Penny McCarthy

Course leader, Fine Art

'I am the course leader for postgraduate studies fine art. I teach on both studio and theory modules across the fine art subject area, including supervising PhD research students. I run the Art and the Body context option for level 6 students and the studio modules for PG students. I am also one of the leaders of the Gravity Lecture series with Becky Shaw and Andrew Sneddon.

'My own research uses drawing, photography and writing. My recent works have appropriated texts that describe scientific discovery, historic expeditions and the fictions of Borges. For the past few years my work has explored the imaginative space of the book in a series of pencil-drawn copies of texts. Encyclopaedia of Dust (RGAP 2001) and Shadow Book (RGAP 2004) are volumes that bring together my images and writing. My work has received awards from the Wellcome Trust, Arts Council England and Arts and Humanities Research Council and exhibited extensively widely including a new site-specific work for the exhibition Nothing is Forever at South London Gallery. My current project Penelope/Odyssey will be shown as part of Ulysse(s): L’aute mer at the FRAC Bretagne in May 2013.'

Lise Autogena

Reader in Fine Art, Cultural, Communication & Computing Research Institute (C3RI)

Academic and professional qualifications
MA Art in Architecture, University of East London, MA Fine Art Curating, Goldsmiths College, Ba Hons Fine Art, Surrey Institute,

Professional biography
Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University since 2012

Research and scholarly activities
Lise moved from Denmark to the UK in 1987, where she pursued research in glass until the early 1990s. She was nominated for the Jerwood Prize and awarded an Arts Foundation Award for her experimental work in glass.

Between 1994 and 1997 she curated a cross-disciplinary art venue ‘Autogena Projects’ from her home in Neal's Yard in Covent Garden.

She co-founded the Christiania Researcher in Residence programme (CRIR) in 2004, an ongoing international research facility, enabling cross disciplinary research into the counter-cultural social experiment Christiania, in Copenhagen. Between 2003 and 2009, she was co-founder of the floating community 'Hermitage Moorings' on the river Thames in London.

She has since 1991 worked in collaboration with the artist Joshua Portway, developing large scale performances and multimedia installations that have involved collaborations across many different specialist fields. These projects have often used new technologies and visualisations of global realtime data, to explore how the economic, geographic, technological and societal systems we have created, impact on our human experience and sense of self in the world.
 
Lise has experience as a consultant, advisory and steering board member in many different cultural organisations and contexts
Homepage: www.autogena.org

Other responsibilities
Member of the The Art and Design Research Centre Steering Group
 
 

Andrew Sneddon

Senior lecturer, Fine Art and Creative Art Practice

'I am a Scottish artist and senior lecturer in fine art and creative art practice at Sheffield Hallam University and also lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art. I have an MA and a BA (Hons) in fine art from Glasgow School of Art and studied at the British School at Rome. I have exhibited nationally and internationally, and currently engaged in a practice-led PhD at the University of Edinburgh. My practice and PhD are concerned with exploring our complex relations with place and the decision-making process of the artist in response to context and situation.

'I have also contributed to three chap-book publications that feature Alec Finlay, Jeremy Millar and Roddy Buchanan. I have recently contributed to a number of conferences with papers entitled ‘Two naked men and an open fire’, ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for but I’ll know it when I see it’ and ‘The act of improvisation in the work of Tacita Dean’. I also co-organise an interdisciplinary project called ‘GRAVITY’ that was launched in 2010 as a forum for debates about the visual as a critical domain within the creative industries. This research project examines the myriad ways the art world deals with its ambivalent and yet enduring relationship with the artefact.'

Sharon Kiveland

Reader in Fine Art

'I am Reader in Fine Art, a research associate of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London, and editor of the journal Transmission Annual (London: Artwords). I have exhibited widely in Europe and North America. I have dreamt of Rome, been melancholy in Trieste, and had a disturbance of memory in Athens, which can be traced in the publications in the series Freud on Holiday, I forgot my shoes on the steps of the Freud Museum, London, and thought of witty remarks too late on the stairs of the Freud Museum, Vienna, events that are recounted in L'esprit d'escalier and An Agent of the Estate,  the flowers Freud did not send are recorded in Freud and the Gift of Flowers (published by (information as material and cubearteditions).

'My practice appears in the intersection of public political action and private subjectivity. Recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions:  Un Vent de revolution, Centre d’art Passerelle, Brest (2012), and at  Galerie des petits carreaux, Paris, DOMOBAAL London, Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf (2012–13).   My work is  represented by DOMOBAAL, London, and Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, and is held in many public collections, including FRAC Bretagne, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Tate Library Special Collections.'

Michelle Atherton

Senior lecturer, Fine Art

'I teach art practice and theory on the undergraduate and postgraduate fine art courses. I am a practicing artist whose artwork underpins my teaching.

'My interest in art stretches across all areas and I am interested in working with students who work any media. Recent theoretical inquiries have included the rise of the experiential in art, the material and intolerant Image, and humour in art.

'My artwork is lens-based and aims to objectify cultural phenomenon, exploring the way we move and are moved in our everyday life. I sometimes, quite literally, use different transport systems as case studies for investigating contemporary concerns, preoccupations, and obsessions, (that are often taken for granted), as a means to talk about the complexities of relations and their representation. Recent video projects include Absorbing Red Photons exploring what is involved in a brief act of submersion at 2,000ft below sea level and Dreams of Flying – an investigation into what dreams are played out by taking a ride in a MiG Fighter. 

'My writing has been published in the art press and my artwork has been supported by the Art and Humanities Research Council and exhibited widely in Europe.'

Chloe Brown

Course leader and Senior lecturer in Fine Art

Main duties
I am currently: Fine Art course leader, Level 6 co-ordinator
Module leader: Art Context 1 • Professional Art Practice 1 • Fine Art Studio 3 • Art Context Placement 3.

Academic and professional qualifications
MA in Sculpture from Chelsea College of Art, London
BA in Fine Art from the University of Reading

Professional biography
I joined the BA Fine Art Course at Sheffield Hallam University in 2008. Prior to that I was a senior lecturer at Derby University from 1995 and fine art course leader there from 2002-2008. I have been a visiting artist and tutor to many fine art courses including University of Humberside, Norwich School of Art, De Montfort University, Bretton Hall, Nottingham Trent University.

Teaching interests
I teach across all levels of the BA Fine Art  course, teaching both art theory and practice. I run workshops in artist's publications and how to make books. I also supervise PhD students.

Research
Using a range of media including film, sculpture, taxidermy, book works and drawing, there are various strands of interest in my practice as an artist. These strands can be defined as research concerning the following
• animal and human studies
• post-industrial ruins
• looking for Hyperborea – a search for northerness
• artists publications

I have exhibited widely in Europe and in the UK and collaborate with researchers from other institutions including: Danske Kunstakademi, Copenhagen, Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Kiel Germany, The Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway, Alfred University, USA, University of Newcastle and the School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University, The University of Sheffield and London Metropolitan University.

Professional activities
From 1995 to 2013 I was a member of the Research Group for Artists Publications (RGAP).
Other Responsibilities
I sit on the SIA Gallery board and on the Creative Spark board.
I am a trustee of Sheffield Civic Trust.

Other responsibilities
I sit on the SIA Gallery board and on the Creative Spark board.
I am a trustee of Sheffield Civic Trust.

Hester Reeve

Senior lecturer

'My practice explores art as a species of philosophical agency, invested first and foremost in the task of radical thinking. But this does not mean I abandon making for writing, my passion here is how such thinking forms new types of subjects, mediums and behaviors for artists. My practice is necessarily wide ranging - incorporating live art, drawing, sculpture, writing and performance for camera.

'I have specific research interests in the relationship between art and philosophy (and belong to the newly established international research network 'Performance Philosophy'), in the suffragette as a militant artist (working in collaboration with Olivia Plender under the umbrella of the Emily Davison Lodge and in association with Tate Britain amongst others), in David Bohm’s Dialogue (I trained with the charity Prison Dialogue, facilitate groups in a variety of national contexts and run Dialogue groups within the art school) and in drawing as live notation (gaining funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board to investigate).

'In the mid to late nineties I was based in Prague working with environmental NGOs and I co-authored a major publication exploring through interviews the transition from communism to democracy (‘Libkovice: Zdar Buh,’ DIVUS 97). Public showings of my work include former Randolph Street Gallery Chicago, LIVE Biennale Vancouver, Women’s Library Gallery London and most recently Arnolfini Bristol.'

Mark Purcell

Subject group leader, Fine Art

Professional biography
Chair of a housing co-operative, freelance antique dealer and substance abuse counsellor until my late twenties before studying for a BA Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University. I went on to work as a curator at Manchester Metropolitan and Leeds Metropolitan Universities before returning to Sheffield Hallam as a PhD student and joining the academic staff in 1999.

Teaching interests
How technology informs art practice and developing employability skills for the cultural industries.

Research and scholarly activities
Having partially completed my PhD many years ago I intend to return to PhD study in the near future. My current research interests are in the area of scientific methods and their relationship to creative practice.

Other responsibilities
Chair Extenuating Circumstance process and carry out Student Complaint investigations for the ACES Faculty. A nominated Independent Investigator for staff complaints at Sheffield Hallam.

As Robert Rauschenberg famously stated 'It is extremely important that art be unjustifiable'
In my current role I aim to justify the unjustifiable when it enables creative practices at Sheffield Hallam.