https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6242-7755
Through an overlaying or process-based combination of the methodologies of poured abstract painting and pop art signs, I examine the relations between the exploratory act of creating paintings, their context and presentation and how that includes a relation to digital and virtual images. The intention is to discover how, through the ontological act of making, contemporary abstract painting becomes a material activity that co-exists with and reflects digital representation. By encompassing embodied gesture, form, colour, line, chance, depth and opticality, the disembodied digital is referenced by the absence of hand-gestured expression with the use of stencils and clip art alongside industrial processes and materials; flatness, layering, household paints, varnishes, spray paints and more recently, digitally reproduced photographic images.
The stencils and clip art are sourced from the internet; digital symbols, emoji’s, vanitas skulls, dice, flames, words, decorative flourishes, brush-marks, etc. (with attendant art historical or popular cultural meanings). The photographic images depict the materials and objects used in the construction of the paintings and all the materials and working tools are purchased from utilitarian sources.
www.michaelstubbs.org
Contemporary Painting, Contemporary Abstract Painting, Expanded Painting, Post Medium Painting, Historical Abstract Painting, Post Structuralism, Post Modernism, Overlapping relations between Embodied, Physical Painting and the Disembodied Digital/Virtual
2025 - Painting as Idea: Painting after Conceptual Art in Britain – Funding (3K, University of the Arts London) for conference and publication start-up
2024 - Michael Stubbs: New Paintings’ - Funding (1.2K, Liverpool Hope University) for solo exhibition, talk/video
2022 - Signifiance - Funding (1.7K, Liverpool Hope University) for Group exhibition, curation, talk/video
2019 - Digital-Painting-Photography. Named partner funded by Derby University for conference (2019) and £324 Glasgow School of Art funding for chapter publication (2020) by Cambridge Scholars Publications
2018 - Teaching Painting. Named partner on ‘Teaching Painting’ funded by Glasgow School of Art; Manchester School of Art; Brighton for conference paper at Royal Academy of Arts and group exhibition at Royal College of Art (2018)
2018 - Destroyed by Shadows - Funding (1.5K, Liverpool Hope University) for Group exhibition, curation, talk/video
2017 - Michael Stubbs: New Paintings’ - Funding (1.5K, Liverpool Hope University) for solo exhibition, talk/video
2003-04 - PhD Fees and Studio Funding, Goldsmiths, University of London
1999-02 - Full-time PhD Bursary, AHRC
Contemporary and Historical Abstract Painting, Post Medium Painting, Post Structuralism, Metamodernism, Phenomenology, Digital Culture, Hypersurface Architecture, Accelerationism, Object Orientated Ontology
2023-26 - Sitian Zeng, (PhD Primary Supervisor)
Research Title: ‘Painting as an Approach to Explore Immanent Subjectivity in the Digital Age’.
2020-24 - Ginny Elston, (PhD Primary Supervisor)
Research Title: ‘Rethinking Material Knowledge through the Agency of the Art Object’. Completed, 2024
2018-21 - James Frew, (PhD Primary Supervisor)
Research Title: ‘Digital Facture: Painting after new Media Art.’ Completed, 2021
2020-Present - Reader in Contemporary Painting, Painting and Printmaking Department, School of Art, Glasgow School of Art
2015-20 - Lecturer, Painting and Printmaking Department, School of Fine Art, Glasgow School of Art
