After Muybridge: Becoming Unknown

Abstract

This thesis paper is in support of the exhibition, After Muybridge: Becoming Unknown, and examines the material and conceptual approaches to my work with drawing, animation and installation. The paper begins by looking at figures (both human and animal) as a central image, and a means through which I explore the relationship between corporeality and subjectivity. It looks specifically at experiences of motherhood, both cultural and autobiographical, and how they might be transcribed/transfigured through the language of drawing and animation. Eadweard Muybridges photographic studies provide a starting point for exploring the animated figure. His representations of Victorian women as domestic labourers are deconstructed through my artwork, and this thesis paper details the processes carried out in the studio over the course of two years. The artworks described here consist of both drawing-based works, created through a process of cutting, collaging and employing traditional and non-traditional drawing and painting materials, and, a video projection of animated drawings. My thesis exhibition brings these sympathetic media togetherreimagining the female body and identity, and, creating more porous boundaries between human and animal bodies, domestic and wild spaces, animate and inanimate figures.