Collaborative Arts

Generated through the AHRC funded project ‘The Art of Conversation’ awarded to O’Brien and Mark Dunhill in 2001, this research investigates the material available on the historical precedents for collaborative practice in the visual arts and how this is related to contemporary practice. It also aimed to consider why an increasing number of artists choose to work collaboratively, some of the strategies and methodologies employed by collaborative artists and how collaborative art practice has contributed to current discourses about contemporary visual art in relation to wider cultural contexts. The methodology used include practice-based research, interviews with artists, interviews with students and a questionnaire to course leaders, pedagogic research and the collation of the information gathered for a website.

The research framed the three-month residency that O’Brien & Dunhill undertook at the European Ceramic Work Centre, s’Hertongenbsoch, Holland.

Tamiko O'Brien

Biography

Since 1998 Tamiko O'Brien has been working collaboratively with Mark Dunhill. Dunhill and O'Brien's work has involved large-scale motorised installations, site based works, video, photography, small multiples and posters. O'Brien is also involved in pedagogic research through her involvement in Paradox, the Fine Art European Forum.

Current Research

One of the primary tasks in Dunhill and O'Brien's collaborative practice has been to work out how to make sculpture unhampered by the burden of taste or the 'hand of the artist'. This quest has led them to devise elaborate strategies, mechanisms and processes involving elements of chance, remote control and other peoples' aesthetic decisions.

While their work is clearly concerned with questions of authorship, veracity, 'craftsmanship', the performative aspects of making and the peculiar and problematic status of sculpture it also sets out to reflect upon the nature of human endeavour, aspiration and futility.

Through their art practice and other forms of investigation Dunhill and O'Brien have researched the motivations, issues and dilemmas that arise when artists choose to work together.
www.collabarts.org ,co-edited and curated by Dunhill and O'Brien, was established in December 2005 as a resource and platform for artists, theorists and art students offering a source of information, dissemination and discussion about collaborative art practice.

Pedagogic Research

In 2004 Tamiko O'Brien was a founding member of Paradox, the Fine Art European Forum, an independent network working under the umbrella of The European League of Institutes of the Arts. Since that time she has chaired Paradox meetings and a conference; established the Paradox website http:paradox.wimbledon.ac.uk; co-authored the Tuning document for Fine Art Higher Education in Europe; and been an active member of a European working group considering professional practice in the arts. She is currently working on a CLIP CETL funded research project in to the nature of placements and internships in Fine Art.