Practice-based art research

All art begins as an idea. Something stirs within our imagination, which grows, taking shape and direction according to our interests and artistic practice. Education provides us with tools to make sense of our ideas, which become real as we produce our art. An idea is shapeless and without meaning or structure until we begin to test these ideas by producing work. Unless we keep our work in a cupboard or under a blanket or buried in the files on our computer and never show anyone, we must engage with an audience and show our work. This is about entering into a conversation. This conversation can be part of the process of education with tutors and peers; it can be with family or friends with less understanding of my work or, perhaps most scarily, it can be with a shapeless, amorphous mass of an external audience whose reactions are more difficult to second-guess. The definition of practice-based research is that, in order to explore a research question, we need to create things as part of this process. “The research is exploratory and is embedded in a creative practice.” (Gauntlett, 2021)

One interesting point here is that my creative practice is ongoing and open-ended, leading to new insights and directions. It does not stop when I have created a body of work, held an exhibition, or shown my work in a book. The feedback and my response to that feedback have become an integral part of my process. We lose control of our creation as others always find their own meanings and interpretations with likes and dislikes which are different from our own. Once we share work, either with an audience or with partners who will share in the making of the art, there is also an opportunity for feedback and new insights, which can change the very nature of the work we produce and the nature of our practice. The course notes often speak of a developing practice. As I near the end of the Context and Audience unit, I have thought about what this term means. It seems clear that I will never stop refining my practice. As I share my work whether with an audience or with partners interested in developing shared works, I will continue to re-interpret my works and reconsider my creative processes and output and to re-access the tools I use within my practice. This cannot be considered as a one-way process. As my ideas change by engaging with others, so my audience and partners with whom I share the creative process will also change after engaging with me. Ann Schilo’s book Visual Arts Practice and Affect brings together contributors who discuss how art begins, whether through engagement, conversation, reflection, and what goes on inside our heads,  “we are interested in the slippages, associations, disjunctions, and reflections that occur in our encounters with art and when we speak to one another.” (Schilo, 2016, p. xiii) This reflection on ideas and the production of art has many steps, but I will focus on the gaining of knowledge through research. It seems basic that the more we read and the more ideas we question and test, the more our experience grows. Graeme Sullivan raises an interesting counterpoint to this idea, “Oftentimes what is known can limit the possibility of what is not and this required a creative act to see things from a new view.” He goes on to explain that research must be not only “systematic and rigorous” but at the same time “inventive so as to reveal the rich complexity of the imaginative intellect.”  (Sullivan, 2006, p. 20). Much of Sullivan’s writing tries to explain practice-led arts research and what sets it apart from other kinds of research. This echoes a point that Stephen Scrivener writes about, distinguishing between practice-based research done for the purposes relating to the creation of an “art object and the art making process…. the art making process is understood as a form of research and the art object as a form of knowledge” and research done for the point of gaining “knowledge and understanding”  Scrivener concludes that if research is an original investigation undertaken in order to gain knowledge and understanding then the creation of art “is undertaken in order to create apprehensions (i.e., that is objects that must be grasped by the senses and the intellect) which when grasped offer ways of seeing the past, present and future, rather than knowledge of the way things were or are. Hence, in the context of making art I would define research as original creation undertaken in order to generate novel apprehension” (Scrivener, 2002)

I do not agree with all the points Sullivan and Scrivener make such as the implication that only research in the arts is inventive and that this is what sets it aside from research in other fields. However, having said this, it does seem obvious that knowledge and learning using practice-led research face unique challenges, such as the challenge over “whether knowledge is found in the art object or whether it is made in the mind of the viewer.” (Sullivan, 2009, p. 47) In the absence of a precise definition of what practice-led arts research is, many, like Sullivan, tell us about the gaps and what this research isn’t. Sullivan quotes Australian Art Critic Benjamin Genocchio, who tells us that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” (Genocchio, 2001, p. 28)) The term of artist-researchers is introduced. People who “delve into theoretical, conceptual, dialectical, and contextual practices through artmaking.” (Sullivan, 2009, p. 62) I like this description best.

Regardless of these discussions on the merits of art research, it seems that a practice which involves an iterative process of traditional research, the creation of artworks, feedback, contemplation of how the art sits with others and then taking on board such comments to potentially revise the original artwork. Is certainly a form of research. This is a powerful and helpful tool to anyone trying to develop their practice and to find their place in their particular research interest using an ever-expanding body of work.

It is interesting to consider an art practice which is isolated and never seeks the opinion of others. What might be the outcome were we never to show anyone our work? I ignore for a moment how that would work out when engaging in study and having work assessed. Many years ago, I studied Physics at college, so I will share a theoretical experiment designed to show the gaps in understanding of quantum theory. Erwin Schrodinger proposed that a cat be placed in a sealed box with a radioactive substance and a Geiger counter, which would trigger the release of poison and would detect radiation. The cat could be thought of as both alive and dead at the same time. (Howgego, 2019) This is clearly impossible which is what the experiment set out to show. Is the undisclosed artwork hidden in a drawer like that cat in a box? Were all the rolls of unprocessed film left behind by Vivian Meir or Garry Winogrand a legacy which should have been left undisturbed as without the author starting a conversation, how could we know the basis or the planned outcome of their idea? I have not looked into this but I guess that these films have been processed and the pictures are sold with same value attached to works which these photographers approved of and sanctioned. I do not say I agree or disagree.

References

Gauntlett, D. (2021) What is practice-based research?, DavidGauntlett.com. Available at: https://davidgauntlett.com/research-practice/what-is-practice-based-research/ (Accessed: 7 January 2025).

Genocchio, B. (2001) Fiona Foley: Solitaire. Annandale, NSW: Piper Press.

Howgego, J. (2019) What is Schrodinger’s cat?, New Scientist Science Definitions. Available at: https://www.newscientist.com/definition/schrodingers-cat/ (Accessed: 20 April 2024).

Schilo, A. (2016) Visual Arts Practice and Affect: Place, Materiality and Embodied Knowledge. Edited by A. Schilo. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Scrivener, S. (2002) ‘The art object does not embody a form of knowledge’, edge. Working Papers in Art and Design. Available at: http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades (Accessed: 7 January 2025).

Sullivan, G. (2006) ‘Research Acts in Art Practice’, Studies in Art Education, A Journal of Issues and Research, 48(1), pp. 19–35. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475803.

Sullivan, G. (2009) ‘Making Space: The Purpose and Place of Practice-led Research’, in Smith, H. (ed.) Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 41–65.