Wonderlust: the influence of natural history illustration and ornamentation on perceptions of the exotic in Australia

Abstract

This thesis is comprised of two parts: a Studio Research component with an accompanying Exegesis (66%), and a Dissertation (33%). The Dissertation examines the historical and cultural context of the production of natural history illustration and ornamentation, and the formal qualities of these visual forms that enabled them to inform and disseminate exotic constructions and perceptions. These visual forms were a significant part of the intellectual and cultural framework of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and frequently represented the ‘other’ as desirable and different. The aesthetic responses generated by such exotic representations operated subliminally to develop and reinforce dualistic notions surrounding the difference of the distant ‘other’ in comparison to the European self. The Dissertation examines the specificity of the operation of these visual forms in relation to exotic perceptions of the Australian ‘other’ from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, and develops an argument about the rise of a unique mode of perceiving the Australian ‘other’. The Dissertation elaborates the theoretical context for the studio research which is an evocation and examination of the aesthetic experience of the exotic, informed by natural history illustration and ornamentation. A process of quotation and transformation of historical imagery was developed to investigate foundational representations and perceptions of the Australian exoticised ‘other’ and the manner in which this imagery persists and reforms as it circulates in society. The imagery is reworked by a painting process that utilises the material and formal properties of paint to explore the nature of the aesthetic perception of the exotic while also providing a metaphoric model of the manner in which the self is defined in relation to the ‘other’. The process offers an alternative mode of conceiving the ‘other’ within the post-colonial concept of hybridity. The results of the studio research are elaborated in this Exegesis and will be presented as a site-specific installation of paintings in the ANU School of Art Gallery from 17 to 26 March 2010.