Fine Art Research

Welcome

The Fine Art Team’s areas of arts research and practice are broad and diverse. Themes and specialisms include post humanism, aesthetics, cognitive science and art-science methodologies, territories explored specifically by artist and theorist Steve Klee. Steve’s writing on these subjects includes the article Inhumanist Artand the Decolonisation of Nature which featured in the Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, Antennae.

From the perspectives of painting and curation, Andrew Bracey’s research interests explore what he terms ‘Parasitical Painting’: an alternative method for understanding appropriation art based on a dialogue between contemporary artists and historical paintings. The development of what Bracey describes as ‘the controlled rummage’ can be seen in his project Bummock which presents new methods for accessing archives.   

Militant forms of Art Activism feature within the team, specifically in the research undertaken by Martin Lang. This can be seen in the publications including From Watts to Wall Street: a Situationist analysis of political violence, Spectacular malaise: art and the end of History, and Counter cultural production: a militant reconfiguration of Peter Bürger’s “Neo-avant-garde.

Ideas of the dialogic are also prevalent. Alice Tuppen combines artistic, educational and psychological influences to produce co-creative, reflexive and transformational forms of participatory practice-based research. Her work engages all contributors in new forms of relational encounter through digital, performative, sculptural and filmic practices that together generate expansive and sustained multi-modal dialogues. 

Within themes of the dialogic, Steve Fossey’s work is concerned with what he describes as the ‘mechanics of becoming of social’. Steve’s research practice uses performance, drawing, moving image and writing to explore ideas of intimacy, proximity, care and hospitality. He is also concerned with experimental pedagogy, with writing on the subject featured in the book Leap into Action Companion: Critical Performative Pedagogies in Art & Design Education.