Publications

Back and forth

By: Jane Rendell

With a background in architectural design, followed by research in architectural history, and then a period teaching public art and writing art criticism, my research has tended to focus on transdisciplinary meeting points – between feminist theory and architectural history, conceptual art practice and architectural design, art criticism and autobiographical writing – through individual and collaborative research projects.¹

Most recently my writing has explored the position of the author, not only in relation to theoretical ideas, art objects and architectural spaces but also to the site of writing itself. This interest has evolved into a number of ‘sitewritings’ that investigate the limits of criticism, that ask what it is possible for a critic to say about an artist, a work, the site of a work and the critic herself and for the writing to still be read as criticism.2 ‘Back and forth’ traces the journey of a text which started life as ‘Travelling the Distance/Encountering the Other’ for David Blamey’s edited collection, Here, There, Elsewhere; Dialogues on Location and Mobility3, where I wove reflections on my childhood in the Middle East with a more theoretical commentary on spaces of encounter in academic and intellectual life, from teaching through to criticism. I returned to these childhood memories and extended them in connection to the theme of sanctuary for ‘To Miss the Desert’, a piece of art criticism commissioned by Gavin Wade in response to Nathan Coley’s Black Tent (2003).4 Later, when I was asked to write an essay for an exhibition...

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