Name: Rachel Choo
Year: 2013
Thesis Title: Unlocking the Art of War: Prisoner-of-War Art in World War II in Singapore
Thesis Abstract
This thesis is an overview study of the little-known field of prisoner-of-war art from World War II Singapore. It argues that the art is worth studying for its value as art. This approach, which is applied in this study and involves the understanding of the art through the analysis of its subject-matter, form, iconography, style and meaning, can not only help to establish its status as a genre of Singapore’s art history, but also enhance its value as historical artifacts and sources of information about wartime internment. This thesis introduces a number of known internee artists, all of whom were Westerners marched by Singapore’s Japanese conquerors into appalling conditions of captivity. It describes the conditions in wartime internment, which were highly influential in encouraging the making of art, and shaping the forms it took. Ultimately, this thesis argues that Singapore’s prisoner-of-war art is of ample quality, diversity and yet unity to be recognised as a genre – hitherto overlooked – in Singapore’s art history.

Name: Joseph Tham
Year: 2013
Thesis Title: Merzbow – The Art of Noise in Japan
Thesis Abstract
The rise of Japanese Noise or Japanoise in the late 1970s and the emergence of one of its icons, Merzbow, were to prove pivotal in placing Noise as a creative art form into sound art by the end of the 1990s. Masami Akita, the main artist behind Merzbow, drew from his Western art school education of his university years and his deep love for the experimental and the weird in sound and forge a sonic art form which is abstract, outré and yet very much Japanese in its conceptual underpinnings. This thesis aims to examine deep into the background of Akita to understand where the origins of his Noise comes from by first taking a critical survey of the history of Noise in the arts and music in the twentieth century to position Merzbow’s art in context.

Name: Lee Wee Yan
Year: 2013
Thesis Title: A Psychoanalytic Investigation of Symbolism as Visual Subterfuge in Jimmy Ong’s Drawings: Negotiating Subjectivity in Heteronormative Singapore
Thesis Abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to contextualise, theorise and analyse Jimmy Ong’s drawings as actively expressing a strong autobiographical narrative, both implicitly through his psyche as well as explicitly through the form and content of his drawings. This dissertation proposes that the selected figurative images from Ong’s exhibition “Ancestors on the Beach” bespoke Ong’s crisis with his subjectivity and his attempts to resolve it. They also perform as surrogate images reflecting or mirroring the artist’s gender-sexual politics, desires and aspirations in the context of heteronoramative Singapore. Figurative images, especially the male nude, have been a hall mark of Ong’s works since the 1980s. A declared homosexual, Ong’s mastery of the subject as a critical visual trope and device is of significance to this study which integrates and synthesizes contributions from psychoanalytic theory, art history and criticism, sociological and semiotic theories. The study will explicate the process of sublimation by analyzing the pictorial symbolism in Ong’s drawings as the visual trope of subterfuge. This dissertation asserts that the visual trope of subterfuge is an unconscious incorporeal psychical drive of sublimation informing the process or act of symbolisation that produces the pictorial configurations in Ong’s figurative narratives.

Name: Durriya Dohadwala
Year: 2013
Thesis Title: The Agency of International Exhibitions and Curatorial Projects in the Positioning of Pakistan’s Contemporary Miniature Art
Thesis Abstract
Miniature art is an important component of the Pakistani art canon. From a traditional technique of copying old masters, symbolic of the nation’s glorious Muslim heritage and identity, contemporary miniature has now become a genre that investigates technique, form and content often through subversion and the use of new media. The international positioning of Pakistani contemporary miniature art is unique – it is almost always a part of Pakistani contemporary art exhibitions but there have also been a number of exhibitions that solely exhibit contemporary miniature which signals its special place in the Pakistani contemporary canon. This study evaluates four major international exhibitions and projects namely; Manoeuvering Miniatures 2001, Contemporary Miniature Paintings from Pakistan 2004, Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration 2005 and Beyond the Page: Contemporary Art from Pakistan 2006/2010 to investigate the dominant positioning of contemporary miniature art within the realm of Pakistani art internationally. By critically evaluating the nature of these exhibitions, their curatorial strategy and their themes this study seeks to determine whether this positioning is the result of the agency of these international exhibitions and curators. This thesis also briefly considers the role of mega exhibitions in the construction of contemporary miniature’s location as the prime art of Pakistan.

Name: Sally Clarke
Year: 2013
Thesis Title: Exploring the Dynamics Informing Chinese New Media Artists Through Miao Xiaochun
Thesis Abstract
The histories of Asian art are full of controversies and China’s is no exception. While it is obvious that government changes in policy and leadership impact the lives of a country’s citizens, what is remarkable in China is the pace of change. Artists working in Beijing have responded to the transformation occurring in their urban environment, from the 1990s to the present day through a multitude of mediums. This thesis takes the practices of new media artists and contrasts them with the work of Miao Xiaochun who is well-respected in China and abroad for his digital photography and 3D computer animations. Miao Xiaochun’s work is complex given his extensive engagement with European Renaissance paintings, use of allegory, intertwining of Chinese aesthetics and philosophies. Employing the theoretical background of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s works in metaphysics and epistemology, this thesis undertakes an analysis of Miao’s Renaissance inspired C-Print and 3D computer animations works, and unravels some of the dynamics informing one of his more complex works Microcosm.

Name: Augustine Wong
Year: 2013
Thesis Title: Imagining Other Worlds: Heterotopias and Third Spaces in Contemporary Singapore Art and Film
Thesis Abstract
This study attempts to examine the multifold ways in which spatial imaginings imbued with heterotopic and Third Space potentialities might have been conceived and given expression in the multidisciplinary works of selected Singaporean artists and filmmakers. Additionally, it seeks to elucidate the array of sociocultural and socio-political issues and implications that might be critically encoded in these selfsame spatial imaginings. Chapter One of this study establishes the justification and the necessary theoretical underpinnings for this study, situating it within the context of an increasing intersection between critical theory, cultural geography, film and visual art as a methodological approach for the study of contemporary visual culture. Chapter Two proceeds, then, to examine the specific ways in which disparate heterotopian imaginings replete with inversionary possibilities might have been realised in the works of selected Singaporean practitioners, underscored, in turn, by the diverse range of historical, sociocultural and socio-political concerns that might be crucially embedded in these works. Chapter Three furthers the discussion via an analysis of the ways in which various Third Space imaginings as the counterpart of heterotopic terrains might have been embodied and expressed in the works of selected practitioners, complemented, in turn, by a critical exploration of the possible sociocultural and socio-political effects engendered via a presentation of such liminal sites and spatial terrains. This study concludes by positing salient affinities and confluences between heterotopic and Third Space imaginings as a point for further reflection.