Artistic research: Methods that work

Abstract

This volume has emerged from discussions about the status of arts practice and its legitimacy as research. Art-making as a means of research enquiry remains ambiguous and ephemeral, but increasingly acknowledged as an important way to model our knowledge and experience of the world. In the past two decades there have been great strides in its identification within the academy, with phrases like ‘practice-based’, ‘practice-led’ research or ‘artistic research’ being acknowledged as legitimate pursuits, if slippery to identify. What always seems to come along with this is some kind of exploration of the new. This isn’t like innovation in other fields, but has properties and perspectives that are specific to it as methods of enquiry. These methods are uncontroversial within creative practice and represent a challenge to thinking about research as textual or text-based outcomes that can be easily assessed. This volume collects a number of different perspectives on the status and practice of art as a method or research enquiry. Together they represent a conversation about how we work in this field and what methods work.