Material : Making
Bringing together staff from across the School of Art, the Material : Making group shares and evaluates practice-based research.
We approach making as a fluid concept, an ongoing conversation. As individual research practitioners, we take an artist-based approach to examining questions of art practice as research. As a group, we seek to develop rigour about our methodologies, research propositions and what constitutes data.
Making is a complex engagement between body, space, and material; research into, or through, making often results in dense, subjective projects. One aim of the group is to explore how we might create a ‘frame’ for an audience; to get their attention and open up these projects. Rather than explaining what we did, we aim to attend to the experience of our audience now. In this spirit, we explore how our research propositions are made explicit through the form of the presentation, rather than through what we say.
Presentations by group members are seen as forms of production – presentation as making. Can we approach presentation as reflection? Can we approach making as reflection? In the spirit of trying not to fetishise, or take for granted what we think we mean by ‘making’, can we re-make making?
Get in touch
If you are interested in getting involved with Material : Making, or have questions, please get in touch with Dr Conor Wilson (c.wilson3@bathspa.ac.uk).