Rob Ward PhD, MA, Dip. AD, Cert
Ed
Current roles
- Programme Leader: BA (Hons) Fine Art and Crafts
Biography
After completing my Diploma in Art and Design at Maidstone
College of Art I gained a scholarship on behalf of Graham
Sutherland (who was awarded the Shakespeare Prize) to study at the
Hochscule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. I trained as a fine
artist painter and printmaker though I have also worked in
photography (film and darkroom as well as digital). I am a
practising artist who works with numerous media often combining
them in ways that deconstruct the conventions that are usually
associated with their traditional approach. Research into modernism
and post-modern ideas have informed my teaching and practice. I
completed my PhD thesis in 2010 on The Hunting of the Duckrabbit:
In Pursuit of an Aesthetics of Knowledge which was concerned with
the inadequacy of hermeneutics and epistemology in descriptions of
art practice as a vessel for knowledge – whilst also claiming the
thesis itself as a work of art “containing” knowledge – i.e. a
paradox (hence the duckrabbit illusion allusion!).
Current modules taught
- Historical and Contextual Studies
- Studio Practice Fine Art (Printmaking)
Research / scholarly activity
- Evasive Display (It’s a fair Co-opt!) Tate Liverpool 2006
- Studio as installation Staffordshire University 2008
- “Masterpiece” published in Stimulus-Respond (online journal
Summer2010) http://www.stimulusrespond.com/
- Suite of Prints (Darkaster) exhibited at “The Point” Doncaster
2010
- Parole in caos published in Stimulus-Respond (online journal
December 2011) http://www.stimulusrespond.com/
Recent interest in the “page” as a space for the conflation of
text and image (where image becomes text and text becomes image)
has led to work that whilst representing the conventions of
illustration and narrative evade both.
Projects
I am currently working on “An Alphabet of Dysfunction” 24
linocuts in black and white.