Out of position : the ball park of humour in contemporary art

This practice-led research project explores how humour can be employed to develop a methodology for examining the socio-political dimensions of contemporary art practice. This research aims to identify and elaborate on how using the evasive strategies and elliptical frameworks associated with ideas of the absurd and nonsense can lead to new ways of understanding the nexus between social, political and cultural practices. This is achieved primarily through an examination of the art practices of Marcel Duchamp, Bruce Nauman, and Martin Kippenberger. These artists contextualise this research because in different ways they all engage with humour as a device to critique conventional notions of how art can be read or understood. Using these strategies the project aims to demonstrate new ways for considering how visual art can use humour to creatively and critically investigate the relationships between art and the social.