Dr Zoë Mendelson (b. 1976) is an artist and writer with an expanded field practice that owes its spatialisation, historical narratives and compositional framework to painting. Her work includes various forms of writing (fiction and non-fiction), painting, collage, drawing, hand-driven animation, installation, and singing. Mendelson has exhibited widely showing works, performing and publishing, nationally and internationally. Her work is also installed permanently (visibly and covertly) in public buildings.
Zoë’s research engages disorder as a culturally produced phenomenon, in parallel to its clinical counterpart, suggesting its value to knowledge production within Fine Art and critical theory. She is interested in how culture co-opts psychological and medical motifs and spectacularises them, leading to complex and widespread mis-readings. This has led her to produce artworks in direct response to imagery produced or used within medicine itself - particularly in diagnostics. She has a profound interest in ill-being as a place of potential agency and advocacy - at odds with a current focus on well-being as a ‘success’ narrative.
Zoë is Head of Painting & Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art. She co-curates the network paintingresearch with Geraint Evans and is co-founder and editor of The Edit, an online and inclusive, de-canonised bibliography for students in Fine Art and related fields, now used in Arts education internationally.
