Developing her interest in the role of writing in an artist’s practice,
Dr Mary Anne Francis contributed to ‘The Art of Research: Research Narratives’ – an international symposium at Chelsea College of Art & Design in October 2008 with the paper ‘On the value of “Situational Fiction” for an artist’s writing’.
Presented as an artwork, and as such, entitled ‘Paper’, the text discussed the tendency towards ‘explanation’ that, as Susan Sontag notes, dominates much writing about art. Proposing a typology of alternative approaches, it argued for the value of one of these in particular: ‘site-specific fiction’, as that deploys fictional / ‘novelistic’ writing in different types of social space. According to the implications of the paper’s logic, this reflexively includes the conference hall and exhibition space.
Responding for the call for artists to present examples of their work that could be narrated as ‘research’, Mary Anne offered this paper as her artwork, in an exhibition context. While debate about the way in which art might be research (with a big ‘R’) has been plentiful over the last ten years or so, there has been much less discussion about the form of writing in an artist’s research practice (including the PhD), and the way in which this might take on aspects of an art-work (and likewise, challenge more academic definitions of ‘Research’). These are debates that Mary Anne’s ‘Paper’ sought to raise, continuing her work with post-graduates ‘What is an arist’s writing? (In research)’
www.maryannefrancis.org/43.html
Copies of the limited edition print-run are still available.
More recently, ‘The Art-Lectures’ – a series of events open to all staff and students in the Sallis Benny Theatre – is developing this preoccupation by inviting guest experts to ply ways in which art interfaces with the lecture as the latter is addressed from the spaces of philosophy, performance, curating and art-criticism. Programme details available at Main Reception.
Mary Anne also contributed two pieces – one from her Part Art brand - to the group show Farmers’ Market that was curated by Handel Street Projects in Wigmore Street, London November – December 2008. Other exhibitors included Richard Deacon, Bob & Roberta Smith and Braco Dimitrijevic.
