Wonder in Contemporary Art Practice

Co edited by Irene Brown and Christian Mieves.

Published by Routledge as part of their Advances in Art and Visual Studies series.

Introduction and chapters by Brown and Mieves.  Dr. Christian Mieves is a painter and Senior Lecturer at Wolverhampton University.

Wonder has an established link to the history and philosophy of science. However, there is little acknowledgement of the relationship between the visual arts and wonder. This book presents a new perspective on this overlooked connection, allowing a unique insight into the role of wonder in contemporary visual practice. Artists, curators and art theorists give accounts of their approach to wonder through the use of materials, objects and ways of exhibiting. These accounts not only raise issues of a particular relevance to the way in which we encounter our reality today but ask to what extent artists utilise the function of wonder purposely in their work.

Reviewer Christopher Smith, editor of the Journal of Visual Arts states 'Brown and Mieves bring a much neglected attention to the topic of wonder and the visual arts in this edited collection of reflexions drawn from a diverse range of distinguished scholars and practitioners....It goes beyond theory into the studio and the role wonder has in the production and reception of visual arts.  This stimulating read is a must for academics and practitioners in the visual arts'. 

Other contributors are Dr. Will Buckingham, reader in Writing and Creativity at De Montfort University, Leicester and Associate Professor in the College of Literature and Journalism at Sichuan University; Shirley Chubb, Reader in Interdisciplinary Art at the University of Chichester; Alison Dalwood, visual artist, senior lecturer in fine art at the University of Hertfordshire and director of artbetween.org, a project with artists from China; Silke Dettmers, sculptor and Senior Lecturer at the University College for the Creative Arts, Canterbury; Marion Endt-Jones, Honorary Research Fellow in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester; Anne Hilker, doctoral student at the Bard Graduate Center, NYC; Celina Jeffery, curator, writer and associate professor of Art History and Theory at the University of Ottawa, Canada; Runette Kruger, Head of the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa; Laura Kuch, artist who lives and works in Germany and London; Juliette Losq, artist, won the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2005, shortlisted for the Catlin Prize in 2011, and one of the five shortlisted artists for the John Moores Prize in 2014; Dr. Terry Ownby, photographer and photo historian teaches photo media and photo history at Idaho State University-USA; Alistair Robinson director of Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art since 2002, has contributed to journals including the New Statesman and published monographs and essays about fifty artists; Mark Sanderson, academic, writer and photographer and Senior Lecturer at the University College for the Creative Arts, Canterbury; Dr. Tiffany Shafran, an Australian artist and curator currently the Coordinator of Education Programs at Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery; Jane Wildgoose, artist, writer and researcher with a background in design and making for stage and film. Her current practice centres on collecting, and working to commission with museums, including Sir John Soane’s Museum in London and Yale Center for British Art in the USA.