Artist Research Network
About us
The Artist Research Network (ARN) is a collective of artist-academics dedicated to advancing contemporary art practice and research. Based in the School of Art & Design, our expertise in practice-led methodologies reaches across the full spectrum of visual arts research. We work across drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, moving image, performance, installation, social practice, interdisciplinary practice, and more. We examine the diverse ways that contemporary art practice intersects with aesthetic, social, cultural, political, and environmental discourses to produce new forms of knowledge and insight. Our research manifests primarily through creative outputs and engages with diverse publics and communities through exhibitions, talks, screenings, workshops, and publications. We supervise MFA and PhD students and welcome opportunities for collaborations both within and beyond the university. We come together as a network to examine and champion the diverse ways artistic practice functions as research, how it generates new knowledge, enriches our aesthetic and intellectual lives, and enables new ways to understand the complex issues of our times.
Image credit: Diana Baker Smith, A Colonial Habit of Growth, 2026, super 8 film still.
Convenor
Associate Professor Grant Stevens: grant.stevens@unsw.edu.au
Our people
Acknowledgement of Country
UNSW School of Art & Design stands on an important place of learning and exchange first occupied by the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples.
We acknowledge the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land that our students and staff share, create and operate on. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend this respect to all First Nations peoples across Australia. Sovereignty has never been ceded.
