The purpose of the AUT Visual Arts Practice-led Research Centre is to foster excellence within visual arts scholarship through multi-dimensional, experimental and imaginative practice-led research. The centre is premised on developing and supporting knowledge and understanding of both the visible (objects/images) and invisible (ideas/concepts) in art practice. This framework allows for intangible ideas to be sustained and materialised in artworks, as insightful and ethical responses to local, global social, political and cultural discourses. Key to this process is the capacity of visual arts practice to raise issues and explore questions related to cultural, communal, geo-political, ecological and pedagogical concerns.
In the artworks we make, our members aim to function as critics and conscience of society with the questions we ask, the futures we imagine, the methods we develop, and the creative practices we produce. The centre works from the position of being locally rooted but globally routed, (Lopesi, 2021) recognising the unique conditions of practice in Aotearoa and Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.
The AUT Visual Arts Practice-led Research Centre upholds the university’s responsibility as a “critic and conscience of society” – a role recognised in section 268 of the Education and Training Act (2020) – by exploring how visual arts practice-led research can question dominant narratives, foreground marginalised positions and hold space for ethical reflection.
The centre challenges social, cultural, and political assumptions, through research methods that provoke critical thought rather than offering single-solution answers. Rooted in integrity and guided by Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the centre seeks to hold society accountable while imagining alternative futures grounded in creativity, care and cultural responsibility.
The AUT Visual Arts Practice-led Research Centre draws inspiration from the brittle star fish (pātangaroa) with its five tentacles that designate new constellations revolving around one heart. We adopt the brittle star as biological metaphor that relates to real-world values and multi-dimensional art practices. In addition to the five tentacles the brittle star also has five mouths, representing the diverse voices in this centre.
The different ‘tentacle-themes’ each become a directional indicator for the body of the brittle star, and by proxy the centre, at certain times. The ability to fluidly pivot, and the quality of responsivity of the starfish, is also demonstrated in our centre’s ability to move agilely in response to socio-ecological and political conditions through artistic means.
Brittleness itself is a quality of art practice and reflects the centre’s intent to be both durable enough to uphold our multi-pronged values and fragile enough to care for and maintain excellence in visual arts practice-led research.
AUT Visual Arts Practice-led Research Centre is underpinned by five core values that guide its work and vision. These values are interwoven like the inter- and intra-disciplinary nature of the visual art practices they house: