people at the graduate school of creative arts and media

 

gemma tipton: dit, school of art design + printing, research scholar (strand I)

 

 

 

biographical details

 

Gemma Tipton is an independent writer and critic of contemporary art and architecture. Based in Dublin, she contributes regularly to art and architectural publications, panel discussions, lectures, radio and television programmes in Ireland and internationally. Reviews, features and interviews are published in The Irish Times Magazine, Art and Architecture Journal, Artists Newsletter, CIRCA, Fuse, Gloss, Irish Architect, Irish Museums Journal, Selvedge, Apollo, VAN. She has been manager of CIRCA Magazine and editor of Contexts. Gemma received her primary degree from Trinity College, Dublin (English Literature).

 

 

Gemma has also been a judge for the Museum of the Year Awards, and for the AIB Prize. Gemma is the editor of Space: Architecture for Art, an investigation of the architecture of contemporary art galleries; and author of Home, a study of contemporary memorials. In 2001 she was awarded the Arts Council’s Critic’s Bursary in Contemporary Architecture Writing.

 

 

Forthcoming in 2008 is Desire: Designing Houses for Contemporary Ireland, which Gemma has edited, published by Gandon; State of Art Criticism, edited by James Elkins, to which she is a contributor; and a book documenting and assessing the first two years of the LAB in Dublin (editor). She writes catalogue essays, including, most recently, for the Irish Museum of Modern Art on corporate art collections. Gemma has had a series of exhibitions of her own work, and has worked as an independent curator.

 

research interests

 

I am interested in how context affects subject – whether this is the way the architecture of an arts space changes perceptions of the objects it contains, how certain collections confer value on the art works included, or the manner in which the remit of a publication alters the way in which writing is understood. In terms of writing, it is important to me to write in a manner that opens topics under discussion to those in other fields or spheres of interest. This also includes writing for non-specialist publications. As contemporary art takes high and low culture for its subject matter it seems more and more important to embrace all forms of cultural expression in addressing contemporary art. In doing that, however, it is crucial to investigate how cultural context alters meaning and value. How is the celebritising culture of, say, the Biennales and Art Fairs altering value and meaning? This question leads to the subject of research for my thesis: how value is constructed in contemporary art. How context and adjacency and contingency conspire, and are co-opted into creating value. How non-object-based and conceptual art practices, once deliberately (and defiantly) anti-market are now used by those profiting from the market to add value, as well as becoming commodified themselves. Are there any strategies of refusal, open to an artist in this manner, that can not be turned into a tool to create value, and how are practitioners to navigate this? What other value systems can be brought to bear in these assessments?

 

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For additional information on the collaborating institutions consult www.dit.ie, www.ncad.ie, www.iadt.ie and www.ulster.ac.uk.