Mycological provisions: an a/r/tographic portraiture of four contemporary teaching artists

This is a critical and qualitative research study exploring the work of four contemporary artists using social art practice as a form of public pedagogy. The study examines a collection of projects authored by each artist to understand the political and ethical dimensions of this work and the complexity of teacher/artist identity. The aim is to consider how these practices operate pedagogically, and how social and participatory artworks more generally produce public pedagogies. During the summer of 2013, a series of mushroom hunts were organized to collaboratively discuss each artist's work, and reflect on the field art education. Throughout fungi is used as a post-formal epistemological lens to deterritorialize boundaries between art and education, and as a material for collaborative dialogue and art making. The findings of the study shed light on the changing nature of art education and teacher/artist subjectivity. Artists involved in this work were found to take on a number of complex and shifting identities that affect their capacity for critical reflection. This is complicated by the institutionalization of social practice and public pedagogy, impacting the ethical and political scope of this work, which is predominantly available to privileged middle to upper class white students and publics. Despite this, the majority of artworks explored in this study are able to circulate critical public pedagogies as an alternative to conventional arts education, offering examples of experiential, project and place-based approaches to learning and critical pedagog