ACADEMIC STAFF PROFILE

Dr Alison Rowley
Reader in Art and Design

Education

BA (Hons.) Middlesex Polytechnic, MA and PhD University of Leeds

Background

Alison Rowley studied Fine Art at Middlesex Polytechnic and practiced as an artist for ten years. From 1983-93 she lived in Western Australia where she worked collaboratively with writer Terri-Anne White on exhibitions at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and provided images for White’s collection of short stories Night and Day published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press. In 2001 she was appointed Lecturer in Art History, Theory and Fine Art at the University of Leeds, where she was a member of the Executive of the AHRC Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (CentreCATH). Before joining the School of Art and Design at Liverpool John Moores University she held the position of Senior Lecturer in Historical, Theoretical and Critical Studies in Visual Art in the School of Art and Design at the University of Ulster, Belfast. Her monograph Helen Frankenthaler: Painting History, Writing Painting was published by I.B. Tauris in 2007.

Research Interests

Modern and contemporary art; feminist history, theory and practice in the visual arts and cinema; psychoanalysis and aesthetics; aesthetics and politics; configurations of social class in British art; relations between art and historical understanding displayed in international survey exhibitions of contemporary art since the 1990s.

Alison Rowley has written on the work of many contemporary artists including, Chantal Akerman, Willie Doherty, Eva Hesse, Martha Rosler, Dorothea Tanning and Jenny Saville. Her writing is concerned to understand artworks as material, critical practices capable of articulating historical, social and theoretically situated knowledge that established contemporary art discourses often find difficult to accommodate.  Presently she is at work on a second single authored book titled Common gestures, class acts: studies in ‘young British art’, an analysis of the return in the 1990s of neglected histories of British social and political life since 1945 in key works by artists grouped under the heading ‘yBa’. Her essay-length interview with Trinh T. Minh-ha about her digital film Night Passage (2004) will be published later this year. She has been commissioned to write catalogue essays by the Moscow based collaborative art group AES+F for two exhibitions of its digital video installations.

She has been invited to present papers nationally and internationally, including, Birkbeck, University of London (plenary lecture, 2009), Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2009), Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast (2008), 1a Art Space, Hong Kong (2005), University of the Arts, Camberwell (2004), Stirling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, USA (2004), University of the West of England, Watershed Media Centre, Bristol (2002), University of Leeds (2002), College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, USA (2001). She has convened conference sessions at Tate Britain (2008), University of Nottingham (2004), Tate Modern (2002). She was a member of the organizing team for the Association of Art Historians Annual conference, Belfast (2007).

Research Outputs (selected)

Books  
Helen Frankenthaler: Painting History, Writing Painting (2007) London/New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, ISBN (HB): 978 1 84511 5180, ISBN (PB): 978-184511 5197

Chapters in Books
‘A Painter’s Hesse’, in Encountering Eva Hesse (2006) ed. by Griselda Pollock and Vanessa Corby, ISBN: 3791333097, pp. 137 - 152

‘“The Fourth Dimension”: An Interview with Doug Johns’ (2006) in Encountering Eva Hesse, ed. Griselda Pollock and Vanessa Corby, Munich/Berlin/London/New York: Prestel, ISBN: 3791333097, pp. 89-95

‘”Before her Time”: Lily Briscoe and Painting Now’ (2004) in ‘Unframed: The Practices and Politics of Women’s Painting’ ed. by Rosemary Betterton, London: I.B. Tauris Ltd, ISBN: 1 86064 771 5/ 772 3, pp. 17-40

‘Painting in a “Hybrid” Moment’ (2003) co-authored with Griselda Pollock, in Critical Perspectives in Contemporary Art: Hybridity, Hegemony, Historicism (Tate Critical Forum) ed. by Jonanthan Harris, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, and Tate Liverpool, ISBN: 0-85323-958-4, pp. 37-79

‘Plan: Large Woman or Large Canvas? A Confusion of Size with Scale’ (2001) in Feminism, Art, Theory: An Anthology 1968-2000, ed. by Hilary Robinson, Oxford & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, ISBN: 0-631-20850 X., pp. 392–396

‘On Viewing Three Paintings by Jenny Saville: Rethinking a Feminist Practice of Painting’ (1996), in Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts ed. Griselda Pollock, London: Routledge, ISBN: 88-109, ISBN: 0-415-14217-3/14128-1, pp. 88-109

Contributions to Journals
‘Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois: A Story of Modern Art, by Mignon Nixon’ (2007), commissioned book review for Papers of Surrealism: The Journal of the AHRC Centre for Surrealism and its Legacies, ISSN 1750-1954, Issue 5, 2007, pp.1-7.

‘Eva Hesse at Tate Modern, not painting, not sculpture’ (2003), commissioned essay-length review for Textile: A Journal of Cloth and Culture, London: Berg, ISSN: 1475-9756, vol. 1, issue 3, pp, 289-295

‘Exhibiting “Martha Rosler”? A feminist response to the exhibition Martha rosler: positions in the life world,(2002) in n-paradoxa (online) ISSN 1462-0426

‘An Introduction to Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger’s Traumatic Wit(h)ness-Thing and Matrixial Co/in-habit(u)ating’  (1999) parallax, 10 vol. 5, no.1, London: Taylor and Francis, ISSN; 1353 4645 10, vol. 5, no.1, pp. 83-88

'Wildflowers, Women and the Law' (1996) Women's Art Magazine, ISSN: 0961-1460, no. 68 Jan/Feb, p. 30

‘“Lapses of Taste”: On Dorothea Tanning’ (1995) Women's Art Magazine, ISSN: 0961-1460, no. 66, pp.16-19, winner, Women’s Art Magazine New Writers Award

Other outputs 
Common Culture – Pop Trauma, (2006) Void, Derry, ISBN – 10 0-9551763-1-X. ISBN – 13 978-0-9551763-1-9 contribution to collaborative catalogue text with the collective Common Culture

Now and Then: Feminism, Art, History, A Critical Response to Documenta 11, (2006) by Griselda Pollock and Alison Rowley, CentreCATH Document 2, ISBN 0-9553348-0-2, ISBN 978-0-9553348-01

Awards

Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, £20,734.00 in 2006/7
British Academy Small Research Grant,  £3,825.00 in 2005
College Art Association (USA) Travel Grant, $500.00 in 2001
James and Shirely Martin Scholarship, The North American Foundation of the University of Leeds, $1,000 in 1998.
Women’s Art Magazine New Writers Award, £100.00 in 1995.

Research Students (Present)

Anjalie Dalal Clayton, ‘Coming into View: Emerging Perspectives on the Visibility of Black British Artists’, Director of Studies, School of Art and Design, LJMU.

Samantha Jones, ‘The Undetermined Nexus: An investigation of Liverpool Biennial in relation to regeneration, wellbeing and public art commissioning and public engagement’, Director of Studies, School of Art and Design, LJMU.

Lynn Wray, ‘Propaganda for Liberty: Art in the service of democratic politics’, Director of Studies, School of Art and Design, LJMU.

Sarah Taylor, ‘ Aspirational Beauty: Backgrounds and Backdrops, the Staging of Class’. External advisor, School of Art and Design, University of Ulster.

Research Students (Completed)

Suzanne M. Wilks, ‘FEDA: Between pedagogy & politicised art practice’, supervisor, University of Leeds, 2005.

Louise Wallace, ‘Painting the Peripheral: A Reconsideration of “the Feminine” in the Late Interiors of Pierre Bonnard’, supervisor, University of Ulster 2006.
Justin McKeown, ‘Manifesting a Socially Engaged Arts Practice in Contemporary Systems of Power: Case Study Northern Ireland’, supervisor, University of Ulster, 2008.