Contact Details

J.P.Vickery@warwick.ac.uk

Office: G40, Millburn House, University Science Park

Telephone: +44 (0)24 7652 3459
FAX: +44 (0)24 7652 3297

I came to Warwick in 2001, previously Henry Moore Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Art History and Theory, University of Essex, where I completed my MA and then PhD (on modernist aesthetics and contemporary art, completed 1999). I was lecturer in modern and contemporary art in the History of Art department here at Warwick before being invited to join the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies in 2004.

I am currently the Director of the MA Global Media and Communication [MA GMC]: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/cp/study/globalmedia

My field is urban cultural policy, with a particular interest in the role of contemporary art. I look at issues around urban cultural production and the politics of public culture -- particularly the construction of cultural spaces and alternative public spaces (from artist-run galleries to 'faith spaces'). The first involves looking at the conditions (policy, management, organisation) of creating art and artistic intervention in public space; the second is more theoretical in understanding the role of culture in political discourse (both national and in the context of the European Union). These represent two medium-term projects, both of which will emerge as books. The former called ‘Art and the Politics of Urban Space’, and the second, ‘Art, Cultural Policy and European Futures’. Over the years I have worked extensively with artists (among them Colin Halliday, Jochen Gerz, Charles Quick) uncovering the role of critical thought processes in artistic production.

I have innovated two masters programs in the last five years, the last being the MA GMC. The Centre takes its teaching seriously -- we explore ‘teaching-led research’, regarding our masters programs as much a research venture as our regular academic publications. In the MA GMC, with my colleague, sociologist David Wright, I use global media as a compelling contemporary framework for assessing the creative, cultural and political dynamics of the new world order. In the past I have authored eight undergraduate courses (up to 24 weeks long) and nine masters courses, as well as conducting many student trips and public excursions, from London and two major field trips to Paris; I ran the extensive Coventry-Warwick Public Art Project in 2003, with student collaborations for Coventry’s urban regeneration. I have supervised over 90 masters dissertations, many workshops and open public seminars at Warwick, an international conference, and two symposia. I was on the scientific committee for the Art of Management and Organization Conference at the Banff Centre, Canada in 2009, and have organized three streams, chaired and delivered papers at dozens of other conferences.

I am an Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College member (2009-2013), and have undertaken reviewing and assessment for many other bodies, including the ESRC and a European Commission project. I have sat on many committees: I sit on the University’s Board of Graduate Studies, recently the SME Steering Committee of the Warwick International Digital Laboratory, and have played various roles in the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies. I have represented the Centre and University on various foreign trips, to the Far East and the USA. I was an extrnal PhD supervisor for Oxford University's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in 2009-10.

My public culture involvement has meant working with artists, doing a lot of travelling and working as an art critic. I am one of the main contributors to the Art & Architecture Journal and Press Website Blog (London) along with a new ‘interviews’ project as one of three directors of A&AJ Films. So far we have filmed interviews with Christo, Joseph Kosuth and Michelangelo Pistoletto. We are currently developing a ‘Critical Texts’ site for fast publication of new writing on urban aesthetics and cultural politics. We will be speaking at the 2012 European Capital of Culture Project in Guimaraes, Portugal.

http://aajpress.wordpress.com/ 

This last year my art crticism featured ‘The Miniscule-Blue Helmets and the Space of Cultural Conflict’ in Derks, P. (2010) The Miniscule Blue Helmets by Pierre Derks, Amsterdam; ‘2-3 Strassen – Art Pension Residency’ in Gerz, J. (2011) 2-3 Strassen: The Making of 2-3 Straßen, Köln: Verlag DUMONT; ‘Jennifer Tee at Eastside Projects’, Art Review 46, December 2010; ‘Jochen Gerz’s 2-3 Strassen in Ruhe2010’, A&AJPressBlog, http://aajpress.wordpress.com/, October 2010; ‘Public Art in the 21^st Century’ (with Jeremy Hunt) Grove Art Online Dictionary, 2010; ‘Capsule: Talking Birds at Unit 8’ [Video documentary: 20 mins], A&AJPressBlog, http://aajpress.wordpress.com/, December 2010; ‘Public Art in the New Millennium’ (with Jeremy Hunt; trans. Portugese) Deslocações: exílio, topologia, deslocalização, ed. Gabriela Vaz‐Pinheiro and Miguel Costa, Universidade do Porto, Porto, 2011; ‘Dan Graham Beyond Eastside’, in Domus: Art, Design Architecture, on http://www.domusweb.it/, 25 February, 2011; ‘Dan Graham Videos and Architecural Models’, A&AJPressBlog, http://aajpress.wordpress.com/, 10 March, 2011; ‘The UN and Pierre Derks’ Blue Helmets’, A&AJPress, August 2011. I have done a series of filmed interviews for A&AJ Films (forthcoming, Marvch 2012: with Joseph Kosuth, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Christo, Charles Quick, and Vong Phaonophanit and Claire Ouboussier). Other publications are: ‘Stretching the Boundaries: participation in visual arts’ [commissioned by ArtReach UK art consultancy] November 2011; ‘Beyond the Creative City – Cultural Policy in an age of scarcity’ commissioned by MADE Centre for Placemaking Birmingham, November 2011; ‘Strange Cargo and the future of Cultural Participation’, critical paper commissioned by Strange Cargo, 2011 (published January 2012); ‘Strange Cargo and the future of cultural participation’, Strange Cargo Annual 2011 (forthcoming 2012); and three other forthcoming pieces: 'The Past and Possible Future of Countermonument', for Public Art Online IXIA Public Art Think Tank Birmingham, (forthcoming March 2012); ‘Public Art and the Art of the Public -- After the Creative City’, on the current state of public art, commissioned by IXIA; ‘Anti-Spaces and Ante Spaces in the Post-Creative City Urban Landscape’, commissioned by Eastside Projects for their new book (forthcoming May 2012).‘After the Creative City?’, will soon be published in three parts by European Centre for Creative Economy’s www.LabKULTURE.tv.

My academic research is longer-term in gestation, and in the past involving an enormous investment in the Aesthesis Project, and edited (sometimes translating) for the six issues of the journal Aesthesis: International Journal of Art and Aesthetics in Management and Organisational Life (2007-9). The final product of this venture is an edited volume (with Ian King) Experiencing Organisations: exploring new aesthetic perspectives, Oxon: Libri publishing (forthcoming early 2012). My chapter is called ‘Aesthetics and the Spaces of Organisation’.  

I edited (with Diarmuid Costello) Art: Key Contemporary Thinkers, Oxford: Berg (2007), with entry on ‘Robert Morris’, introductions and the glossary; I edited FLASH@Hebburn: Urban Art in the New Century, London: A&AJPress, writing the chapter ‘Infrastructures: creating FLASH@Hebburn’. My enduring interest in the work of Jochen Gerz was the subject of may last article, ‘Art, Public Authorship and the Possibility of Redemocratization’, Visual Culture in Britain, vol.12. no.2. (July, 2011). Coming soon (May)-- Editor and author (with Ian King) Experiencing Organisations: new aesthetic perspectives, Oxon: Libri publishing. Chapter: ‘Aesthetics and the Spaces of Organisational Life’.

I am currently writing articles based on the series of papers given at various events over 2011: ‘The Pasts and Possible Futures of Countermonument’, In Certain Places Symposium on the Contemporary Monument (with Preston City Council), UCLAN (2011); ‘A Hidden Cultural Sector?: Faith Communities, Political Theologies and Urban Space’, at the CreativeCityLimits AHRC Network Workshop, University of Plymouth School of Architecture (March); ‘Urban art, Intellectual Property and Aesthetic Organisation: Understanding 2-3Strassen’, University of the Arts London Graduate School (June); ‘Communities of resistance: faith as a new cultural avant-garde’, Empowerment and the Sacred Interdisciplinary Conference, Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies Leeds University (June); as Chair and contributor to the ‘Stretching New Boundaries: participation in visual arts’, Folkestone Triennial (September); ‘Anti-Spaces, Ante-Spaces and the Gallery in a Post-Creative City Urban Landscape’, Eastside Projects evaluation symposium (October); and then 'Beyond the Creative City – Cultural Policy in an age of Scarcity, MADE (Annual ‘Talking Cities’ Lecture series), Birmingham (December). All bar the Leeds event are available online as research film archive.

In 2010 I was nominated to membership of the International Association of Art Critics, and also the Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network (ACORN). I am also a member of the Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism (SCOS) and European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS). I sit on editorial and advisory boards for the journals Art and the Public Sphere, The Poster: Journal of Visual Rhetoric, and Organizational Aesthetics (USA), and review for many others.

For some past research projects see

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/cp/research/aesthesisproject/

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/cp/research/urbanculture/

I take PhD students for research projects on:
> contemporary media, art, design and culture;
> cultural and urban creativity, policy and politics;
> public culture and public sphere studies;
> organizational aesthetics.

Current PhD students include:
Junmin Song on 'The theory and practice of Creative Placemaking'.
Rob' O'toole on 'Design Thinking in Creative HE Pedagogy'.
Jiyun Yoo on 'Postmodernism, marketing and the consumption of live pop music'.
Tomi Oladepo, 'Digital Public Sphere and Democracy'.