Non-Representational Geographies of Therapeutic Art Making

"The world impinges on us far more than we can consciously know. In this adventurous book, Candice Boyd takes this insight and fashions from it a contemporary perspective on therapeutic art making which extends and redefines what we can mean by therapy." (Nigel Thrift, Schwarzman Scholars)

Utilising non-representational theories and practice-led research methods, this book serves to reclaim therapeutics as ecological, spatial and material. It examines the sites and performances of a wide range of therapeutic art practices, including painting and drawing, dance movement therapy, fibre art, subterranean graffiti practice, and poetic permaculture. In doing so it provides an important assessment of the role and status of therapy in contemporary life.

A highly interdisciplinary text, Boyd’s research is informed by a thorough reading of post-structural theory including contemporary feminism, Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm, Whitehead’s process-oriented ontology, and Deleuze’s writing on sense and the event. This innovative study will prove essential for scholars and practitioners of cultural geography, socially-engaged art, therapeutic studies, and occupational therapy.