An artist’s response to an anthropological perspective (Grimshaw and Ravetz)

‘An artist’s response to an anthropological perspective (Grimshaw and Ravetz)’ (2016) was written in a considered response to the influential Grimshaw and Ravetz article (2015) published in the journal of the Association of European Social Anthropologists, Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale on art and anthropology. My article tackles the assumptions and biases presented by Grimshaw and Ravetz about contemporary art practice, from the perspective of the artist, that is as informant / source community. The article reframes the anthropological debate about art within other debates from social anthropology. The article demonstrates that the favoured and established approaches of Ingold and Sansi, are in fact atypical of the anthropologist's ethnographic approach. I attempt to elucidate what is unique and useful in social anthropology, its methods and research parameters, and how these methods might throw a useful light on art as a category of human behaviour and material culture.