Hiding in the open: a queered artistic practice.

This text investigates creative decision-making in art practice and theoretical models that illuminate the sense of how contemporary working practice as an artist (expert
practitioner), functions. Further it seeks to demonstrate how observation and documentation alters the creation of new work, which emerges from the process. It also seeks to show how this perspective differs from that of non-makers (expert spectators).
Equally important is the linked thematic content, where complex notions of identity, self and culture are played out against an historic time frame as well as in contemporary art making situations of various models (museological, commercial, academic), and within the
several guises I perform (as an artist, writer, curator) which might give rise to signature practices.
These investigations work in parallel with those that seek to identify, understand and explain the nature of coded information that has been used in the artistic practice of
same-sex lovers. Embedded coded information is ostensibly about one subject yet contains within itself another subject matter, and I refer to this phenomenon as hiding in plain sight.
The Portfolio includes an outline of methods and strategies adopted in the project, an enquiry into the interweaving of objects made, curation, and outlines the most recent
project Golden Rain, addressing institutional privilege, gifting, and hiding in plain sight. It provides a retrospective account of changes in my practices and records the development of new strategies to deal with institutional homophobia over a series of exhibitions,
artworks and practice-based investigations.

A thesis submitted to Middlesex University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Arts.