Dr Jane Robb is an artist and academic with over a decade of experience in the education sector, including as a qualified teacher and lecturer in outdoor education. She has expertise in delivering creative, embodied and environmentally focused experiences in different settings including outdoors and in the community. A self-taught artist, she uses photography in the expanded field to explore and develop her view and understanding of the world. Her photographic work often includes written or spoken word combined with hand drawn elements, to explore themes of place, belonging, memory, body and landscape. Her exhibited work spans photo-essays, photobooks, video, animation, illustrated flash fiction and fine art.
Visual Presentations/Workshop: Involving the Body in Socially-Engaged Artistic Practice
As a visual artist, educator, researcher and movement practitioner with a specialism in the environmental sciences, I felt that something was missing from much of my traditional photography and mixed media artwork. I have been a movement practitioner throughout my life, and integrating the body into areas of art, education and research is increasingly acknowledged as an important aspect to fully embody concepts, theories and develop one’s practice. Creative and embodied approaches in art, education and research also challenge the traditional knowledge hierarchies in these areas, offering an alternative ‘way of knowing’ to the Westernised default of ‘mind-over-body’.
My education and research roles led me to think carefully about ethics, including ethics of my main medium, photography. As a result, I produced a series of ‘Meditations’ on photography and ethics, where I questioned my own artistic and photographic creative process through the lens of ethical practice. Each ‘Meditation’ includes a visual image I produced, superimposed with writing that refl ects my ‘internal self-talk’ on an issue. Seeking a way to incorporate the body into my own visual work, and drawing inspiration from various practitioners that also span the art-education-research continuum, I developed body-based practices to accompany the ‘Meditations’. The series has since expanded to ‘meditate’ on broader topics associated with ethics in social and environmental issues.
The body-based practices are designed to offer a ‘way-in’ for others interested in varied and inclusive approaches to engaging with social and environmental science, ethics, art and the creative process. In this visual and participatory presentation, I will present the visual ‘Meditations’ and invite the audience to engage in a led body-based practice, to then explore, share and discuss their experiences with this way of working.