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Bearing witness to the unwatchable : expressing compassion from afar through a visual art practice : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2026) Pinson, Helen
Photographic images depicting the death, destruction, and chaos caused by armed conflicts are alarming and are being transmitted across the globe at an astonishing rate. The tragic consequence of these conflicts is a humanitarian crisis of mass displacement, as we witness domicide on an unprecedented scale. My photocollage-paintings are made in response to news reports and media photographs of certain of these conflicts and the immense suffering they inflict on civilian populations. I consider the mediating effect of the screen on the ways we see events from a distance. How can I address these horrors for a longer period than the short moment they appear on my screen? I actively question the entangled ethics and aesthetics of using art as a tool to express my response and ask what my practice can offer.
A design exploration of the contemporary anti-fashion paradox : taste, rebellion, and digital distortion : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master in Design at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2026) Zhao, Ruohan
Fashion rebellion manifests differently in the age of mass information and algorithmic influence. This thesis examines the paradox of anti-fashion, exploring how digital platforms simultaneously enable personal expression while accelerating the commodification of rebellion within the fashion system. Drawing on fashion theory and cultural studies on status and taste, the research considers how constant social media exposure shapes taste, influences decision-making, and distorts self-image. The research aims to reveal that anti-fashion is not solely about avant-garde aesthetics, fashion rebellion and deconstruction, but also about the designer’s intention, authenticity, and resistance to external pressures like consumer expectations. The design component investigates these ideas through a metaphorical design language informed by the four stages of a caterpillar’s metamorphosis. Victorian mourning wear is also examined as a historical reference as a symbol for the ‘death’ of traditional anti-fashion and its rebirth within contemporary culture. Draping experiments, fabric manipulations, and print development translate the forms, colours, and textures of the caterpillar and mourning garments into material explorations that reflect transformation and adaptation in contemporary society. The final design outcome synthesizes research, material experimentation, and print development into two looks, each corresponding to one stage of the caterpillar’s lifecycle. These works articulate an alternative vision of anti-fashion which is rooted in cyclical transformation, creative intention, and the negotiation between individuality and systemic influence. The thesis demonstrates how anti-fashion can continue to function as a tool of self-expression and resistance, even in a culture where rebellion is rapidly absorbed, commodified, and normalized.
Being mean to books in order to find out the meaning of books : a designerly exploration of the human-book relationship : a thesis submitted in particle fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design, Massey University, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2026) Lythgoe, Kayla
Being mean to books in order to find out the meaning of books explores my own relationship with books, and their position within my practice as an emerging book designer. What began as an exploration of the future of the book turned into an attempt to understand them in their present state. In order to come to understand their physicality, the impacts of the embodied reader, and the idea and ideal that books represent socially. This research was conducted through an auto-ethnographic design lens, putting my own relationship, tensions and preferences with books at the heart of the work. Through a series of practice led making — or unmaking — I engaged with books, breaking the unspoken rules of interacting with them and testing the limits of my own habits. I began with arguably the meanest act (Burning a book), I was reluctant, hesitant — and simply didn’t want to be mean to books. Through repeated exposure of intervening in an increasingly mean way, my relationship with books as a reader, designer and bibliophile developed to appreciate the marks a book gains from an embodied readers interaction. Books quickly revealed themselves as active participants in the interventions, shaping and directing not only individual encounters but conducting the full idea and scope of the work. By engaging with books in this extreme manner, I’ve come to understand what they mean to me and others, socially and culturally, beyond just the physical object. This research created space for me to truly get to know books and although I cannot simply sum up what books mean, I can say what they mean to me; which is everything. They are no longer simply something that I just enjoy reading, designing and being surrounded by but they are a framework through which I think and communicate myself. As an emerging book designer, it was vital for me to understand books in this way.
Refracting spectres : deep time mourning in a cinema of catastrophe : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2026) McIntosh, Elise
Refracting Spectres explores sceno-cinema-installation practice to facilitate mourning of catastrophic multirealities. The project uses a framework of deep time thinking to reorientate current climate change paralysis that is influenced by an overload of apocalyptic media, especially films. To mourn climate changing land is to recognise the grief of things already lost, or are in the process of being lost. Beings, landscapes, and ecologies are disappearing without the needed processing through mourning. Deep time is a geologic concept that offers a different understanding of time which is expanding and incomprehensibly slow; It conflicts with modern, fast-paced time evident in many apocalypse films. Multirealism opens opportunities to explore deep time through a tangled weave of possible futures that are lived in differently, and through different perspectives. Refracting Spectres is a haunted transition space – like a cinema – where the audience is immersed by the entanglement of multirealities, and forms a perpetual atmosphere of mourning. This practice-based research engages with projection, film, and scenography to form an atmosphere to mourn. The use of projection and film enables a strong connection to both death and modernity. A film is already part of the past. Within a cinema, films immerse the audience in the spectrality of already ‘lived’ narratives. Scenography and installation allow for people to experience a constructed atmosphere – to create a shift in time and place. Through an exploration of apocalyptic media as multireality presents and futures, this project encourages the release of audience’s hidden grief in a climate changing – and changed – world. It is an invitation to mourn.
Endo-exo : the oppressive violence and perverse reclamation within sadomasochism, invertebrates, and cyborgs : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the postgraduate degree of Master of Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2026) Hughes, Gabriella
My MFA project, entitled Endo-Exo, examines how Western institutions have continuously imposed oppressive values onto minorities in various ways, and proposes, within a fine art context, how we can manipulate and reclaim them. By exploring different contexts of bigotry that have long been part of mainstream culture, I connect to my own experiences and position as part of a multifaceted minority, to highlight how personal traumas can arise from the ongoing systemic issues perpetuated by Western media. By using references from popular culture, I aim to expose aspects of the subtextual and illicit propagandising and acts of violent bigotry that continue to plague our everyday lives. By drawing upon imaginative symbolism, punk subculture, and relevant examples drawn from academic theory, I will analyse how these topics can be deconstructed and recontextualised through a marginalised lens to foster empowerment. Additionally, I will reflect upon artists of similar creative fields, those who identify as women, queer (sexually and gender-diverse), neurodivergent, and/or the chronically ill. As an interdisciplinary artist, I incorporate sculpture, drawing, photography, and installation within my work. My practice involves ongoing creation, aspiring to reach a place where feelings are processed and internalised hatred is not regarded as personal fault but as a recognised consequence of suppression, even within the context of a relatively isolated country like Aotearoa, New Zealand (as I equally identify as both tangata whenua and tangata tiriti). At the conclusion of this exegesis, I urge you, reader, to acknowledge the space minorities need to thrive within contemporary art practice, as well as to recognise the continued importance of anti-authoritarian positions in the arts—specifically in light of the current rise of fascism and its impact on the Globalised political environment.