Speaker

Gavin Butt

Biography

Gavin Butt was trained as a fine artist and art historian. Gavin is a writer, curator and filmmaker. Across his diverse output, he is interested in how the social worlds and aesthetic preoccupations of visual artists can be connected, sometimes in surprising ways, to those within popular music, queer culture and performance. His latest book No Machos or Pop Stars is a detailed cultural history of the subversive influence of UK art school on popular music culture, telling the story of how fine art painters and performers became post-punk and pop music pioneers. He is currently Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle.