A remote pedagogy

I am a maker. I make ideas into living forms by thinking through exhibition-making and writing. These reveal new problems through which emerge new ideas. My work is informed by art, poetry and thermodynamics as the creative productive forces. I engage critical art historical inquiries that challenge accepted narratives by activating archives and oral histories to re-frame our encounter with the past and reset our vision and imaginations for the future. My strategies aim to dislocate and disengage deeply-held narratives, catalysing truth to reveal itself through encounters that combine visual practices with performance, documentation, extensive research and intervention to decolonise archives, re-situate narratives and unashamedly disrupt the canon. Each project is unique and self-determining. Implicitly, the fragment lays foundation for all creative movement.

I have recently completed a five year research project, producing an extensive volume on the so-called 'A' Course, a radical experiment in art education undertaken at St. Martin's School of Art beginning in 1969. The publication, The Locked Room (MIT Press, 2020) includes interviews, conversations, and writings from participants alongside never-before-published photographs and archival documentation. It presents more than thirty student projects, spanning four years of inventive instruction by its four tutors, Peter Atkins, Garth Evans, Peter Harvey, and Gareth Jones, as well as student-initiated games and actions—including an account of the infamous extracurricular “boxing match” organized by students.  The project was co-sponsored by the Henry Moore Institute and the Paul Mellon Foundation and the editorial board have combined to produce The Locked Room blog.

In 2019, I curated Dreams & Dystopias exploring contemporary post-colonial East Africa at the crossroads through the lenses of two powerful image makers. The photography of renowned international photojournalist Guillaume Bonn is (Madagascar, Kenya, France) captures post-colonial East Africa as a society perennially poised between two worlds. Bonn’s images depict place as archaeological sites shuttering an unreachable disappearing past, barely effable but through the echoes of its fragments and traces. The poignancy of a past to which one can never return; ‘le mal d’Afrique’ some have called it; yet one that remains ever-present in its decaying architectural  landscape. Grace Nditiru (Kenya, UK) is an acclaimed international artist whose 'hand-crafted' videos and experimental photography compose an elusive beauty, potent insight and sensitive approach to institutional critique, post-colonial healing and social transformation. Co-sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society, the exhibition featured slide presentations and geo-political research to enable viewers to critically engage with the aspirations  that motivated our shared colonial ancestry beginning with the earliest British expeditions into Africa.

I have made work with Zamana Space, The Ismaili Centre, Flat Time House, Bartha Contemporary and Laure Genillard Gallery in London as well as the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany and the Trondheim kunstmuseum in Norway. 

I am also co-editor of Better Books | Better Bookz: Art, Anarchy, Apostasy and the Avant-Garde (Koenig Books, 2019) and the author of several works on sculptors including Adam Barker-Mill, Gary Woodley, Gustav Metzger and Werner Schreib. 

I am currently on break from exhibition-making in order to pursue PhD research in philosophy with Howard Caygill, applying art theory to interrogate synthetic biology and the inception of life. I completed my MPhil at CRMEP, Kingston University, with my dissertation, Genius, Judgement & Production: a critical interrogation of Kant’s concept of genius through the logic of hypotyposis. I am married to Keith with whom I have made two amazing children.