The origins of Land/Water and the Visual Arts lie in the establishment of a Photography Landscape Group within the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Plymouth in the early 1990s, led by Jem Southam and Simon Standing. The imperative for the Group’s formation was the first HEFCE Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 1992, which linked funding to research activities.
For the second RAE (1996) in discussion with Liz Nicol, the decision was made to open the initiative to a wider field of art practices, and it was named Site Space Location Place (SSLP). Projects within SSLP developed, and Littoral became an umbrella title for creative and collaborative projects that explored common themes of coast/sea/estuary.
The first project in 1998 used part of Exmouth Customs House for art projects that were both experimental and / or collaborative. From this point, we agreed – as a priority – to engage in the process of reflection on practice as research through a dialogue between artists and curators. In the early 2000s, under the convenorship of Liz Wells, the research group was renamed Land/Water and the Visual Arts.