Saskia Warren

Representing audience engagements with contemporary art works:
mapping experience and aesthetics at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Supervisors: Dr Tariq Jazeel, Dr Jess Dubow, Oliver Mantell (Audiences Yorkshire)

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award: Geography Department, University of Sheffield, and Audiences Yorkshire, Yorkshire and Humberside.


MA Art Gallery & Museum Studies, University of Leeds (2008) Distinction
BA English Literature & Language, St. Peter´s College, University of Oxford (2006)

This doctoral research explores how audiences perform encounters with contemporary artworks in the specific site of the internationally-renowned, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton. This cross-sector project utilises the knowledge and expertise of Audiences Yorkshire, an arts development agency, and the Geography department of the University of Sheffield in order to explore the relationships between space, experience and the dynamic production of contemporary art´s meaning and socio-political resonance.

This project intersects with discourses on concept driven art through foregrounding the importance of the audience in the arts experience. It will consider certain examples of contemporary art which rework and experiment with some of the concerns surrounding art, audience and participation introduced in the 1960s. In The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, Rudolf Friedling writes: `One question runs persistently through discussions on participatory art: where does the artwork reside – in the text, in the act of reading, in the act of imagining the enactment, or in the act of doing it?´ (2008).

This research poses the questions: How do audiences understand their role in a contemporary art experience? Do audiences subscribe to any given script in an encounter with contemporary art? Does a cultural complex for participation effectively account for differentiality or disengagement? How does a more nuanced understanding of audience engagements with contemporary art, including an understanding of the spatial dimensions of art experience, impact upon structures of meaning in arts discourse?

Research Interests

• Audience and audiencing
• Conceptual art, land art, participatory art
• Cultural policy
• Intersections between Cultural Geography and Art History
• Landscape theory

Awards

• Julia Wood Prize for History (2002), St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford.
• Travel Award (2004, 2005), St. Peter’s College, University of Oxford.
• AHRC Professional Preparation Master’s Scheme Award (2007)
• Scholarship award (2008), ‘The Museum and Contemporary Art: Experience Economy?’ workshop programme and conference, Copenhagen Doctoral School and Statens Museum for Kunst.

Publications

• Warren, S., (forthcoming) ‘Mediation and visitor engagement: re-writing ‘the script’?’, Event Culture, R. Gade & J. Rasmussen (eds.), Copenhagen Doctoral School.
• Warren, S., (Dec 2008) (abstract) ‘An Evaluation and Reimagining of the British Museum English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programme’, Museums Education Monitor (MEM).
• F. Lloyd, (2008) The Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, University of Liverpool in association with the Public Sculpture and Monuments Association. Researcher.
• B. Riley, (2007) Society, Steidl, London. Researcher.

Conferences

• Copenhagen Doctoral School (November 2009) ‘Event Culture: The Museum and its Staging of Contemporary Art’. Representing audience engagements with contemporary art works: mapping experience and aesthetics at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, England.
• University of Sheffield (April 2009) ‘Lives, Cultures and Environments: Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference’. Audiencing Conceptual Art.
• University of Sheffield (March 2009), a panel with Professor Doreen Massey. Geographies of responsibility: Strategies beyond the academy
• Copenhagen Doctoral School and Statens Museum for Kunst, workshop programme (April, October 2008), ‘The Museum and Contemporary Art: Experience Economy?’. Reality Check: Mediation and visitor engagement: re-writing ‘the script’?

Contact Details

Address: University of Sheffield, Department of Geography, Winter Street, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK
Tel: +44 (0)114 222 7973
Fax: +44 (0)114 222 7907

email : Saskia.Warren@Sheffield.ac.uk