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Marie A Sierra

University of Melbourne, Faculty of Fine Art and Music, Faculty Member

The University of New South Wales, UNSW Art & Design, Adjunct

University of Tasmania, School of Creative Arts and Media, Adjunct

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Professor Sierra has a 30-year career in the arts. Her research, which takes the form of traditional research outputs (detailed on Academia.edu), and non-traditional research outcomes (detailed on her website mariesierra.com), explores the intersection of art and nature, the agency of art, and ethics in the creative arts. She is the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne.

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Pia Ednie-Brown

University of Newcastle NSW

Megan J McPherson

University of Melbourne

University of Melbourne

University of Technology Sydney

Juhani Tuovinen

Sheridan College

A/Prof Lindy Osborne Burton

Queensland University of Technology

Ann-Sofie Henriksson

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

The Australian National University

Alistair McCulloch

University of South Australia

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Papers by Marie A Sierra

An ethical engagement: creative practice research, the academy and professional codes of conduct

by Barbara Bolt, Megan J McPherson, Marie A Sierra, Pia Ednie-Brown, and Carole Wilson

Research Ethics, 2020

This paper reports on the experiences of creative practice graduate researchers and academic staf... more

Creative Arts Research Approaches to Ethics: New ways to address situated practices in action

by Barbara Bolt, Pia Ednie-Brown, Marie A Sierra, Carole Wilson, and Megan J McPherson

As a ‘new’ research discipline, the creative arts challenges ethics understandings with emergent ... more As a ‘new’ research discipline, the creative arts challenges ethics understandings with emergent research practices. In this paper we focus on a current learning and teaching project that attends to ethical know-how in creative practice research in order to address the gaps between institutional research know-how and the practices of creative practitioners in the world. Graduate creative practice researchers working in the university are required to observe the University’s Code of Conduct for Research and adhere to the guidelines provided by the National Statement, however practicing artists working in the community are not similarly constrained. Once creative practice PhD graduates leave the university, they are no longer required to gain ethics clearance for their work but use their own developed sense of ethics to make “judgment calls.” Ethical know-how is situated, contextual, and a mainstay of all professional practices in action. In order to address the disjuncture between institutional ethics and compliance, what we call “know-what,” and the ethical know-how required in the real world by artists, this paper sets out the principles and an approach to developing ethical know-how. Through a case study that adapts real world art practice to the research context of the Academy, this essay demonstrates how institutional know-what can be brought into play with ethical know-how. We propose that “the hypothetical” enables us to shift perceptions and practice around ethics. This approach raises issues specific to the creative arts disciplines and prepares our graduate researchers to become ethical and innovative practitioners in the real world.

ATSE's Research Engagement for Australia May Just Fit Creative Arts: DDCA NiTRO paper

by Marie A Sierra and Denise Ferris

The Australian National Innovation and Science Agenda, launched in December 2015, has significant... more

Public Transport and Pedalling as Public Art: The Work of Mick Douglas

Over the past ten years, artist Mick Douglas has developed a series of tramways projects resultin... more Over the past ten years, artist Mick Douglas has developed a series of tramways projects resulting in an art that explores imagining a city and its sustainable future. These projects are collaborative in nature, and are formulated around the idea of a dialogue or exchange between two similar but different entities. Like the experience of a city by tram, these dialogues engage and disengage, occurring between cities such as Kolkata and Melbourne, between conductors and passengers, and between the act – and the metaphor – of being transported. The passengers in Douglas’ projects can be real (experiencing a performance by Melbourne conductors on a tram in Kolkata, India), imagined (exploring the modes by which the project operates, including a book, tickets, and a website), or even transplanted (the artists who decorate trams in Karachi transform a Melbourne tram). All modes are an example of project-based action-research operating through a psychogeographic vehicle, where the line between the audience and artist, and between the ride we all take to a collectively imagined future, is continually being inscribed. The project also has grown awareness of the importance of sustainable public transport and the essential social network that ensues from it, including in Kolkata where the tramways have been under threat.

Subject Guides for Higher Education at RMIT University

Iteration Again: Critical response to the work of Raquel Ormella

When Waste Returns: Re-imagining 'use value' in a tidal river

Books by Marie A Sierra

Transformative Pedagogies and the Environment: Creative Agency Through Contemporary Art and Design

by Marie A Sierra and Kit Wise

Transformative Pedagogies and the Environment: Creative Agency Through Contemporary Art and Design, 2018

Ingeniously, this book combines new pedagogies with new syllabus: it connects the contemporary em... more Ingeniously, this book combines new pedagogies with new syllabus: it connects the contemporary emphasis on active learning and the pressing challenge of environmental discourse. To a backdrop of many centuries of studio education—always organic, intuitive and critical—art and design furnish a necessary educational paradigm for how we grapple with teaching the unknown. As the editors Marie Sierra and Kit Wise say, “the very practice of art and design, by virtue of its ability . . . to hold opposing views in tension, provides a platform to engage with environmental issues”. Their intelligent and reflective book Transformative Pedagogies and the Environment: Creative Agency through Contemporary Art demonstrates the important research activity occurring in studio teaching in Australia, the U.K., and New Zealand, showing how critically engaged and thoughtful pedagogical practice involves students in the key issues of environment. It reveals how inspired studio teaching can engage students with broader issues of community, politics, and empowerment, so they enter their professions with real experience of the agency and catalytic potential of art and design.
Associate Professor Robert Nelson
Associate Director Student Learning Experience
Monash University, Office of Learning and Teaching

An ethical engagement: creative practice research, the academy and professional codes of conduct

by Barbara Bolt, Megan J McPherson, Marie A Sierra, Pia Ednie-Brown, and Carole Wilson

Research Ethics, 2020

This paper reports on the experiences of creative practice graduate researchers and academic staf... more

Creative Arts Research Approaches to Ethics: New ways to address situated practices in action

by Barbara Bolt, Pia Ednie-Brown, Marie A Sierra, Carole Wilson, and Megan J McPherson

As a ‘new’ research discipline, the creative arts challenges ethics understandings with emergent ... more As a ‘new’ research discipline, the creative arts challenges ethics understandings with emergent research practices. In this paper we focus on a current learning and teaching project that attends to ethical know-how in creative practice research in order to address the gaps between institutional research know-how and the practices of creative practitioners in the world. Graduate creative practice researchers working in the university are required to observe the University’s Code of Conduct for Research and adhere to the guidelines provided by the National Statement, however practicing artists working in the community are not similarly constrained. Once creative practice PhD graduates leave the university, they are no longer required to gain ethics clearance for their work but use their own developed sense of ethics to make “judgment calls.” Ethical know-how is situated, contextual, and a mainstay of all professional practices in action. In order to address the disjuncture between institutional ethics and compliance, what we call “know-what,” and the ethical know-how required in the real world by artists, this paper sets out the principles and an approach to developing ethical know-how. Through a case study that adapts real world art practice to the research context of the Academy, this essay demonstrates how institutional know-what can be brought into play with ethical know-how. We propose that “the hypothetical” enables us to shift perceptions and practice around ethics. This approach raises issues specific to the creative arts disciplines and prepares our graduate researchers to become ethical and innovative practitioners in the real world.

ATSE's Research Engagement for Australia May Just Fit Creative Arts: DDCA NiTRO paper

by Marie A Sierra and Denise Ferris

The Australian National Innovation and Science Agenda, launched in December 2015, has significant... more

Public Transport and Pedalling as Public Art: The Work of Mick Douglas

Over the past ten years, artist Mick Douglas has developed a series of tramways projects resultin... more Over the past ten years, artist Mick Douglas has developed a series of tramways projects resulting in an art that explores imagining a city and its sustainable future. These projects are collaborative in nature, and are formulated around the idea of a dialogue or exchange between two similar but different entities. Like the experience of a city by tram, these dialogues engage and disengage, occurring between cities such as Kolkata and Melbourne, between conductors and passengers, and between the act – and the metaphor – of being transported. The passengers in Douglas’ projects can be real (experiencing a performance by Melbourne conductors on a tram in Kolkata, India), imagined (exploring the modes by which the project operates, including a book, tickets, and a website), or even transplanted (the artists who decorate trams in Karachi transform a Melbourne tram). All modes are an example of project-based action-research operating through a psychogeographic vehicle, where the line between the audience and artist, and between the ride we all take to a collectively imagined future, is continually being inscribed. The project also has grown awareness of the importance of sustainable public transport and the essential social network that ensues from it, including in Kolkata where the tramways have been under threat.

Subject Guides for Higher Education at RMIT University

Iteration Again: Critical response to the work of Raquel Ormella

When Waste Returns: Re-imagining 'use value' in a tidal river

Transformative Pedagogies and the Environment: Creative Agency Through Contemporary Art and Design

by Marie A Sierra and Kit Wise

Transformative Pedagogies and the Environment: Creative Agency Through Contemporary Art and Design, 2018

Ingeniously, this book combines new pedagogies with new syllabus: it connects the contemporary em... more Ingeniously, this book combines new pedagogies with new syllabus: it connects the contemporary emphasis on active learning and the pressing challenge of environmental discourse. To a backdrop of many centuries of studio education—always organic, intuitive and critical—art and design furnish a necessary educational paradigm for how we grapple with teaching the unknown. As the editors Marie Sierra and Kit Wise say, “the very practice of art and design, by virtue of its ability . . . to hold opposing views in tension, provides a platform to engage with environmental issues”. Their intelligent and reflective book Transformative Pedagogies and the Environment: Creative Agency through Contemporary Art demonstrates the important research activity occurring in studio teaching in Australia, the U.K., and New Zealand, showing how critically engaged and thoughtful pedagogical practice involves students in the key issues of environment. It reveals how inspired studio teaching can engage students with broader issues of community, politics, and empowerment, so they enter their professions with real experience of the agency and catalytic potential of art and design.
Associate Professor Robert Nelson
Associate Director Student Learning Experience
Monash University, Office of Learning and Teaching