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Course

  • BFA (Hons) Fine Art

Admissions

Queen’s began to admit students to read Fine Art on a regular basis in 2006 and now takes two undergraduates for this subject each year. In the past, our Fine Art students have exhibited their work in the College, won the OUP Pirye Prize for Art, been selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries, and above all contributed a great deal to the diversity and the fun of being at Queen’s.

The course

Fine Art is a three-year course in which practical work is combined with study of the history and theory of visual culture since 1900.

Teaching

Teaching is provided entirely by the Ruskin, which is just across the road from Queen’s.

Interviews

As well as the interview conducted in the Ruskin, which includes a practical test, candidates who apply to Queen’s will receive a College interview where they will be given an opportunity to present their portfolio and talk about their understanding of art.

Introduction

I was born and educated in Australia, studying art history, French and law (among other deviations and fabulous detours) at the University of Melbourne. I then completed my PhD in 2009 at the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Before moving to Oxford in 2012, I was an Andrew Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, working with Boris Groys and Sarah Wilson (2010-2011), and an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow through the University of Melbourne (2011-2012).

Teaching

Most of my teaching takes place at the Ruskin School of Art, on the other side of the High Street. I teach at all year levels, mainly in the Ruskin’s Contemporary Art History and Theory programme, but always trying to bridge the making and presentation of contemporary art. From 2012-2017, I was the Ruskin’s Director of Graduate Studies, overseeing its MFA and DPhil in contemporary art making and contemporary art history, and then the Head of the Ruskin School of Art from 2017 to 2020.

Research

My research explores the fascinating intersections of contemporary art and politics, with particular emphasis on installation, performance, exhibitions and cultural infrastructures, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, in Australasia and across decolonial worlds. I’m currently working on a new project, exploring biennials and other curatorial and exhibition histories amid the post-war politics of the non-aligned movement and the decolonising south. I am also one of the editors of the MIT Press journal, ARTMargins.

Publications

Among my recent books are Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art against Democracy (MIT Press, 2015); NSK: From Kapital to Capital (MIT Press and Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, 2015; co-edited with Zdenka Badovinac and Eda Čufer); Mapping South (Melbourne, 2013) and, with Charles Green, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta: The Exhibitions That Made Contemporary Art (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016).

You can find out more about my other essays and talks on contemporary art and exhibitions on my academia page.