Convenor: Associate Professor Ross Woodrow, Deputy Director (Research and Postgraduate) Queensland College of Art.
Questions about the nature and status of practice-based research have dominated debates in university art and design schools over the past decade. This focus on theorizing, interrogating or repositioning studio practice within a research framework has been driven in large part by the dramatic rise in popularity of studio-based research higher degrees. A significantly greater number of studio-based Doctoral students are currently enrolled in Australian art and design schools than there are PhD candidates in traditional university art history or art theory departments.
The research status of the traditional art history thesis is well established since it conforms to the expectation that research 'activity involves considerable reading rather than looking' and 'turning images into words'1. On the surface at least, the sort of research model evolving in studio-based programs in art schools is in many ways the antithesis of this by privileging looking and substituting images for words.
The aim of this strand of the conference is to explore the ways art theory has developed or is evolving in art and design schools to meet the demands of the new practice-based research paradigm. This is potentially a very rich field so any papers that engage the topic of Theory for Practice will be considered; however, to help crystallize current thinking we would particularly encourage papers related to the demands of writing theory in a studio context. A particular interest will be the exegesis ? now the standard terminology for the written element of a higher degree studio submission. Papers might explore the form and role of the exegesis or research paper in a studio-based postgraduate submission: or, demonstrate ways undergraduate students are being introduced to the complexities of exegetical writing.
1. Michael Ann Holly, ?What is Research in Art History, Anyway?? in Michael Ann Holly & Marquard Smith eds. What is Research in the Visual Arts? Yale Univ. Press, 2008, p. 3