‘The house is still named after him’: Exploring the subjective tensions of the female artist inhabiting cultural discourses

Abstract

This paper discusses the problematic category of ‘things known’ to be the masculine hegemony (‘His House’) through which we experience reality, and the challenging situation of inhabiting dichotomous frameworks of knowledge. Methods are defined within practice in work that is process led, that investigate the relationship between thought, action and interpretation, in order to interrogate dichotomous boundaries of knowledge. Through a practice-based inquiry a shift is recognized from methods that bind creative thinking to the dichotomy of concept to object. Acts of experimentation are employed as a method of action, or ‘flitting’, a ‘hybridised’ method of continuous action, between text, form, reflection, object, experience and image, drawn from subjective perception, as a means to interrogate and intervene within the existing structures of knowledge.