What is seen: Challenging the five-sense hierarchy through performance and textile art

In recent decades, the sensorial turn in contemporary scholarship has highlighted the sociocultural and political dimensions of the senses. This has been partly based on a critique of the privileging of sight over the other senses in western thought and culture. This practice-based research project takes the critique as a point of departure to explore the impact of traditional western conceptualisations of the senses on the production and reception of visual art practices. It asks: how is the western model of the senses, marked by the five-sense hierarchy, challenged through art practices such as performance and textile art? This thesis in creative practice has taken an interdisciplinary and multi-method approach towards its two complementary components – the dissertation (Vol 1) and the creative project (Vol 2). Volume 1: Dissertation presents the theoretical, historical and critical contexts that inform the ideas explored in and through studio research. By focusing on significant developments in mid-20th century art practices and case studies of the now-iconic artists Yoko Ono and Lygia Clark, the dissertation interrogates how the radical embrace of performance and textile art strategies challenges the occularcentric focus of the so-called visual arts. Volume 2: Portfolio of Creative Work Documentation is comprised of five experimental works. The creative project records, details and critically reflects upon each of these works presented during my candidature. These creative works employed an intersection of performance and textile art strategies, testing the ways in which art methods engaged the western constructions of the senses, with vision privileged over and above the other senses. The creative works sought to challenge the western hierarchical organisation of the senses and confront issues of the perceptibility of certain senses, such as touch and taste. By unravelling this tightly knotted system of sense ideologies and practices, this thesis in creative practice attempts to uncover the power and potential of multisensorial dynamics, arguing that the unique intersection of performance and textile art approaches in visual art practices generates alternative expressions of the senses. These practices hold a mirror to the sensory conditions that simmer beneath the surface of western thought and culture.

Grantor dc:publisher

UNSW, Sydney

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Cairncross, Boni

• Textile art
• Performance
• Textiles
• Five-senses
• Multisensory
• Yoko Ono
• Lygia Clark
• Creative practice
• Boni Cairncross
• Five-sense hierarchy
• Sensory studies
• Sensory

Statement dc:rights

• open access
• CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
• free_to_read

Licence

• https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/

Language dc:language

EN

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/21393

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:unsworks.library.unsw.edu.au:1959.4/63313