Abstract

In/Visibility of The Abandoned School is a practice-led form of visual inquiry that investigates school closure in two ways: first, through a photographic practice that documents my experience in and with schools as they stand closed on the periphery of society, boarded up and locked off from the public; and second, through a site-specific installation performed with a closed school located in British Columbia, Canada, in which a temporal site of exchange took place. This research contributes to arts-based research by attending to the roles that photography and installation, as conceptual art practices, can play in a practice-led research project and it responds to a call made by arts-based researchers to investigate ways that art practice can be conceptualized as a mode of research (O Donoghue, 2009; 2011; Sullivan, 2004; 2006; 2010; 2011).

Keywords: school closures, photography, practice-led research, visual inquiry

How to Cite:

LeBlanc, N., (2014) “In/Visibility of the Abandoned School: Beyond Representations of School Closure”, Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education 31(1), 55-88. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jcrae.4919