About

Artist writing is an emerging interdisciplinary mode of research that is deeply absorbed in the connections and disjunctions between language, politics, poetics and contemporary art. It facilitates the creation of expanded forms of text encompassing literary genres while incorporating modes such as drawing and image production. Offering new interruptions to linguistic representation, art writing foregrounds the experiences of practitioners who have been historically underrepresented due to factors such as socio-economic position, race and gender.

This project asks how particular tonalities expressing the socio-psychological atmosphere of place emerge through the generation of new forms of site-specific writing as artistic practice. Central to this question are several key factors such as Northern Ireland’s layered history and evolving present, and the relationship between legitimisation, class and the vocabularies developed in the orbit of art.

Exploring how audiences can become central participants of the writing process, I will question how art writing can function as interaction – not interpretation. This line of inquiry holds the potential for art writing to develop modes of articulation outside established hierarchies, where signal and interpretation have historically been prioritised over the role of ambience and affect.

I will engage in a series of conversations, writing in response to exhibitions at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry-Londonderry, emphasising engagement with the multiplicity of oral histories and underrepresented knowledges as NI as a society works towards situating itself within what it means to exist ‘post-conflict.’

By contributing to the overlapping communities surrounding the CCA this project will have significant impact across all of its programme streams. Presenting my investigation through the production of various publications, these outputs will consider the implications of an audience that is generally, but inaccurately, regarded as coming from a place of simplistic binaries – an assessment that this research will facilitate me to challenge.