Dr Gillian Whiteley was a Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture with an MA Sculpture Studies and doctorate from the University of Leeds.
With a background in community arts/theatre and education, she previously taught at the Open University and in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds.
At º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ, she was coordinator of the Politicized Practice Research Group and co-organiser (with Dr. Jane Tormey) of RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt (RaRa), a research initiative with events, network and book series published by Bloomsbury (for which she was commissioning editor). She also operateed as bricolagekitchen a multifaceted project space for creative-critical practice, emerging from preoccupations with the art and politics of improvisation, bricolage, assemblage and trash. As a sonic and multimedia improviser, she was part of the free-improv collective Gated Community and was engaged in Alchemy/Schmalchemy and an improvisatory duo ...the gathering, the chewing...
Gillian's research interests include historical and contemporary theories and countercultural practices of creative dissent, ludic and performative protest, art activism, sites of transitory utopia, bricolage and detritus, focusing on trans-disciplinary practices and cultural production within socio-political contexts. With members of the Politicized Practice Research Group, Anarchist Research Group and Theatre and Performance Research Groups at º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ, she works on collaborative projects around Re-imagining Citizenship and Political Violence and the Visual Arts (with Prof. Ruth Kinna, following an Independent Research Foundation flexible grants award for a two-day workshop in 2016, Gillian is working on a co-edited book, for Routledge’s Interventions series).
Her main current research project is Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer, for a book forthcoming in the RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt book series (Bloomsbury) and a related exhibition. This follows up archive and art research work carried out as part of her University Fellowship (2017/18) and the development of partnerships with various organisations, including the People’s History Museum, Mayday Rooms, Sparrows’ Nest and the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts of Besançon. In May 2017, RaRa (Tormey and Whiteley) worked with LU Radar Arts to produce a weekend festival, For & Against: Art, Politics and the Pamphlet, which explored and celebrated the radical history and format of the pamphlet through a one-day research symposium, an exhibition at Charnwood Museum and various public events and community workshops held in º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ town centre and public park.
Gillian has worked extensively on historical and contemporary practices of performative countercultural politics, with research on various groups in the 1960s/70s such as the Dutch Provo and Welfare State International, eg researching and curating a retrospective exhibition Radical Mayhem: Welfare State International and its Followers (Burnley, UK, 2008) and recently publishing ‘Welfare State International’ in J.Bull and G.Saunders (eds) British Theatre Companies: From Fringe to Mainstream 1965-69, (Bloomsbury, 2016). Earlier work includes a curated project Pan-demonium (2009) at the AC Institute, New York, and the devising and performance of a Pan-demonic suite in Berlin at The Knot, (2010) a nomadic platform for art practices and experimental social interaction in the public sphere. Working with the live ensemble, Alchemy/Schmalchemy, the most recent manifestation-performance piece was Onto-epistemological hoodoo: Putting a Barad text to work at the Summer Institute in Qualitative Research in response to the theme of ‘Putting theory to work’ at Manchester Metropolitan University in July 2017. Previous performances are explored in ‘[Schm]alchemy: Magical sites and mischievous objects – episodes in a performative inquiry into the transformative and disruptive potency of stuff’ in Body Space & Technology Journal, Vol. 15.
Her work on the art and politics of trash includes: 'Situating Junk: art , garbage and trash ontologies' in M.C.L. dos Santos (ed) Design, Waste and Dignity (CNP/Olaris, 2014); ‘Scavenging from margins to mainstream; artist as bricoleur’ in Stéphanie Jamet-Chavigny et Françoise Levaillan (eds) Retour sur l’art de l’assemblage, actes du colloque international (Les Presses Universitaires de Renne, 2011); monograph Junk: Art and the Politics of Trash (IB Tauris, 2010). In 2013, with a Research and Master Teaching Fellowship at Victoria College of Arts, University of Melbourne, she contributed public talks and seminars related to two exhibitions and a published essay, Regimes of Value: Sensuous Stuff, Entangled Objects. Undoing the Order of Things.