Edinburgh Napier University

  There is an extant of research devoted to the ocular nature of tourism as a set of visual practices, and accordingly, to the tourist gaze thesis (Urry & Larsen, 2011). Within this construct, it is suggested that tourists’ and others’ visual practices and performances, such as photography and sightseeing, form an intersection of gazes (Crang, 1997; Lutz & Collins, 1991). At present, much consideration of the tourist gaze is captured and framed, through photographic practices: particularly those undertaken by tourists, and within tourism settings (Ekici Cilkin & Cizel, 2021). Although the tourist gaze is of interest on interdisciplinary bases, there has been little attention directed to this construct through arts-based research. As a transdisciplinary approach which combines tenets of creative arts in research contexts, arts-based research uses the artistic process as a way of understanding (Leavy 2020; McNiff, 2008).
My presentation will extend the existing photographically framed understanding of the tourist gaze through arts-based research. Firstly, I will reflect on my reflexive ‘others’: as an artist, researcher, and viewer. I will then discuss my arts-based approach to understanding the tourist gaze, with tourists and tourism subject to my intersected gaze. My arts-based method involves visual art practices of drawing and painting, both within embodied tourism contexts, and through using tourists’ photography as source materials. The presentation will therefore present my recent research which studies the tourist gaze; and my artwork will also be considered through the intersection of my own others’ gazes, of artist, researcher, and viewer.