READINGS: A STUDIO COMPANION

These texts are not external references but internal presences. They circulate within the work—sometimes consciously, often intuitively—shaping how objects are seen, arranged, and felt.

Bachelard opens the interior as a site of reverie.
Heidegger situates the object within being.
Merleau-Ponty returns vision to the body.

In parallel, Bennett and Brown unsettle the object—allowing things to exceed their function and become active participants in the image.

The writings on Margaret Olley and Joseph Cornell form a continuous dialogue with the work, not as influences but as affinities—shared orientations toward intimacy, containment, and the quiet intensity of domestic space.

Practice-led research texts do not frame the work from outside; they articulate what the work is already doing.

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Core Theoretical Framework

Bachelard, Gaston. (1994 [1958]). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press.
→ Foundational for understanding interior space as lived, intimate, and psychologically resonant.

Heidegger, Martin. (2008 [1927]). Being and Time. New York: Harper Perennial.
→ Frames being as situated, grounding the project’s concern with presence and dwelling.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (2013 [1945]). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
→ Establishes perception as embodied and relational.

Barad, Karen. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway. Durham: Duke University Press.
→ Reconfigures matter as active, relational, and performative.

Object / Thing Theory / Materiality

Bennett, Jane. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.
→ Positions objects as vital and agentic rather than inert.

Brown, Bill. (2001). “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry, 28(1), 1–22.
→ Distinguishes objects from “things” as sites of excess meaning.

Appadurai, Arjun (ed.). (1986). The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stewart, Susan. (1984). On Longing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Practice-Led Research

Barrett, Estelle, & Bolt, Barbara (eds.). (2007). Practice as Research. London: I.B. Tauris.
→ Establishes making as a form of inquiry.

Frayling, Christopher. (1993). “Research in Art and Design.”
→ Defines research into, through, and for practice.

Nelson, Robin. (2013). Practice as Research in the Arts.
→ Provides structure for evidencing practice-led work.

Key Artists & Monographs

Ades, Dawn et al. (1981). Joseph Cornell. New York: MoMA.

Hartigan, Lynda Roscoe. (2007). Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination.

Edwards, Deborah (ed.). (2008). Margaret Olley: Far from a Still Life.

France, Christine. (2013). Margaret Olley: A Life in Art.

Critical Theory / Psychoanalysis / Gender

Kristeva, Julia. (1982). Powers of Horror.

Irigaray, Luce. (1984). An Ethics of Sexual Difference.

Grosz, Elizabeth. (2008). Chaos, Territory, Art.

Sontag, Susan. (1964). “Notes on ‘Camp’.”

Supporting Texts

Baxandall, Michael. (1985). Patterns of Intention.

Yanagi, Soetsu. (2018). The Beauty of Everyday Things.
→ Connects everyday objects with ethical and aesthetic attention.

Reading, here, is not separate from making.
It is another form of arrangement.