Karen Seccombe

Citation

Thesis Title
the clarity of light. Self-representation through art making: a personal response to the social justice work of WAI the Women's Art Initiative collect

One in three New Zealand women will experience violence. The social responses given can positively or negatively, affect the capacity to recover from these experiences with dignity. Ms Seccombe undertook insider research within a closed art making community, WAI - the Women's Art Initiative collective, analysing the many positive, autonomous, and justice based ways that women can respond to their experiences of violence and abuse through an active engagement in art making. This feminist, anti-oppressive, and Response Based Practice approach challenges commonly accepted deficit notions of the necessary therapeutic relationship between art and women who have experienced violence. Her research offered insight to a model of practice, a series of guidebooks, and a personal body of stained glass installation works, which acknowledge the often invisible resistance, strength, courage and mana of those whose voices are most marginalised within this discourse.

Supervisors
Professor Bob Jahnke
Associate Professor Margaret Forster