Art and Design: Art as Activism
This guide brings together key Library resources to help you find information relating to Fine Art and Art and Design.
Art Activisms is the political dimension of contemporary art. Artists as cultural practitioners, can occupy a number of roles from, curators, educators, agitators, political agents and active politicians.
If you are an Art Activism researcher or want to find out more about Art Activisms the reading list below provides a list of the core reading.
To find out more about Art Activisms and the Arts, Design and Media research clusters use the links below:
A selection of Art Activisms books
- Art and Politics Now by Anthony Downey A highly illustrated, accessible guide to political art in the twenty-first century, including some of the most daring and ambitious artworks of recent times Why have so many artists turned to political subject matter in the last decade? Can art not only question but also reinvigorate the social, civic, and political imagination? Art and Politics Now offers a brilliant survey of artists engaged with "the political," whether in providing commentary, questioning social structures, or actively responding to the world around them. Eleven thematic chapters address and contextualize a range of highly topical subjects, including globalization, labor, technology, citizenship, war, activism, and information. Art and Politics Now also highlights the radical changes in the approaches and techniques used by artists to communicate their ideas, from the increase in collaborative, artist-led, and participatory projects to activism and intervention, documentary and archive work. Many high-profile artists are featured, including Chantal Ackerman, Ai Weiwei, Francis Alys, Harun Farocki, Omer Fast, Subodh Gupta, Teresa Margolles, Walid Raad, Raqs Media Collective, Doris Salcedo, BrunoSerralongue, and Santiago Sierra.ISBN: 9780500291474Publication Date: 2014-10-21
- Articulating Resistance by Deeptha Achar (Editor); Shivaji K. Panikkar The disciplinary understandings of contemporary Indian art are being challenged in our time by experiences, narratives, and strategies designated as activism. Articulating Resistance: Art and Activism explores this space between art and activism without letting the discourse being reduced either to a simple formulation about art in activism or activism in art. The focus, instead, is on interrogating the politics of aesthetics as well as the connections between the visual and other disciplines. Deriving its insights from methodological moves made in the fields of art history/criticism, culture studies, and visual culture, the book foregrounds the links between the practice of art and the urgencies of the public world trying to bridge, in the process, the space that reaches across the academy and all that is known as activism in our time. The different sections in the book explore the complex relationship between art-producing practices and frameworks of viewing that seek alignment with the various struggles around caste, community, gender, and sexuality.ISBN: 9789382381013Publication Date: 2012-10-01
- Art and Social Change by Will Bradley (Editor); Charles Esche (General Editor); Mark Lewis The relationship between art and social and political change is not only a highly topical area of current debate, it is also fundamental to the history of modern art. This volume gathers together for the first time the essential texts that have defined this area since the late nineteenth century. Using primary sources, case studies, and new commissions, Art and Social Change provides an overview of the historical development of art with ideas of social and political change, from utopian imaginings to active engagement. Incorporating artists’ writings and public statements, as well as critical and theoretical texts, the volume also highlights developments outside established Western art history.ISBN: 9781854376268Publication Date: 2008-04-01