A re-presentation of object phenomena through the medium of painting

Through the development of a series of object/paintings (Paintjects), this thesis examines processes of abstraction, presentation and reception. Ideas concerning the status of painting as image (pictorial space) as opposed to object (actual space/surface) and the means by which these various characteristics are discerned and articulated, forms both an historical and conceptual zone within which this project functions. Various painting issues such as the pictorial scale, content and composition of non-objective painting have both personally and historically become problematic due to their arbitrariness. (These same issues have also been used in the vanguard of claims for the death of painting as a medium.) This project has sought to negotiate these 'problems' through imposing a series of limitations derived from the placement of an object behind the canvas. Here, the various functions, memories and appearances of an object, provide options for both the selection of materials, and the processes through which they are engaged. This simultaneous presence ancd proximity of art object (painting) and its source, (object behind/subject) creates the tension of the Paintject where the viewer is made to witness a closing of the gap between resemblance and identity; sign and signified. The aim of the Paintject is then to question the relationship between the object and its representation (its semiological status) through setting the object in a state of oscillation between what it is and what it seems to be. Within the context of this project, painting then becomes not just a space, but a place where the traditional relationship between the art object and its subject - and the experience of both - is transformed.