Louisa Preston, Artist-Publisher-Researcher

Louisa Preston is an artist-publisher-researcher, meaning, her work is oriented by a contemporary art practice approach towards generating knowledge through publication and publishing. Louisa is currently focused towards understanding the conditions and roles of publishing practices at the intersections of artist practices and creative communities in Scotland (and their transnationally connected networks).

The act of publication and the publishing process is of particular interest to Louisa as a practitioner-academic due to the different meanings ascribed and legitimacies attached to the range of publishing channels available today: from the established, institutionalised publishers and journals, to the museum and gallery catalogue, the art book fair, the comic and zine fair, the self-published magazine Fount *, Instagram posts and stories, and these very web-pages.

Starting with the supposition that networks of production, consumption, and re-distribution of both artist-publishing artefacts and the ideas held within, support and develop communities of practice, Louisa’s research practice investigates these networks, and the roles of artist-publishing for practitioners and communities in part via the mode of Fount magazine.

Louisa aims to investigate the networks and roles of artist-publishing with the objective of understanding why publishing in this area is flourishing in the contemporary, post-digital age; what roles these practices play in their intersections with other creative industries sectors at the boundaries of the mainstream market-driven book publishing industry and rural communities outwith major urban centres.