Partial coherence

Research Background: Partial coherence explored an expanded understanding of painting, where the surface of the artwork becomes more than the application of pigment to canvas and instead manifests itself as a site of material investigation. Through recasting relationships with painting practice, this exhibition presented a space within which the canvas, the wall, lighting and the body are implicated in the realisation and experience of an artwork. Research Contribution: Alongside painterly works, I also utilised light installations, bronze sculpture, constructed shelving and garment making, in order to position surfaces, affect and material as uniquely interrelated concepts. The geometric shapes of the folds in the paintings are reiterated in the planar surfaces of the bronze, the shadows of the shelf, and the surfaces of the dress. Research Significance: This speculative investigation of surfaces gestures towards subjectivities that are intimated through the manipulation of the various materialities. Fashioned garments can be conceived of as an activity of surfaces of the body and the exhibition explored how encounters between various surfaces also become immanent to the work. Conceiving of fashion in these terms has the potential to reveal the intensive aspects of surfaces, and the ways affects are produced in encounters between these surfaces, such as the material surface of the garment, the body and the material surfaces of the environs.