The AAANZ PhD prize is judged on the merits of the final submitted thesis or exegesis and documentation of a recently graduated PhD student. In 2023 there were twelve research-based or practice-led PhD entries, of which, four were shortlisted.
WINNER
$1000 sponsored by Taylor and Francis
Christian Joseph Rizzalli, ‘Between communism and fascism: The entangled history of political photomontage in Italy, 1925-45’, (University of Queensland)
Abstract
This dissertation provides the first focused analysis of the ways in which photomontage was used in the service of radical politics in Italy between 1925 and 1945. Throughout this period, photomontage was deployed by significant political movements whose radical left- or right-wing ideologies were highly antagonistic: both Communist and Fascist artists and organisations exploited the capabilities of the modern technique to construct specific images of themselves and their adversaries. Through analysis of a selection of the most relevant artworks, exhibitions and illustrated journals from the period under investigation, I argue that the development of political photomontage in Italy reflects the ideological malleability or ambiguity of avant-garde photomontage techniques, with both left- and right-wing artists and designers almost invariably borrowing techniques that had been pioneered by figures from the opposite end of the political spectrum. In making this argument, this thesis seeks to disrupt the literature’s current reliance upon a dichotomous and often reductive framework in which cultural production under these two political poles is understood as irreconcilable.
The historical narrative traced by this thesis can be divided into three periods. The first is in the mid-late 1920s, when political photomontage first appeared in Italy in the work of the artists Vinicio Paladini and Ivo Pannaggi, who were part of a left-wing minority amongst the Futurist avant-garde. The second period is in the 1930s, when political photomontage was enthusiastically embraced by the Fascist state and its supporters in the Italian right-wing avant-garde (such as Mario Sironi, and the Rationalists Giuseppe Pagano, Giuseppe Terragni, Edoardo Persico and Marcello Nizzoli). The final period is very brief, being contained entirely to the year 1945, when political photomontage was reclaimed by the postwar Italian Left and deployed in a number of small-scale propaganda exhibitions designed by the artist Albe Steiner. By considering all three periods as part of a longer, interconnected narrative, this thesis teases out the exchanges across political lines that shaped the entangled history of political photomontage in Italy.
Shortlisted
Anya Samarasinghe, ‘A taste for Britain: The history and significance of Victorian paintings in Aotearoa New Zealand’s public collections’, (University of Auckland)
Abstract
Victorian paintings in Aotearoa New Zealand’s major art institutions are a largely untapped resource in art historical scholarship. This is remarkable: these works constitute an important component of the collections and are critical to charting institutional origins and development. This study aims to illuminate their cultural significance in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This thesis approaches the Victorian paintings held in Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū by delving into their acquisition, display contexts and histories. It reveals that the narratives surrounding the acquisition and display of these artworks are connected to ideas of taste for elements of British culture and constructions of Aotearoa New Zealand’s identity.
Formal and stylistic analysis of the paintings provides insight into the aesthetic, social and cultural concerns evident in Victorian art as a whole and their place in Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural history. This mode of analysis aids in professing the paintings’ art historical significance. The study also engages in an examination of exhibition history, using both permanent holdings and visiting exhibitions to ascertain patterns and influences that filter into wider considerations of the socio-political, economic and cultural environments of Aotearoa New Zealand.
In addition, the thesis considers looming questions about how we understand these paintings in a contemporary context. Notions of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history and identity increasingly diversified in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The place of the colonial cultural heritage that the Victorian paintings represent became less assured and exhibitions featuring them became increasingly rare. To understand the place of these works in Aotearoa New Zealand culture, we need to balance historical concerns with the challenges presented by ever-evolving notions of identities, heritage and histories. Victorian paintings in Aotearoa New Zealand are vital to exploring these questions and thus require closer attention. Ultimately, there is space, both on gallery walls and in scholarly discourse, to give prominence to these eclectic works and their complex meanings.
Ivana Ninić, ‘The escape artist: Charles Conder, women and modernity in late nineteenth-century Australia’, (University of Western Australia)
Abstract
While residing in Australia between 1886 and 1890, Charles Conder (1868-1909) created a significant body of work that formulates his interest in and response to the expressions of feminine modernity in the colonial context. From a singular compositional device enacting the sense of movement to the subject of a fashionable promenade, female figures are a sustained thematic idiosyncrasy of Conder’s Australian works that also functioned as idioms for feminine modernity. Australian art historians have considered Conder’s Australian artworks a valuable contribution to Australian Impressionism as a national version of globally emerging impressionist movements; however, no study has framed his subject, style, and form with his venture into the world of women. This thesis is the first to deconstruct Conder’s current place within Australian Impressionism and position his works within the broader context of the discourse on modernity in nineteenth-century Australia and its cultural links to Europe.
Central to my argument is Rita Felski’s definition of modernité, which is “concerned with a distinctively modern sense of dislocation and ambiguity” but also “locates it in the more general experience of the aestheticization of everyday life, as exemplified in the ephemeral and transitory qualities of an urban culture shaped by the imperatives of fashion, consumerism, and constant innovation”. In late nineteenth-century Australian popular culture, modernité emerged as a set of Eurocentric aesthetic values in art and fashion that were predominantly assigned to the conceptual space of femininity. In this thesis, I position Conder’s images of urban women within the context of social and cultural changes shaped by modernity and social tensions caused by the emergence of the modern woman.
In my research, I rely on visual analysis in conjunction with the examination of primary and secondary resources that illuminate the artist’s life and the cultural circumstances of Eurocentric modernity that framed the production of his works. Extensive archival research of Australian newspapers permits the reconstruction of the social climate in late nineteenth-century Australia with particular attention to the world of feminine modernité. Likewise, examination of exhibition catalogues, reviews of Conder’s works, artist’s correspondence and other ephemera assist in comprehending the artist’s production as an ongoing negotiation between the demands of the contemporary Australian art market and the need for artistic self-expression.
At the centre of each chapter is the dialogue between Conder’s artistic practice and the subject matter of his works. This methodological approach offers a unique vantage point for the study of modernity in the colonial context and the artist’s subjective response to it. The focus of the first chapter is a critical analysis of Conder’s landscapes with female strollers to elucidate the intercorrelation between movement, sensation, romantic sensibility, and feminine modernity. Next, a case study of Conder’s works from the Heidelberg period actualises the symbolic relation between impressionist technique, subject matter, and gender in the formation of the Australian pastoral landscape. Relatedly, I highlight the marginalisation of Conder’s feminised work in the Heidelberg School as the national and masculinised plein air school. In the third chapter, I examine Conder’s hitherto overlooked Melbourne Sketchbook (1888-1889) to demonstrate the influence of cartoons and fashion plates on his sketches of urban types and modern life. In the final section, I focus on Conder’s painting A Holiday at Mentone (1888) to show how this work addressed the ambiguity of Eurocentric feminine modernity in Australia at the turn of the century.
Miriam La Rosa, ‘Guests, hosts, ghosts: Art residencies and cross-cultural exchange’, (University of Melbourne)
Abstract
This thesis investigates art residencies as sites of hospitality. It analyses two cross-cultural residency projects I developed: a residency organised on standard lines, involving art travel, and a hybrid residency, involving virtual and in-person elements. My discussions reflect on the conditions of art residencies before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining the distinction between visitation and invitation, the ethics of working in a place that is not ‘your own home,’ and the potential of the gift exchange to challenge fixed binary roles such as host/guest, insider/outsider, giver/receiver. The thesis proposes a new understanding of the changing relationships between art residencies and artists through the curatorial implications of the act of showing and of hospitality.