Imagination, Autonomy and Transgression within Contemporary Fine Art Practice

This practice-led research project, held by a materiality of ‘thinking through making’ on a deeply personal level, is concerned with how the autonomous imagination manifests in collaborative artistic practice, and translates into co-authored work, and the transgressions therein. The central question this research project seeks to answer is: What happens in the collaborative act of aesthetic exchange of social practice art in the context of social and political crises, and how can such acts both inform the artform, the artist and the participants? It responds to these questions through an interweaving of critical engagement with theorists and a body of work created through the research project. Its findings form a critical and reflexive expansion of my individual art practice and benefit the social practice arts sector understanding of practice though prisms of ‘surrender and running to’, ‘beholding’, ‘imminence’ and ‘the radical imagination’. The thesis explores how the imagination ruptures normative political thinking and impacts the individual and the communal through a socially engaged art practice of solo, collaborative and group performativity, framed herein as the ‘post-autonomous.’

This thesis has an alternative title of ‘Beholding the Radical Imagination: a new lens on social practice art through practice-led research'.