The ‘Great Walk and More’: Thupelo artists’ Workshop 2010

Abstract

These approaches suggest a new and challenging mode of investigation into the working methods of contemporary artists. This still exploratory approach pushes beyond the limitations of traditional art historical aesthetic interpretation to investigate further into processes of artwork construction, and new modes of analysis, examining new and different methods of working, such as how artists may collect and categorise, (Schneider ibid.; Calzadilla and Marcus ibid; Schneider and Wright ibid.). Contemporary visual art is often reified as a practice 'set apart' from society, in which a relationality of 'artefact qua artefact' (Berger 1972;Root 1996;Strathern 1990) establishes value within a rarefied art historical trajectory of aesthetic value (primarily Western derived) emphasising progression and innovation. Even public art may still appear to be on a stage 'apart' from the everyday, its esoteric meaning and self-referentiality separating audience from creator.