Studio as Pedagogy

A one year research project at Glasgow School of Art

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At the Association of Art Historians Conference last week, I saw visual artist Karen Tam give a paper on her ‘Flying Cormorant Studio for Lee Nam’. Through this work, Nam sought to make an intervention into existing narratives of studio in museums and galleries, which rarely offer a space for the migrant artist. The work highlights the aspects of performativity of studio which I have been exploring at the Glasgow School of Art. 

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On my last visit to the communication design studios at GSA, i began to think about the studio as a space in which to negotiate risk. 

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Jonathan in silversmithing and jewellery told me that this workbench for hammering metal was as old as the school itself.

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Studio waste in the interior design department - waiting to be moved on to recycling- another example of the materiality of studio based learning.

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What happens when the gallery space becomes a studio space? The 'three points of contact' project at GSA in 2012 experimented with this idea within the Mackintosh museum, inviting artists to set up residencies within the gallery to celebrate and 'illuminate the creative process'. I love the idea of the 'network residency' and the gallery and studio as 'points of contact' within this. 

For more info see: http://www.threepointsofcontact.info/

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GSA Sculpture and Environmental Art student Chris Silver describes the 'all-encompassing' experience of studying at GSA and makes an important point about the studio technician as artist. 

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Walead Beshty, A Partial Disassembling of an Invention Without a Future: Helter-Skleter and Random Notes in Which the Pulleys and Cogwheels Are Lying Around at Random All Over the Workbench, The Curve, Barbican, London, 9 Oct 2014-8 Feb 2015. 

This art work consists of more than 12,000 prints, made over the course of a year. Each print was made by coating a porous surface, such as discarded paper or cardboard,with UV sensitive cyanotype chemistry. Then an object from the artist's studio was placed on top and the print was exposed directly to sunlight, producing the object's silhouette against a cyan blue background. 

Studio ephemera- post-its, bills, 'to-do lists'- cover the walls of The Curve space. The studio has become the content, rather than context of the work. 

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Once studio pedagogies are internalised and learned, we don't have to think of them; we can think with them.

Lee S Shulman, Signature Pedagogies in the Professions, (2005), p.55. 

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Fashioning the Studio

I saw this advert on my first day at GSA, as I was waiting to meet Vicky Gunn, Principal Investigator on the project, outside the Barnes Building. I'm hoping to think more about how the physical environment of the studio might also encourage students to adopt particular forms of behaviour and fashions- in this case the doc marten shoe- and how this impacts on the experience of studio-based learning. 

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GSA, Silversmithing & Jewellery Studio, Reid Building (Feb 2014)

I took this photo on a tour of the Reid building when it had newly opened last year and before I was appointed Research Assistant on this project. I've always been fascinated by studio spaces for the ways in which they both seem constitute and represent art/design practice and for the material forms of knowledge they make visible. I think this image captures the sense of 'magic' people often associate with the studio and which I will be trying to make sense of in this project. 

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About the project

The image of the artist's studio is one of the most revered spaces in our cultural imagination. ‘Studio as Pedagogy: What Works and Why Does it Work?’, a one year research project at Glasgow School of Art (GSA), aims to look beyond the studio as a cultural trope and understand its pedagogical function within the art school. To do this, the research team will be undertaking interviews with staff, students and alumni at the GSA and conducting observational based study, alongside a comprehensive literature review. The research is being conducted by Vicky Gunn, Leah Armstrong and Sarah Rowles.

Leah will be using this space to post images, thoughts and other updates as the project develops.