An investigation of interiority : beyond the boundaries of subject and into the practIce of painting

this document charts a painter’s intention to evolve ambiguous and geographically indeterminate spaces that are potentially neither inside nor outside, public or private that are constructed from two dimensional images, in an unremitting state of realisation, keeping our view in constant motion. Postmodern discourses relating to interiority and discussed in architecture and interior design were used as a lens to extend and challenge the context and content of this figurative painting practice. Architectural theorist Beatriz colomina’s critique of Peter and Alison smithson’s House of the Future (1956), laid the groundwork for the theoretical position of this project, by focusing upon how domestic conditions are dichotomous. Anthony vidler’s writing on Architecture Cornered: Notes on the Anxiety of Architecture and the theories of jeanette Budgett on the curtain designs of Petra Blaisse, appraise the domestic interior in new ways. they all draw attention to levels of discomfort in the representation of the domestic realm. to mine the notion of security versus disharmony in paintings of rooms, research began into potential and variable thresholds and boundaries of domestic spaces. 1960’s new Zealand modernist interiors, architecture and objects give regional resonance in the experimentation of subject matter. A critical shift from looking to an interior as subject, to a pivotal focus on the interiority of the practice resulted in a greater awareness of process in the construction of paintings. clarification of key procedural approaches led to an apparent division of subject matter into the re-presentation of portraiture, and paintings of fabricated rooms. this strategy established a dialogue that sets up tensions between both subject and painting conventions in the manipulation of spatial ambiguity in the picture plane. synthesis of theoretical and practical research culminates in populated painted aggregations of the domestic interior, paintings that make manifest a re-engineering of the familiar through technique, content, and context.