Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Jorella Andrews

Academic qualifications

PhD in Art Theory, Essex University (1997): Merleau-Ponty and the Question of Painting
MA in Art Theory, Essex University (1992): Merleau-Ponty on Intersubjectivity
BA (Hons) in Fine Art Printmaking, Central School of Art, London (1984)

Teaching

At present, my teaching is limited to one course: a lecture series for Level One History of Art students entitled ‘Modernities’. This introductory course examines some of the most important forms that the modern has taken from the fifteenth century to the present, and looks at the ways in which these have manifested themselves in the making and viewing of visual art and culture.

Areas of supervision

The dissertations I am supervising cover a wide range of topics but are united in having a common orientation (sometimes overt, sometimes more implicit) towards phenomenological themes and methodologies. Current dissertations-in-progress are engaging with: African (tourist) objects and issues of intercultural translation and meaning production; questions of corporeality and meaning explored through a Merleau-Pontean ontology of the flesh, and through practices of physical theatre and Butoh; critical and artistic research into the branding of supranational power; questions concerning the Abolition 200 project (2007) and the wider politics of state patronage of the arts under New Labour;  investigations into phenomenology’s capacity to offer new modalities for developing photographic meaning.

Grants & awards

Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2001 - 2002)

British Academy, Major Studentship (1992 - 1995)

Professional activities

Visiting Associate Professor, Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan (academic year 2007–2008)

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan (Winter semester 2005).

Member of the editorial board of Third Text, an academic journal that provides global perspectives on contemporary art and culture

Member of the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILTHE)

Member of CAA (College Art Association)

Member of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature (IAPL)

Member of the British Society for Phenomenology

External Examinerships (2000-2004): University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC): BA (Hons.) Art and Aesthetics; Kingston University: BA (Hons) Fine Art; Middlesex University: BA (Hons) Fine Art

Selected panel debates and other activities

Chair: 2007 IAPL (International Association for Philosophy and Literature) Conference, University of Cyprus. Session: ‘Phenomenologies/Perceptions/Interpretations,’ 6 June 2007.

Respondent (speaker: Alfredo Jaar), 'Field Work: Reports from the Field of Visual Culture', Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 17 May 2003.

Participant in 'Still Life', a panel debate on the work of Sam Taylor-Wood. Hayward Gallery, London. 12 June 2002.

Participant in The Creative Circuit: The Experience of Cultural Translation, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. (2000) This was a panel discussion relating to the exhibition 'Drawing Space: Contemporary Indian Drawing (Sheela Gowda, N.S. Harsha, Nasreen Mohamedi), Beaconsfield Gallery, London, 7 October - 29 November 2000.

Convenor of 'Performing Space' with Johnny Golding and Peter Weibel. Inhabiting Technology Conference, ICA, London. (2000)

Convenor, 1999 Pacific Asia Cultural Studies Forum Conference, Goldsmiths College (1999).

Panel debate with artists Mai Ghoussoub and Fernando Arias, and sociologist Paul Gilroy. Story-Time: An exhibition of artists living in Israel/Palestine, Candid Arts Gallery, London (1998).

Papers presented

‘Critical Materialities,’ Royal College of Art, London. Day Seminar: Research and the matter of art: ‘Thinking by Doing’ and a Materialist’s Method, convened by Yve Lomax (RCA) and Vanessa Jackson (RA); with Prof. Peter Osborne. 21 Feb 2007.

‘Appearance is Everything: Phenomenology, art and critical enquiry’, Humboldt University, Berlin (Institut für Kultur- und Kunstwissenschaften), 5 July 2007.

'Showing Off': A Merleau-Pontean Approach to the Ethical. IAPL (International Association for Philosophy and Literature) 2005: Chiasmatic Encounters. Special Panel: 'Bodily Écarts : Encountering Merleau-Ponty in the 21st Century'. University of Helsinki, 2 - 8June 2005.

‘Intending objects and signs ”which have no meaning”'. Royal College of Art, London. 14 January 2004.

Of Ethics and Intermundane Space'. IAPL (International Association for Philosophy and Literature) Conference 2002 - Intermedialities, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 3 - 8 June 2002. Session: The Lived Body and its Alterities.

'Painterly Transubstantiations/Political Change', Seventh Annual Meeting of the International Society for Phenomenology, Aesthetics and the Fine Arts, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge Mass., 10 - 12 May 2002.

'Phenomenological Orientations: Art/Perception/Ethics'. The Future Past of Visual Culture (Conference 1), Tate Britain, London, 23 Feb 2002.

'The Dance of the Hand: The Material Space of Language'. Central St. Martins College of Art, London (2001).

'Dis-alienation and the Eye' (a paper referencing the work of Frantz Fanon and Maurice Merleau-Ponty). Exils/Exiles - 2001 (International Conference), Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex. (2001).

'Moufida Tlatli's "The Silences of the Palace": A Cartography of Servitude.' Geographies of Home Conference, University College London. (2000).

'Vision, Violence and the Other: A Merleau-Pontean Ethics'. The 25th Annual Meeting of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle, Washington DC. (2000).

'Maria Sibylla Merian: Collecting Metamorphosis'. Workshop: Sammeln und Ausstellen. Literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven , University of Paderborn, Germany (1999).

'Staying Embodied: Merleau-Ponty, Integrated Being and the Creation of New Structures'. The 1999 International Conference of the Merleau-Ponty Circle, Wrexham, Wales. (1999).

'The Dance of the Hand: on gestural writing, epistemology and creativity'. Central St. Martins College of Art, London (1999).

'Maria Sibylla Merian: Painting the Microcosm'. Association of Art Historians 1999 Conference, Southampton (1999).

'The Forensic Aesthetic: Iconographies of Violence'. Central St. Martins, London (1999).

'The Virtual Intersection: Pieter de Hooch's Woman with a Broom and Pail in a Courtyard'. Secret Spaces, Forbidden Places (international colloquium). Herstmonceux Castle, England (1998).

'Merleau-Ponty, non-philosophy and painting'. Central St. Martins, London (1998).

'Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology and Processes of Describing'. Kingston University, (1997).

'Instabilities, Uncertainties, Aliens: A Perspective upon our Searches for Security'. University of Oslo, Ethnographic Museum (1997).

'Carrie Mae Weems and the Question of Criticism'. Essex University (1997).

'Matisse, Merleau-Ponty and the Search for Depth', Aesthetics: A Day School in Philosophy. Birkbeck College, University of London (1996).

'Cutting the Line: The Late Works of Matisse Discussed from a Merleau-Pontean Perspective'. World Phenomenology Congress, Guadalajara, Mexico (1995).

Research interests

Having trained as a fine artist and then as an art theorist, I am interested in the relations between philosophical inquiry, perception, and art practice, with a particular emphasis on phenomenology and the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. (I am currently writing a book around these topics entitled Showing Off: A Philosophy of Image.) I also have a strong theoretical and practical interest in research and pedagogical issues within the fields of art history and visual culture. Here, key for me are relationships between embodiment, materiality, and thought, and various modes of what Donna Haraway has famously referred to as ‘situated knowledge.’ A work-in-progress on this topic is an extended essay entitled ‘In Situ: An Ethics of Standing and Staring.’ More generally, I am curious about twentieth-century/contemporary visual culture in all of its diversity, and also have a longstanding interest in seventeenth-century Dutch art.

Selected publications

Books

Showing Off: A Philosophy of Image, I. B. Tauris (forthcoming 2012)

Selected articles:

‘Questions of Identity in Black Art Discourses' in Rasheed Araeen (ed), The Whole Story: British Post-War Art (forthcoming)

‘The Photographic Stare’, Philosophy of Photography, 2010 (forthcoming)

‘How to be counter-environmental: art, research and the techniques of discovery’ in José Quaresma et al (eds), Research in Art: A Forest, Many Paths, Edição CIEBA, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, 2010

Vision, Violence and the Other: A Merleau-Pontean Ethics', Gail Weiss and Dorothea Olkowski (eds.), Feminist Interpretations of Merleau-Ponty, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007, 167 – 182.

Critical Materialities', Academy, Angelika Nollert et al (eds), Revolver Verlag, 2006, 178 – 186.

'Losing Labels and Liking It', Heather Maitland (ed), Navigating Difference: cultural diversity and audience development, Arts Council England, 2006, pp. 141 - 147.

‘Painterly Transubstantiations / Political Change' in A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.) Analecta Husserliana LXXX1, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston, London, 2004, pp. 141 – 151.

'Identity - An Introduction' and 'Post Theory - An Introduction', Ziauddin Sardar, Rasheed Araeen, Sean Cubitt (eds.), The Third Text Reader on Art, Culture and Theory, Continuum, 2002, pp 135 - 137 and pp 229 - 232.

'Maria Sibylla Merian: Collecting Metamorphosis' in Gisela Ecker, Martina Stange and Ulrike Vedder (eds.), Sammeln, Ausstellen,Wegwerfen, Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Kšnigstein/Taunus, 2001, pp 71 - 89. (On the work of a seventeenth-century artist/entomologist)

'Dispossessing the Land', in Richard Hylton (ed.), Landscape Trauma in the Age of Scopophilia (an Autograph exhibition curated by Richard Hylton), Autograph, London, 2001, pp 57 - 63. (On contemporary works by Annabel Howland, Henna Nadeem, Ingrid Pollard, Camila Sposati and The Search for Terrestrial Intelligence - S.T.I. Consortium)

'The Virtual Intersection: A Meditation on Domestic Virtue', Fran Lloyd and Catherine O'Brien (eds.), Secret Spaces, Forbidden Places: Re-thinking Culture, Berghahn, Oxford and New York, 2000, pp 171 - 183. (On a work by Pieter de Hooch)

'Easels and Amazons ('Amazons of the Avant-Garde'), Third Text 50, Spring 2000, pp 109 - 113.

'Telling Tales: Five Contemporary Women Artists from India', Third Text, 43, Summer 1998, pp 81-89.

'Cutting the Line: The Late Works of Matisse Discussed from a Merleau-Pontean Perspective' in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka [ed], Analecta Husserliana, The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, Volume LIII, Book II, Dordrecht/Boston/London, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998, pp 335 - 343.

'Renegotiating the Familiar, Inhabiting the Strange: The Installations of Permindar Kaur' in Crosscurrents/Krysninger (exhibition catalogue), Riksutstillinger/National Touring Exhibitions, Norway, 1997, pp19 - 21. (Norwegian translation: pp 56 - 58).