2. Watercolour as a Medium of Ephemerality (Technique/Process)

3. Touch and Physical Connection in Painting (Thematic/Visual Strategy)

4. Strategies of Blurring, Layering, and Dissolving (Visual Strategy/Interpretation)

5. Critical Gaps and Contemporary Context

·       Explores art–science collaboration during COVID-19 where artworks inspired new scientific research.

·       Showed that art can spark innovation in vaccines, ecology, and public health.

·       Demonstrates how creative processes engage memory, emotion, and participation.

·       Useful for your work because it shows how art connects society, science, and lived experience in times of crisis.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07853890.2022.2123557.

·       Examines Warburg’s view of art as a repository of collective memory.

·       Introduces concepts like pathos formulas and the Mnemosyne Atlas mapping visual memory.

·       Warns that mass images can erode cultural memory.

·       Relevant to your project as it shows how art mediates cultural transmission and memory preservation.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024391?seq=1.

Presence Through Absence: Thresholds and Mimesis in Painting

·       Analyses how artworks create meaning through what is absent or unseen.

·       Introduces “thresholds” – points where viewers fill gaps with imagination.

·       Shows that absence produces presence and engages memory.

·       Useful for connecting blur, incompleteness, and memory distortion in painting.

https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2015.130.1.1

Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance

·       Surveys how contemporary artists address memory, archives, trauma, and forgetting.

·       Shows art’s role in both preserving and questioning memory.

·       Notes memory’s inherent slipperiness and distortion.

·       Directly relevant to framing your work as part of the contemporary memory-art discourse.

https://www.scribd.com/document/501850157/Contemporary-Art-and-Memory-Joan-Gibbons.

Social Touch Deprivation During COVID-19

·       Studied lockdown’s impact on mental health and craving for touch.

·       Found lack of intimate touch linked to loneliness and anxiety.

·       Touch deprivation heightened longing for closeness.

·       Supports your theme of physical connection and touch as essential for wellbeing.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.210287.

Touch and Narrative in Art and History Museums

·       Argues touch enriches museum narratives beyond vision.

·       Handling replicas or multisensory displays strengthens memory retention.

·       Improves accessibility for visually impaired visitors.

·       Useful for showing how touch shapes memory and storytelling in art contexts.

http://136.175.10.10/ebook/pdf/The_Multisensory_Museum.pdf#page=88.

The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses

·       Introduces haptic visuality – images that feel tactile.

·       Focuses on intercultural cinema and diasporic memory.

·       Shows how sensory cues transmit cultural identity and embodied memory.

·       Supports your use of watercolour’s sensory and bodily resonance to evoke memory.

https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Skin_of_the_Film/jfQjJc2mqqgC?hl=en&gbpv=1

“Safe is a Wonderful Feeling”: Atmospheres of Surveillance and Contemporary Art

·       Explores art engaging with surveillance atmospheres.

·       Shows how artworks recreate unease, safety, or paranoia under constant watch.

·       Surveillance alters identity and social memory.

·       Relevant to your project as it links atmosphere, absence, and memory through art.

https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/12756.

Memory, Forgetting, and the Archive in Contemporary Art

·       Examines artists’ use of archives as sites of memory and forgetting.

·       Shows how gaps, omissions, and erasures are central to memory work.

·       Highlights artists as archivists and anti-archivists.

·       Useful for discussing memory distortion, absence, and archival practice in art.

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/156351/IP_THESIS_Full_draft_FINAL_compressed.pdf?sequence=1.

Art and the Ephemeral in Contemporary Culture

·       Focuses on art designed to be temporary or transient.

·       Ephemeral art resists commodification and emphasizes experience.

·       The memory of the artwork becomes its legacy.

·       Perfectly supports your watercolour ephemerality and fragility theme.

https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pGqgEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA310&dq=ephemerality+water+colour&ots=mdyNSnZmzq&sig=lBIIGgbglQ9cF7bedNDT2gAleeU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ephemerality%20water%20colour&f=false.

• Read through all sources carefully.

• Take notes and summarise each source in your own words.

• Identify themes, debates, or patterns in the literature.

• Organise into categories using one clear structure:

  • Debate (different scholarly positions)

  • Interpretation (different readings of the same idea/work)

  • History (development of idea/technique over time)

  • Definition (how critics define or frame the concept)

• Do not review sources one by one – group and synthesise.

·       Shows memory is reconstructive and prone to distortion.

·       Covers false memories, suggestibility, and cultural memory shaping.

·       Highlights memory as interpretation rather than literal record.

·       Provides the cognitive science grounding for your argument on distorted memory.

https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=P5fTQ2vYkrgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA346&dq=art+memory+and+distortion&ots=P0os-WbCcb&sig=HzIBaDL1kWQNsHm2X_qWFzAzoRA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=art%20memory%20and%20distortion&f=false.

Memory, Art and the Shaping of Identity

·       Examines art as a vessel for personal and collective identity.

·       Creating or engaging with art surfaces memories that shape selfhood.

·       Notes art’s therapeutic and communal role.

·       Supports your work by linking memory to identity formation through art.

https://esmed.org/MRA/mra/article/view/2204.

Memory and Cultural Identity in Russian Contemporary Art

·       Analyses how post-Soviet art negotiates memory and identity.

·       Artists revisit Soviet legacies, trauma, and repressed histories.

·       Memory in art becomes a tool for cultural resistance and truth-telling.

·       Relevant for showing how art shapes collective identity through memory politics.

https://open.mgimo.ru/bitstream/123456789/4825/1/sravpol_14_3_4_9.pdf.

• Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past (Schacter & Coyle 1997)

• Aby Warburg’s History of Art: Collective Memory and the Social Mediation of Images (Forster 1976)

• Memory, Forgetting, and the Archive in Contemporary Art (Pessin 2019)

2. Presence, Absence, and Gaps

• Presence through Absence: Thresholds and Mimesis in Art and Memory (Fricke 2015)

• Safe is a Wonderful Feeling: Atmospheres of Surveillance and Contemporary Art (McGrath 2012)

• Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance (Gibbons 2007)

3. Ephemerality and Fragility

• Art and the Ephemeral in Contemporary Culture (Ross 2022)

4. Touch, Connection, and Embodiment

• Social Touch Deprivation during COVID-19 (Kirsh, Von Mohr & Fotopoulou 2021)

• Touch and Narrative in Art and History Museums (Levent & McRainey 2014)

• The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Marks 2000)

5. Art, Identity, and Politics

• Memory, Art and the Shaping of Identity (Shapiro 2021)

• Memory and Cultural Identity in Russian Contemporary Art (Comparative Politics Journal 2018)

• Art-Science Multidisciplinary Collaborations to Address the Scientific Challenges Posed by COVID-19 (De La Funte 2022)