Wonder in Contemporary Artistic Practice

Christian Mieves is a painter and Senior Lecturer at Wolverhampton University, UK. Recent publications include journal articles on Luc Tuymans, Dana Schutz and the Beach in Contemporary Art Making. He has been co- editor of the special edition of the Journal of Visual Art Practice 9.3 (2010) and works currently on a special journal edition on erosion and visibility (forthcoming 2017). Irene Brown is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Newcastle University, UK Recent projects include Poetics of the Archive: Creative Community Engagement with the Bloodaxe Archive, an AHRC funded project at the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts, 2015; Phantasmagoria Electric, an installation, exhibited as part of the Twice Upon a Time: Magic, Alchemy and the Transubstantiation of the Senses, Centre for Fine Art Research, School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, 2014 and International Research Fellowship at the Bakken Museum of Electricity and Mesmerism, Minneapolis, USA, 2013.

Introduction



Christian Mieves and Irene Brown



Part I: Taxonomy, Structures and Identities



1. Archives of Wonder: Collecting the Liminal in Contemporary Art

Tiffany Shafran



2. One Hour: Visual Practice Exploring a Collective History

Shirley Chubb



3. Wonders Without Wonder: Divining the Donkey-Rat

Will Buckingham



4. Wonder, Subversion and Newness
Runette Kruger



5. The Snow Globe as Object of Wonder

Anne Hilker



6. From Nimbus Cloud to Cloud Canyon: Artistic Practice and the Idea of Wonder in Contemporary Art

Christian Mieves



Part II: Contemporary Curatorial Practices



7. Spectral Exhibitions: ‘The Wonders of the Invisible



World’ (or, Exhibiting Contradiction – Known Knowns and Unknown Unknowns)

Alistair Robinson



8. Wonder on Tour

Irene Brown



9. Coral-Fishing and Pearl-Diving: Curatorial Approaches to Doubt and Wonder

Marion Endt-Jones



10. Preternatural: Curating Wonder

Celina Jeffery

Part III: Contemporary Artistic Practice and the Function of Wonder



11. Collecting Skulls and Hair: In Pursuit of Wonder in Death’s Chambers

Jane Wildgoose



12. Wunderkammer of the Now: In Search of the Wunderbare: Romanticising as a



Contemporary Fine Art Practice

Laura Kuch



13. The Enemies of Wonder: An Itinerant Conversation

Silke Dettmers and Mark Sanderson



14. Claude Glass Re-visited: ‘...the largest down to the smallest balls of mercury reflect the entire universe.’

Alison Dalwood



15. Photographing the