A peripheral vision?

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on the founding of the Journal of Visual Art Practice in 2001, as written from the perspective of the journal’s inaugural editor. The article provides a brief overview of the history and context to the development of the journal, which includes the role of the National Association for Fine Art Education, a prior, associated publication, Drawing Fire, and also, critically, the outcomes of the Jarratt Report (1985) in the UK, which led to the framing of art practice as ‘research’, and inclusion in national research audits. The article considers some of inner tensions at stake in establishing the journal and outlines the hopes for the journal as considered in its early years. It concludes with questions regarding the future of the journal as something, in the words of Bruno Latour, which might ‘cherish a maximum of alternative ways of belonging to the world’.

KEYWORDS:

• Drawing fire
• editorship
• Journal of Visual Art Practice
• National Association for Fine Art Education
• Research Assessment Exercise

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The title of this article echoes that of a conference paper I gave at the University of Southampton in December 1993 at the invitation of Colin Cina, who encouraged me to speak from my convictions. This was later published as a chapter (Biggs 1994) in Nicholas de Ville and Stephan Foster (eds) (1994) The Artist and the Academy: Issues in Fine Art Education and the Wider Cultural Context.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Iain Biggs

Dr Iain Biggs, RWA, is a former Director of the PLaCE Research Centre, University of the West of England and a former Chair of the UK National Association for Fine Art Education. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, and a Visiting Researcher Fellow at the Environmental Humanities Research Centre, Bath Spa University. A proponent of deep mapping, he has published on this and other topics, writes an occasional blog, maintains a studio practice, and supervises and examines doctoral students. His most recent publication, with Professor Mary Modeen, is Creative Engagements with Ecologies of Place: Geopoetics, Deep Mapping and Slow Residency (Routledge, 2021).