Material : Pedagogy : Future
Through the creation of a network of interdisciplinary perspectives, we seek to critique and develop understanding around the function of the present-day art school in relation to broader social, cultural and economic ecosystems.
The teaching of Fine Art at Higher Education level is predicated on the idea that artists teach artists. But what happens here? How do artists educate? What pedagogies are applied and how might understanding them offer broader debates around creative industry, resilience and change making?
Art schools are said to produce critical, resilient thinkers but how is this enabled through their education? How do artists learn? What is the purpose of an art school education now? The complexities of an art practice – often incorporating latent methods, questions and influences – can be hard to make sense of, even by artists themselves. This group sets out to understand this distinct type of learning.
The importance (and pressure) on art subjects makes this research focus poignant and timely. The focus of the group is on the education of practical learning, using an artist-based approach to examine questions of art pedagogy, practice and research.
The Material : Pedagogy : Future group is convened by Jenny Dunseath, Reader in Fine Art, and Dr Natasha Kidd, both artists and researchers within the School of Art.
Members from Bath Spa
Astrid
Breel
Jenny
Dunseath
Natasha
Kidd
Members from other insitutions
Hannah Sackett has a PhD in Education from Bath Spa University. Her research interests include making-as-learning and non-hierarchical, open-ended education. She is also interested in the dissemination of research to non-academic audiences.
She has written texts and created research-based comics for academics in the disciplines of art and design, history, archaeology and creative writing.
Working across and amidst sculpture, moving image, and writing, JJ Chan’s work draws from lived experience and stories stolen from eavesdropped conversations, to explore the edges of realities in constructing identity. Through storytelling and world-building, this work (re)searches for an alternative space beyond aggressively progressive capitalist time, seeking new worlds from the ashes of the present.
JJ’s work seeks an alternative way of being and of seeing. At the foundations of their work and (re)search, is an investigation of portraiture and self-portraiture which seeks new cartographies of gender, identity, and collecting, that are sited at the boundaries between the authentic and the imaginary. This aims to make possible new forms of representation and storytelling/story-reading by combining methods of making, collecting and narrating.
JJ works towards contributing to artistic enquiries on race, gender, diaspora and portraiture, and towards the discovery of a new kind of imag(in)ing. In this work, they give emphasis to questions of materiality, embodiment, and sensuality. Consolidating this work and its synthesis with studio-based teaching, and bringing this to bear on the urgent sociopolitical and ecological challenges we face today, has lead to a relationship with teaching and learning that is underpinned by collaboration and a non-hierarchical working-with students that champions their own voices in the wider contexts of art practice. This collaborative student/teacher endeavour allows us to explore the most urgent emerging enquiries pushing against the cultures of today, and to co-create a curriculum that holds at its core the values of academic research; that of the urgency of new discovery and its contribution to the future of knowledge.
They studied Fine Art at the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University, and later Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, where they also completed a PGCert in Art and Design Education through the RCA Teaching Fellowship.
JJ is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London.
j.chan@kingston.ac.uk
In her process-orientated studio practice, Joanne Addison tries to let my decisions be governed by the behaviour of materials, individually and in relation to one another.
Drawing on contemporary theories around objecthood and making, individual works assimilate the conditions in which they are made. During short studio sessions she works with components and materials that she keeps deliberately close to hand, in order to enable a responsive approach to the thing she is making. In work that is apparently casually and speedily made, the legacy of a repetitive and therefore paradoxically slow process is disclosed. With the goal of loosening familiar objects and motifs from their bearings in everyday life, she often remakes each sculpture numerous times, paring down to locate and condense its essence.
Joanne enjoys the relationship between teaching and making and believes in working towards a more inclusive and dynamic learning environment for fine artists in higher education. In collaboration with artist and teacher Natasha Kidd, she explores how learning is manifested in form. Often working with their students to explore the challenges and opportunities that arise from teaching and learning about art practice, they are keen to relate to other disciplines when reflecting on their own. To date, this collaboration has resulted in the production of a number of significant educational resources, objects and events, participation in educational research groups, and contributions to books, national and international conferences and symposia.
Joanne studied for a BA in Fine Art at Norfolk Institute of Art & Design, after which she spent some time living and working in Glasgow. Post-graduate study at the Slade brought her to London and she has been living and working here since. She is represented by Tintype Gallery, where as well as exhibiting her work she has curated projects including Work Work, a group show about the synthesis of teaching and making.
Joanne is School Head of Department at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London.
Kate Squires is an artist and researcher, living in London. She is an Associate Lecturer (Fine Art) at Bath School of Art where she is part of the Material: Pedagogy: Future research group in the Art Research Centre. She works as an associate artist and education consultant (Tate Learning, Whitstable Biennial, Backlit, The British Library.) She is working towards a PhD in Fine Art (practice based) at UCA, Canterbury.
In 2019 she was Resident Artist in the Materials Cupboard, Tate Modern, in collaboration with Tate Learning. In 2015 she was Artist in Residence in Learning and was commissioned to develop an Open Studio at Tate Modern. Between 2009 and 2014 she founded and organised Centrum, Berlin, an artist project space in Berlin, Germany. She has worked in gallery education for over fifteen years both as an artist and curator. Roles have included Communities Curator and Head of Education and Public Programmes at Whitechapel Gallery and she was Head of Education at Camden Arts Centre between 2003-2008 and 2014-2017.
She has exhibited in the UK and Berlin including the Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury; Tintype, London and the online platform, Skelf. She is a trustee for Action Space which supports artists with learning disabilities.
Katrine Hjelde is an artist, lecturer, curator and researcher. She is Course Leader for Graduate Diploma Fine Art and Senior Lecturer BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts. She is a UAL Senior Teaching Scholar and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
As an artist she exhibits in Great Britain and Europe. She collaborates with Oslo based b+r architects, where outputs include the permanent Holocaust Exhibition at Villa Grande, Oslo. Further collaborations include FLΔG collective, a group of artists, researchers and art students who explore the relationship between art practices, art education, and pedagogy, looking at forms of knowledge production and dissemination in the art school and beyond.
Katrine’s PhD ‘Constructing a Reflective Site: Practice between art and pedagogy in the art school’ considers the relationship between art practice and teaching through a critical examination of reflection in art, in pedagogy and in philosophy. Post PhD, she was awarded an AHRC Cultural Collaboration Grant which enabled further expansion of the research connecting the art educational institution with other cultural bodies like publicly funded galleries. Ongoing research focuses on the student exhibition, the role of the art school in society and developing critical connections between the art school and society.
Get in touch
If you are interested in getting involved with Material : Pedagogy : Future, or have questions, please get in touch with Dr Natasha Kidd (n.kidd@bathspa.ac.uk) and Jenny Dunseath, Reader in Fine Art (j.dunseath@bathspa.ac.uk).
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