Abstract
This thesis applies photographic theory and approaches to the interpretation of Bill Culbert' s three-dimensional installations, elucidating the interdisciplinary nature of his oeuvre. It examines the writings of Roland Barthes, Rosalind Krauss and Susan Sontag, amongst others, and relates their discussions of photographic theory to the role that photography plays in Culbert' s work. Chapter one examines Culbert' s use of photography to explore themes further developed in his installations, investigates the role of the camera obscura in his break from painting, and identifies the continuous interaction between his three-dimensional work and his photographs. Chapter two explores Culbert's use of light and its interaction with space, relating the examination of light and space in his work to aspects of photography such as the index, time, movement, multiplicity and the photographic surface. It also identifies his site-specific practice as part of a broad challenge to Modernism's autonomy and the coded nature of the gallery that began in the 1960s. Chapter three examines Culbert's use of readymade objects and his manipulation of their original contexts, noting parallels to the photographic image's relationship with context. This chapter compares Culbert's use of found objects to Marcel Duchamp's readymades, the Surrealist found object, avantgarde photomontage and Minimalist sculpture. Chapter four investigates the binary states of reality and illusion - integral to photography - that inform Culbert's work. This chapter discusses Plato's allegory of the Cave and the indexical nature of photography, then goes on to explore Culbert' s use of shadow, reflection, metaphor,
metonymy, pun and inversion, arguing that these devices resonate with photography's mediation of our perception of reality. The thesis concludes by arguing that Culbert's rejection of Modernism's self-referentiality and his fusion of painting, photography and installation locates his work within Postmodernist practice.