3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item An autoethnographic approach to material as form and meaning in sculpture and printmaking(2018) Pape, Kyra SimoneThis study involves a written component in dialogue with a creative body of work in sculpture and printmaking. There is an engagement with the personal material and corporeal experiences in relation to the production of a body of artworks. The focus is on the materials used, the materiality and the personal experiences. The written component engages autoethnographically and psychoanalytically on the structural possibilities and metaphoric potential of materials, namely: sugar, polyurethane foam and metal. The principle interest is on sugar. Whilst emphasizing the materiality and the object-materialviewer and/ or maker embodiment, there are particular interests in the ways in which the ‘objectness’ and/ or ‘thingness’ of materials affects the experience of the artwork by a physically present viewer. There is an exploration on how the materiality of the work may provoke experiences associated with abjectness and disturbance. It is suggested that the grotesque, abject, uncanny and amorphous, have the ability in sculpture to affect the viewer as well as maker through sensual experiences of the works material. The amorphous, formless and malleable materials’ abilities is argued to be able to subvert conventions that allows for the investigation of how anti-form embraces temporary existences. The written component further aims to support an understanding of the process and choice of materials through an exploration of a number of theoretical and critical positions on the importance and significance of materials when used to produce artworks. There is a primary engagement with ways of making meaning through cultural production in Fine Arts in South Africa by focusing on materials’ structures (social, political, historical, and chemical) in relation to personal experiencesItem What difference does it make who is speaking?(2016) Khoza, MbaliThis thesis examines the concept of authorship in literary and artistic practice by travelling the concept of authorship from literature to artistic practice. To achieve this the thesis will be guided by the questions, ʻwhat is an author?ʼ, ʻwhen is authorship?ʼ and more importantly the title question, what difference does it make who is speaking? To unpack these questions and those that will follow, my research will begin by thinking through the idea of authorship and authorial voice in literature and to identify the ways in which this is performed in artistic practice. Additionally the thesis will explore the authorship and authority, particularly how the author uses the power of language to impose authority over the reader and the West language still holds power the postcolonial subject or authors. In retaliation of this authority, the thesis also looks at how postcolonial writers/artists have developed a language of power. This analysis will be directed by a selection of theorists, writers and artists. Theorists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault whose questions on authorship are the bases of my research and Miek Bal Traveling Concepts in the Humanities, Jacques Derrida Of Grammatology, Ngugi Wa Thiongo Writers in Politics, Walter Benjamin The Task of the Translator and Jean Fisherʼs Embodied Subversion as well as other supporting reading. In addition to that, investigating methods of writing in Dambudzo Marecheraʼs novella House of Hunger and Willimam S. Burroughs The Naked Lunch and how these ideas are reflected by artistic practice .To help envisage the idea of the ʻartist as authorʼ I look very closely at specific works of three postcolonial artist and their relationship with language. I have selected works by artists Kemang Wa Lehulereʼs Some Deleted Scenes Too, Tracey Roseʼs Span I, and Danh Voʼs Last letter of Saint Théophane Vénard to his father before he was decapitated copied by Phung Vo as well as drawing from my own practice.Item Item Investigating opportunities for critical and integrated pedagogy and learning in visual arts :a case study of two Gauteng-based schools(2015-02) Sathekge, GaisangThis research project investigates secondary schooling Visual Arts programmes and the extent pedagogical approaches encourage critical and closely integrated learning. The research involves a case study between two secondary schools in Johannesburg - a comparison of two grade ten Visual Arts learning programmes - by investigating the content taught and the pedagogical approaches employed. By evaluating the content of the learning programmes and pedagogical approaches, I investigate whether, or to what extent, the learning programmes challenge hegemonic ideologies and encourage a learning approach that does not perpetuate biased and stereotyped views of culture but learning that critically integrates diversity and difference in the classroom in a manner that is relevant and meaningful to the learner.Item Encounters with the controversial teaching philosophy of the Johannesburg Art Foundation in the development of South African art during 1982-1992(2015-05-25) Castle, ElizabethThe Johannesburg Art Foundation (JAF), founded in 1982 by Bill Ainslie, maintained a teaching philosophy which opposed any form of discrimination and stressed that art education should be a possibility for everyone. There was no prescribed curriculum and the programme was not dependent on an external educational authority. I argue that particularly in the decade 1982-1992, the South African apartheid government's educational policy towards cultural activities was prescriptive, stifling and potentially paralysing for many artists. Nevertheless, the teaching at the JAF sustained a flexibility and tolerance of ideas combined with an emancipatory ambition that promoted exchange. The philosophy was infused with a social justice and a political activism agenda squarely in opposition to the separatist apartheid education laws. This study contextualizes the impact and efficacy of the teaching approach at the JAF in terms of its intellectual, social and political perspectives during the years 1982-1992. This teaching approach prompted acerbic encounters within the competing systems of formal and informal institutions. It is this controversial anomaly signifying elements of collision in the pursuit of developing modernism that are investigated to some extent. Personal involvement as an artist and teacher, during the period 1982-1992, allowed my contribution and participation in the development of the teaching philosophy. The paucity of available literature on the subject has stimulated a comprehensive preliminary investigation of the way in which the JAF cultivated alternative educational policies. The individual methodologies and personal experiences extracted from interviews with artists, Council Members and members of staff are documented in order to provide a detailed characterisation of the values of the JAF. In addition, original documentation representative of the genealogy of the JAF forms part of the curatorial practice for the exhibition Controversial ways of seeing at the Bag Factory Gallery. The JAF declined from 1992 and finally ceased to exist in 2001.Item On the road to Durban:using empowerment evaluation to grow teachers' arts and culture curriculum knowledge(2008-05-13T06:57:22Z) Glass, Donald L.South Africa has engaged in an outcomes-based curriculum innovation that includes Arts and Culture as a new learning area. Few empirical studies have examined what the curriculum innovation looks like in practice in this high inequity and low capacity school system. This study examines what teachers' curriculum looked like, what influenced their design decisions, and what the growth of their curriculum knowledge looked like. A small sample of new grade 7 Arts and Culture teachers from a disadvantaged township setting participated in an adaptation of empowerment evaluation to gather curriculum data over a 1.5 year period. The findings of this evaluation-research study showed teachers using a more dialogic process to design curriculum with varied influences from policy, learning support materials, and handson arts practice, rather than a linear design process starting with learning outcomes. Gaps in curriculum knowledge about outcomes and assessment were also identified. As part of the empowerment curriculum evaluation (ECE), learning outcomes seemed to play a more powerful role as heuristics in growing their meaning(s) in practice, and generating valid assessment critiera. Evidence was found to argue that the ECE was associated with curriculum knowledge growth and increased self-determination for the teachers who had some initial experience in the learning area before participating in the study. iv