A Game Approach to Art Appreciation – Pop-Up Research Lab

Contribute to this live, action-based research project by being part of an embodied, emboldened recursive creative art appreciation experience in Full Circle. Led by artist and creative animateur Naomi Lee McCarthy, explore identity construction in Australia through a contemporary art lens. 20 minute ‘rolling’ sessions.

Art Appreciation as embodied, emboldened, recursive creative practice This live action research project will be delivered in two parts: Firstly, by conducting a Pop-Up Research Lab, involving a rolling series of mediated and unmediated art appreciation experiences navigating Full Circle, currently on exhibition in The Lock Up. This exhibition considers the inheritance of family cultural traditions and how artists delve into the past to navigate their future. Through the research framework, artist and creative animateur Naomi Lee McCarthy will invite audiences into an examination of the dialogues generated through engagement with culturally and politically divergent artworks. Research Lab participants’ feedback will be recorded anonymously (written down) and selected quotes translated into a text based film. This research will have a focus on the performed body as a contested site Secondly, by presenting The Lab Reloaded, an interactive, performative lecture, including presenting the findings from the Pop-Up Lab translated into a short film. During the lecture, artist and creative animateur Naomi Lee McCarthy, will continue to negotiate the social practice of art appreciation by gamely involving the audience in performative gestures that model the research experience. The intention of the performative gestures in both components will be to set the conditions for ‘an experience’ to occur with each of the focus artworks. ‘An experience’ is philosopher and psychologist John Dewey’s phrase for an aesthetic experience as something of distinct value, that is different to the ‘everyday’. The focus of this research is to examine the impact of art appreciation experiences when diverse audiences apprehend the body of the other as performed marker of power, inverter of accepted narratives, trope to problematize and reveal of the conceit of cultural norms.