Abstract

The emergence of feminism in the late twentieth century saw a critical reappraisal of conventional modernist approaches to theory and practice in the visual arts. Concomitantly, postmodernism posited the “death of the author” and made more implicit the viewer‟s role in the generation of art. While much subsequent scholarship has been devoted to understandings of women‟s artistic practices and their placement within the art historical canon, and some attention has been paid to the question of collaborative authorship, especially in the field of literary studies, there has been little focus on the dynamics of collaboration when theory meets practice. Taking as its springboard Joanna Zylinska‟s concept of the “writing of impossible description” 1 and the consideration of an encounter with art grounded in a feminist ethical approach, this paper interrogates the nature of artistic collaboration. It examines the reciprocal relationship between art making and theorising through an investigation of the authorial voices of artist and viewer. By focusing on a creative partnership established in the joint authorship of a recent publication, this paper seeks an understanding of a collaborative critical practice