Fine Arts Doctoral candidate wins award for thesis

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Simon Ingram with his "Painting Assemblage No. 2" in the exhibition "Just Painting" works from the Chartwell collection curated by Natasha Conland, curator of Contemporary Art, Auckland Art Gallery. Photo by John McIver.

MEDIA RELEASE
20 APRIL 2007

University of Auckland Fine Arts Doctoral candidate wins award for best doctoral thesis

Simon Ingram, from the Elam School of Fine Arts Doctoral programme at the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries (NICAI), has been awarded a University of Auckland Best Doctoral Thesis. Recipients of this award receive six thousand dollars.

Simon entered the doctoral programme in 2002 with eight years experience as an exhibiting artist, museum worker, art writer and web-designer. His project was supervised by Elam School of Fine Arts senior lecturer Allan Smith (primary) and Department of English Professor Wystan Curnow (secondary) and entailed a series of investigations on post-industrial paintings' interaction with mechanical and computational systems of organisation and operation.

His thesis, Painting As Machine, is an inquiry into the conversation between art and contemporary technology. More specifically, it develops the modernist notion of the autonomous, self-made artwork in relation to painting as a constructional and computationally based self-organising system. It includes machines made from Lego robotics and generic constructional materials to paint autonomously in oil paint with a brush, and paintings that use cellular automata as a method to govern their decision making process. Drawing on divergent strands of thought (artificial life research, history, art history and theory), the project re-stages and reinvents painting as a critical, contemporary project.

"Working with a model of painting as a machine allowed me to construct an alternative painting history and made it possible to open painting up to new conversations and new sets of knowledge," says Simon, who has contributed papers to a number of international conferences and this year is involved in several public gallery shows. "The resources at The University of Auckland were excellent, the supervision I received helped me extend and develop a project in ways I hadn't anticipated."

Allan Smith says Simon was quite simply an exemplary doctoral candidate: "Simon's practice is characterised by an impressive mix of intellectual depth and practical understanding - he is at home in either the mess of the studio, the formality of the conference lecture theatre, or the exacting field of critical writing. Not surprisingly, Simon's current work has already attracted the interest of several curators and writers in New Zealand and offshore."

For more information visit http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=paintingthatthinks

ENDS