ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges the concept of the artist as understood by the culture of possessive individualism, one that has resulted in the chronic failure of empathetic imagination that Ghosh calls the Great Derangement. It does so by foreground an alternative view of creative activity, one in which art acts to animate ensembles of heterogeneous skills and concerns, facilitating in turn processes of mutual accompaniment within a meshwork of relations. Ensembles that retain the psychic benefits of an engendering creativity but at a distance from the assumptions, expectations, and protocols central to a hyper-professionalised art world. Taking the work of Simon Read and Luci Gorell Barnes as examples, it discusses aspects of their art practices within the context of the greater relationality within which they are located as citizens, neighbours, artists, university teachers, ecologically and socially engaged activists, and researchers.
