At UTAS, all forms of creative practice is recognised as a research endeavour. All of our academics have profiles in their respective fields, and they exhibit, perform or write at levels that are regionally, nationally or internationally significant. On the pages linked from here, you’ll see the research foci of staff as well as those of postgraduate research students, highlighting areas of particular creative and cultural strength at UTAS.
For postgraduate research students, whether you’re working in a studio making fine art, working in theatre, or making music, we can provide insightful and supportive supervision for your research project, and help develop a project that leads to a Masters by research degree, or a PhD. We also support areas of research in the theory and history of art, music and theatre. We have several areas of research strength and focus, which you’ll find in the projects on this page; your work may align with one of these areas, or may take another approach to contemporary creative and cultural practice.
Through research practice, you will make your own work, contextualise it among the work of others, and develop it through critique and feedback with your peers and supervisors. This will culminate in a exhibited or performed piece of work, accompanied by a written exegesis and oral defence; or an entirely written piece of work, accompanied by an oral defence.
If you would like to discuss joining our research teams in the creative cultural practices, please feel free to either get in touch with a member of staff directly regarding possible supervision for your project, or the Graduate Research Coordinator.
The Tasmanian College of the Arts (Inveresk) is able to provide supervision for PhD candidates. Supervision depends on the research project and can be accommodated either solely through TCotA or as a joint arrangement with another School.
The thesis for a PhD in visual arts may be presented in one of two forms:
Option (1) results from a studio-based enquiry project, and incorporates an exhibition of the studio work produced during the program and a supporting written exegesis.
Option (2) is a written document which conforms to norms for PhD theses in the humanities and social sciences.
Recent Examples:
The Master of Fine Arts (Research) is a two year research degree program administered by the University's Research Higher Degrees Unit and supervised by the School of Visual and Performing Arts. We offer supervision in the following areas: art theory, arts management, ceramics and glass, curatorship, digital art, drawing, painting, photography, sculpture and textiles.
Our special relationship with the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery also enables approved Masters research projects to be undertaken. These could include the theory of conservation management, public arts management and cultural collection practices.
Recent Examples:
The Voice Theatre Lab is housed at the Tasmanian College of the Arts (Inveresk). Voice Theatre is a laboratory; it explores and develops physical and vocal training practices which are rigorous, and highly energized, fusing contemporary East and West theatre practices to create a physio-vocal training aesthetic.
Since its inception in 2006, the group have focus on the concept of crisis, and it’s affect on the voice. These investigations include the dichotomies of voice and body in order to abandon literal reality to locate another non-physical, non-tangible place; the relationship between abstract imagery, text and voice; the abandonment of text and the expression of imagery through sound; and the relationship of physical crisis and the voice. As well as training sessions throughout the year with core company members, the company mount exploratory productions that investigate these concepts. The human voice has been a topic of investigation for centuries, and yet it is object of mystery.
The work of the Voice Theatre Laboratory is physically and vocally rigorous and spectators that enjoy challenging, expressive and experimental work, will find the experience most rewarding. It is demanding work that investigates the performer’s vocal presence through physical and conceptual acts of crisis. Each production focuses on the performers voice as the fundamental expressive and artistic material at the centre of a gamut of all theatrical elements.
The Research
The Voice Theatre Lab pushes the boundaries of the use of the human voice and body through states of ‘crisis’. The work explored is the result of the application of various dichotomies and contradictions, which abandons literal, and textual, therefore focusing on opposites and non-conventional means of vocal production and physical states. Voice work provides the key for the performer to rediscover his or her mysterious entity – an inner voice through improvisations and non-verbal expressions.
The Voice Theatre Lab’s on-going investigation aims to maintain the view that voice is indeed an immensely important tool, a tool that has been neglected, and that physical and conceptual crisis, as opposed to freedom, relaxation and textual, ‘literal reality’, can benefit the voice and allow it to flourish and reveal its many colours and nuances.
Contact: Robert Lewis
All Voice Theatre Lab projects
