Coming to an Understanding: Dialogue as Practice and Understanding in Contemporary Art
Supervisors: Prof Clive Cazeaux, Dr Jon Clarkson
Research group: Centre for Fine Art Research
Nearly all twentieth-century artworks have been written as the product of the creative individual artist or genius. In contrast, recent social-activist and neo-conceptual artists have cited dialogue as a social mode of meaning-generation in contemporary art. For example, the WochenKlausur group offers a series of conversations as an artwork, a claim grounded in the conceptual and process-based traditions of art (Kester 2004). Dialogue has been John’s principal mode of practice as an artist for a number of years. This practice-based research investigates what contemporary artists understand of dialogue, and argues that dialogue is a critical model for developing a socially-focused and reflective art practice.
The outcome of this research will be a body of work where dialogue operates as the art practice, and which demonstrates the capacity of dialogue to extend the meanings and boundaries of art.
