The Processes of Repetition: Transgressing the Boundaries of Fine Art, Craft and Design

This paper is developed from my PhD study ‘Moments of Repetition in the Process of Art Production: Temporalities, Labour, Appropriations and Authorships’ (2010) and is written from the point of view of a Contemporary Artist. Having personally crossed boundaries from Textiles Embroidery B.A. moving to Fine Art Sculpture M.A., the uneasy relationship between the areas of fine and applied art became increasingly obvious. Although the context for my work has changed, what has held constant is a dedication to repetition, not as an endlessly repeated object or subject, Warholian like in nature, but held within the process of art production.

The paper will consider the role of repetition within the concept and development of process, advocating that theories of repetition may be able to think through the perceived boundaries of art, design and craft. The purpose of the repeated action within process can be considered more complex than a means to an end. It is not just a prerequisite to forming a critical mass or achieving a particular form. Whether observed from the standpoint of different schema such as a normative vision or deconstructive ideology, the repetition within process can be seen to affect the object, its relation to the viewer, authorship, and the subject.

The paper concludes that a strong critical position can be utilised through analysing the process of production, a position relatively well considered in craft and design disciplines but perhaps under represented in fine art critique whose preferred stance is to interrogate creative practice from an objective and subjective position.