writing and the Phd in fine artconcerning what one might take to be real. The written text is deliberate, careful and
intellectual in a conventional manner. however, the introduction prepares for what
is a lack of engagement with the concept of absence within current art criticism and
this is taken up at the end of section two within what the author/artist has called ‘a
first motion of absence’ (Roulstone 2006: 38-41). one could describe this ‘motion
of absence’ as an active kind of art criticism where the author apparently responds
intuitively to a still from the video work of douglas gordon. however, it is also an
enactment of the presence of an author who has turned critic and reflects back on
contemporary art practice which presents and embodies concepts of absence. What
this does is to propose another level of theorizing which might take for granted the
phenomenological imperative of so many phds in Fine art. however, within this
context, it quite simply sets up a tension between theoretical exegesis and the research
practice of the artist, whose paintings in the final part of the phd provide what she
describes as ‘a faulty vehicle for absence’. This is not at all to offer an understanding
of the limits of painting within the theoretical domain because the study has already
proposed intimate critiques of the metaphysics of both derrida and lacan. it is simply
to conjoin both theoretical positioning and the outcomes of artistic practice as unable
to resolve the philosophical enquiry into what absence might be, also their equivalence
in its non- predication upon a negative. in other words, art practice and theory view
absence as also presence.
overall this phd posits the tensions and elisions and also the gaps between theories
and art practices, both through criticism and intellectual exegesis and in relation to art
works. it demonstrates the versatility of the concept of absence and its relevance to its
core subject, which is the research paintings and what is proposed. The phd deftly cuts
into the space between the visual and theoretical, both in its form, through its three
‘motions of absence’ and its layered content. its major generic findings can be said to
be the deployment of paintings as equivalent to and in excess of theories. it is again a
formulation of its subject, which is absence. it does not add to the available literature
in a conventional sense but nudges towards a distinctive research formulation where
existing theory is a substantial component of that which eludes its reach. it can be
considered to be both a satisfactory phd submission and one which like all our examples,
proposes what a phd might be within a field of research which is under construction and
predicated on the uncertain. it is also a field which responds to current culture where
no matter how dense and theoretically charged the cited sources, the artist is always
subject to her own embodied, critical scrutiny and her actual and intellectual position
in a given space and time. indeed, one of the distinctive qualities of this and other
phds studied is that the conventions for the systematic process of research programme
and full delivery is extended so that the doctorate ceases to be contained within its
submitted form, but takes on the subject of its enquiry. in the case of this phd, a critical
metaphysics is expounded and experienced through theoretical exegeses and the final
submission of paintings: the painted surface of fleeting gesture and barely discernible
mark becomes a palimpsest for the thesis. in other words, the whole thesis proposes
absence: that is the four sections of the written text, its introductory explanations
concerning absence in the visual arts, the exegeses on the metaphysics of derrida and
lacan and the five ‘motions of absence’, the last of which presents the twenty research
paintings themselves, altogether provides the thesis. Together they provoke ideas and