Artists as Travelers in Landscapes of Memory and Time: Researching Ideas of Self through Personal Narratives of Text and Imagery

By:

This presentation will identify the links between memories of place, and the emotional responses that contribute to a body of finished works. It will then present ways in which these links can form the basis for researching ideas of self through personal narratives.

The use of journals as records allows individuals to record what they find in the world and what they seek in the world. They are invaluable tools for learning about the self and about others. Journals are the personal landscapes of ideas, that can be viewed either chronologically or at random, that form the basis for understanding and researching ideas of self.

In this presentation I will demonstrate how I: • record my own thoughts, ideas, and images of places I have been • refer to these drawings and writings when I am creating art works. • record the writings and thoughts of others who inspire a response or resonate with my own ideas or experiences • use the journal as a tool for reflection about where I am, what I am feeling and how I am responding to situations. • trace the narrative journey

The presentation will be delivered as a narrative that includes the journals, images both in words and visuals of specific periods or fragments of time and will make explicit the links between place, memory and emotional response that result in the finished works.

Having provided this scenario of how to use such resources as data, I will discuss through a question and answer forum, how this approach can be applied in the context of undertaking a PhD by Artifact and exegesis.

Stream: Creative Arts and Learning

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Dr Adele Flood has taught and worked across all levels of Education with an ongoing particular interest in Visual Arts Education. In the Tertiary Sector she has worked in Teacher Education for a number of years and more recently in Academic Development. Adele has expertise in curriculum development, assessment strategies and the alignment of Graduate Attributes with assessment and practice. She is a past president of Australian Institute of Art Education (AIAE) and is currently on the research board of The International Society of Education through Art (InSEA), She remains on the executive of Art Education Australia. She has written extensively on creativity and her most recent research is concerned with ideas of identity. She has a strong belief in the need of an individual to be heard and that notions of self should be explored by engaging in creative practice. In her current research Adele is exploring further, the ways recording narratives in visual diaries or journals can add to a person's understanding of self thereby enabling a change in their practice.
Adele presents her research regularly at both national and international conferences and she has many published papers in the fields of Art Education, Narrative Inquiry and the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching. She has attended several UNESCO international learning summits and represented Australia at the UNESCO Regional forum in Nadi. Adele is a practising artist; in the exhibition Sojourn (March 2007) on which her presentation is based she presented a series of 30 gouache and acrylic paintings based upon her travels to the South of France.