20

WRiTing and The phd in

Fine aRT

Katy Macleod and Lin Holdridge

This chapter will address the role of writing in the formulation of a phd in Fine art. it
will view writing as part of a negotiation between setting out the thesis as research proof
and critical engagement with it through conceiving and making art. Through brief
but detailed analyses of five submitted phds and an insight into two current studies,
it will adumbrate how the role of the researcher is embedded in the enquiry; that
this is essential to the ‘unfinished business’ of the research (Chapter 3). The chapter
will demonstrate how an artist who is in pursuit of further art research will not have
produced an argument and drawn conclusions so much as provided a provocation to
produce more art, contingent to the changed conditions s/he has effected through
the phd (Chapter 14). We will provide details of this process. We will also claim it
demonstrates a critical reflexivity which is touched upon by a number of chapters in
this book, notably by morwenna griffiths (Chapter 10). however, where griffiths is
concerned to clarify research distinctions between, say, critical reflection and critical
reflexivity, we deploy the latter as an encompassing term which registers the way in
which the phds cited here turn back to engage critically both with their own purposes
and institutional contexts. This is partly due to those purposes of art research which
refuse the convention of a written thesis, also the shifting of the central focus of research
from sources external to it, to the art, which then becomes the enquiry, itself. it is not
our intention to provide a theoretical exegesis to identify such art research, nor will this
chapter present an argument which draws clear conclusions in that sense. however,
we will provide insight into the value of critically reflexive phds whose formulation of
questions outweighs the more conventional demonstration of an argument, proving
that satisfactory research has been produced and that training has been completed;
hence, the case studies have been selected to demonstrate certain critically reflexive
qualities, which are enhanced by an appropriate deployment of writing.
The chapter will be in three parts: the first will offer a brief overview of sources
and ideas; the second and key part, will present examples of doctoral practice and
submissions and the third will address the requirements for building appropriate
research cultures. in our view there is a particular imperative attached to research