This article considers the relationship between artistic research, creative production and exegesis. What it is that renders a particular creative outcome as significant and the ways in which an accompanying critical text functions as a navigational tool, directing readers towards points of entry into the overall work, is at the core of the paper; and the issue of interdependence as contrasted with independence is duly addressed. These matters are discussed within the context of university expectations surrounding higher degrees by research, and are informed by professional research, supervision and examination experience in Europe and Australia. Embodied knowledge and somatic intelligence are explored, and the paper concludes with a focus on the differing impacts of time on varying forms of creative production: on what this wear and tear of time might do to exegesis and to either an art object or an event.