Textualisation of the found object through rematerialisation

My studio research proposes new uses for post-structuralist semiotics by investigating different materialisations of the found object through acts of remaking. This exegesis and the results of my studio practice argue that the ‘readymade’ in its historical conceptualization has been normalised as a standard method of art making and critical interpretation. By contrast, in this study, the conventional understanding of the readymade as art context dependent is repositioned in an investigation of how the found object can undergo a process of transposition through remaking and reimaging. This material and textual shifting of the conventions of the readymade questions the notion of an origin or source to which texts as objects may derive. I argue that a new materiality of the found object can be achieved through the reproductive processes of casting and photography. By critically re-evaluating this process through post-structural theory, this research offers an alternative reading of art objects utilizing technologies of reproduction. Fundamentally, my research argues for a release of the found object from the prescribed historical discourse of the readymade into textual discourses of materiality and the subject. It recognizes the implicit role of the body in the reading and writing of these various texts. By incorporating the ideas of jouissance, signifiance, the image-repertoire, differance, translation, and the real, the notion of the body as a palimpsest for the objects I remake is investigated as an interplay between representation and writing, form and text.