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One foot in Eden : an exhibition of works

thesis
posted on 2023-05-27, 17:15 authored by Pollard, Gayle
The Art Of Storytelling - The Real Authors. \The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it. Its value consists in what is woven and rewoven into it.\" (1) The process of metamorphosis or transformation is inherent to our way of perceiving the world. It is the catalyst for life itself: the creation of myth. No thing or meaning remains entirely the same. Shifts in symbolic meaning have always formed as the conditions of the times change especially now in the 20th Century as technology representation is far more accessible the media marketing and production due to The changes seem more rapid now in contrast to the movements and forms of art and folk tales in Fuedal society. New genres are being created all the time. New genres are old genres with different motifs. For example the science fiction movie of the Eighties reads similarly to the Western of the Forties and Fifties. Within a great deal of the visual arts literature religion folk and fairy tale going back to antiquity a certain kind of history reveals itself. The times are coloured and told by the authors artists and narrators living then. Some stories and paintings are filled with strange and unusual or 'out of this world' imagery. This 'fantastic element' is the basis for my work. My references stem from classical and eastern myth folk and fairy tale alchemy paganism and christianity to create a language including personal symbolism which is an attempt to carry on the tradition of folklore in a reworked form. This use of bricolage is similar to how the folk tale has been constructed over a long period of time. It exists as an ever transforming chain free to absorb an amalgam of symbolic languages as it roams from mouth to mouth image to eye and manifests itself through the author's personal experience and ideology. Popular opinion relegates folk and fairy tale and the 'Fantastic' to the nursery. However Fredric Jameson points out in his book 'The Political Unconscious': \"These oral tales of tribal society the fairytales that are the irrespressible voice and expression of the underclasses of the great systems of domination adventure stories and melodrama and the popular or mass culture of our own tine are all syllables and broken fragments of some single immense story.\" (2) I am using the motif of the Dragon one of the most prominent characters in our cultural and personal psyche and history as an agent of transformation. I am also using the Dragon to represent femininity in a positive aspect in contrast to the traditional concept of the evil dragon/evil female. It is an attempt to disrupt stereotyping of folk and fairytale images and to orientate myself and viewers with the desire for the fantastic. (1) Italo Calvino; Introduction 'Italian Folktales'; Penguin Ltd. Harmondsworth Middlesex England c.1982 (2) Fredric Jameson; p. 105; Chapter 2 - Magical Narratives 'The Political Unconscious'; Narrative As A Soc1.ally Symbolic Act; Cornell University Press Ithaca New York 1981."

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Copyright 1985 the author - The University is continuing to endeavour to trace the copyright owner(s) and in the meantime this item has been reproduced here in good faith. We would be pleased to hear from the copyright owner(s). \All works completed within the Master of Fine Arts degree program\". Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of Tasmania 1986. Includes bibliographical references"

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