Underwriting: an experiment in charting studio practice

Abstract

Why do visual artists write? What does it mean to be a contemporary artist engaged in practice-based research? This article is an artist's response to the task of making a body of visual artwork that constitutes research in the contemporary academic context. I am exploring how written language may form part of this and responding to current debates about the possibility of a ‘new’ kind of knowledge emerging from studio/art practice that can be considered alongside conventional academic research methodologies.

I set out to gain a deeper understanding of artists' writings and interrogate their functions and affect in a range of contexts, alongside my own practice. I have focused on a period spent in the studio making a series of works based on the same frame, re-filmed, from the feature film The Cruel Sea and the use of a written studio log to document the process, but not necessarily ‘anchor’ It. The log works as a map or navigation tool pointing towards the next question. In the text, reflections on artists’ writings intersect with textual and visual extracts from the log itself.

Keywords:

• artists' writings
• practice-based research
• tacit knowledge
• visual intelligence
• painting
• process