Abstract:
This research investigates what it might, or might not mean to study (borrow, or steal) existing art and deliver this newly. It engages with art - itself - as a primary medium of practice. Its hypothesis is intended to close the distance between the work of art and how we see (around) it. Subsequently it sets out to contribute a device for better observing the subject and object of art. To do so: the main tool is a framework (named here as un/mastery). It is developed from an ongoing empirical review of historical and contemporary fine art and its incumbent surrounds. It declares its location as modo - a multifarious view of time and space in a setting after postmodernism. Because seeing art in this light involves unseeing art, selective testing gamesomely conveys challenges specific to art practice in the present moment. The proximity of the Written exegesis to the Studio project is also a key methodology - it aims to culture the reader by providing supplementary written materials that resonate (in content, form and tone) with the Studio component. Rather than formulating a systematic singular (or masterful) argument, the ancillary text unfolds in a series of short 'takes' or sections: it forms an enlarged series of reports. Providing an inspection of the idea through extended sub-headings, these chronicles are delivered as a cut-up interview. Continuously interspersing the roles of interviewer and interviewees, it attempts an adulterated yet consistent documentation of practice. The eponymous un/mastery study is set against related practices, theories and cultural protocols across fine art. More specifically it surveys photography as dishevelled within philosophyʼs business of essentially assigning its art as both assay and double. It finds that this rupture, which claims to allow the artist to be objective, is not possible. For the purposes of addressing this assertion the un/photograph empties out the image as anterior to both copy and notion. The investigation outcomes range from calculated misinterpretation (the common understanding of art is primarily grounded in misrepresentation: the descriptions of art in text, the way its details are rendered in print or online), to outright larceny and possession. An image under this device finds itself infinite, in the sense that it is not possible to grasp nor to restrict all of the material on its surface. The findings encounter a threshold of presence and absence in art practice. The research provides an outline, setting, explorations, evidence of findings and a reflective commentary - amalgamated within an unconventional system in order to avoid squashing the subject and object of the un/making at play. While its anthology provides a critical survey of un/mastery: its discourse, aesthetics, and practice, it does not act as an explanation. It concludes by recommending how the framework developed here might be uplifted for further use within the abridged and uneven intricate trajectories of fine art.