Delighted to launch Thinking Back Making Forward: Artistic Research in Practice at Perimeter Books, Melbourne on July 18 2026. Jessica, Brad and I shared our thoughts in conversation with an appreciative audience which included several of our wonderful contributors.
Charles, Jessica, Brad discussing Thinking Back Making Forward with an engaged audience at Perimeter Books, Melbourne.
Edited by Brad Haylock, Jessica Wilkinson, & Charles Anderson
In the last three decades, creative practice fields, such as art, design, architecture, creative writing, fashion, and others, have undergone a ‘research turn’, strongly stimulated by doctoral programmes to deepen artists’ reflections on the roots, relevance and urgencies of their work. However, the integration of research into practice has not always been smooth, and the transformations not unequivocally positive.
For Thinking Back, Making Forward, we issued an open call to ask artists, spanning disciplines and nationalities, how PhD research has influenced their making and thinking. Through its thirty contributions, the book tackles this question in an open way, to acknowledge, equally, the advantages and disadvantages of the creep of the PhD into creative practice. Using keywords and creative approaches as connecting threads, the opening and closing texts weave together the chapters of the creative practitioners, showing a wide range of what research in creative practice can entail.
Authors: Annie Bellamy; Nicholas Boyarsky; Jeremie Brugidou; Jessica Bugg; Carla Cruz and Nina Hoechtl; Lionel T Dean; Anne Douglas; David Gates; Ismini Gatou; Joost Grootens; Graeme Harper; Andrew Hodgson; Alexander Hunter; Jessyca Hutchens, Naomi Vogt and Nina Wakeford; Åsa Johannesson; Eduardo Kairuz; Roger Kemp and Anthony Fryatt; Ilona Krawczyk; Victoria Lynn; Clare McCracken & Pia Johnson; Fraser Muggeridge; Yogan Muller; Libby Myers; Gerrie van Noord; Kateřina Olivová; Alvin Pang; Cecilie Sachs Olsen and Matthew Dalziel; Benjamin Sheppard; Alice Twemlow with Anja Groten, Maya Rasker and Andrea Stultiens; Chanda VanderHart
Published by VALIZ, NL, 2026
Design: Virginie Gauthier, Zuzana Kostelanská, Maud Vervenne
Publishing partner: RMIT University
SAALA was formerly established in 2016 and moved under the banner of CAStudios, as part of the transformation of Stutterheim / Anderson Landscape Architecture orginally founded by Charles Anderson and Cath Stutterheim in 2003. Charles continues as the director of SAALA, with Cath, having retired as an active partner, contributing on selected projects as a consultant Senior Landscape Architect.
SAALA works on a project by project basis. For each project we establish project specific teams and collaborative partnerships to deliver design excellence across all scales of the fields of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design.
SAALA continues to build on the award winning reputation of Stutterheim / Anderson Landscape Architecture for the design of resilient, urbane and experientially rich environments.
SAALA maintains its long held ethos as a Landscape Architecture practice grounded in two inter-dependent qualities: an awareness that our fundamental responsibility is to the Earth as the dominant force with which we negotiate as designers, and a fine-grained attentiveness to the cultural, temporal and spatial, material and immaterial forces which constitute place.
Links: www.saala.com.au
New Quay Park, SAALA in collaboration with Aspect Melbourne, 2016.
