Emeritus Professor
Personal statement
I am an artist, artistic researcher and academic. Much of my work as a practitioner has been in collaborations, but I am currently producing a new body of solo work which is characterised by a play with image/text boundaries as a means to think around, and through, institutional and rhetorical frameworks and behaviours.
As Director of the Art Research Centre, I encouraged a holistic approach to art, research, education, curation and practice, to explore new avenues where art practice and pedagogic philosophy can come together in a brilliant Art School environment.
Up until June 2016, I was Professor in Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Lincoln where I developed Artistic Research and National and International Networks. Prior to Lincoln, I was Professor in Creative Practice at Coventry University for 4 years. Prior to that I designed and was Course Leader for the MA Fine Art Course at Sheffield Hallam University for 10 years then Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam for 5 years.
Individual and collaborative projects have been exhibited throughout the UK and internationally, including The Stag and Hound at PSL in Leeds, for which Dutton and Swindells were nominated for the prestigious Northern Art Prize.
Online academic presence
Research
My art practice concerns a mattering of language, both textual and visual. I work with all kinds of images, drawings, objects and texts through a range of processes such as collage and appropriation. I also occasionally curate and any curatorial methodology emerges directly out of the work I make in the studio.
In terms of research feeding into both my teaching and my heading up of Artistic Research, I am informed by a growing body of artists who seek to rethink the nature of the art educational institution as a process of unfolding ‘epistemic events’ rather than a sequence of ‘progressive’ tiers of knowledge.
Current projects
I am currently working on new body of studio work and an ongoing co-curatorial project with Andrew Bracey.
Recent projects
Recent projects include Midpointness, a co-curated project with Andrew Bracey for Airspace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, UK and the Trans-Art Triennial 2016, Art/Text, for NCST gallery. Tangshan, China and The Work is a Score for The Lock-Up Art and Culture Centre, Newcastle, Australia.
I co-curated two major projects with Dr. Brian Curtin of Bangkok University, entitled Possession (1) for Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre (BACC), which opened in March 2013 and Possession (2) for LGP in Coventry (March 2014).
In 2015, I was Visiting Professor at the School of Creative Arts, University of Newcastle, Australia.