My research is concerned with the interstices between contemporary art practice, anthropology and art history. I am a trained anthropologist with an ethnographic focus on art in Iceland and Scotland, through which I explore a range of topics including drawing, interdisciplinarity, alterity, the imagination and materiality. I write journal articles as well as teach, curate exhibitions, attend residences and conferences, and give public lectures on my work and research interests. My work ties in with GSA’s strategic themes of Contemporary Art and Curating and Material Culture, as well as the School’s research group Reading Landscape. My interdisciplinary ethos also compliments GSA’s interest in interdisciplinary art education and creative practice.
From 2013-2016 I was a Research Fellow on a five year ERC-funded project at the University of Aberdeen called 'Knowing from the Inside: Anthropology, Art, Architecture and Design' (KFI, 2013-2018), led by Professor Tim Ingold. Based in anthropology the project was designed to speculate on and reconfigure the relationship between theoretical exposition in the academic human sciences with the often-neglected sensory, embodied nature of our relationship to the dwelt-in world. KFI proposed that knowledge and understanding is best gleaned through working with people and things rather than the study of them. The project also sought to attend to alternative forms of description and representation in academia beyond text and explored how anthropology, in particular, could be performed, drawn and sang. In 2017 a KFI group exhibition, entitled ‘Knowing From the Inside: The Unfinishing of Things’ presented work produced during the project for which I exhibited a suite of drawings. The works on paper were part of a long-term project exploring the role of abstract drawing within ethnographic research.
Recent publications include: the edited volume ‘Imaginations – Interiors – Surfaces: An Exhibition of Artefacts’ (University of Aberdeen, 2017); 'Drawing's Alterity' in Collective and Collaborative Drawing in Contemporary Practice, ed. J. Journeaux and H. Gørrill (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017); ‘Cracked Glaze', in An Unfinished Compendium of Materials, ed. R. Harkness (Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen, 2017); ‘Prisms of the Abstract: Material Relations in Icelandic Art’, (Journal of Material Culture, 2016). Recent presentations of my work include: an artist’s talk and storytelling circle for the project ‘ ‘Land, Earth, Empathy’ with Emily Joy, Hardwick Gallery, University of Gloucestershire (2020); paper ‘The Posthuman Sublime: The Art Practice of Katie Paterson’, at the Practising Landscape: Land, Histories and Transformation Symposium, the Glasgow School of Art (2020); Panel Convenor, for ‘Confluences of Art History and Anthropology’, at the Art, Materiality and Representation conference, British Museum (2018); Roundtable discussant and Panel Chair for the symposium Drawing Matters, York St John University (2017); paper ‘Anthropology and Art: An Interdisciplinary Practice’, Stroud Valleys Artspace (2017); paper ‘The Painter’s Discipline: Aesthetics and Form in Scottish Painting’, invited lecture for UCL’s Research Seminar for Material, Visual, and Digital Culture (2017). I have also curated a number of interdisciplinary exhibitions both here in the UK and abroad including: ‘Jaðarsýn’ (2010), at Kling og Bang Art Gallerí, Iceland; ‘Beyond Perception’ (2015), University of Aberdeen; ‘Drawing the Anthropological Imagination’ (2016), University of Durham.
