Beyond curriculum: the Fine Art studio as a space of exception

Maggie Ayliffe, is Associate Dean and the Head of Wolverhampton School of Art. She is a painter with a broad range of research interests including feminist art practice and art school pedagogies. She studied fine art at Humberside Polytechnic and holds both Masters and MPhil qualifications from Manchester Metropolitan University. Ayliffe’s work focuses upon questions of gender and the feminine within the broad field of visual culture. She is an experienced lecturer in Fine Art practice and Visual Culture and is an active member of a wider research community – having contributed to numerous symposia and public debates. More recently, Ayliffe has been working collaboratively with Dr Christian Mieves, Newcastle University to develop a theoretical understanding of studio based teaching and the role of the studio in creating creative communities and places of mentorship and learning through a residency and symposium based project: Dirty Practice.

Andrew Bracey is an artist based in Waddington. He is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Lincoln, where he is studying for a PhD by Practice. He is a co-investigator on the long-term research project Bummock: Art and Archives with Danica Maier. Recent publications include his book Enough is Definitely Enough, Beam Editions (2021), Parasitical Paintings, Journal of Contemporary Painting (2018), Controlled Rummage as Artistic Strategy, TEXTILE Cloth and Culture (2020) and chapters in PhotographyDigitalPainting, Cambridge Scholars Publishing(2020) and upcoming in Pattern and Chaos: Meaning and Making, Intellect publishing (2023).

Joanne Lee is an artist, writer and Course Leader for Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, where she also co-convenes the Transmission public lecture series. Her research uses image and text to attend to the everyday and the local. Recent projects have included the co-curation of ‘Everywhere: life in a littered world’ for the Art Institute, Plymouth (2021) and an article ‘A walker's guide to littered landscapes: an exploration of interdisciplinary, imaginative and collaborative modes of attention.’ (2019). A journal documenting Lee’s everyday life through ‘Sheffield in virus time’ now extends to over one million words.

Danica Maier is an artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art. Her work focuses on the unrepeating repeat, intersemiotic translation, and tactics that enable aspect seeing. Maier’s work uses site-specific installations, drawing, and objects to explore/expose expectations. Recent exhibition & events include: Bummock: Tennyson Research Centre, Collection Museum, Lincoln (2022); Associated Thoughts on Line, as part of the Convocation: On Expanded Language - Based Practices in the Research Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019). Upcoming publications include: Pattern and Chaos: Meaning and Making, Intellect publishing (2023); and Score: Mechanical Asynchronicity, Beam Editions (2023).

Christian Mieves is a painter and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Newcastle University, UK. Research themes in Mieves’ work to date have included themes such as erosion and illegibility of images. Recent publications include journal articles on Luc Tuymans, Dana Schutz and Peter Doig. He is editor of the special issue of the Journal of Visual Art Practice on ‘Erosion and Illegibility of Images’(2018). He is also co-editor of the book Wonder in Contemporary Artistic Practice (Routledge, 2017) and published an interview with artist David Schutter (Journal of Contemporary Painting, 2018, 4:2).

Laura Onions is an artist and senior lecturer on BA (Hons) Fine Art at the University of Wolverhampton. She makes print-based objects and projects to think about relationships between environments and people. Most recently, Gathering Press, a mobile screen printing unit designed to open temporary messy space and destabilise educational positions. Recent papers and publications include; Maker-centricity and 'edge-places of creativity': CARE-full making in a CARE-less world, in the European Journal of Cultural Studies. Printmaking Communities at the Edge of Chaos, IMPACT12 International Printmaking Conference, Bristol. Printing Press as Boundary Object, CPHC Birmingham and National Library of Ljubljana, Slovenia.