JAWS: Journal of Arts Writing by Students - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2015

This article starts with the premise that artists have an intrinsic understanding of visual space through a theoretical awareness of spatial discourses in art, including the ‘gesture’, objecthood and post-studio debates. This understanding then becomes interwoven into the practical aspects of sustaining an art practice, and expanded within the broader context of the socially felt space within which artists make work. The article looks at practices that exemplify the artist’s need for space, in relation to: spaces in which artworks are produced, stored and distributed; the depicted studio; occupations which deny headspace; and gendered containment of domestic space. Lastly, the article asks whether practices with varying adaptability to spatial resources are then varyingly resilient when there is a lack of space, resulting in different levels of sustainability for different types of practice.

CDD – Compulsive Dismantling Disorder, is a quasi-diagnosis for the systematic and obsessive dissembling of objects, whereby an object becomes an exploded diagram of its parts. This is analogous to empirical research methods, whereby a human analyses an object in terms of its cumulative parts. Taken as an ontological perspective, questions of operation and dependence arise in relation to the theories of Tristan Garcia and Graham Harman. When considering the Journal of Artistic Research (JAR) in this context, an irreducible issue of potentiality is identified: selfexposition prohibits art from functioning as art-research.

Framing the City is a visual essay that reflects on the construction of images and the fabric of place. Combining original collages and writing by Camilla Brueton with quotes from theorists and artists who influence her, it presents the city as a living collage. Hopes, dreams and optimism from different decades are embedded in the built environment; constantly framed and reframed by our movements and actions as we go about our daily lives.

Towards the end of the 1970s the American art scene welcomed a new era: postmodernism. The new radical practices and ideas concerning representation were central in the photo-conceptual art of this period, and appropriation became the key deconstructive method. This is an article about the Pictures Generation, the way postmodernism was initially theorized, and deconstructed, and the notion of desire through the analysis of significant artworks of that period.

The critical meaning of this visual essay is between the images and the sense of intent, rather than in any written argument/analysis.

Starting with the origins of the Information Age and the Dot-Com bubble of the early 1990s, this article explores the rise of a culture dominated by the computer. This article argues that society is only understood through the language and techniques of the computer and has had a lasting effect on art and society. This idea is further explored through Nicolas Bourriaud’s theory on Relational Aesthetics and charts the link between a technological environment and way we produce and understand art. Interlinked with this argument is an analysis on how the computer has changed the face of labour, with the gallery and the monitor becoming new environments of production.

This article aims to compare and contrast two different types of drawing mediums and their ability to capture the nature of time and memory. The purpose of this enquiry is to gain a better understanding of the process of both drawing and thinking and how the qualities of different graphic tendencies correspond to these processes. Throughout the creation of the drawings and the reflective writing that ensued, the main point of reference has been Bachelard’s book The Poetics of Space (1994). The reading of this text and the metaphors within have both inspired and confirmed the qualities within the drawings. The recognition of this interplay is invaluable for future practice.

As part of JAWS’s ongoing commitment to publishing and working with emerging academics and arts writing across higher education, for the first time we have invited a first-year B.A. student to contribute the review. For this review, our reviews editor Renée O’Drobinak (Slade School of Art) has taken a ‘hands off’ approach, with Julius Puolakanaho taking the lead in not only writing the review independently but choosing an exhibition that he felt lent itself to the emergent themes in this JAWS, where arts methodologies are seen to be employed in traditionally more scientific pursuits. The exhibition ‘Revelations: Experiments in Photography’ at The Science Museum ran from 20 March to 13 September 2015, exploring the relationship between the use of photography in science since the mid-1800s up to their present day mutual influences and overlaps.

‘Revelations: Experiments in Photography’, The Science Museum, London, 20 March–13 September 2015