Wonder in Contemporary Artistic Practice (Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies)

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 utilize the function of wonder purposely in their work.

Christian Mieves is a painter and Senior Lecturer at Wolverhampton University, UK. Recent publications include journal articles on Luc Tuymans, Dana Schutz and the Beach in Contemporary Art Making. He has been co- editor of the special edition of the Journal of Visual Art Practice 9.3 (2010) and works currently on a special journal edition on erosion and visibility (forthcoming 2017).

Irene Brown is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Newcastle University, UK Recent projects include Poetics of the Archive: Creative Community Engagement with the Bloodaxe Archive, an AHRC funded project at the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts, 2015; Phantasmagoria Electric, an installation, exhibited as part of the Twice Upon a Time: Magic, Alchemy and the Transubstantiation of the Senses, Centre for Fine Art Research, School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, 2014 and International Research Fellowship at the Bakken Museum of Electricity and Mesmerism, Minneapolis, USA, 2013.