RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM
Speaker’s Biographies
Gerry Davies was born in the Cynon Valley, South Wales in 1957. After undergraduate study in sculpture at Wolverhampton Polytechnic he did his MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, London. He has exhibited widely in the UK, most recently a solo show at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham; he has also held arts related fellowships and residencies, notably Artist in Residence at Durham Cathedral and Fulbright Scholar at Purdue University, USA. Gerry is currently Senior Lecturer in Drawing at Lancaster University. He lives and works in North Yorkshire. Rebecca Fortnum read English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford before gaining an MFA from Newcastle University. She has been a Visiting Fellow in Painting at Plymouth University and at Winchester School of Art. She was a Senior Lecturer at Norwich School of Art (1993-1999) and at Wimbledon School of Art from (1999 – 2004). She has completed residencies in Botswana, Marseilles, USA (Skowhegan) and the British School in Rome. She has been a Director at Cubitt Gallery and Gasworks Gallery, London. She is currently an Associate Lecturer at University of the Arts, London and Research Fellow at Lancaster University. Her book, In their own words: Interviews with British women artists, will be published in 2006 by I.B. Tauris. William Furlong is an artist who established Audio Arts magazine on cassette in 1973, which now represents the most substantial archive of original recordings of contemporary art. The archive has recently been transferred to the Tate for reasons of research, conservation and future access. Working primarily with voice and sound, his recent exhibitions include; An Imagery of Absence, Imperial War Museum, London (1998), Sound Garden, Serpentine Gallery, London, and Tholsel, ‘Intelligence, New British Art 2000’, Tate Gallery, London & To Hear Yourself as Others Hear You, solo exhibition at the South London Art Gallery 2002./2003 and Acts of Inscribing, a BBC commission for the prow of Broadcasting House. Furlong is currently working on a new extensive book on Audio Arts for Phaidon Press, provisionally titled, Talking Art. Paul Harper studied furniture at Buckinghamshire College of Art and Design and completed the MA Applied Arts and Visual Culture at London Guildhall University. Since 1999 he has worked in arts management. As part of his work for the Arts Council, South West ALIAS scheme he has organised a series of symposia entitled Practice and Reflection, aimed at encouraging practitioners to contribute to critical discourse around craft. He is currently studying for his PhD at London Metropolitan University, which is concerned with developing a theoretical framework for craft practice and exploring the potential of digital video as a methodological tool to aid the analysis of practice, by which aspects of craft practice can be more roundly externalized for research, reflective and curatorial purposes. Michael Jarvis is an artist, writer and lecturer. He works part time at Northumbria University, contributing to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in teacher education and fine art. He is a consultant and researcher in primary and secondary schools. Currently he is studying for a PhD at Lancaster University. The research is concerned with questions of visuality in the contemporary practice of painting. A provisional title is ‘How Painting imparts Sense to Vision.’ The research aims to
analyse painting as a practice grounded in phenomenology, which attempts to identify the essential qualities of objects and to re-present them. A critical component of the study is to analyse how the painter makes and ‘performs’ a work and how the viewer in turn ‘performs’ the work during the active process of perception. Kerstin Mey PhD MA PGDip studied Art and German language and literature in Berlin. After completing a PhD on sculptural aesthetics there in 1990, she worked at universities in Germany and the UK before taking up the position as Research Area Leader in Art and its Locations in Interface, School of Art and Design, University of Ulster, Belfast. Her publications include articles and papers on contemporary art, aesthetics, cultural policy and curatorial projects. She has edited Sculpsit: Contemporary Artists on Sculpture and Beyond, (2001) and co-edited with Simon Yuill, Cross-wired: Communication, Interface, Locality (2004). Art in the Making – Aesthetics, Historicity and Practice (Peter Lang, 2004) and is currently completing a book on Art and Obscenity, forthcoming I.B. Tauris, 2006. Emma Rose Senior Lecturer in Art in the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University. After postgraduate study at Chelsea School of Art she taught at Leeds University before taking a post in Art at Lancaster. She has exhibited paintings, drawings and video installation widely in Britain and Europe more recently solo shows at MAC (Midland Arts Centre) Birmingham, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, Hotbath Gallery, Bath, AdHoc Gallery Buddle Arts Centre, North Tyneside as well as ‘BASICS’ transmediale 05- Berlin, Germany and The Big Screen, Exchange Square, Manchester selected by the Cornerhouse Gallery,Manchester. She has also curated exhibitions such as Slow Burn: Meaning and Vision in Contemporary British Abstract Painting which toured to: the Mead Gallery, Warwick University, Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University and Leeds Metropolitan Art Gallery Chris Smith is Principal Lecturer in the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design, London Metropolitan University. His research interests include the relationship between theory and practice in art and design with a special interest in the nature of theorising practice. He is a member of the Art and Praxis Research Group which has been involved in a collaborative project with the Baruchello Foundation in developing work towards the theme Image / Imagine. Work with the Baruchello Foundation has included an Exhibition / Symposium on this theme at Unit 2 London Metropolitan University. He has also collaborated with Art and Language on exhibitions and symposia on the theme of 'What work does the artwork do?'. He is the editor of the Journal of Visual Art Practice. Nigel Stewart has danced with Figure Ground, the improvisation collective Grace and Danger, and as a solo artist. He has also worked as a director and choreographer, most notably with Theatre Nova and Triangle in the UK and Odin Teatret in Denmark, and Theatreworks Ltd. He performed in Clever, produced under the Dance Northwest Extend Commission and the Nuffield Theatre's Live Wire Project, and he has worked as dramaturg in Lehmen’s Stations for the Berlin Tanzfest. His articles have appeared in New Theatre Quarterly, Performance Research, Performance and Total Theatre, and co-edited Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts (forthcoming, Peter Lang 2005). He has taught dance and theatre at
Wolverhampton University and many other UK HE institutions, and is presently Lecturer in Theatre Studies at Lancaster University. Sue Wilks was born in Iraq in 1960 and has lived in West Yorkshire since 1968 . She is an artists who has worked as an art educator in Leeds for nine years, during which time she also completed the MA Feminist Theory, History & Criticism in the Visual Arts programme at the University of Leeds. Sue was awarded her PhD in Fine Art Practice (also at the University of Leeds) in September 2005. An online dossier of her research project titled 'Feda: Between pedagogy and politicised art practice' can be accessed at http://www.feda.co.uk/ Nigel Whiteley is Professor of Visual Arts in the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University and has been a visiting professor at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, and the Central Academy of Art and Design in Beijing. He has lectured in several countries including the USA, South Korea and Croatia, and addressed a number of international conferences. His solo books include Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future, Design For Society and Pop Design - Modernism to Mod. He contributed to many journals and books, guest editing a number of Design Issues on design criticism and has written a regular column for Art Review.