Academic Writing

“Normalism and Legal Representation in Canadian Art”

Master’s thesis completed in partial fulfillment of the degree Master of Arts in Sociology, Carleton University. July, 2021. Supervised by Dr. Bernhard Leistle. Second reader Dr. Jean-Michel Landry. This research has been nominated for a University Medal.

Abstract:
In this thesis, I consider a 2014 Supreme Court hearing involving the National Gallery of Canada and CARFAC-RAAV, our nation's preeminent artists’ advocacy group. It is my proposition that CARFAC-RAAV’s success in the hearing – which legally required the National Gallery to pay mandatory minimum fees to artists exhibiting in their gallery – is part of a process of reification of an artistic productivism. A suite of theoretical considerations build toward this conclusion focusing on the study of the antithetical tendencies of the legal and artistic orders. I argue that the former is based on a predilection for continuity and permanence, the latter on reflexivity and a certain anomalistic acceptance of things anew. When these two orders meet in the event of the hearing, a juridical rigidity of value and vision finds mooring in the artistic field. This is pertinent today because alternative visions of arts’ operation become stymied behind normalized labour-centered forms of practice. In this case then, law becomes one important sinew of normalism in the Canadian artistic field.

Citation:
Curley, Evan. Normalism and Legal Representation in Canadian Art. Master’s Thesis, Department of Sociology, Carleton University, ON. Unpublished Manuscript.

“In Field and Impasse: Artistic Practice and the State in Rural Nova Scotia”

Undergraduate thesis completed in partial fulfillment of the degree Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Sociology, Saint Francis Xavier University. March, 2018. Supervised by Dr. Lynda Harling Stalker. Second reader Dr. Patricia Cormack. A Canadian Sociological Association Award was received for this work.

Abstract:
In this thesis the established scholarship of practice theory, formed by French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, is taken to consider the structure and functioning of artistic production in rural Nova Scotia. A particular focus is given to state intervention and how the political field intersects with the logics and everyday practices of artists and intermediary arts organizations. An analysis of a new economic orientation, the “creative economy”, and a theoretically responsive historic review of national and provincial state intervention establish the ground for exploring the current artistic field. It is revealed that an impasse to artistic autonomy is inscribed in structural relations of the field. This is an outcome of the state led rise of a folk culture orthodox and the workings of granting apparatuses in Canada. This work concludes with notes towards a transfiguration of the artistic field - one that subsumes a structure increasingly disengaged with the state and that works towards further artistic autonomy. I believe this work to be an important contribution to our thinking on art and the state in Nova Scotia and perhaps other rural communities in Canada. 

Citation:
Curley, Evan. In Field and Impasse: Artistic Practice and the State in Rural Nova Scotia. Undergraduate Thesis, Department of Sociology, Saint Francis Xavier University, NS. Unpublished Manuscript.