucco: from emperors to local officers and ordinary people. They used stucco to convey statements of authority or to underline their participation in networks of power. After having analysed stucco in Byzantine society, the thesis turns to wider Mediterranean stucco production, and examines differences and commonalities between Byzantine stucco and that produced in Medieval Italy and the different regions under Islamic reigns. This thesis is an initial framework. This framework is threefold: the single building, the broader context of Byzantine art, and the stucco production in the Mediterranean. The case-by-case approach used revealed how the study of stucco, in combination with the rest of the materials used in architecture, is crucial to understand the history of buildings and the communities behind them. It is the interaction between micro and macro contexts that provides the core for understanding stucco in Byzantine architecture. This interaction is also what makes stucco a diagnostic material, which provides us with a new insight into Byzantine architecture.

This practice-based thesis explores the concepts of Indigenous relational space, performance and performative Indigeneity by 'curating togetherness' towards sovereignty in Taiwan and beyond. My curatorial projects - the most significant of which are Dispossessions: Performative Encounter(s) of Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art (2018) and Ngahi' Routes: When Depth Become Experiment (2019) - reveal a tendency toward two distinct curatorial strategies, which I refer to as 'Indigenous performative curation' and 'trans-Indigenous connecting spatiality.' Broadly defined, these strategies capture the particularity of Indigenous-to-Indigenous cultural exchanges and collaborations. They also constitute an approach to reclaiming counter-narratives of cultural traditions, asserting embodied sovereignty and embracing land-based philosophies realised across tribal and state borders through performative modes of curation. The thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter One charts the evolution of Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art, including its historical development since 1990 and the advance of curatorial practice since 2010, to reconstruct the background of the curatorial narratives discussed below. Chapter Two focuses on three distinctive Indigenous relational practices - Truku Nation artist Dondon·Hounwn's performance art, Rukai Nation sculptor Eleng Luluan's installation art and my own performative practice as a Bunun Nation curator working at an Indigenous public cemetery. Chapter Three demonstrates how the relational practices of Indigenous performance were activated across Performative Encounters between Sápmi and Truku in Dispossessions. It examines the performative encounter and participatory engagements among homeland, tribal/clan-based kinship and global frameworks through a discussion of Northern Sápmi (Norway) artist Marita Isobel Solberg's Chemical Chords and Truku (Taiwan) artist Dondon·Hounwn's Awakening: Original Contract, which appeared in Dispossessions. This performance art exchange, broadly defined as trans-Indigenous connecting spatiality, captures the particularity of Indigenous-to-Indigenous cultural exchanges and collaborations, but also consists of a media conglomerate representing an invocation as a multi-authored approach to reclaiming counter-narratives of cultural traditions, asserting embodied sovereignty and embracing land-based philosophies across tribal and state borders. This thesis can not only foster meaningful cross-cultural encounters and participatory, relational experience towards sovereignty but also internally transform institutions' interpretive banalities and hegemonic discourses.

Looking back now over the course of my PhD study, which feels like it has been a very long journey, it appears to me as a series of revolutions: that is, transformations in my way of thinking (hard now to contemplate that I have come out the other end of them) which completely changed my view, not just of my subject - the Henry Moore Studio at Dean Clough - but the art world within which I was working, and the way I wanted to write about it. When I embarked on the study in 2016, I was working as a collections curator at Leeds Art Gallery, based at the Henry Moore Institute. As the Institute is affiliated to the Henry Moore Foundation, which is the parent body of the Henry Moore Studio, I was - in theory - an insider to the project. In reality, the Studio had closed many years before I arrived on the scene, and I had never met Robert Hopper or any of the core group of people who worked there, so I came with little prior or special knowledge of the organisation. However, that is not to say that I came to the project empty-handed. Quite the opposite. As I see now (but only in retrospect), I was carrying around in my head an encompassing view of the art world, which permeated my professional practice. This did not relate to my work at the Institute or Leeds Art Gallery specifically, but a career spent working in and around institutions: from my art historical training (undertaken in a traditional university department), through several years of curatorial practice, latterly within the framework of a municipal gallery and specialist centre for the study of sculpture. Essentially, my job at the time was to categorise, evaluate and document works of art; then place them within the established canon of art history by displaying them in thematic, chronological or genre-based configurations; and, initially, I intended to explore the Henry Moore Studio in exactly this way. I wanted to define what it was, then compare it with other similar art organisations and situate it within a particular segment of art history, so that it could be better understood within my art world; and possibly used to inform future practice. It was not that I felt this method would be best particularly, but that I didn't really know any other way. From reading around the subject, I knew that the Henry Moore Studio had been a making and exhibition project, which generated a series of large-scale projects, in which the site was often a key element. Whilst the Studio had been funded by the Henry Moore Foundation, I understood that it had been run on the ground by a group of artists, based at Dean Clough, Halifax, under the leadership of Paul Bradley, who had been highly instrumental in the first project by Giuseppe Penone and subsequently managed most aspects of its programme. As a project operated by artists for other artists, under the auspices of an institution, I attempted to sketch a lineage for the Studio amongst artist-led initiatives, as they had evolved in the post-war period, specifically from the 1960s to the 1980s.

This thesis offers a revisionist account of the work of the modernist sculptor Barbara Hepworth through both the study and display of her personal library housed at The Hepworth Wakefield. In doing so it seeks to offer a non-monographic, non-chronological approach towards her work that invites the contribution of other voices from diverse disciplines and demonstrates the value of different areas of knowledge to the study of Hepworth's work. Artists' libraries are generally an understudied area of the legacy of an artist, which have an uncertain status as to both value and use. The thesis therefore not only questions what we can learn from Hepworth's library about her attitudes towards reading, but also what is the value of such collections in an artist's legacy? Employing a curatorial methodology is central to answering this question, which uses the model of the 'exhibition as research'. The thesis is divided into two halves, the first examining the Hepworth library as a case study within the curation and interpretation of artists' libraries more widely, whilst the second approaches the library collection through three different interpretative frameworks. First it considers the library as network through focusing on the interdisciplinary nature of many of Hepworth's working relationships, relationships that tend to be often overlooked in favour of the artist groupings which she was involved with. Secondly it approaches the library as a tool or resource, sometimes used in tandem with Hepworth's own creative writing. Finally it considers the library as a collection, thinking about moments of interrelation between different books. The thesis concludes by reflecting on the changing status of artists' libraries over time and the impact of this for research.

This thesis investigates the question 'Does Yorkshire Sculpture Park make people happy?' through a methodological approach which draws on critical epistemologies of situated lived experience, phenomenological approaches to landscape and aesthetic experience, participatory research paradigms and narrative inquiry. Using Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) as a case study, this collaborative PhD project finds that the aesthetic and social encounters facilitated in its environment provide potential ways to wellbeing that have been underexplored in current literature on wellbeing in cultural organisations. The thesis proposes that wellbeing in an organisation needs to be considered from the ground up, rooted in the lived experiences of the communities that it serves. The research uncovers four distinct wellbeing narratives. Firstly, the organisational story of respite, creative learning and access to art experiences embedded within the founding mission of the YSP. Secondly, the biographical narratives of the visitors in which life events, family memories and new experiences are embedded within its landscape. Thirdly, the experiential, temporal narratives of experiencing sculpture in the landscape through the journeys around the park. Finally, the intersubjective sculpture stories collectively produced within the project. Through the collection and collation of these different narratives, it places the wellbeing experience in its biographical, temporal, spatial and social contexts in order to illuminate its specificity and contingency. It argues that the potential for wellbeing experiences to occur at YSP is contingent on particular environmental conditions, here proposed as two sets of axes between openness and safety and continuity and change. Furthermore, it suggests that it is the specific sociality constructed within the aesthetic encounter through which these experiences are made meaningful. In doing so, it offers an original contribution to knowledge for the study of the situated experiences of wellbeing within the aesthetic encounter, including its impact upon research and planning for wellbeing programming within an art gallery context and understandings of wellbeing in the cultural sector.

This thesis takes as its subject sculptures from the Archaic Greek world which have accompanying inscriptions carved upon the figure itself, as opposed to on a separable base. This thesis will show how these inscribed figures are important evidence for the formulation of the relationship between Archaic Greek images and texts and have yet to be explored fully. This is for the purpose of better understanding the combination of media during this period which has mainly focussed on painted pottery or the rare few examples of funerary statues which have been paired with their original bases by modern arachaeologists which are mainly Attic. This thesis will propose a methodology with which one can dissolve the separation between the sculptural and epigraphic elements of these dynamic monuments to understand better the way in which these two media work together to make meaning through their juxtaposition, contrast, comparison and synergy. Furthermore, this thesis will show the ways in which temporal, spatial, cultural, and religious contexts not only play a part in the meaning-making of Archaic inscribed sculptures, but also how in turn how these figures play a part in creating their own contexts for their interactions with the percipient.

Forms of material cultural repression are at the forefront of modern-day cultural debates and discourse. Over the course of the past twenty years, our theoretical understanding of forms of collective memory has been thoroughly expanded. Simultaneously, the study of damnatio memoriae, the destructive acts against the portraits and inscriptions of a condemned individual in the Roman period, has benefited from the publication of the foundational works of Varner and Flower. However, these studies have thus far focussed on the immediate aftermath of the destructive acts, and the reception of the already-destroyed material. In addition, the question of how damnatio affects the Roman collective memory of the condemned remains unanswered. This thesis aims to answer this question, by examining closely two understudied aspects of the phenomenon - the immediate 'spectacle' of destruction, and its long-term consequences on a condemned individual's surviving 'material legacy'. Focussing on the case study of the city of Rome before the 'crisis of the third century', the interactions with the material legacies of condemned emperors will be examined. Each method of interaction will be analysed separately, considering all types of material from a handful of emperors in each case, to establish the way it influenced how Roman culture remembered 'tyrants'. The immediate 'spectacle' of damnatio will be discussed first, revealing how the destruction acted both to remove the positive identity of the condemned, as well as to begin the creation of a new negative identity to replace it. The long-term consequences will then be examined. Analysis of the acts of successor emperors to deliberately contrast themselves with condemned predecessors reveals how this contrast further engrained the negative identity into the cultural memory of the city. The appropriation of their buildings, furthermore, demonstrates how successors reigning long after the death of a condemned emperor continue to rejuvenate this process, contributing further to the recreation of the condemned's identity. I will argue that close scrutiny of all the consequences of damnatio memoriae reveals a process that transforms the positive identity of a condemned emperor into a negative exemplum of tyranny, embodying the negative qualities that the destruction and denigration of his material legacy condemn him for.

Laws of the Face is a multi-modal, participant-observer study of forensic cultures of human identification which pursues practical and theoretical objectives as complementary, focusing on methods of post-mortem facial depiction as forensic objects whose socio-cultural affordances have been overlooked. Recognising Forensic Art’s epistemological precarity within forensic science and ontological ambiguity as art, the cultural in/visibilities of the dead are considered through theories of faciality, photography and necropolitics, and the operational work of post-mortem forensic depictions is resituated with reference to the counter-forensic (Keenan, 2014a; Sekula, 2014), forensis (Weizman, 2014) and Humanitarian Forensic Action (Cordner and Tidball-Binz, 2017), with the work of citizen/netizen allies suggesting new ways to extend the forum of relational citizenship and forensic care (M’Charek and Casartelli, 2019). An operational study undertaken in a medico-legal facility in Cape Town (South Africa) results in an evidence-based framework which supports the routine uptake of standardised post-mortem facial imaging/depiction in complex operational contexts, informed by ways in which the so-called ‘migrant body’ is forcing change and innovation in forensic methods internationally. Fieldwork and semi-structured interviews (n=70) with forensic deathwork practitioners internationally provide a grounded analysis of the state of the field, culminating in a new critical framework for post-mortem Forensic Art as a form of ‘extra-ordinary deathwork’ (Moon, 2020), characterised by its re-mediating actions located both in the process of the work itself, and in the work these images are expected to perform, forensically and well as socially. Conventional frameworks of expert/amateur knowledge are challenged, and pracademic exchange promoted. The main tenets of the thesis are performed by an online artwork called Speaking Likeness, comprising eighteen audio-visual portraits of forensic artists in which aspects of the hidden curriculum of this work is revealed through embodied knowledge and arts-based research.

This thesis is written as an element of PhD research by sculpture practice, undertaken in response to the idea of ‘embodied dreaming’, a phrase originated by British psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas (1999). The investigations through practice, and the arguments made, construct a new definition of sculptural practice that embeds the psychic life of the maker in the action of making, and explores how this might contribute to existing histories of British sculpture. I use a capitalised form of Embodied Dreaming to differentiate my use from Bollas’. The concept of Artistic Research (Mika Hannula, Juha Suoranta and Tere Vadén, 2005) is used to characterise sculptural making in methodological terms and its key principle the ‘democracy of experiences’ enables the research to bring together critical and analytical practices with action based, manual processes in a way that has relevance to contemporary identity questions. The traditional processes of modelling and casting are reconfigured to encapsulate an understanding of the psychic activity of the maker when making, in relation to identity formations that have class, gender and multigenerational ethnicity in their scope. The research asks the question: how can sculpture convey what it is like to inhabit a woman’s body as the researcher knows it, which is differently positioned from the masculine contributions to the history of figuration that constitute the European and British sculptural canon from Rodin to the present day? Life writing, from a feminist perspective, is the key method used to reveal the interpretative psychoanalytical approach employed in the research, it is the way that knowledge of making is explicated, in methodological terms, from inside the practice as lived experience. The arguments made demonstrate how my proposal of Embodied Dreaming, which is the result of this research, is a way to understand what Tim Ingold has described as ‘thinking through making’, and analyse sculpture that results from such a practice (2013).

Early Christian art is of key importance in the mutual transformation of Roman culture and Christianity, the transformation of an anti-imperial offshoot of aniconic Judaism, into the official religion of an iconophilic empire. Despite this, early Christian sarcophagi have often fallen into the gaps between classics, medieval studies, art history, and patristics and biblical studies. Christian funerary commemoration has been characterised as a break, with Christian sarcophagi treated separately to non-Christian, and considered to represent the foregrounding of a very different kind of identity: communal and religious, rather than individual and cultural. This thesis offers a re-viewing of early Christian sarcophagi in their late Roman context. It explores the formation of a newly Christian Roman identity from the late third into the fourth century, and will find that Christian sarcophagus patrons were building on the frameworks of traditional commemoration, and still engaged in elite Graeco-Roman culture. The aesthetics considered here were distinctive in several interrelated ways that also reflect wider trends in late antique visual (and even literary) culture: inherited formal frameworks, an interest in the statuesque, and a self-conscious sense of materiality. The increased interpretative opportunities challenge the characterisation of Christian sarcophagi as less complex and culturally engaged than their predecessors. Roman heritage was made the foundation for the new Christian identity of the fourth century.

This work explores the utility of digital imaging techniques as research tools in the study of early medieval carved stones. Often three-dimensional imaging is seen primarily as a means of recording an object for preservation, illustration or outreach. The approaches developed here use these digital resources to gain a new perspective on the carving of the stones to address questions relating to the presence or absence of a 'Govan school'. The terms 'Strathclyde Style' or 'Govan School of Carving' are used as a convenient shorthand to describe the 9th-11th century carved stones in the Strathclyde area; however, it has also been suggested that the traits shared by these monuments indicate that the carvers were either trained in or worked in a centralised location. The thesis presented here provides a new perspective on these questions through a digital lens. The thirty-one carved stones housed at Govan Old have experienced varying degrees of wear. Three-dimensional imaging and Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) were instrumental in recovering worn patterns on many of the stones. This has led to the recognition of several trends in the Govan collection that had been previously overlooked. These digital techniques were also used to determine whether templates had been employed in the replication of figures, which could indicate that tools were shared by members of a single workshop. Finally, Kitzler Åhfeldt's Groove Analysis was applied to the 3D models to identify the carving 'signatures' of individual carvers. These strands of research were then considered together to determine whether a centralised school or workshop is likely to have been connected to Govan. This research demonstrates that digital imaging techniques are invaluable research tools; their flexible and infinitely replicable nature offer new insights into carved stone that would be otherwise untenable. While these applications are by no means restricted to stone in the early medieval period, the digital corpus of the Govan collection presented here demonstrates that these new avenues of investigation facilitate new analyses from which all early medieval sculpture in Scotland would benefit.

Key pattern is a type of abstract ornament characterised by spiral shapes which are angular rather than curved. It has been used to decorate objects and architecture around the world from prehistory onward, but flourished in a unique form in Insular art (the art of early medieval Britain and Ireland, c. AD 600-1100). Ornament of many kinds was the dominant mode in Insular art, however, key pattern has remained the least studied and most misunderstood. From the 19th century, specialists mainly have relied on simplified, line-drawn reproductions rather than original artworks. These 'correct' hand-made details, isolate patterns from their contexts, and in the case of Insular key pattern, de-emphasise its important physical structures. This resulted in misunderstandings of key pattern's structure and an inability to recognise evidence for medieval artists' working processes. Postwar art historians and archaeologists then largely abandoned study of ornament structure altogether, in critical reaction to this earlier method. For two centuries, academics have overlooked the artists' role in pattern-making, and how their creative agency is reflected in patterns' internal structures. In response, this thesis presents a new, artist-centred method for the study of Insular key pattern, which adapts Michael Brennan's pioneering approach to Insular interlace (a different pattern), to suit key pattern's distinct structure. Close examination of objects and monuments, rather than idealised 'types', has revealed how Insular artists themselves understood key pattern and handled it in the moment of creation. The core of the thesis is an analysis of key pattern's structural properties, i.e. its physical parts and the abstract, often mathematical concepts that Insular makers used to arrange and manipulate these parts, in order to fix mistakes, fulfill specific design goals, or invent anew. Case studies of individual artworks support this analysis and demonstrate how key pattern is a vehicle for accessing Insular artists' thought processes, as they improvised with the pattern's basic structures for maximum creative effect. For the first time, this thesis also places Insular key pattern in its global context, via comparative analyses of key patterns from other world art traditions. This investigation has confirmed key pattern's origin in prehistoric basketry and weaving technologies and explains why Insular key pattern's geometric complexity remains unparalleled. The adaptation and expansion of this new analytical method for key pattern also proves its applicability to any type of ornament from any culture, making it immediately useful to art historians and archaeologists. This thesis therefore represents a larger paradigm shift that brings ornament study into the 21st century.

This research project has explored the relationship between sound and sculpture, looking particularly at how sound can become sculptural. A sound sculpture is defined in this project as a sound-only entity, which explicitly extends sound’s physical and spatial aspects to take on the role of a physical, visual sculpture. In this research, this is achieved by the use of otoacoustic emissions. There is a lack of music and sound art material that actively intends to utilise the creative potential of otoacoustic emissions. This portfolio of works explores the bodily sensation of otoacoustic emissions and importantly, the agency the audience/listener has on changing their own perception and experience of the sound through their movement choices around an installation space. This novel application of otoacoustic emissions is what the author terms ‘otokinetic shaping’. This goes beyond that of the visual sculptural paradigm by introducing an element of audience participation and control. The pieces are created in a manner in which they are a collaboration between the artist and the audience, with the audience having more creative control than the artist on the work’s sound, structure and duration. The works also examine creative themes such as minimalism and indeterminacy controlled by computer algorithms as a method of extending the already limited decisions made in the creative and compositional process by the artist.

This thesis examines the ways in which the unique creativity brought to late Victorian applied art by the Della Robbia Pottery was a consequence of Harold Rathbone’s extended engagement with quattrocento ceramics. This was not only with the sculpture collections in the South Kensington Museum but through his experiences as he travelled in Italy. In the first sustained examination of the development of the Della Robbia Pottery within the wider histories of the Arts and Crafts Movement, the thesis makes an original contribution in three ways. Using new sources of primary documentation, I discuss the artistic response to Italianate style by Rathbone and his mentors Ford Madox Brown and William Holman Hunt, and consider how this influenced the development of the Pottery. Rathbone’s own engagement with Italy not only led to his response to the work of the quattrocento sculptor Luca della Robbia but also to the archaic sgraffito styles of Lombardia in Northern Italy. Thirdly, the thesis identifies how the Della Robbia Pottery established a commercial presence in Regent Street and beyond, demonstrating how it became, for a short time, an outstanding expression of Italianate style within the British Arts and Crafts Movement.

This thesis examines a group of terracotta sculptures attributed to an artist known as the Master of the Unruly Children. The name was coined by Wilhelm von Bode, on the occasion of his first grouping seven works in Berlin and London. Due to the distinctive characteristics of his work, this personality has become a mainstay of scholarship in Renaissance sculpture. Chapter One examines the historiography in connoisseurship from the late nineteenth century to the present and explores the idea of the scholarly “construction” of artistic identity. Repeated attempts to establish historical identities for our Master have resulted in the unique characteristics of our corpus remaining undefined, and the context in which the sculptures were produced inadequately established. Chapter Two surveys the Florentine tradition and highlights a practice of copying that is evident in the corpus and indicative of common workshop production. New classifications into which the corpus (Appendix I) is divided are proposed. Despite the singularity of subject matter associated with our Master an analysis of the iconography of the sculptures has never been carried out. Chapter three connects the works of our Master to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the humanist revival of antiquity, debates on the Church, notions of Charity, and the politics of Florence.

This thesis investigates seventeenth-century Venetian funerary monuments as representing the Republic’s celebrative imagery. Going beyond the traditional interpretation of these monuments as a display of funerary memory, a series of case studies provided in six chapters examines them as rhetorical devices which celebrated Venice and instilled subtle forms of its republican propaganda. Chapter One focuses on early seventeenth-century ducal monuments and the republican ethos, scrutinising their function as ideological instruments which asserted the grandeur of Venice through their celebration of the doges. Chapter Two analyses the architectural and visual sources of the monument to Doge Giovanni Pesaro, a crucial model for later funerary monuments, focusing on the interaction between sculpture, architecture and the viewer. The comparative reading of contemporary panegyric poems of the Pesaro monument demonstrates how it was perceived as a living presence which was capable of eliciting the involvement of the viewer and gaining his or her persuasion. Monuments to the Venetian captains Caterino Cornaro and Antonio Barbaro are investigated in Chapter Three as significant examples which embody the notion of sacrifice as an act of both civic and religious piety. This forms the basis of the fabrication of the Venetian identity of the newly ennobled families and merchants through the memorials on the façades of San Moisè and Santa Maria dei Derelitti which are analysed in Chapter Four. Chapters Five and Six explore Antonio Gaspari’s project proposals for Doge Francesco Morosini and the Valier family, which remained unexecuted. Inspired by Roman Baroque architecture, Gaspari enhanced the aggrandisement of the ducal families to a quasi-imperialist state. Nevertheless, the actual Valier monument devised by Andrea Tirali remained an indirect celebration of Venice through the celebration of the doge’s achievements. The six chapters thus demonstrate how funerary monuments create a public imagery which complements the so-called “myth of Venice”.

This thesis investigates Dalí’s adoption of religious iconography to help represent themes that he had conceptualised through Surrealism, psychoanalysis and other thought systems. His selective use of sources was closely bound to his life circumstances, and I integrate biographical details in my analysis of his paintings. I identify unexpected sources of Dalí's images, and demonstrate how alert he was to the psychological motivations of traditional art. I find he made especial use of the iconography of martyrdom – and the perceptual and cognitive mechanics of the contemplation of death – that foreground the problem of the sexual and mortal self. Part I examines the period 1925-7, when Dalí developed an aesthetic outlook in dialogue with Lorca, formulated in his text, 'Sant Sebastià'. Representations of Sebastian and other martyr saints provided patterns for Dalí's exposition of the generative and degenerating self. In three chapters, based on three paintings, I plot the shift in Dalí's focus from the surface of the physical body – wilfully resistant to emotional engagement, and with classical statuary as a model – to its problematic interior, vulnerable to forces of desire and corruption. This section shows how Dalí's engagement with religious art paradoxically brought him into alignment with Surrealism. In Part II, I contend that many of the familiar images of Dalí’s Surrealist period – in which he considered the self as a fundamentally psychic rather than physical entity – can be traced to the iconography of contemplative saints, particularly Jerome. Through the prism of this re-interpretation, I consider Jerome's task of transcribing Biblical meaning in the context of psychoanalytical theories of cultural production. In Part III, I show how Dalí's later, overt use of religious imagery evolved from within his Surrealism. I trace a condensed, personalised life-narrative through Dalí’s paintings of 1948-52, based on Biblical mythology, but compatible with psychoanalytical theory: from birth to death to an ideal return to the mother's body.

The 1940s are undoubtedly the years most neglected by scholars of Italian Futurism. The movement had long supported Fascism, but its vocal endorsement of Mussolini’s regime and its military adventures at this time is widely considered to represent Futurism’s ultimate betrayal of those ‘progressive’, counter-cultural values popularly associated with the avant-garde. For many, the movement’s apparent engagement with the forces of reaction and conservatism is reflected in the work produced by its artists throughout the war years, which is invariably presented in terms of propaganda imagery, characterised by an unchallenging and retrogressive figurative vocabulary. However, this thesis argues that the 1940s cannot be said to reveal a rupture in either the ideological or aesthetic foundations of the movement, and that common assumptions regarding the crude, rhetorical and one-dimensional nature of Futurist painting (and poetry) during this period are not necessarily borne out by the works themselves. The text also examines the movement’s status within the cultural establishment at this time. It challenges the notion that the reverberations within Italy of Nazism’s campaign against modern art during the late 1930s were irrevocably to prejudice the Fascist regime and its institutions against Futurism. Indeed, it is argued that one can no more consider the 1940s a period of decline from the point of view of the movement’s political fortunes than one can from an artistic perspective. Of course, Futurism did not survive the war. However, it is suggested that whilst the cataclysmic events of 1943-44 were to seal its fate, they also served to liberate the imaginations of Marinetti and his followers, reawakening the movement’s original, visionary spirit, and inspiring a final burst of creativity that anticipated ‘the future of Futurism’.

This thesis explores the meanings of those Roman sarcophagi which show the Indian triumph of Dionysus. This group, found from approximately the early Antonine to just after the Severan period, shows the same mythological characters in similar positions and surroundings. They --- together with other groups --- tend to be approached from a methodology which either explicitly anticipates homogeneity of meaning or tacitly implies it through the transferral of interpretations from one piece to another. This study attempts to reconsider such actions by exposing the different effects that individual sarcophagi draw. As a group, these sarcophagi cover a period of significant change in the funerary realm. Since the group straddles important divisions between public imagery and private expression, we can more readily anticipate the latter through knowledge of the former. While studies of the triumph as ritual have begun to recognise it as a rite in flux, to be understood in its various instantiations rather than as a trans-historical event, such an analytical shift has not been applied to sarcophagi. In explicitly moving away from the assumption that we can assert genre-level meanings, this thesis undertakes an assessment sensitised to the possibility of case-by-case variation in meaning. This approach is also recommended by the intensely personal nature of the function of the sarcophagi: as the final resting places of lost loved-ones. First, a survey of prior approaches is made. Next, the group is rigorously defined with a methodology designed not with an intent to imply ancient applicability, but rather to be explicit about the generation of a working set. Subsequently, the sarcophagi are decomposed into their constituent elements and analysed, before in the next chapter being reconstituted and their effect in collusion analysed. Finally, the group is studied as a whole and the reasons behind its development, modifications and decline explored.

This thesis examines the roles of Queen Victoria’s children as collectors, makers and patrons of sculpture from around 1860 to 1900. To date, the royal children’s engagement with sculpture has received hardly any scholarly attention. The conventional narrative is that after Prince Albert’s death in 1861 royal patronage stagnated and lost its previous significance in the art world. However, based on major archival research and object-focused analysis, this thesis demonstrates that the royal children represented a new and distinct group of royal patrons whose artistic engagement was at the heart of Victorian sculpture. By focusing on the careers of three of Victoria and Albert’s nine children as case studies, it becomes clear that royal patronage of sculpture was highly diverse and complex. The first chapter assesses the role of Bertie, the Prince of Wales, as a collector of sculpture and highlights the ambiguousness of his encounters with the medium. The prince was a well-informed and zealous collector of sculpture; but he considered the medium to be principally for decorative purposes and personal enjoyment. The second chapter looks at Princess Louise as a maker of sculpture who had to negotiate her status as a princess and female amateur with her ambition to work like a professional sculptor in the public sphere. The third chapter focuses on Vicky, the Princess Royal and later German Empress, as a patron of sculpture in an Anglo-German context. As eldest and favourite daughter of Prince Albert, Vicky tried to continue her father’s artistic legacy by engaging with sculpture in multifarious ways and realising his vision of an exemplary patron. Yet, her fraught political position as a British liberal at the imperial court in Germany complicated her efficacy in the sphere of contemporary sculpture and resulted in her focus on the Renaissance. This thesis contributes to a revaluation of royal patronage in Victorian sculpture studies and also indicates the relevance of Queen Victoria’s children to scholarly discourses including Aestheticism, female sculptors and Anglo-German artistic relations.

This practice-based research project is about the location of the self within aesthetic experience: how can a response to an object put forward for aesthetic appraisal lead to an awareness of the physical and embodied cognitive self The study centres on sculpture and our experience of it. It begins by considering how an aesthetic experience can act as a framing mechanism though which an awareness of the physical and cognitive self can be realised. By drawing upon several established philosophical and scientific ideas surrounding aesthetic experience, and through actual fine art practice, making sculptural objects which knowingly seek to trigger certain responses, the study will examine possible constituent factors within the experiential moment. In terms of theoretical and scientific contributions to the issue, the study considers the possible roles of proprioception and affordance, mirror neurons and embodied consciousness. The studio works involved have the characteristics, broadly, of skeletal mechanical devices, in metal, wood and other materials, stripped down to a functional minimum. The final phase of the project involves a motion capture experiment which sought to support the practical and theoretical work undertaken with a detailed account of viewer movement and body position in relation to the sculptural object, and thus offer analytical data regarding certain aspects of the aesthetic experience. The data collected has then been used as the basis for new studio work to further examine the relation between viewer and object.

This thesis examines the exhibitions of Greek architectural sculpture in ten European collections. The exhibitions used as case studies display both original sculptures and plaster copies. These displays can be found in the Acropolis Museum, Athens; the British Museum, London; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the Archaeological Museum of Olympia, Olympia; Delphi Archaeological Museum, Delphi; the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge; the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford; the Kongelige Afstøbningssamling, Copenhagen; and the Skulpturhalle, Basel. These exhibitions are assessed using the heritagescape methodology, considering the boundaries, visibility and cohesion within the displays. This assessment is then compared with the results of a survey of visitors to the same exhibitions, asking for their responses to interpretive material within the exhibitions, specifically, tours, models, pictures, information labels and videos. It argues that while all archaeological or history museums are places of the past, the degree to which each creates a sense of the past for its visitors, rather than relying on the inherent sense of the past present in the artefacts displayed or supplied by visitors themselves, will vary according to a number of factors, including the target audience and the aims and objectives of the different institutions.

This thesis presents a conceptual knot, namely of how to sustain the intentionally temporary. Part of the original contribution of this thesis lies in exploring what it means for an artwork to be temporary, tracing the historical context from the twentieth century onwards, thereby establishing the category of temporary artworks, and providing thoughts on how to care for temporary artworks so that they might be known and experienced by future audiences. On the basis of this research, a practical proposal is developed for what a retrospective of temporary artworks might look like. Temporary artworks should be considered as a category unto their own because of the specific set of constraints which set them apart: they are physical works of art which exist for an intentionally limited amount of time, and are created only once. These specific constraints problematize the engagement of future audiences due to the works’ very limited and singular existence as a physical work. In order to address the issue of how to (re)visit impermanence, I develop the claim that what is passed on from a temporary artwork is contingent on the stakeholders, including the primary audience, who are posited as a group of unintentional archivists holding stock in a type of living archive. After their material unmaking, temporary artworks can be experienced through the notion that ‘the artwork is not present’, a riff on artist Marina Abramović’s retrospective work The Artist is Present (2010). A retrospective of temporary artworks would consist of memories and documents contextualizing their fragmentary nature, highlighting what Severin Fowles discusses as ‘the carnality of absence’. A clarification of what is missing assists in sustaining what I develop and describe as ‘the performance of loss’, a critical part of temporary artworks. Stewarding a temporary artwork into the future thus depends on letting the material object go, and contextualizing its presence, loss, and absence for future audiences.

For many years, meanings and interpretations of artefacts that are taken to represent African culture including the Ife bronzes have been predominantly produced and fixed by a team of western curatorial experts (Ciolfi, 2012). Such museum practices have prevented visitors and the people being represented by the artefact from participating in the process of interpretation and meaning-making. In the particular case of the ‘Ife bronzes’, the previous meaning and implications of the Ife ‘bronzes’ as part of ‘the cradle of the world’, according to Yoruba oral traditions, are yet to be given the amount of attention they deserve. For a long time the interpretations and meanings produced by curators were drawn from the writings and accounts of earlier western travellers, explorers and colonial officials whose culture affected how the Ife bronzes have been perceived and interpreted (Coombes, 1997: Vogel, 1999). Today despite the impact of ‘the new museology’, strong traces of such biased interpretations and meanings are still evident in the framing of the Ife bronze head, exhibited at the British Museum Sainsbury African gallery as a ‘funerary object’ in postcolonial times. Such narratives highlight ‘relations of power and not relations of meanings’ (Foucault, 1980:114). These contemporary exhibitionary frames highlight the need for interpretations and meanings that will consider how changing roles, ownership, usage, political situations and geographical location have affected and will affect the Ife bronzes. In this thesis I carry out this work, documenting the social life of the Ife bronzes from pre-colonial Ife to postcolonial digital British Museum. I argue that there is a need for a new space that will encourage rewriting, revising and representing the Ife bronzes in a more capacious way to depict their changing meaning as they journeyed through time. This theory is in line with Hall (1997) and Foucault’s (1980) theories that meanings and interpretations are not static but are affected by time and changing context. The thesis therefore explores the multifaceted political, economical and sociocultural implications of the Ife bronzes. Despite these wider implications of Ife bronzes, they are still only too often shrouded in narratives that tend to validate the supremacy, civilisation and intellectual ‘supremacy’ of the West instead of substantiating the ingenuity, civilisation and intellectual capabilities of Africa. Digitisation is critically considered as offering a potential new space for representing Ife bronzes in a new light that might allow meanings with postcolonial ideology to emerge. Focusing on different periods involving the Ife bronzes (the pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial) the thesis explores the potentials of digital representation. The thesis concludes that digital representation but only combined with a critical contextual approach, have the potentials of initiating a more thorough decolonisation of the Ife bronzes through an inclusive participatory culture.

The thesis aims to develop an understanding of the nature and evolution of brick temple architecture in the subcontinent, focusing in particular on terraced Hindu structures of the fourth to sixth centuries CE. It also seeks to advance understanding of the iconography and artistry of the terracotta relief panels that once graced the outer walls or platforms of Gupta period brick temples. To date, scholarship on Hindu temple architecture of the Gupta period has primarily focused on cave and structural stone temples, while brick temple architecture of the epoch, along with terracotta reliefs and sculptures, have largely been confined to the margins of historical studies. This approach has led to the formation of a somewhat distorted picture of the architectural landscape of the Gupta period. To address this shortcoming, all of the known terraced structures in the subcontinent have been mapped in order to establish an understanding of the development and dissemination of this mode of architecture. The architectural form and relief sculpture of the vast terraced brick Śaiva monument known as ACI or Bhimgaja, situated at the heart of the ancient fortress city of Ahichhatrā in Uttar Pradesh, forms the main case study for the thesis - with architecture being the subject of the first half of the thesis. ACI is compared with a terraced brick Vaiṣṇava structure at Pawāyā in Madhya Pradesh, formerly the Nāga centre of Padmāvatī, and with the only standing brick temple of the Gupta period, at Bhītargāon in Uttar Pradesh. Despite the scale and complexity of the former two monuments, neither has received adequate scholarship. A series of fifth- and early sixth-century CE ornamental terracotta pilaster and frieze fragments from Ahichhatrā, held in the reserve collections of the British Museum, are examined within the context of Gupta period temple architecture; the objective being to determine where each of the fragments would have been positioned on a temple. On the basis of these artefacts and related pieces from the site, it is possible to build up a picture of the type of décor that would have adorned the exterior of ACI. The many intriguing sculptures and relief fragments from Pawāyā and Ahichhatrā are the subject of the second half of the thesis. Some of the reliefs - especially those hailing from ACI - are of great importance since they represent some of the earliest visual depictions of myths contained in the Mahābhārata and other religious texts. These reliefs and sculptures are explored within the broader context of Gupta iconography, with particular attention paid to the numerous and fascinating terracotta reliefs of the era, most of which are divorced from their original settings. Moreover, based on style and scale, some of panels evidently share the same origin and these are collated here. In addition, new interpretations are proposed for several of the plaques.

This thesis includes a monograph, The Sculpture of Charles Wheeler (London: Lund Humphries in association with the Henry Moore Foundation, 2012), and a catalogue essay ‘Let There Be History: Epstein’s BMA House Sculptures’, in Modern British Sculpture, ed.by Penelope Curtis and Keith Wilson (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2011). The book is the first study of Wheeler, an important but neglected sculptor who was President of the Royal Academy from 1956-66; the Epstein essay looks anew at a notorious episode in the career of one of modernism’s canonical practitioners, coming to radically different conclusions to the accepted narrative. The accompanying analytical commentary reflects on the complex research journey towards understanding and articulating hidden histories of modern British sculpture. Deploying traditional methodologies of archive exploration and making connections between divergent critical and artistic groupings has enabled the construction of new histories. Disrupting the appropriation and elision of ‘modern’ with ‘modernist’ and ‘avant-garde’ restores the work of non-canonical practitioners to the historical moment of the first half of the 20th Century, while historical analysis draws mythologised artists into the contingencies of the real world. These publications offer original insights and their impact is becoming evident in the fields of British sculptural and architectural history. Beginning in the recent past as I prepared to write this thesis, the commentary moves into the deeper history of the research journey, considering my theoretical approaches, the initial difficulties of writing against the prevailing academic fashion, the serendipities of a supportive scholarly milieu and the details of making Wheeler’s history. The value of the monograph itself is discussed. Reviewing Epstein’s modernist cause célèbre proved the transferable value of dispassionate archival research. The commentary finally comes full circle, concluding in October 2014 when I found myself, unexpectedly, implicated in the very history to which I have contributed.

The concerns of this thesis are aligned with approaches to the historical study of sexuality, gender and identity in art, society and culture which are increasingly articulate and questioning at present. However, it is distinct from these recent studies because it redirects attention toward a stimulating encounter with the past through new theoretical proposals and interpretive perspectives on the manner in which mythology asserts itself as the vehicle for expressing male same-sex erotic behaviour, gender performance and masculine identity in the visual culture of the Italian Renaissance. By following a methodological, historiographical and interdisciplinary mode of enquiry, this thesis formulates and expresses new perspectives which engage with the representation of masculine concerns relating to these historically specific matters in the visual domain of the period. Conventional historical definitions of traditional art historical models of masculinity are also called into question through reassessment of how the function of the ideal male nude body in Renaissance art was shaped by particular social and historical contexts in different regions of Italy during the sixteenth century. These interrelated themes are approached in three stages. Firstly, there is interpretation of the complex and convoluted meanings within the narrative of the mythic sources, as well as decoding and contextualising of the symbolic messages of the images in question. Secondly, I assemble and examine the textual evidence that exists about erotic and social relationships between males in the Renaissance so that their historical significance can be tracked and placed in the context of the tension which existed between Renaissance Italian judicial and religious proscription and commonplace behaviour. And thirdly, I offer comprehensive analyses and interpretive frameworks which are informed by and based upon a wide range of written as well as visual sources together with evaluation of competing theoretical perceptions. The main arguments are presented in three chapters: The central theme of Chapter One is gender performance with specific focus upon the integral and didactic role of pederasty in visual representations of myths which conflate erotic desire between males and philosophical allegory. The historical phenomenon of pederastic relationships between males is addressed through interrogation of the pictorial vocabulary of Benvenuto Cellini’s marble Apollo and Hyacinth (1545), and Giulio Romano’s drawing of Apollo and Cyparissus (1524).The arguments and theories discussed and analysed in Chapter Two deal with Michelangelo’s depiction of Ovidian mythic narratives. Here, close attention is paid to the intricate nuances and sophisticated iconography used by Michelangelo for three highly finished presentation drawings - The Rape of Ganymede (1532), The Punishment of Tityus (1532) and The Fall of Phaeton (1533) - which Michelangelo presented to Tommaso De’ Cavalieri. The chapter aims to encourage a re-evaluation of these three drawings as a meaningful and connected narrative endowed with significant cultural and personal significance relating to their creator’s anguish about physical desire and its relationship to what modernity terms as ‘sexuality’. In Chapter Three, I consider how several works featuring the theme of Apollo flaying Marsyas can be read as articulations of the imaginative and ideological structures of the formation and preservation of masculine identities. The chapter addresses the iconographic visibility of the theme of flaying and explores the philosophical and literary metaphoric significance of this myth. Primacy is given to destabilising dominant conceptualizations of the heroic male nude as a subject in art throughout all these selected case studies. Centred as they are on sexual attraction or destruction rather than idealisation of the male figure, these chapters offer a revaluation of ways of seeing the archetypal heroic nude in a myriad of ways.

This thesis sets out to explore the influences on and meaning of early imperial female portrait sculpture and statues of Aphrodisias in Asia Minor. This group is unlike any other. There survives a rich amount of contextual evidence as well as some unique portraits with unusual features. They appeared at a time of social change for women and as the first images of imperial wives and mothers emerged from Rome. Local artists exploited this imagery in the city of Aphrodite, the ultimate mother of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. These portraits have only ever been studied as part of the corpus of statues that includes those of males; as a homogenous group with little new to say. In the home of the most significant mother of the time, I propose that the portraits disproportionately emphasise motherhood and reflect the new-found power enjoyed by some of the earliest empresses. Emerging theories surrounding gender in the ancient world and an art-historical approach have highlighted inconsistencies and inadequacies in former arguments and methodologies dealing with material of this kind. In response, this thesis applies new theories, considering the role of gender with a close examination of iconography and social and political factors to develop an unbiased and objective approach, free from preconceptions and entirely based on the evidence. The stripping away of previous assumptions has necessitated a reassessment of ancient portraits of both sexes which is tackled in Chapter One. After an assessment of the special circumstances of early imperial Aphrodisias in Chapter Two, the thesis then interprets material by grouping portraits apparently influenced by Rome in Chapter Three, and those which seemingly do not in Chapter Four. In each case, I show how each individual portrait expresses its own unique message of sometimes unexpected values.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and Prince Albert (1819-1861) have long loomed large in Victorian sculpture studies. Numerous scholars have examined the public statues of Victoria and Albert that were erected throughout the United Kingdom and across the British Empire between the 1840s and the 1920s. Yet, to date, the couple’s own patronage of sculpture has been largely overlooked. In light of this lacuna in the scholarship, this thesis examines the formation, display and dissemination of Victoria’s and Albert’s sculpture collection; explores the public sculpture projects with which they were involved; and analyses contemporary responses to their patronage. In so doing, it reveals what sculpture meant to Victoria and Albert personally; what their patronage meant to the contemporary sculpture profession; and what impact they had on the wider history and historiography of Victorian sculpture. The thesis is organised chronologically and broadly divided into three periods, representing three distinct but interrelated trends in the formation, arrangement, dissemination and reception of Victoria’s and Albert’s collection and the changing status of royal patronage. The first is the period between Victoria’s and Albert’s marriage in 1840 and Albert’s death in 1861. In this period, the couple’s patronage was prolific, varied and widely disseminated. They commissioned and acquired an extensive amount of sculpture for the royal residences and closely involved themselves with numerous public sculpture projects such as the sculpture programme in the New Houses of Parliament. This thesis demonstrates the complex imbrication of the couple’s public and private patronage of sculpture by revealing the extent to which their involvement with public projects informed their private patronage and the degree to which this fed into their public image as patrons. The second part looks at the decade after Albert’s death, a period in which Victoria concentrated her patronage almost exclusively on memorial busts and statues of him. Her various memorial commissions have often been treated interchangeably as simple indexes of her legendary grief. This thesis restores specificity to this body of memorial sculpture and uncovers the extent and sophistication of Victoria’s patronage in this period. However, it also shows the damage done to her reputation as a patron through her seemingly relentless desire to commission posthumous portraits of Albert. The third part concentrates on the last three decades of Victoria’s life. It reveals the extent to which she remained active as a patron and the degree to which her taste for sculpture evolved in the 1880s and 1890s. Yet, Victoria’s patronage was indelibly associated with mid-century sculptors whom Edmund Gosse, chief evangelist of ‘The New Sculpture’ dismissed as representative of ‘the dark age’ in the history of British sculpture. At a time when public statues of Victoria by some of the leading sculptors of the age were being erected across the globe, her position as a leading patron of contemporary sculpture was steadily undermined by the perception that she was stuck in the past.

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).

In 1989 the American Surrealist associated painter, sculptor, and writer Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) suggested an intermedial dimension to her multifaceted œuvre in her essay ‘Some Parallels in Word and Pictures.’ Taking this essay as a critical point of departure, this thesis offers an intertextual theorisation of Tanning’s practice. It concerns the role of narrative in her work, and the way in which she borrows from the histories of art and literature as source materials. The thesis presented here is that Tanning’s work from the context of Surrealism and beyond makes reference to the fairy tales and other, more extensive works of literature which she read in her youth whilst at work in her public library in Galesburg, Illinois, whether implicitly in visual references or explicitly in her works’ titles. Throughout, the library is read as a key source of inspiration. This is true too of the impact which Tanning’s belated visit to the Louvre had on her post-Surrealist stylistic development. Broadly, this thesis aims to rethink the methodologies used to interpret Surrealism, and reunite the literary and visual aspects upon which the Surrealist movement was initially founded. This interdisciplinary approach contributes fresh perspectives by marrying the history of Surrealism with that of the fairy tale, including that of Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, and the fairy tale illustrations of Gustave Doré, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Rackham, and John Tenniel. The anti-fairy tale emerges as useful critical tool in defining the intertext which appears when Surrealism and the fairy tale are paired. The ‘demythologising’ project of Angela Carter is useful to call upon in the articulation of the anti-fairy tale, and her work is easily placed in dialogue with that of Tanning, especially in terms of its feminist leanings. The dialogic, intertextual theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, further developed by Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes, support this reading of Tanning’s visual narratives. More recently such theories of intertextuality have manifested themselves in the work of Dutch narratologist Mieke Bal who proposes a model of ‘preposterous history’ in order to creatively re-read the relationship between source (or pre-text) and intertext. This research is primarily text-based and devotes long-awaited attention to Tanning’s literary works which are read visually, including her short story ‘Blind Date’ (1943), and her novel 'Abyss' (1977), later reworked and republished as 'Chasm: A Weekend' (2004). I argue that her novel provides textual continuity with her Surrealist visual narratives of the 1940s creating a more cyclical, ‘preposterous’ shape to her career than has previously been acknowledged.

This project explores the representation of the Holocaust in three museums: Yad Vashem in Jerusalem; the Imperial War Museum in London; and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim, Poland. It uses the so-called Auschwitz Album, a collection of photographs taken in Birkenau in May 1944, as a case-study. Employing the concept of mythology in the Barthesian sense of a ‘language in which we speak’, it examines the ways in which the Holocaust is more and more a prism through which other things are viewed; a language in which other things are spoken of. Chapters 1 and 2 lay the groundwork for the results of fieldwork described in chapters 3-5. Chapter 1 is concerned with the photographs themselves. Describing the structure and content of the collection, it demonstrates the degree to which the interpretation of photographs is complicated by what the viewer brings to them. While photographs might appear to transmit information, this chapter suggests that they are better understood as reflective objects. Chapter 2 interrogates the assumptions of five “classic” accounts of the Holocaust by Raul Hilberg, Helmut Krausnick, Lucy Dawidowicz, Martin Gilbert and Saul Friedländer, in light of a proposed ‘Holocaust metanarrative’. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 engage with the particular museums on their own terms, posing questions about how they interact with the societies they are found in. Each museum, these chapters argue, raises a set of questions about the host nation’s relationship with the past. Chapter 6 looks at the specific display strategies employed by the museums to display the Auschwitz Album, considers how this relates to the broader institutional and national agendas as explored in Chapters 3-5. An epilogue takes the basic conclusion of this section – that all memory is local, and that debate about meaning is likely to be the continuing legacy – and asks if there is an alternative language in which to speak of the Holocaust.

During approximately twenty-five years of the early to mid-sixteenth century, a hitherto largely unnoticed series of Caen stone tombs were erected in Sussex and Hampshire churches with designs that emphasized religious imagery. These crudelycarved but high-status monuments displayed the piety of those commemorated and included a transitional mixture of Gothic and Renaissance motifs. Strong circumstantial evidence suggests they were carved by masons in Chichester, employed within a cathedral ‘works organisation', who could offer lower transportation costs than those producing Purbeck marble tombs in London and Corfe, Dorset. The tombs satisfied the religiously conservative taste of local patrons with at least 14 tombs being designed as Easter Sepulchres. Later monuments appear incongruous when set against the backdrop of state-inspired change in religious doctrine and were among the last carved in the medieval tradition. As the pace of the Reformation quickened, the iconoclastic policies of the radically Protestant government of Edward VI constricted the masons' operations and probably brought their business to an end around 1550 - despite diversification into secular work. Employing archæological recording techniques and archival research, this project identifies and catalogues, for the first time, the 32 surviving examples of these masons' output, which demonstrate a much greater production rate and wider distribution than previously published. The project also investigates the destruction of the monuments' religious iconography by Protestant reformers, probably in 1548-53, and/or the erasure of devotional motifs by relatives in attempts to protect the tombs from damage. In addition, the project explores issues of patronage, the sources of the masons' designs, their construction methods and places them in the context of tomb production in London and the provinces in the mid-sixteenth century.

Until modernity, the word ‘sculpture’ was used to denote mimetic representations of the human form. From modernity on this term was extended to include new and unusual works that often do not share obvious features with traditional sculpture or even with what we know as art. This thesis is placed in the chronological frame of modern art and examines the meaning and truth of modern sculpture and the ways it is to be understood as a work of art. The thesis is separated into three parts. The first and introductory part explores the way modern sculpture has developed and redefined its status and meaning in the history of art from Rodin until Duchamp and the movements of found art and conceptual art. The aim of the first part is to specify the issue of perception and the function of phenomenology in the understanding of modern sculpture. The second and third parts aim to specify the validity of modern sculpture as art, considering particularly Heidegger’s thinking on the nature of art and the truth of art in the postreligious age of modernity. Specifically, the second part examines Heidegger’s position on the meaning of art after the ‘death of art’ and moreover the place of sculpture in modernity focusing on the theme of homelessness in Rodin’s and Giacometti’s sculpture. The third part examines more closely the way abstract art and specifically the work of Barnett Newman could be seen as a truth revealing, following Heidegger’s criticism of the metaphysics of symbolic and representational art. The thesis argues that the validity of modern sculpture and generally modern art lies in its acknowledgement or, in Heidegger terms, thinking of the homelessness of the human being in modernity and the destitution of modernity, and hence in its revealing of the aspect of the truth and being that has been forgotten.

Islamic architecture is arguably one of the greatest manifestations of Islamic visual culture. One of the defining aspects of the unique, aesthetic richness of traditional Islamic architecture has been the application of ceramic ornamentation or embellishment. There is a growing concern, however, that this legacy is being eroded. The diminishing identity of Islamic visual culture is particularly evident through current architectural developments occurring in the Arab states. The building revolution in the Gulf countries has dramatically increased momentum since the onset of the ‗oil economy‘, echoing the phenomena of globalization. This research project explores these concerns, discussing the erosion of Islamic ‗identity‘ within contemporary architecture in the Gulf States and in particularly Kuwait, as well as the ensuing decline in the use of ceramics as a defining embellishment material. The research compares the aesthetics of traditional and contemporary Islamic architectural design, whilst also examining the reasons behind this erosion in traditional design style. The diminishing identity of Islamic visual culture is investigated by combining studies in the fields of art, aesthetics, design, architecture, and the social sciences, in order to understand the nature of the research problem. A series of case-studies demonstrates how ceramics may be used to re-introduce a sense of Islamic identity within contemporary architecture. This offers design proposals, new materials and technical processes that acknowledge the rich traditions of Islamic Ceramics while also being appropriate for application within the context of contemporary Islamic architecture detailing; blending contemporary aesthetics and technical thinking with traditional Islamic design. The aim of the case-studies is to offer proposals for a new aesthetic vocabulary of architectural embellishment that is both appropriate to and innovative within, the context of contemporary Islamic architecture. This new aesthetic vocabulary III specifically blends contemporary design principals, new materials and technical processes, whilst acknowledging the rich traditions of Islamic ceramics. The PhD project, applies two types of research methodology: theoretical research and practice-based research. The former focused on social sciences and applied quantitative and qualitative research approaches, including surveys and interviews undertaken within Kuwait. The findings obtained from these surveys verified the emergence of a new cultural style of contemporary architecture and shaped the practice-based element of the project; proposals for ceramic embellishment that are contemporary, while still reflecting many recognizable aspects of traditional Islamic design. The new architectural style can be attributed to factors such as globalization, the adoption of international building styles, and a seeming unwillingness to incorporate traditional styles into new building design, all of which contribute to the currently weak identity of Arabic / Islamic ceramics within Kuwait. Despite of this, the survey revealed that Kuwaiti society maintains a strong relationship and affiliation with Islamic culture, although many seemed unaware of their own rich culture and its past legacy. The practice-based research involved two distinct phases. The first phase involved the development of a large number (172) of new glazes. The glazes were intended to reflect the palette of colours used over generations of Islamic Ceramic culture, while still being appropriate for integration within the contemporary Islamic architectural environment. The second phase of practice involved a series of case studies, embracing a wide range of contemporary architectural ceramic design processes (including 2 and 3 Dimensional geometrical patterns and interpretations of contemporary calligraphic design). The case studies utilised a number of modern technologies, such as 3D Solid modelling, CNC Rapid Prototyping and Laser-cutting, to prove that modern design and manufacturing technologies can be integrated within traditional ceramic processes. The aim being to both provide ceramic products that architects and designers can use to enhance the modern IV architectural environment of Kuwait and re-establish the creative status of ceramics.

Through creative practice research this thesis investigates the concept of touch and its application to museums with the process defined as ‘practice of touch’. The main practical outcome of this thesis is an interface between the museum visitor and an untouchable museum object as part of the object interpretation. The implementation of this idea is realised with the ‘Tactual Explorations’ project. The format of this project is a tactile exhibition consisting of virtual and conventional artworks combined. The subject of the study focuses on interaction between museum visitors and exhibits in order to create an accessible and tactile solution around museums’ ‘do not touch’ policy; without being limited to but being especially for blind and partially sighted visitors. The reason behind paying special attention to these members of the audience is the significance of the sense ‘touch’ in communicating with the world around them. While the main objective of this research is to gain more understanding of the concept of ‘touch’, on a deeper level it investigates whether or not a haptic interaction with untouchable visual information can be achieved with the aid of a creative interface between the museum visitor and an untouchable museum exhibit. By using this creative interface, the aim of the research extends to gaining a better understanding of touch through curating with information design and artistic methods. The purpose behind the idea is to form an inclusive museum experience free from assumptions of just one interpreter without rejecting the traditional methods of object interpretation. The practical outcome enhances dialogue with the existing information by paying special attention to tactile properties of a museum object through a set of artworks. The project is supported by other practical experiments in order to understand the value of visual/photographic information attached to an untouchable object and involve other scholars and artists in interpreting this information tactually. While accepting museums’ policy of ‘do not touch’, the praxis of this thesis is proposed as a method of interpretation that aims to bring in the ‘missing interactivity of touch’ through an engaging tactile exhibition of physical and virtual artworks made by various artists. In contrary to more common approaches of involving artists in interpreting museum objects, in this model created works are not inspired by the original, but directly based on its texture information in order to create haptic interaction, without using a direct replica or embossed copies. In other words, this interface is presented as an addition to the object’s formal interpretation, not to replace it. The research adopts creative practice research methodology in general; and realises it with a reflective and participatory approach borrowed from action research within interpretive research paradigm. The main research strategy deployed is practice-led. Rather than staying in the boundaries of qualitative research, the study takes guidance from the manifesto of performative research which is declared as an alternative to the qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, by offering creative approaches to conducting a research project.

This practice-based discovery-led research, uses sugar syrup as a sculptural element, to create sculptures in which the dynamics of the syrup's viscocity show a semiautonomous kinesis indicative of a decline into formlessness. A major influence on this research has been the 18th century chemist Elizabeth Fulhame, and her experiments with substances that involved a high level of improvisation, repetition and acute observation. The syrup is made by boiling ordinary granulated sugar until it becomes viscous; it is then cast in moulds or poured into receptacles. The latter frequently consists of familiar domestic objects such as bottles and funnels. The casts and receptacles are then located within supporting structures, which may be constructed for this purpose, or alternatively they may be found, but whatever the circumstance, they are an integral and influential element in the sculpture. Over time, environmental influences (temperature and humidity etc) cause the syrup casts to change, so that they lose their apparent solidity and definition and proceed through unpredictable patterns towards entropy. The sculptures were documented through text, video and photography in order to record patterns of aesthetic activity, which sometimes extended to 26 months. The slow and usually almost imperceptible creeping motion of the melting syrup had a subversive presence that increased over time as it interacted with the objects that contained and supported it. Over long periods of time, the sculptures degenerated to the point that they existed in the border zone between opposing states: fonn/formless; animate/inanimate; solid/liquid; technological/organic. By linking semiautonomous sculpture with the abject and Mary Douglas's conception of domesticity as an ideological system of rituals and taboos, this research extends the field of dynamic, process-led art, building upon work by Arte Povera, Andy Goldsworthy, Anya Gallaccio and the 'antiform' works of Eva Hesse, Richard Serra, Robert Morris and Robert Smithson.

This thesis explores both the conceptual register and tropic play of sculpture as a fine art in some of the key writings of Plato, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. It serves to show how sculpture is both shaped by and reshapes in turn philosophy's explicit register of sculpture as an art form. The central argument within this thesis is that sculpture turns its back on philosophy as soon as philosophy casts sculpture out of its mould. Registering sculpture as a fine art within philosophy reveals that whilst specific examples of sculpture may appear to confirm the conceptual meanings ascribed to it by the philosophers Kant, Herder and Hegel, can equally show its unreliability and inconsistency as an art form. The title of this thesis The Philosophy of Sculpture: The Sculpture of Philosophy serves as a heading for an engagement with an explicit reading of sculpture as a fine ati and the sculptural as a trope. Therefore, the sculpture of philosophy is read as a heading for the presentation of sculpture as an object or art form in the writings of Kant, Herder and Hegel. The philosophy of sculpture appeals to an engagement with the use of the sculptural through the tropes of casting, moulding, sculpting, carving, modelling, shaping and forming in the writing of philosophy. This will show that there is something specifically philosophical about sculpture as a practice. Furthermore, the crossovers between these two approaches highlight the effects they give place to, particularly in the context of reading sculpture through a case study. Therefore, the latter half of this thesis engages with the ways in which the sculptural appears within architectural formations and explores an alternative reading of sculpture in relation to some of the themes generated out of a collaborative project between the philosopher Jacques Derrida and the architect Peter Eisenman.

This study focuses on the relation of three Japanese artists to Fluxus: Takehisa Kosugi, Mieko Shiomi, and Yasunao Tone. In the early 1960s, these three were part of a free improvisational music group in Tokyo called ‘Group Ongaku’ (Music Group). In Group Ongaku, partly through concerns with l’objet sonore, they moved from focussing on sound only, to a concern with performing action as music. From 1961 onwards, they came into contact with Fluxus ‘leader’ George Maciunas via the experimental composers Toshi Ichiyanagi and Nam Jun Paik, and artist Yoko Ono. Kosugi, Shiomi, and Tone all participated in Fluxus activities in New York. Although their contributions have been mentioned in Fluxus publications, the relation between their early work in Group Ongaku and their later work in Fluxus has not been discussed thoroughly. This study aims to show why their work appealed to Maciunas, and bore similarities to the work of other Fluxus artists, resulting in a mutual appreciation. I wish to demonstrate that this was not just a simple matter of the Japanese artists having been influenced by Fluxus or John Cage, but that the beginnings of their experimentation and the development of their work was rooted in their own context in Japan. A view of Fluxus as an international group where specific, local concerns were also relevant to the artists that participated in it will be supported. Shared influences between some members of Fluxus, and Group Ongaku, such as Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and ethnomusicology ensured concerns with action, chance, the unconscious and re-evaluation of familiar environments and objects. This, for Group Ongaku, was set against the social and political tension of 1960s Tokyo, where World War II was still fresh in the memory of many citizens. Millions of protesters were taking to the streets fearing another war if America were allowed to continue with military bases in Japan, and the superficial happiness of middle-class workers wishing to make a good standard of living from the economic boom was being critiqued by artists. Close readings of each individual’s work bearing relevance to Fluxus are presented in the final part. This will be the first study to present chapter-length, in-depth readings of Group Ongaku members’ work together in the context of Fluxus. As close readings of the work of these three artists are scarce, this will contribute to the understanding of them. Japanese artists in Fluxus are numerous, yet under-studied as individuals in Fluxus contexts, and it is hoped that this study will add to Fluxus studies another perspective on the relation between Fluxus and Japan. Additionally, this will provide the first PhD-length study in English or Japanese on Group Ongaku’s relationship to Fluxus.

This research examines the development of surface motifs in drapery, and how they can be further developed through practice to allude to aspects of the female body. The motif of central importance is the fold, developed in the natural fall of cloth when draped on the female body. To locate this research within contemporary practice consideration is given to the work of relevant current artists, who either fragment or develop surface motifs, which act as a synecdoche to reference the body. The research commenced with an extensive examination of the historical development of the draped fold in painting and sculpture, this underpinned the beginning of the practice research and its contextualization. The practice based research consisted of a sense of studies, commencing with an investigation into how motifs could be developed in cloth using various techniques of stitching and manipulation that were identified through the historical study. This was followed by an exploration into the relationship between drapery and the underlying female figure, examining the body's effect on the fold and identifying points of support. These studies were carried out using a life model and photographically recorded and documented. Subsequent studies involved a small-scale stuffed model, which enabled an investigation of the various methods of glue starching required to fix the cloth to produce a draped cast of the figure. Although these studies produced promising results, it was realised that the photographic images which recorded the cloth in its transitional stage, whilst it was still wet, produced the most significant motifs, in terms of their skin like quality, a duality to suggest the female body. As a result the use of the camera was adopted as a method of fragmenting the image and interpreting the 3D sculptural models into a 2D surface motif. From this, a visual taxonomy was created which categorized the motifs under the following key themes, Openings, Visceral and Body Parts. Each category was considered in terms of its ability to allude to the female body through visual or sensual qualities, and from this motifs that allude to the female body were created. The penultimate stage of the studio practice is an analysis and explanation of the final images chosen for exhibition. It is these images that are most successful in alluding to the female body. They are presented as a series of vignettes rather than a stand-alone image, so the central motif is further enforced.

The research explores Donald Judd's concept of Specific Objects, and how the notion of singular qualities, so essential to the concept, can be extended through the practice of sculpture. According to Judd, unity can only be achieved in sculpture when its form is specific and has only one quality. There must therefore be no apparent parts, no hierarchy and, therefore no relationships of parts. In addition, Specific Objects rejects illusion. The sculptor Robert Morris further defined singular qualities as those which predominantly distinguish 'good form', thereby positioning it within the syntax of Gestalt psychology. Significant though Judd's sculptures are, few seem to conform to his definition of Specific Objects because through his use of orthogonal geometry and contrast of materials, many of his sculptures do indeed appear not only to be composed of parts, but actually rely on the relationships between the parts. In addition, the contrast of opaque and transparent surfaces, inevitably leads to illusion. Rather than follow Judd's use of orthogonal geometries from parts of differing materials and colours, this research has investigated the potential of circular geometry to create form of sculptural significance within Judd's strict definition of Specific Objects. Key to this research has been what Rosalind Krauss described as the deflection of geometry, of which there are two types: one is based on actual variations in physical geometry and the second results from the illusory qualities of materials and surface finishes. The studio investigations sought to ascertain to what extent the 'deflection of geometry'can expand, but equally as importantly, maintain the viability of Judd's concept. In other words, the challenge was to extend the possible range of geometries that posses the singular qualities associated with Specific Objects; and in so doing provide an alternative response to the dilemma posed by the concept; how to make unified forms with variation and sculptural significance. The studio investigations were project based. Each project was directed by its aims and the resulting studies evaluated through criteria in which unity and singular qualities were fundamental. A reductive approach to studio investigation led to two forms that conclude the research. The unified geometry of the first is elliptical, although visual tension derives from the rotation of the internal ellipse relative to its external counterpart, whereas the second form contains the implied division of an internal figure of eight derivative within an elliptical exterior. Both forms were cast in translucent resins to combine illusory and physical deflections of their geometry. By so doing, they expand Judd's concept, by demonstrating the potential for implied duality and perceived variance to exist within a singular, unified, and specific form.

This research project was founded on the cultural and environmental context of Kenya, with reference to the Giriama Vigango, commemorative grave posts of the Gohu secret society, and the transformation of this information into contemporary sculpture. This arose from studying African artifacts in UK museums, as other European artists bad done, resulting in an examination of the formal characteristics alone. This stage was supported by a literature search of both fine art and anthropological approaches to African art. Through these factors, the lack of contextual knowledge was manifest, and therefore fieldwork became a necessity, in order to consider the symbolic and functional aspects of the posts in their original context This approach has rarely been considered by artists in the West, illustrated by the views of Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Serra, who suggested it was advantageous to the artist not to know about the context of an ethnographic artifact to make artwork. Subsequently, I undertook a six-week field trip to Kenya in 1999 to document and record the Vigango. This experience brought about a change of focus from the artifacts to questions of visual context. As a result, the African context, the use of materials and constructions plus conceptual aspects of ritualistic importance came to the fore. On return to the UK, I began the process of synthesising these observations into my art practice. The cross-cultural dynamics of the work that I was creating began to suggest further questions about context, cultural binaries and cultural interaction. In the studio, I constructed 'Shelter', a tunnel-shaped construction of human dimensions made of clay and sticks. This work located the local African vernacular architecture as a central focus for the artwork. In the transposition of my understanding of art practice from continent to continent, I started to move away from working with organic and natural materials and started to experiment with industrial materials. Upon analysis, it became clear that commonalities as well as juxtapositions were emerging, thus highlighting questions of interpretation and re-interpretation. I then explored issues of artistic transposition by relocating my own explorations to the African context for review. The key stage here was the reconstruction of the 'Panels' at the National Museum of Kenya, Nairobi, in the 'Crossing Boundaries' exhibition (2001). The responses to this work led up to the final series of three full-scale structures created as fragments of 'Walls'. The studio practice revealed the salient theme of concealed and revealed elements inherent in the semiotic values of the materials and forms. Encompassed in this was reversal with the binary oppositions of interior/ exterior, absence/ presence, solid/ void, horizontal/ vertical and positive / negative, however taking a Post-Structuralist stance. The photographs, initially an important part of the recording process and taken from the sculptural work, became significant as artwork in their own right displayed as large digital prints. These were subsequently exhibited at the Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies, London (2003) under the title 'Concealed/revealed', in order to gather an informed response to the work from a Western audience.