Abstract
M.Tech. (Fine Art)
The study is positioned within a post-structuralist paradigm, within the theories and discourses of social geography, which place the human experience of the interaction between society and the natural environment at its centre. The purpose of my study, is to apply semiotic analysis to selected works of visual art pertaining to or using map-based elements as part of their subject matter or content, and to unpack how the conventions of social geography and cartography are re-envisioned semiotically in these selected examples of map-based art.
Social geography is the study of the relationship between society and the natural environment and how the shaping of the natural environment has come to be a creation of humanised forms existing out of complex layers of socialisation (Murdoch 2006:1). The study investigates the relationship between art and social geography, specifically through the semiotic analysis of selected map-based works by the following artists: Gerhard Marx, Hannelie Coetzee and The Trinity Session, as well as my own art practice.
Though my research I investigate the way in which artists become the cartographers, or map-makers of their own geographies, and how unconventional approaches to mapping by artists can be analysed through, what Emmanuelle Casti (2000:37) terms, semiotic cartography. Part of this investigation aims to explore selected theories and philosophies of social geography which are then contextualised in relation to each artist’s work. Through this research I unpack different modes of map-making which I then explore in relation to my own art practice.