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Sampling the Self: A Fragmented Landscape

Brenda Factor

Master of Fine Arts

2009

College of Fine Arts, UNSW

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Contents

Originality Statement 3

Acknowledgements 4

Abstract 5

List of images 6

Introduction 8

Section One 15

The Fragmented Body – The Landscape of Self

Section Two 26

The Fragmented Memory – The Multiple as Memory

Conclusion 34

Endnotes 38

Bibliography 40

Appendix 1 – Installation images from MFA exhibition,

The Sampled Self, COFAspace, 10 - 13 November, 2009 46

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisors Wendy Parker and Associate Professor

Leong Chan for their support during the course of my MFA. They were

unfailingly encouraging and generous with their time and feedback, and I

greatly appreciated their input.

Friends and family are called upon to provide support in many forms. I would

like to thank, in particular: my parents Frances and Mendel, my friends Lisa

Bluthal, Clare Gillfeather, Susan Watson, Fiona Hooton and Catrina Vignando.

The encouragement provided by my dear friend Dr Julie Marcus for this project

and others, over the past twenty years, has been invaluable.

My source of inspiration for embarking on this research degree, and indeed for

pursuing a creative life, is my partner Dr Sally Clarke. Without the myriad

support she provided none of this would have been possible.

I am also grateful for an Australian Postgraduate Award, which provided

valuable financial support.

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Abstract The central theme of Sampling the Self: A Fragmented Landscape is the notion

of the fractured or fragmented self and its repeated reinvention through the

context of artistic intervention. The aim of the studio research project has been

to develop a body of work which functions as a vehicle for multiple readings of

self and explores the notion of the fractured self - body and memory - via

metaphoric devices such as fragmentation, repetition and reconfiguration.

In pursuing this theme I conceptualise a new visual vocabulary of self as

fragmented, fluid, mutable and ultimately elusive. In my body of work I set out to

create a dialogue of self – self in some of its many manifestations – that relies

on multiple configurations of memory, body and identity. Repetition is used as a

metaphor of both a fragmented memory and a fragmented self. Within the

context of my installation works the multiple signifies loss or absence and

functions as a memory fragment, a materialisation of how one event has so

many differently remembered versions, within the archaeology of memory.

The final outcome of this research project is a coherent body of studio research;

tangible artworks which are metaphoric, sometimes personal, at other time

collective, explorations of the idea of the self and its many facets, and which

were displayed at COFAspace in 2009. The purpose of this accompanying

written research document is to provide a critical examination of the studio

research produced for this Master of Fine Arts (MFA) project.

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LIST OF IMAGES SECTION ONE 25 - 26

Fig. 1a. Joshua Reynolds, Master Crewe (1772 -1835) as Henry VII, 1776, oil on canvas, 137 x 112 cm Fig. 1b. Brenda Factor, Untitled, 2007, aluminium, spray paint, 68 x 102 cm Fig. 2a Romaine Brooks, Emile d’Erlanger, La Baronne, c.1924, oil on canvas, 41 7/8 x 34 in Fig. 2b Brenda Factor, Pink as …., 2007, aluminium, , spray paint, 68 x 102 cm Fig. 3a Unidentified artist, Pocahontas, 1616, oil on canvas, 77.5 x 64.8 cm Fig. 3b Brenda Factor, Sorry as I…., 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 51 x 68 cm Fig. 3c Brenda Factor, Sorry as II…., 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 51 x 68 cm Fig. 4a Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog, late 1590s, oil on canvas, 44 7/8 x 37 in. Fig. 4b Brenda Factor, Untitled, 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 51 x 68 cm Fig. 4c Brenda Factor, Untitled, 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 34 x 85 cm Fig 4d Brenda Factor, Untitled, 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 25 x 120 cm Fig 5a Marie-Elénore Godefroid, The Sons of Marshall Ney, 1810, oil on canvas, 63 � x 70 1/8 in Fig. 5b Brenda Factor, Untitled, 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 51 x 85 cm Fig. 6a Louise Bourgeois, Torso/Self Portrait, bronze and plaster, c1963 -1964

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Fig. 6b Brenda Factor, After Louise B, 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 68 x 204 cm Fig. 7 Brenda Factor, Untitled, 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 75 x 75 cm Fig. 8a Frida Kahlo, The Little Deer, 1946, oil on masonite, 9 x 12 in Fig. 8b Brenda Factor, To Frida with Love, 2009, aluminium, spray paint, 50 x 175 cm Fig. 9a Felix Nussbaum, Self-Portrait with Jewish Identity Card, 1943, oil on canvas, 56 x 49 cm Fig. 9b Brenda Factor, For Felix, 2009, aluminium, spray paint, 119 x 34 cm

SECTION TWO 33 - 34

Fig. 10 Brenda Factor, Family Portrait (detail), 2008/2009, silicone, size variable

Fig. 11 Brenda Factor, In memory of … (detail), 2008/2009, silicone, pins, size variable Fig. 12 Takashi Murakami, DOB’s March, 1995, acrylic on canvas mounted on board, 27 9/16 x 39 3/8 in Fig. 13 Takashi Murakami, Time Bokan - blue, 2001, acrylic on canvas mounted on board, 70 7/8 x 70 7/8 in Fig. 14 Katharina Fritsch, Rat King, polyester and paint, 1993 Fig. 15 Allan McCollum, Over Ten Thousand Individual Works, 1987/88, enamel on hydrocal, 5.1 cm diameter each, length variable

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Introduction

This document accompanies the body of work produced during this studio

research project and draws out the meanings behind my art practice, my

methodology of making and elucidates the ways in which my ideas have

developed and evolved over the past two years. It is through the process of

�unpicking� my studio work conceptually that I have been able to articulate my

project - Sampling the Self: A Fragmented Landscape

Research Project Objectives

The central theme of Sampling the Self: A Fragmented Landscape is that of the

notion of the fractured or fragmented self and its repeated reinvention through

the context of artistic intervention. In exploring this theme I conceptualise a new

visual vocabulary that reflects on the multiplicity of self; a self that is

fragmented, fluid, constantly changing and ultimately elusive. Throughout this

project I use the concept of multiplicity itself to undermine the singularity of

familiar narratives, both in a personal and collective sense.

This paper focuses on the ways in which my work functions as vehicles for

multiple readings of the self. In my body of work I set out to create a dialogue of

self – self in some of its many manifestations – as self-portrait or as a reflection

of a collective self. It is a self that relies on multiple configurations of memory,

body and identity. The final outcome is a body of work which is itself

fragmented, the sum of many parts yet by its very nature, tangible and

complete.

The Unknown Self

As the notion of self is the key theme of this project it is important to offer a

definition of this term within my context. From the outset it is critical to note that

�the self� is in itself a vast, and often contested subject area – within the fields of

psychology and philosophy. The variety of understandings of self – from a

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feminist perspective1 to a Jungian viewpoint - for example, indicate the

malleability of the self and its ability to isolate, converge, to be projected and to

be invented and exploited. Within my context as a maker I have selected the

meanings that most resonate with me – and in this context I define the self as

constructed and mutable – ever changing, fragmenting and reconfiguring. In

this way personal - and by extension - collective narratives are created and

performed. My understanding of self also embraces �collectivity, and while

acknowledging that identity to some extent necessitates difference and

differentiation, I also hope to articulate a sense of collective or shared narrative.

Memory, identity, and the self are all constructs, and as such, open to

negotiation. The self is not something that is contained only within the body but

something that can be shared communally and culturally.

Intrinsic to the notion of self is the way it is expressed: verbally, textually,

gesturally, visually and through the continuous representations or performances

of the body. The self and identity is expressed in ever changing permutations to

all the senses. The self is elusive. Can it ever be known?

My background

Like everyone, I come to any artistic project the sum of many parts. In choosing

this thematic exploration I am integrating my own personal trajectory – as a

social historian and curator, and more recently as a designer and visual artist –

and the accumulation of ideas and experience that accompanies this path into

this body of work. Fragments of life and experience reconstruct a new whole.

Like the work of many artists, this work contains autobiographical elements -

ideas of story telling, autobiography and remembering inform my work at many

levels. In the 2007 exhibition, eye to �I� – the self in recent art, Geoffrey Wallis

describes how many of the artists in the show view the idea of visual

autobiography and states that:

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..this genre is clearly undergoing a radical transformation as artists push

at its edges, introduce a range of new media and generally explore all

the options for self investigation available to them.2

I like the notion of pushing at edges – but in my work I take that further – I am

interested in the collapsing of boundaries – through fragmentation and

fracturing - to develop my own vocabulary of visual autobiography.

These ideas operate as a vehicle, a kind of short hand for an artistic exploration

of personal and collective narratives - the shattering of self – and the reuniting –

as our sense of self is constantly transforming and evolving. In my work the

landscape of self moves from the notion of the �I�, to that of the �we�.

In effect autobiographical telling is performative: it enacts the “self” that it

claims has given rise to an “I”. And that “I” is neither unified nor stable – it

is fragmented, provisional, multiple and in process.3

Project Underpinnings

This project initially grew out of an interest in repetition and multiples.

I was – and continue to be – drawn to the multiple ways that repetition can be

read: to the ways that multiple objects are produced and then grouped to

transform meanings and ways of seeing a work. And when massed together,

multiples have a transformative and disruptive power, undermining singular

meanings or narratives.

Within the context of this research project I use repetition as signifier of both

memory and the collective self. By this I mean that repetition, multiples,

copying and appropriation act as metaphor and vehicle for an exploration of the

self – both as personal narrative and collective identity. In terms of my project,

I came to realise that my interest in massed, often cast objects, was in evoking

a sense of a familiar memory, while simultaneously distorting it. At the same

time I use cast multiples to signify absence from the original and to stand in as a

type of shard or fragment in the archaeology of memory.

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One branch of my project then, has been to investigate the development and

production of similar, repeated objects that are grouped together to create an

environment or installation. These cast objects operate as reminders of

fragmented memories; when massed together they become a signifier of the

absent original and the fragility – and multiplicity – of memory.

Another aspect of my project is concerned with the way in which images

themselves can operate as multiples – reproduced and copied time and time

again. While I am aware of Appropriation art as a movement of the 1980s and

within its more contemporary context today, I am specifically interested in

�sampling� existing images as a link to the past, to memories of the past which

can be broken down and reconfigured as a metaphor for the self. My work

therefore relies heavily on a type of �sampling� within the context of

�postproduction� – a type of contemporary appropriation of sound and images,

which has been around in music for a number of years, and which is also

current in contemporary visual arts.

While the notion of postproduction may be seen as a tool infiltrating much art

production rather than any radical subversion of historical images, Nicholas

Bourriaud in his book Postproduction, writes that

Postproduction artists invent new uses for works, including audio and

visual forms of the past, with their own construction. But they also reedit

historical or ideological narratives, inserting the elements that compose

them into alternative scenarios.4

And it is this development of an alternate scenario with new meanings that

makes the idea of sampling both as tool and concept so appealing within the

context of my work.

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Sources and influences

In the development of this research project it has been essential to read widely

and to engage with the works of numerous contemporary artists. Many of their

ideas, either explicitly stated or those that I have read into their work, have

informed the development of this project.

The art movements or art �ideas� I have examined include: Pop and Post Pop,

Appropriation (from the 1980s to currently), Multiples, the Uncanny, Post

Production and the Super Flat Movement. While I draw on many of the ideas

contained within these thematic movements, my work does not identify solely

with any. Instead I sample both ideas and images to develop and visually

articulate a landscape of self.

In order to locate my research project I have looked at and read about the work

of the following contemporary artists: Sturtevant, Cindy Sherman, Mike Kelley,

Louise Lawler, Kiki Smith, the Chapman Brothers, Allan McCollum, Takashi

Murakami and Katharina Fritsch.

It is the work of the latter three artists that has been of the most interest to me,

and with whom I find the strongest resonances. Murakami, for the super flat

and colourful nature of the work that can easily allow the deeper meanings to be

lost. Fritsch for the way she plays with scale and multiples to create a sense of

the uncanny, again masked by the very solid and tangible nature of her work.

McCollum, for his articulation of the ways in which multiples can function as

vehicles for his elegant ideas and for the way in which he uses quotidian

objects; transforming them through both volume and scale into very meaningful

pieces.

It is not my intention to provide a detailed reading of specific artist�s work. It is

simply not possible or desirable in a paper of this length. Instead, where

relevant as in, for example, the work of Murakami or McCollum, I discuss these

artists in relation to a specific idea or concept within my own work.

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The Body of work

Over the course of this studio based MFA I have developed a coherent body of

work that aims to develop a visual vocabulary of the fragmented or fractured

self, and can be divided into two branches, both growing from the seed of

repetition. Both of which utilises existing images and objects as a starting point

for an exploration of issues such as identity, memory and personal and

collective narratives. And while both share many ideas, the embedded

meanings are divergent.

Each section of this document explores a different type of work that in turn is a

vehicle for a fragmented idea or an idea fragment. These sections examine the

concepts that are embodied within my work, teasing out the theoretical

underpinnings and context both art historically, and against the backdrop of

contemporary artists whose work, I believe, resonates with mine.

In the first section of this paper, The Fragmented Body – the Landscape of Self,

I examine the studio work produced during the course of the MFA which

explores the idea of the fractured or fragmented self. These works become a

metaphor for a fracturing – and repairing - of self, and they, together with the

other fragmented work I present in this project reflect the fluid and constantly

changing nature of narratives, both personal and collective. I also explore the

idea of the �original�, and the transformative nature of the �copy�. I look at the

role of the portrait and self-portrait as a starting point for much of my work –

which becomes the context for a type of historical destruction and a renewal

through reworking that history in a reconfigured and contemporary piece.

The second section of this paper, Memory Fragments - the Multiple as Memory

reflects on the way the multiple can exist as a metaphor for the multiplicity of

memory. These form the basis for an exploration of the idea of a collective

memory and also signify absence from both the original and the whole body.

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Memory is a construct, constantly changing and reinvented. In my work, each

small object – for example a cropped head – can be read as a memory

fragment, a materialisation of how one event has so many differently

remembered versions.

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Section One

The Fragmented Body - the Landscape of Self

She was neither naive nor solipsistic; rather, she took the totality of her life --

politics, history, race, her country, her lovers, the reality of her physical

condition -- and painted it through the space of her own body. That her body

was horrifically injured is at the centre of her world, but that does not make

her world partial and personal, any more than the broken body of Christ

makes Christianity partial or personal to me. The body is both experience

and metaphor. The broken body of Frida Kahlo has been too long

understood as experience and overlooked as metaphor. The autobiography

is there -- how could it not be? The metaphor carries the paintings forward,

into the true territory of art, which is always both personal and universal at

the same time.5

Like Kahlo, I am interested in expressing the universality of experiences

through a personal exploration of self – however unlike Kahlo my work does not

use my own body as its defining imagery, rather it samples others bodies – and

by extension, others experiences, to develop a particularized visual landscape.

This visual landscape is protean, and does not need to be fixed in any one

configuration. Like the landscape in both reality (nature) and imagination (art) it

is constantly changing, always fluid and open to so many interpretations.

Thus a major focus of this research project has been to explore the ways in

which it is possible to create a body of work that reflects on the nature of the

self as fragmented, mutable and unknown. To produce works which are the

visual representation of the fractured nature of the self, and which allude to the

multiplicity of being.

The Sampled Body

In this section I discuss the works in the Fragmented Body series in relation to

the ideas of ‘postproduction’, autobiography and the collective self.

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In making this work I began with the idea of the portrait and self-portrait, and the

ideas embodied within these. Since I wanted to reflect on the nature of self,

portraits – and particularly self-portraits - were an obvious and enticing subject.

Firstly, portraiture is a long and established art genre with an accompanying

body of analysis, from many viewpoints. The one which interests me the most

is a feminist critique, as it offers up the idea of the male gaze, while the

performative nature of self portraiture is multi layered and textured. Thus artists

like Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman perform their bodies to create new

versions of self as ‘other’. They do this without being necessarily

autobiographical – in fact Sherman rejects this explicitly:

It has nothing at all to do with me. I work with myself, that’s my material

somehow, but the finished photograph has something more to offer than

reflections of my “personality” … My photos are certainly not self-portraits

or representation of myself, although unfortunately people always keep

saying they are.6

My artworks sample both well-known and unknown portraits or self-portraits,

which are real or imagined reflections of self and others. By their very nature

portraits are the end product of intense scrutiny. Self-portraits are the product

of a type of internal, autobiographical and psychological scrutiny. The

Fragmented Body series of works takes this scrutiny and deflects it back,

shattering the notion of a fixed idea of self. In my pieces portraiture as an

individual reflection of self transforms into a collective landscape of self.

Within these works the idea of self is masked by bright colours and flatness.

The very flatness of the works initially suggests that little meaning is contained

within the piece. It is after all a work without visual depth. However, like the

work of Takashi Murakami and other Super Flat artists, the flat, brightly

coloured surfaces can be a device used to belie the meanings contained within

a cute or graphic surface.

Yet in spite of its almost self-deprecating etymology, “Superflat” is far

from unnuanced or superficial and has cracked open the discourse about

contemporary Japanese culture and society…. Like a Japanese

transformer toy, it has the capacity to move and bend to engage a wide

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range of issues: from proposing formal historical connections between

classic Japanese art and the anime cartoons of today to a Pop Art-like

cross-contamination of high and low to a social critique of contemporary

mores and motivations.7

Rather than being empty works, the flatness and colour of my works is another

way that embodied memory – and meaning - can be hidden and disguised.

For me, sampling existing imagery which already contains so many of the

issues which circulate around portrayals of the self is a clear statement about

the fluid nature of the self – it borrows from the subjects’ own narratives to

create a new story, albeit one with many versions.

The Fragmented Body series ‘samples’ existing portraits and objects in order to

create entirely new images of self. Each work has been created from individual

piece or panels of aluminium: the final work is made up of multiple panels –

ranging from six to forty eight pieces. These very flat, 2 dimensional wall works

are made from spray painted aluminium. Each individual panel is a partial

image of a larger sampled portrait: the panel is saw pierced by hand – as the

image is disassembled and reassembled – like a jigsaw puzzle.

These works function as multiples because of the ‘copy’ that is embedded

within the work, and because I have created them as works made up of multiple

panels – the positioning of which is entirely negotiable. Thus each work

contains multiple options with no fixed placement: the idea manifests in pieces

that can be arranged and rearranged. These works become a metaphor for a

fracturing – and repairing - of self, and they, together with the other fragmented

work I present in this project reflect the fluid and constantly changing nature of

narratives, both personal and collective. Thus the pieces I have made in this

series are both fragmented and interchangeable

Another aspect of my project is concerned with the way in which images

themselves can operate as multiples – reproduced and copied time and time

again. The series of flat aluminium wall works – fragmented portraits of inner

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landscapes - engage with the way that copies are repeated until their meaning

is broken down, fractured and given newly acquired meanings. I make this

explicit in the way that I treat these images so they become completely

unrecognisable in relation to the original. However like the sampling in music,

there is an element of familiarity about my flat wall works – it is just that they are

so very far removed from the original that the notion of familiarity is newly

constructed. My work therefore relies heavily on a type of ‘sampling’ within the

context of ‘postproduction’ – a type of contemporary appropriation of sound and

images, which has been around in music for a number of years, and which is

also current in contemporary visual arts.

Making making explicit

It is difficult to discuss my work without articulating a methodology of making,

thus providing a link to the conceptual nature of the work.

Underpinning my studio work is the idea of the ‘original’, and the transformative

nature of the copy. To make any of these works – from the fragmented body

works to the cameos, I need an original – or at the very least a copy of an

original. I am not a maker who draws or sculpts from a blank slate; instead I

photocopy, trace, take a mould and cast. I am an unashamed sampler.

In our daily lives the gap that separates production and consumption

narrows each day. We can produce a musical work without being able to

play a note of music by making use of existing records.8

The idea of the craft of making is embedded within this work, as it is no doubt

explicit (even if it is explicitly rejected) in most artwork. However my laboured

use of jewellery techniques signals an exploration of the space that lies

between craft and painting. The production of these works is my version of

drawing and painting. Rowena Dring, an artist utilising traditionally craft based

techniques - machine stitched appliqué to create large scale paintings -

describe this as:

… my work isn’t about blurring the boundaries between art and craft: its

about redefining painting and addressing the politics of representation in

a way that is relevant to me.9

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The use of hand saw piercing is the link between the handmade and the final

‘slick’ outcome. The sleekness of the work belies the nature of the process, yet

on closer examination the viewer is able to see the flaws in the line work, little

mistakes as I turn a corner with my saw, the way that no two pieces, although

abstracted from the same images, traced from the same outline, are ever the

same. Thus the copy is distorted, time and time again, overlaid with a new

meaning far from its origins. In a similar way the painted surfaces of the work,

spray-painted using spray cans - often in imperfect conditions (outside in the

elements, inside a poorly maintained spray booth) are never perfect. Instead

they are stippled, pockmarked, sometimes blemished, with an occasional dog

hair for good measure. This lack of perfection is an important part of the work

too, to separate it from the industrial uniformity of, for example the automotive

perfection of Patricia Piccinini’s Autoerotic series (2002)10. My panels (and the

cast silicone heads) are portraits, albeit – the familiar made unfamiliar and back

again to the familiar. This is best demonstrated in the responses they elicit – Is

that a map, a face, some type of animal? As our brains try to make sense of an

abstracted image – to name it and give it some familiarity.

But is this work autobiographical?

…. ideas of what is actually meant by the self have varied and still do

vary considerably. They range from an imaginary coherent and

autonomous self to one that is composed of many fragments – an idea of

self that relieves the biographer of the need to tell their whole life story.11

I have chosen to work with portraits and self-portraits because I am interested in

the idea of personal stories embedded within these images. Thus each of the

works contains two types of narratives: that contained in the original painting,

and that produced by me, when I choose the original image, copy it and

manipulate it. This introduces my ongoing interest in personal narratives, and

although it is not my intention to make my own narrative explicit within the

context of this paper, it is useful to contextualise this interest within my own

background. This can then be extrapolated to the art works themselves.

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As the child of a Holocaust survivor I grew up with an enduring sense of loss,

an awareness of those absences, the gaping holes in family, and the

dysfunction great and enduring traumas can create. As I became older I was

drawn to the stories of others, and eventually worked as an oral historian, social

historian and curator with a particular interest in the stories of marginalised

groups. I was trying to make sense of the world, and often the act of recording

a life story, while it usually contained sadness and trauma, also contained hope

and renewal, particularly through the second generation. The act of telling

personal narratives was redemptive, transformative and by its very definition,

life affirming.

At the same time, working within the discourse of history, particularly in the

1980s, a great deal was written and debated about the accuracy and veracity of

personal stories. This implied that primary texts written either

contemporaneously or later were completely factual, rather than something

already transformed through the act of recounting.

In my studio work I make explicit that my primary source, in this case a painting

or sculpture, is no more a true rendering of a person than a written account of a

battle is a true rendering of that battle – it is filtered, selective and coloured by

the convention of the day. Rather like my new version of historical portraits and

self-portraits. They are simply weighted differently. I expand upon this idea in

Section Two in which I discuss the cast installations or memory fragments.

In self-portraits I am interested in exploring the idea that there is a moment of a

fixed sense of self – which is embodied by the maker. A sense that almost

immediately changes and fragments.

The fragmentation or chopping of the body has occurred throughout the history

of its representation in art. Images produced by the camera brought significant

change to the structure of paintings and the nature of representation by

introducing the possibilities of cropping. The images I create form part of a

historical succession of methodologies that have eventually led to the

fragmentation and complete disintegration of the body. Carravagio’s

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representation of severed limbs, through to the photo-cropped body as

represented in the work of Degas, provide precursors to the fragmented and

flattened body represented in my own works. In my artworks bodies become

fragmented and the parts reconfigured to such a degree that they are no longer

recognizable. The suggestion of body parts remains, yet strangely, perhaps not

those of the original subject. The audience is invited to engage with

regenerated parts, reconditioned through the process of tracing, flattening,

fragmenting, erasing, cutting, compartmentalising and rearranging. The

reconstruction of the original body from these parts becomes impossible; while

some parts are repeated throughout the reconstructive process others are

completely eliminated. The relationship of my final image to the original can be

read in a number of ways.

The fragmentation of the body can refer to the transformation of the body from a

solid being to its representation through modern technologies such as, for

example, digital media and the ability of images to pass through cyberspace.

On a personal level, the fragmentation of the body forms an expressive tool to

describe the fragmentation of the self as it stands within a fragmenting world

and cultural dislocation.

The collective self

In trying to locate this work within current discourse, I would argue that this work

is partly a personal exploration of identity and self, but also an exploration of a

collective identity. The Fragmented Body series explores the notion of the

individual, while at the same time each work is a vehicle for engaging with the

idea of collective life journeys.

The more I explore the conceptual nature of these works, the more I come to

realise that my family history, in a collective sense, is contained within these

new narratives.

My background as a social historian with a strong interest in the movements of

people – waves of migration and in particular serial migration, provides a link to

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the ways in which my works can be read. Migrants and refugees constantly

reinvent their understandings of the world. While a strong sense of self

remains, I would argue that, without conscious thought, individuals reorganise

their inner landscape. It might be out of rhythm initially, but it is extraordinary

the ways in which people are able to able to adapt to a new location.

I have a United Kingdom grandparent’s visa in an old passport that allowed me

to live and work in London for two years in the 1980s. The story of how this

came about is a potent example of the destabilising nature of serial migration I

reference within my artworks (embedded meanings).

Sometime in the 1890s my maternal grandfather’s parents fled the pogroms in

Russia and made their way to London, where my grandfather, Simon Binofsky,

was born in the East End in 1891. Leaving London at the age of two, my

grandfather and his family travelled to New York, arriving at Ellis Island where

the Binofsky family were transformed into the Smith family. In 1912 the now

married Simon followed other family members to Australia where he eventually

settled. Several generations later we are disconnected from these original

roots, the family is fragmented across continents, but a narrative thread

remains.

That ability to transform, to pick up the pieces and put them back together is a

trope that I explore within my work.

Sampling the subjects – a description of the work

The works in the Fragmented Body series are made from uniform aluminium

panels. The size of the panels ranges from 17 x 17cm to 25 x 25 cm. Each

panel is saw pierced by hand and the size of each individual panel is dictated by

the span of my saw frame. The largest square panels (25 x 25cm) are the

upper limit for hand saw piercing; beyond that the pieces would need to be laser

cut.

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To make these works I first select the paintings I intend to sample. I then

enlarge the image on a photocopier, trace around the image by hand, take

elements from the original image and then glue tracing paper onto the

aluminium panel, before saw piercing each piece. In this way I construct an

image, then deconstruct it by cutting it into jigsaw like pieces. These are then

colour coded, undercoated, sprayed with enamel or acrylic paint, then

reconstructed and backed to another aluminium plate.

Each �completed� panel can be further reconfigured by its placement – it can be

arranged to make up a �complete� image or can be manipulated to make up a

new image. In this case the idea of the multiple is retained within the work and

refers to the multiplicity of options. There is no end point, no correct

arrangement for the work; it is negotiated by the arranger whether in the

domestic or gallery space.

I am very interested in the �never endednesss� of countless variations.

Arrangement then is a most important methodological consideration in this body

of work.

Since I am quite consciously ‘sampling’ the images for my own work, meanings

embedded in the sampled portraits and self-portraits are not a primary concern.

It is rather what they represent that is of interest and I am very aware that I

have projected onto the portraits and self-portraits my own personal narrative.

The first work (fig. 1b) in the series of wall panels uses the image of a Joshua

Reynolds’s painting Master Crewe (1772 -1835) as Henry VII12 (fig. 1a). I was

drawn to this image because, in its subject matter, it represents a type of

facsimile, a child dressed as an adult. It was here too that I worked through the

literal and began to chop up the image. Less abstracted than my later works,

the dog is recognisable as a part dog. Here I use repeated motifs, and a limited

palette of green, pink and blue. It was at this point that the ideas of how I could

work with multiples in a less literal way began to emerge.

24

In the next work I take a very striking portrait by Romaine Brooks (fig. 2a) -

Emile d’Erlanger, La Baronne I, c 192413 copy it, fragment it and paint each

panel in a variety of pinks. The resulting work, Pink as…. (fig. 2b) references my

relationship to this colour and the way it is emblematic of: femininity,

queerness, rudeness and discomfort. Clearly unrecognisable, Romaine Brooks’

portrait mutates into landscapes, pseudo anatomical drawings and whatever

else the viewer sees in the work.

A 1616 portrait of Pocahontas by an unidentified artist shows her uncomfortable

in European finery14 (fig. 3a). This discomfort is reflected in simplified

abstraction shapes of the cut-outs, and my choice of discordant yellows and

pinks (fig. 3b) in the first work and pinks and green in the second (fig. 3c). The

outsider status of the subject is echoed by the way in which the colours vibrate

and repel and attract at the same time.

Lavinia Fontana provides the next portrait to sample, with the work Portrait of a

Lady with a Lapdog, late 1590s (fig. 4a).15 Rather grim and dark, the Lady is

resplendent in pearls and intricate lace. In my work she is transformed through

colour, firstly in a series of blue and green, and green and blue works (figs. 4b

and 4c), and then in a work made up of larger rectangular panels (fig. 4d). This

work marks a departure in making, as I take one element (seen in the first panel

on the left) and trace, rework and further abstract in each of the ensuing panels.

This way of moving even further away from the sampled image is something

that I plan to explore more fully in future works.

The Sons of Marshall Ney by Marie-Elénore Godefroid, 1810 (fig. 5a) is a family

portrait, with smartly attired children, the swords and other paraphernalia

referencing the father’s occupation as a military man.16 I transform this work

through fragmentation and the use of lolly like colours into a cartoonish,

childlike piece (fig. 5b).

The largest work I have produced to date –made up of 48 panels - is based on

Louise Bourgeois’ Torso/Self Portrait, (fig. 6a).17 While this sculpture is bronze

coated in plaster, the reproduction I based my work on is unrecognisable as

25

metal. In order to reflect the discomforting, somehow visceral work I move

away from earlier colours and explore pastels. The resulting work, After Louise

B (fig. 6b) is softened and feminised in a way none of my earlier work is. There

is, however, still something bodily about the work.

In the next work (fig. 7) I progress to larger panels – squares of 25 x 25cm, the

upper limit for hand saw piercing. These works use elements from the

preceding works – and operate as both individual panels, or can be grouped

together with other disparate panels. They refer back to the constant

repositioning of personal narratives – the overlaying of experiences and the

shifts that are constantly occurring.

In the next work, To Frida with Love (fig. 8b) I continue to use the larger format

panels to create the largest single work in this series. In this work each panel

can: stand alone, be separated by space but contained within a group, or

massed together. The work specifically references ‘the body as both experience

and metaphor’18 via its original source – The Little Deer by Frida Kahlo19 (fig.

8a).

Sometimes I come across an image that is so personally confronting that the

process of sampling it and transforming it into a colourful, flat piece is both

challenging and discomforting. Felix Nussbaum’s Self-Portrait with Jewish

Identity Card is such an image (fig. 9a). After years of living and painting

underground, he created the self-portrait only a few months before being taken,

together with his wife, to Auschwitz, where he perished.20 In this context my

sampled work is filled with great sadness (fig. 9b). However it is doubtful that

this layer of meaning can be read into the work without the prior knowledge of

its source. This work, more than any within the series, links to the ideas

explored in the next section, of my works acting as memorials, or memory

fragments.

26

Section Two

The Fragmented Memory - The multiple as memory

All artists know how every symbolic object exists in some way to re-

present that which is not present, that which is absent, that which is

gone, that which is beyond recall. And I think that making as many molds

and casts as I've made has worked symbolically for me as a kind of

attempt to master my own apprehensions about death and absence. I've

come to feel that a cast object quite automatically functions as a symbol

for an absent original model, for instance, in a way that is especially

visceral. Every cast re-creates an absent model, and every cast is

invested with the specific absence of its own “lost object,” so to speak,

even as it serves as an uncanny recreation of that object.21

From the beginning of this research project I have been drawn to the idea of the

multiple, and to those artists like Allan McCollum who use multiples and

particularly cast multiples. This interest has been long standing and has been

explored over the years in my jewellery practice. It was again piqued when

visiting Anthony Gormley�s Asian Field, an installation for the 2006 Sydney

Biennale. As a work it was fascinating – different yet similar objects, made by

different hands, but which massed together was powerful and moving. And it

made me begin to think about the ways in which I wanted to work – rather than

being constrained by size as a jeweller, I wanted to explore the ways individual

small pieces could be massed together, transformed through the use of colour

and material, to create installations replete with new meanings and readings. It

was in the process of making my cast silicone multiples that I came to

understand why I have used this device in my work, and its significance within

my current practice.

It is interesting to look at the way artists like McCollum and Katharina Fritsch

use repetition to alter meanings and perceptions. These artists do not simply

27

copy and repeat, they copy, subvert and transform meaning. And that is what I

hope to do in my own studio-based research.

The Fragmented Memory

In this section I look at the installations of cast multiples I have been making as

part of this research project (figs. 10 and 11). I discuss the ways in which, for

me, they come to symbolise memory and loss, and examine the relationship

between the multiples I make and notions of absence to which Allan McCollum

refers above. I look at the way my groupings of cast pieces operate as memory

fragments of both an absent original and a �past� memory. For me, absence is

very much intertwined with memory, and I am interested in exploring how it is

possible to make memory tangible. Within these works repetition is used as a

signifier of both a fragmented memory and a fragmented self. After all what is

the self without memory?

I also discuss how it is possible for artworks to be signifiers of trauma and loss

on both a very personal and wider level and as a transformative memorial, a

type of memento mori. In Section One of this paper, The Fragmented Body -

Landscape of Self I try to make sense of the personal - and collective -

fragmenting of self; in this body of work I try to articulate a language for both

absent and reinterpreted memories, and create works which act as metaphors

for traumatic and incomprehensible loss. That the works presented here are

clearly not sombre memorials, instead are bright and humorous, reflects the

way in which �cuteness� in art can act as a counterpoint to trauma: the trauma

is masked by tangibility, bright colours and invite new ways of readings.

In considering this notion – portraying a traumatic past using seemingly

humorous or cute imagery, the works of Takashi Murakami and in particular

several recurring motifs are illustrative of this idea. It seems to me that much of

Murakami�s work is concerned with creating images which simultaneously invite

and repel - the viewer is drawn in by bright colours, the seemingly simplicity of

the flat work, or the cartoonish style of his sculpture, only to take a step back

28

into discomfort. This is evident in his repeated subject DOB (fig. 12) 22, a �cute�

cartoon like character. In an essay accompanying the 2008 exhibition �

Murakami, Paul Schimmel writes:

How DOB came into existence and what it symbolizes are two different

things; what began as a flat, humorous, benign character morphed into

one who can be alternately monstrous, irrefutably dark, and frighteningly

aggressive, while simultaneously evoking cuteness.23

Another motif or subject Murakami repeats is that of the atomic bomb in a series

of works called Time Bokan (fig.13)24, naming it for an anime series he watched

as a youth. Murakami�s preoccupation with the American influence on post war

Japan is well documented: it is not surprising that the atomic bomb motif

features so frequently in his work as his mother grew up in the city that was

meant to have been bombed, saved only by cloud cover on the day.25

According to Dick Hebdige Murakami explains one component of his

… theory and practice of Superflat, a connotatively nomadic concept

that he uses at different times to refer to any combination of the following

…. [v] the ground-zero flattening if Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the

nuclear strikes of 1945.26

In contrast to this, the imagery I select for my work is not explicitly

representational of trauma, rather it is benign; my aim is to draw people in

through the use of colour and humour. My work lacks the transparency of easy

readings – the meanings are filtered, and like the surface of the works, opaque.

They are fed by specific meanings and intentions; and while the unpacking of

this conceptually is essential for this document, it is not my intention to do that

in the context of, for example, an exhibition.

The works

One branch of my project then, has been to investigate the development and

production of similar, repeated objects that are grouped or massed together to

create an environment or installation.

29

One reason I make massed, cast objects, is because I want to evoke a sense of

a familiar memory, while at the same time distorting it. The cast multiple also

becomes a metaphor for absence.

The quote by McCollum at the beginning of this section elucidates a number of

issues; it demonstrates how a technical process used in an artist�s practice can

itself be symbolic, thus adding an additional layer of meaning to a work. And it

shows how the inherent act of repetition can in fact be replete with meaning.

By its very nature the act or use of cast multiples refers or touches on the idea

of loss and absence. The loss to which I refer is that of the absent original –

which may or not be extant – and its replacement by a new version. The idea

of loss in this context is perhaps paradoxical, given the fact that creating art

works using moulds produces more and more, not less or fewer than was

started with.

I now understand consciously what previously was intuitive. My preoccupation

with repetition stems from a desire to make sense of a history, a past, and the

way that we as individuals or in a collective sense are located within that past.

This is what the German artist Katharina Fritsch alludes to in her works, working

in copies and multiples, manipulating them through scale and material (fig 14)27.

More overtly disturbing than McCollum, the work relies heavily on a sense of

familiarity, our perceptions distorted through proportion and rigid placement.

Her works have such a presence – while often labelled uncanny they seem

instead to make half remembered stories or narratives passed down through

generations very tangible. Cast multiples, oversized or small and grouped

together – her work perhaps growing out of the idea of fairy tales – it is

somehow creepy as �plays on the tension between reality and apparition,

between the familiar and the surreal or uncanny.�28

Lynne Cooke, writing about Fritsch's monumental (and monumentally

creepy) Rat-King, 1993, argued that this and other of the artist's

30

sculptural works are “neither fetishes nor trophies” but “artifacts devised

to act as catalysts.” The description is apt, for Fritsch's works do seem to

set off a kind of chemical reaction in their viewers. They cue associative

links without necessarily admitting these as their own content and, in

doing so, call attention to the ways in which public and private meanings

act as strange-sometimes incompatible-bedfellows. 29

Allan McCollum�s work, too recalls a lost past – at the same time his multiples

comment on issues such as consumerism, the nature of the art market, and

most recently issues of identity in the Shapes Project. Over the past 35 years

McCollum has developed separate and ongoing series of large scale multiples.

His work uses familiar objects – or quasi familiar objects - in the case of the

10,000 Individual Works (fig. 14)30 and the Surrogate Paintings – �McCollum

has been investigating the problem of the copy with paradoxical originality for

nearly 30 years.�31 Or as in the work Perfect Vehicles, oversized brightly

coloured vases that �were screens onto which the artist, and his various

audiences, were encouraged to project a disparate number of meanings.�32 In

the Shapes Project McCollum sets about developing a series of unique shapes,

one for every person on the planet. All digitally manipulated by hand, the

shapes, massed in their impersonal and identical frames, are described as

�creepy crowd totalitarianism�.33 This is where McCollum crosses into the area of

familiar memory: much of his work initially is taken for something else.

An archaeology of memory – the massed works

As discussed in the previous section of this paper, the use of the multiple in my

work can be read in a number of ways. Within the context of my installation

works the multiple functions, in part, as a signifier of the multiplicity of memory.

In my work, each small object – for example a cropped head – can be read as a

memory fragment, a materialisation of how one event has so many differently

remembered versions. This can happen in both an individual and a collective

way.

31

I would argue that each decapitated animal head, whether in an installation or

worn on the body, signals absence, not only for the original model, but also for

the original animal, and most obviously, for the rest of the body. So both the

subject matter, the way the animal is manipulated and the technical process of

casting are all significant vehicles for the development of these meanings.

The meanings that are contained within a single object are transformed by

massing them in large numbers. Repeated use of these �almost identicals� (my

term for these repeated motifs - for this work it is neither desirable nor possible

to produce exact replicas) subverts the original meaning and allows me, as

artist, and you, as viewer to project new meanings on to the work.

For these installations I have used silicone animal heads (or trophies) that I cast

from a mould taken from a plastic toy animal (figure 10). In a link to the

Fragmented Body series that I discussed in the previous section I also cast a

tacky plastic cameo (which references portraits), again in silicone (figure 11). In

selecting two types of objects to cast I decided to continue on from previous

work with small-scale plastic models - toy animals, and plastic cameos, cheap

and crude versions of the original. Both types of objects are commonplace, and

provoke the familiar, or a memory of childhood (animal heads with a grotesque

twist). In the case of the animal heads, it functions both as trophy and is an

inherent reminder of the absent original.

These multiples can be exhibited in numerous ways, and in another link to my

background as a jeweller, can also be transformed into wearable pieces –

necklaces, of course given their own representations – cropped at the neck.

The use of a cropped head is not coincidental, nor is the repetition of the

cameo. While no doubt bodily memory exists, our brains support our memories.

It is in the head that they are processed, reformulated and remembered. And in

the original form trophies of real animal heads and carved original cameos

32

served as vehicles to remind us of an absent original, (an emperor, a loved

one, a successful hunt) while at the same time functioning as a memento.

The cameos

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.34

I have always been fascinated with films showing English stately homes, with

rows of ancestral portraits. It is almost incomprehensible to me that some

families are able to reach back through the generations and to �know� their

ancestors, and what�s more have very tangible evidence of their pasts: portraits,

the family silver, photograph albums. In contrast in my family there are some

photos on my mother�s side, but in the case of my father, only a very few blurry

images of life in pre war Poland remain.

One of my ongoing interests has been to understand the enormity of tragedy –

how is it possible to portray, and for the viewer to comprehend, the

overwhelming numbers of people who have died in, for example an earthquake,

a tsunami, or through genocide. For me, it has always been about trying to

comprehend the enormity of the Holocaust. Of course this is impossible –

however in trying to imagine how this can be commemorated, say, in art – it�s

made me think about how multiples might function.

The grouping of row after row of cameos function as both a memory fragment

and a type of memorial. I struggle with the task of coming to terms with the

Holocaust in both a historical sense and or in a personal sense – named as I

am for my aunt (Bela) one of many of my father�s immediate family to be killed.

How does one make sense of this, and the rippling effects it has on the

individual, the family and the second generation. I personally doubt that making

sense of this is ever possible – however, for me, the cameo installation does

somehow function as a memorial, a memento mori to lives and memories lost.

33

Of course, a series of rubber cameos does not function as a memorial in its

conventional sense. Even the briefest survey of memorials to large-scale tragic

events35 shows that memorials are sombre places of reflection, they can be

places of beauty, but they are not (and perhaps nor should they be) humorous.

The cameos are a metaphor for the loss via the absent original. Massed

together they operate as a type of personal memorial or memento mori –

combining both a reminder of personal mortality together with a memorial to the

already absent.

In 2005 my father published a book of his memoirs (with the assistance of Julie

Marcus)36. The title of the book, When War Came, very clearly signifies a point

in time when everything changes dramatically, traumatically and forever.

Rather than this book being an opportunity to process these memories and

move forward, my father, like so many people confronted by trauma, is unable

to do that. This is not a value judgement – it just is one way that people deal

with traumatic memory, to fix those memories in concrete. My work, and

perhaps particularly the cameo work, provides another interpretation of

traumatic events. Not fixed, either in materiality (soft silicone) or in placement,

this becomes a personalised memento mori to the sadness internalised by so

many, and which is passed onto the second generation.

It is probably no coincidence that, as well as working as an oral historian –

interested in �capturing� that most intangible of things, memories and narratives,

I also worked as a social history curator, collecting material culture, for a

number of years. And even before that I studied archaeology and spent time on

excavations digging up fragments of the past. These installations, then, for me

are ways of re-versioning/re-visioning an absent past.

34

Conclusion

What is currently compelling is our pervasive cybernetic mode, which

plunks copyright into mythology, makes origins a romantic notion, and

pushes creativity outside the self. Remake, reuse, reassemble,

recombine-that's the way to go. (Sturtevant)37

Repetition exaggerates. If something is meaningful, maybe it’s more

meaningful said ten times. It’s not just an aesthetic choice. If something

is absurd, it’s much more greatly exaggerated, absurd, if it is repeated.

(Eva Hesse, 1970)38

Over the course of this studio based research project I have explored several

key themes that circulate around ideas of a fragmented self and the multiplicity

of memory. My aim was to develop a body of work that entered into a dialogue

with narratives of self: personal, inherited, or universal.

In pursuing my themes I set out to create a visual language that evoked multiple

configurations of memory, body and identity. I wanted to explore the issue of

fragmentation through devices such as metaphor, repetition and

reconfiguration. The notion of multiplicity permeates all my art works. Repetition

is used as a metaphor of both a fragmented memory and a fragmented self.

Within the context of my installation works the multiple signifies loss or absence

and functions as a memory fragment, a materialisation of how one event has so

many differently remembered versions, within the archaeology of memory.

Multiplicity itself undermines the singularity of familiar narratives – it takes the

familiar and distorts it, through both volume and scale.

Fragmentation in my work is both a destabilising technique and an act of

renewal. Both concept and technique, it has provided me with opportunities to

extend my practice across boundaries of jewellery, into that of installation and

larger scale wall works.

35

The final outcome of this research project is a body of studio research; wall

works and massed multiples that are tangible reflections of the idea of the self

and its many facets.

My work has always used multiples, and I have always been interested in

repetition and the massing of objects to create a much larger picture.

During the past several years I have come to the realisation that I am not a

jeweller who is able to imbue small pieces with layers of meanings so that they

become small wearable sculptures. I found communicating an idea in one

piece, or a series of small linked pieces, difficult. I was not satisfied with the

creative possibilities of jewellery that I found to be too often self-contained. I

was not interested in containing my work, but wanted to create works with

infinite possibilities. I wanted to be able to make a broader statement, and I

chose to do this by exploring the possibilities of repetition, materiality and

composition to add layers of meaning to my work.

I realised it was not possible for me to undertake a research project confined

within the ‘traditional’ boundaries of the craft of jewellery. It was however

important for me to reference the craft of jewellery in my work, and so each

piece made for this research project has been either hand saw pierced, or cast

by hand. The technical process behind this making, while partially hidden, is

important to the overall concept – and context - of this work.

My initial proposal for this research project, Mass, Multiples and Morphings

reflected my strong interest in the artist’s multiple, and drew on ideas of

duplication, repetition, rhythm and mutation. I was interested in exploring the

spaces between sculpture, painting and craft and design. Interestingly, given

the final focus of the work, I also wanted to look at notion of the artist as

machine and challenge the formal logic of the sequential, ordered unrelenting

nature of mass production. I was also concerned with ideas circulating around

mass consumption and its sustainability.

36

While I have diverged from my original starting point, this has occurred in the

process of developing a more conceptual framework into which my work can be

placed. During its course I have explored the transformative possibilities of

multiples, and have revised my own understanding and definition of multiples.

At its most simple level (even here there may be layers of meaning ascribed by

the maker) are artist multiples – limited editions of the ‘same’ item. In my

installation work multiples – or ‘almost identicals’ - are massed together to

create new meanings that question and disrupt a dominant narrative.

In the Fragmented Body series new meanings have been created by ‘sampling’

a copy (another form of multiple), shattering the original copy and ‘repairing’ it to

create new, overlaid meanings. Sampling was ideally suited to an exploration of

the multiplicity of self: each sampled image carried an aspect of self – an

archaeology of self. Not literal but metaphorical, the sources perhaps provide

clues – themselves shards of a life – further fragmented in the act of sampling

and deconstructing.

Each of the flat wall works in the Fragmented Body series are themselves made

up of smaller panels which can be reconfigured in any number of ways. Like

the small plastic tile games I played with as a child the panels can be moved

around; however unlike the game there is never a ‘right’ way with a complete

image as outcome. The ability to reconfigure the work lends itself to the

possibilities of multiple readings, as I alter the relationships of objects through

fragmentation. This work is concerned with developing different perspectives

through duplication, repetition, deconstruction and rearrangement contained

within a single work.

It is even possible that these works could be read as one entity – it is tempting

to display them across one large wall – panels mashed-up to create one new

enormous image.

This research project has provided an opportunity to research and to delve far

more deeply than usual into the processes of making and the conceptual nature

of the work. In the process of this, many new and interesting ideas have

37

emerged; for example I have come to understand more about aspects of the

materiality of my work and the ways that I use flat colour and silicone to add

layers of meaning in my work.

During the course of the research project I worked on a number of ideas that

have not made it through into the final body of works. I referenced Surrogate

Pictures, a series created by Allan McCollum from 197839 by creating small

picture frames in fleshy pink silicone. While these functioned as a type of

boundary, I was not as interested in framing the body as I was in exploring

ideas that were contained within the body. My next experiment was with

silicone skins – thin layers of pink silicone poured into a mould into which I’d

sampled an imaged copied from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. I was interested

in transforming bizarre and horrific images, as a metaphor for the way we are

‘branded’ by our past histories. These works drew on the ideas of the

Chapman Brothers as they intervened into paintings by Goya.40 I am currently

experimenting with animal ‘skins’ made from floppy pink silicone. These skins,

taken from toy animals, reflect another aspect of the fragmented self – the

empty skin – a metaphor for both self and external boundaries. The idea is one

that I hope to pursue and develop further in future in bodies of work.

I also plan to shift my focus from the idea of the fragmented self to an

exploration of the ‘other’. The central theme will be that of the idea of

dislocation and in this project I plan to reflect more about the processes of

migration and memory, and how the past is remembered. I now plan to extend

this type of analysis to further explore the destabilising parallel narratives of

identity and dislocation by researching and creating a series of ‘interventions’

that insert the ‘other’ into familiar or iconic landscapes to unsettle and upset the

dominant paradigm.

38

1 Meyers, Diana Stanford ‘Feminist Perspectives on the Self’, Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, First published Mon Jun 28, 1999; substantive revision Wed Jan 7, 2004.

(accessed 2 July 2009). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-self/

2 Wallis, Geoffrey J. eye to ‘I’- the self in recent art, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, 2007, p. 8.

3 Smith, Sidonie and Watson, Julie,

InterfaceWomen/Autobiography/Image/Performance, The University of Michigan Press,

2002, p. 9.

4 Bourriaud, Nicolas, Postproduction NY, 2002, p. 45.

5 Winterson, Jeanette ‘Live Through This’ Modern Painters, June, 2005, p. 99.

6 Steiner, B and Jun Yang, Autobiography, Thames and Hudson, 2004, p. 67.

7 Darling, Michael, ‘Plumbing the Depths of Superflatness’, Art Journal 60, no3, Fall

2001, p. 76.

8 Bourriaud, Nicolas, op cit, p. 39.

9 Hung, Shu and Joseph Magliaro (eds), By Hand: The Use of Craft in Contemporary

Art, Princeton Architectural Press, 2007, p. 56.

10 www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/31/Patricia_Piccinini/352/ (accessed 8 August

2008)

11 Steiner, B and Jun Yang, op cit, p. 11.

12 Waterhouse, Ellis, Reynolds, Phaidon, 1972, plate 60.

13 Heller, N.G. Women Artists An Illustrated History, Virago, 1987, p. 146

14 Portrait of a nation, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. New York,

2006, p. 15.

15 Heller, N. G, op cit. p. 21.

16 Heller, N. G, Ibid. p. 83.

17 Borzello, Frances, Seeing Ourselves women’s self portraits, Thames and Hudson,

1998, p. 159.

18 Winterson, Jeanette, op cit, p. 99.

19 Herrera, Haydon, Frida A Biography of Frida Kahlo, Harper and Row, 1983, plate

XXXI.

20 Rebel, Ernst, Self Portraits, Taschen, 2008, pp. 72, 73.

21 Cooke, Lynne Excerpts from an Interview with Allan McCollum, New York City, May

31,1991, (accessed 16 July 2009)

http://home.att.net/~allanmcnyc/Lynne_Cooke_Carnegie.html

22 � Murakami, publication for the exhibition � Murakami organised by Schimmel, Paul,

MOCA Los Angeles, 2008, no page number.

39

23 Schimmel, Paul ‘Making Murakami’ in � Murakami, publication for the exhibition �

Murakami organised by Schimmel, Paul, MOCA Los Angeles, 2008, p. 67.

24 � Murakami, op cit. p. 29.

25 Schimmel, Paul ‘Making Murakami’ op cit. p. 53.

26 Hebdige, Dick, ‘Flat Boy vs. Skinny:Takashi Murakami and the Battle for “Japan”’, in

� Murakami, publication for the exhibition � Murakami organised by Schimmel, Paul,

MOCA Los Angeles, 2008, p. 23.

27 Mathew Marks Gallery http://www.matthewmarks.com/index. (accessed 21 August,

2009)

28 http://www.whitecube.com/artists/fritsch/ (accessed 26 May 2009)

29 Burton, J. ‘Katharina Fritsch: Matthew Marks Gallery’, Artforum International, v. 47

no. 1, September 2008, p. 456.

30 Moleswoth, Helen, Part Object Part Sculpture, Wexner Centre for the Arts, 2005, p.

207.

31 Princenthal, N. ‘Shape Shifter’, Art in America, February 2007, p. 108.

32 Robert Enright, ‘No Things but in ideas’ Border Crossings 20 no3 Ag 2001.

(accessed 17 July 2009), http://home.att.net/~amcnet2/album/enright.html

33 Princenthal, N. op cit. p. 10.

34 George Santayana, Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner, 1905, p.

284.

35 Parr, Adrian. Deleuze and Memorial Culture: Desire, Singular Memory and the

Politics of Trauma Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press, 2008.

36 Factor, Mendel Matthew, When War Came, LhR Press, 2005.

37 The artist Sturtevant as quoted in Birnbaum, Daniel, ‘Sampling the Globe’, Artforum,

Oct 2004, vol 43, Issue 2, p. 241.

38 Nemser, C. ‘A conversation with Eva Hesse’ in Nixon, M., (ed), Eva Hesse - October

Files, MIT Press, 2002, p. 11.

39Website of Allan McCollum, (accessed 2 March 2008)

http://home.att.net/~amcnet2/album/surrogatepaintings2.html

40 Chapman, Jake and Dinos, Insult to Injury, Göttingen:SteidlMack, 2003.

Fig. 1a. Joshua Reynolds, Master Crewe (1772 -1835) as Henry VII, 1776, oil on canvas, 137 x 112 cm

Fig. 2a Romaine Brooks, Emile d’Erlanger, La Baronne, c.1924, oil on canvas, 417/8 x 34 in

Fig.

1b.

B

rend

a Fa

ctor

, Unt

itled

, 20

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, alu

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, spr

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aint

, 68

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Fig. 3a Unidentified artist, Pocahontas, 1616 oil on canvas, 77.5 x 64.8 cm

Fig. 4a Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog, late 1590s, oil on canvas, 447/8 x 37 in

Fig. 3b Brenda Factor, Sorry as I…., 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 51 x 68 cm

Fig. 3c Brenda Factor, Sorry as II…., 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 51 x 68 cm

Fig. 4b Brenda Factor, Untitled, 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 51 x 68 cm

Fig.

4c

Bre

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ed, 2

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Fig 5a Marie-Elénore Godefroid, The Sons of Marshall Ney, 1810, oil on canvas, 63 � x 70 1/8 in

Fig. 5b Brenda Factor, Untitled, 2008, aluminium, spray paint, 51 x 85 cm

Fig. 6a Louise Bourgeois, Torso/Self Portrait, bronze and plaster, c1963 -1964

Fig.

6b

Bre

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fter

Loui

se B

, 20

08

, alu

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ium

, spr

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aint

, 68

x 2

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cm

Fig. 7 Brenda Factor, Untitled, 2008, Aluminium, spray paint, 75 x 75 cm

Fig. 8a Frida Kahlo, The Little Deer, 1946, Oil on masonite, 9 x 12 in

FFig . 99a Felix Nussbaum, Self-Portrait with Jewish Identity Card, 1943, Oil on canvas, 56 x 49 cm

Fig.

8b

Bre

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Fact

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ida

with

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00

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Fig.

9b

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, alu

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19

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Fig.

10

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amily

Por

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l), 2

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8/2

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ize

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able

Fig. 11 Brenda Factor, In memory of … (detail), 2008/2009, silicone, pins, size variable

Fig. 12 Takashi Murakami, DOB’s March, 1995, acrylic on canvas mounted on board, 27 9/16 x 39 3/8 in

Fig. 13 Takashi Murakami, Time Bokan - blue, 2001, acrylic on canvas mounted on board, 70 7/8 x 70 7/8 in

Fig. 14 Katharina Fritsch, Rat King, polyester and paint, 1993

Fig. 15 Allan McCollum, Over Ten Thousand Individual Works, 1987/88, enamel on hydrocal, 5.1 cm diameter each,

length variable

40

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45

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Appendix 1 Installation Images from MFA exhibition, The Sampled Self, COFAspace, 10 – 13 November 2009

Installation View, The Sampled Self, COFAspace, 2009

Installation View, The Sampled Self, COFAspace, 2009

Installation View, The Sampled Self, COFAspace, 2009

Installation View, The Sampled Self, COFAspace, 2009

Installation View, The Sampled Self, COFAspace, 2009