Research

Members of the Critical Practices group engage in a wide range of scholarship, practice and collaborative projects across the following areas:

Art Practices & Visual Culture: research within the group is deeply informed by a critical dialogue between contemporary art practice and debates of visual culture, concerning, for example the political aesthetic, viewership and the interface with image practices and phenomena from disciplines across and beyond the arts and humanities.

Design Practices: the School has a long history of research and education across the areas of Design, including communication design, fashion, textiles and digital production. A particular strength is a commitment to social design practices, which includes supermarket designs for the elderly, product design in remote areas of Mexico, interior designs drawn from networks in Ghana, workshops promoting cultural exchange and dialogues between the Asian immigrant population of the Raval, Barcelona, and collaboration with Trinity Winchester’s ‘Big Sleep Out’, which raises awareness of the issue of homelessness.

Curation: the group participates widely in exhibitions and related events, ranging from solo and group shows, the publication of a variety of research and including on-going engagement with John Hansard Gallery, Tate Exchange, and the Kochi Biennale. The group also contributes to the programme of exhibitions and research events at the Winchester Gallery, which is directly engaged with the School’s MA in Contemporary Curation, and supports the wider undergraduate and postgraduate teaching across the School.

Doctoral Research: the Group supports an interdisciplinary, research-led environment for both practice- and non-practice-based PhD research in the areas of art, design and curation. Recent doctoral research projects include engagements with painting in the expanded field, the study of biennale practices, the activation of archives, collaborative research with Tate Liverpool, and the exploration of international art and design practices (including, for example, working with fabric designs from Ghana; engaging with social design practices with communities in Mexico; the fashioning of pop art in relation to contemporary Iran; and animation relating to questions of in/visibility of Uganda). To find out more about the PhD programme at Winchester School of Art, see Postgraduate Research.

Underpinning the work of the group is its engagement with a variety of key partners. It is affiliated with notable venues such as John Hansard Gallery, Tate Exchange and the Kochi Biennale in India, and various group members are editors associated with journals and book series offering platforms for the exploration of critical practices, including: Asian Artscapes, a book series with Routledge India, and the journals Cultural Politics, and Journal of Contemporary Painting.