The cartographic paradigm in contemporary Australian landscape painting: concepts of ownership, belonging and place 1950-2014.

This PhD consists of a painting folio and an independent written thesis that makes a comparative study of the use of the cartographic or mapping perspective in art, with a particular focus on Australian landscape painting made after World War Two. I argue that this recent Australian art is built on a long history of previous art practices and theories, and particularly on the meeting of Western traditions of landscape and spatial representation and Indigenous traditions of representing space and place. The written thesis also investigates the history of the Southern Highlands and how it has been mapped and represented by Western artists since colonization, which is also the subject of the paintings. While the painting practice is research driven – the paintings are made on the spot and developed from a very personal engagement with the landscape – the investigations of the written thesis inform my paintings from a cartographic and mapping viewpoint with reference to its ancient and contemporary forms.