Uncovered: How do you research through art? Exhibition and symposium

Uncovered: How do you research through art? was part of the Cambridge Festival 2022 programme. This is a project, including an exhibition and a programme of events, conceived by Mary-Jane Montgomerie House and Rebecca Hearle, postgraduate researchers at Cambridge School of Art, and supported by Senior Research Fellow Dr Elena Cologni, Research Coordinator.

All creative PhD students make artistic work as part of their research process, answering their research question(s) either through making – practice-based research - or by researching new methods in practice – practice-led research.

While, at first glance, this appears to be a very different approach to that taken by research students in other disciplines, artistic enquiry as research can work in similar ways, encompassing various methodological strategies such as experimentation with the outcome of new knowledge.

The artist as researcher draws on various theoretical and methodological paradigms, which are often interdisciplinary. Subjective art research approaches that have previously been marginalised can be articulated and embedded into forms.

The programme features research by:

This has been funded by ARU's Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Exhibition, 2-21 April 2022, Ruskin Gallery

The team coordinated this exhibition to uncover aspects of creative research journeys by making art in countless different media, from paintings, prints and textiles to films, books, and manuscripts, using technologies both old and new.

Composite of two photos of the Uncovered: How do you research through art? exhibition at the Ruskin Gallery in Cambridge.

Symposium, 2 April 2022, Ruskin Gallery

During the opening of the exhibition, members of the team discussed their research journeys in conversation with Dr Catherine Dormor, Head of Research Programmes at the Royal College of Art, London.

Composite image of photos from the Uncovered: How do you research art? symposium. Left-right: a crowd of people viewing works of art in the Ruskin Gallery; Postgraduate Researcher April Virgoe speaking; Dr Catherine Dormor speaking; five people viewing works of art in the Ruskin Gallery

Left-right: a crowd of people at the Uncovered exhibition in the Ruskin Gallery; Postgraduate Researcher April Virgoe speaking; Dr Catherine Dormor speaking; five people at the Uncovered exhibition in the Ruskin Gallery.