Our Journal: Peer-review articles for Garland
Gunjan Aylawadi. Hakk, 2015, curled paper strips on card. Photo by Hollie Paterson. Courtesy Australian Design Centre.
We are pleased to announce that Garland is developing a peer-review process to support academic writing that reflects creative practices across the Indo-Pacific region.
Currently, there is no academic publication that provides a platform for research about creative practice across the Indo-Pacific. This is a dynamic region with many new universities and art schools offering pathways to formalise their creative sectors. The recent project Online Encyclopedia of Crafts in the Asia Pacific Region has enabled a network of 125 craft experts from the 50 countries of the Asia Pacific. In established universities, there is also generation of Indigenous artists seeking to contextualise their work through postgraduate research.
Craft practice and material thinking is providing an increasingly productive source of academic research, particularly at the postgraduate level. In its peer-review section, Garland seeks to provide a platform that is sympathetic to the creative aims of this work, while upholding an academic rigour. Garland is a quarterly publication that features thoughtful writing about the material arts. It takes a particular interest in writing that reflects on place in a broader context of cultural dialogue. The remit is regional, focused particularly around the Indo-Pacific, including the west coast of the Americas. Garland is a publication of World Crafts Council – Australia.
The peer review section of the quarterly will include academic articles that make an original contribution to the archive of knowledge about creative practice in the material arts. The material arts includes object-based practices such as craft, product design and representational practices such as painting, photography, video and performance that take a concrete form in the world. This involves consideration of the dialogue between the concept and its physical realisation, which introduces issues of place and materiality. Contributors are invited to reflect an ecological methodology that links research to the world which it serves.
Garland encourages PhD and MFA students to consider submitting a re-worked excerpt from their dissertation that contains original material of general interest.
The style of submissions should conform to the British Standard Harvard academic criteria of citation, demonstration and logical argument. However, as the publication is accessible to the general reader, writers are encouraged to introduce narrative and, where appropriate, use the first person voice. The writing of Richard Sennett offers a model for discourse that is both rigorous and grounded.
Images should be submitted that are at least 1200 pixels wide. They should be captioned: “Artist, title, year, materials, dimensions (h x w x d), photo: photographer.”
Each submission will be assessed by two peer reviewers (see list here). For more information, please email the editor, Dr Kevin Murray. A list of the journal editorial advisory board can be found here.
This initiative is supported by the RMIT University School of Art.