Fine Art Research Unit archive

Past PhD students (Jump to past projects)

Tom Dale

Tom's research has developed from a concern with sculpture, having then broadened out into various concerns with installation/object and moving image. He is particularly interested in how the object increasingly operates as a 'portal' - whereby sculptural objects become shifting signifiers, screen-like and virtual rather than physically grounded and univocal. Not only are objects and images subverted in some way, but they also examine the potential for a frictional relationship to their origins in the everyday and popular culture.

Jamie George

Jamie’s PhD project, The Sculptural, Display, Location and Forgetful Memory, explored the use of Maurice Blanchot's short text Forgetful Memory as a prism for exploring how objects are perceived and remembered. The research developed through the production of artworks, curatorial projects and written texts. Drawing on the writings of Henri Lefebvre, the research explored how sculptures produce space in relation to cultural spatial production. It further examined how sculpture may interact with the political through historicity or rather cultural memory and how the object-based display tendencies of certain practices can function as a progressive 'forgetful memory'. The notion of forgetful memory is posited as a reflexive process of positing, junking and reimagining relationships to cultural information. Through the thesis these concerns were explored through examining the work and practices of artists such as Melanie Counsell, Gabriel Kuri, Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Michael Dean.

A series of research trips greatly informed the project - specifically, a Triangle Network residency and solo exhibition at Organhaus, Chongqing, China and a Gasworks international fellowship award, facilitating a residency with VASL Artists Collective, Karachi, Pakistan. Several exhibitions were also generated during the project, most significantly a collaborative project with Katie Schwab at Jerwood Visual Arts London. The PhD was externally examined by Dr Jon Woods, research Curator, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds.

Andrea Medjesi-Jones

Andrea's research looks at the relationship between painting, drawing and processes of thought. She is interested in Deleuze's notion of a 'shock to thought' whereby the experience of the work can momentarily unravel preconceptions and defamiliarize what, and how, form holds. She is very concerned with the act of making, but also its contextualization and, as revealed in Adorno's late writings, the potential sedimentation of content and its various histories within the work itself.

Past projects

My (We), Jerwood Arts Project Space, London, January – April 2012 (Jamie George)

Triangle Network, Residency at Gasworks, London, March - April 2012 (Jamie George)

American Mountains - The Greenway, Residency at Grand Union, Digbeth, Birmingham May 2011 (Jamie George)

Tableau: Painting Photo Object, Symposium, Tate Modern, London, October 2011 (Andrea Medjesi-Jones)

Space, Time and The Image, Symposium, APT Gallery, London, 2010 (Andrea Medjesi-Jones)

Via Di San Teodoro 8, film, 2010 (David Ryan)

'Changing the system: indeterminacy and politics in the early 1970s', chapter in Changing the System:The Music of Christian Wolff, 2010 (David Ryan)

Knots and Fields, film, 2010 (David Ryan)

Whitstable Biennale June 2010 (Tom Dale)

Wind, le souffle entre les images, Le Quartier, Quimper, France, June 2010 (Tom Dale)

Take shape - Make shift Instants, Chavires, Paris, May - June 2010 (Tom Dale)

Dawnbreakers, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, April - June 2010 (Tom Dale)

'Senseless Violence', Centrum Voor Junge Kunst, Ghent, Belgium, February - April 2010 (Tom Dale)

'Videonale 12', Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, January - March 2010 (Tom Dale)

La peinture est presque abstraite, analogue press, Arles, France, 2009 (essay by David Ryan)

Deceitful Moon, Hayward Gallery Project Space, July - August 2009 (Tom Dale)

'We have Eyes as well as Ears' in the Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music, 2009 (David Ryan)

Crossing Abstraction, Kunstraum Bethianen, Berlin, 2009 (David Ryan)

Saxon (curated by Jan Bolivar), Schwartz gallery (Tom Dale and Benet Spencer)

Abstract Painting Symposium, French Institute, London, 2009 (David Ryan)

Exiled Lines, exhibition and talk, Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge, 2009 (Andrea Medjesi-Jones)

Articles in the journal Art Monthly (David Ryan)

Solo exhibition (2009), Karsten Schubert, London (Robert Holyhead)

Reconstructing the Old House at the Nunnery Gallery, London and Ruskin Gallery (curated by Benet Spencer, Course Leader, Fine Art); essay by David Ryan (Arts Council England funded); artists' talk, London, 2009 (Benet Spencer organiser and speaker)

Whitechapel Art Gallery, East End Academy of Painting, exhibition and publication, 2009 (Robert Holyhead, invited artist)

Meta, symposium on abstract painting at Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge, 2008 (David Ryan, organiser and speaker)

Sonic Illuminations - Sound and moving image, BFI, London, 2008 (David Ryan)

Impact 5: International Printmaking Symposium chaired by Nick Devison, Estonian Academy of Art, Estonia, 2008 (Nick Devison)

Transfer, at Keith Talent Gallery, London, 2008 (co-curation, participation and essay by David Ryan)

Dal Niente - an ongoing series of concerts which attempts to explore lesser known - or rarely performed - aspects of modern music (David Ryan)

Talking Painting. Dialogues with Twelve Contemporary Abstract Painters, Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-27629-2 (David Ryan)

Hybrids Exhibition Catalogue, Tate Publications, 2001. ISBN: 1-85437-379-X (David Ryan)