My recent co-curation of Jazz Up Your Lizard, the exhibition of work by Steve Murison that celebrate five years' of the blog, got me thinking again about what it means to be a curator of outsider art. In previous posts, I have mentioned that the role of a curator is to display work that fits into the 'outsider' … Continue reading Place and space: exhibiting outsider art
I have wanted to write about this subject for a while now, ever since I first received a wall calendar of a certain artist’s work as a Christmas present over two years ago. Since then, I have been lucky enough to see this artist's work in person at the Paris Outsider Art Fair in 2015, and … Continue reading The ‘Savant’ Artist
A few months back, you may have seen my call out for artists to submit work on the theme of 'outsider art' for an online exhibition. Well, we had some great, diverse submissions, and the exhibition is now ready. Click here to visit the online exhibition If you are a regular reader of kdoutsiderart.com you … Continue reading NEW Online Exhibition: Redefining Outsider Art
On 31st May, I was very kindly invited to give a talk at the ‘Life is Your Very Own Canvas’ mid-exhibition event in Aberdeen by organiser of the show, Steve Murison. The exhibition showcased work by people who are part of the Penumbra Art Group in Aberdeen. I spoke briefly about outsider art and how … Continue reading A Note on Outsider Art
REDEFINING OUTSIDER ART: LOOKING AT LANGUAGE AN ONLINE EXHIBITION LOOKING AT THE TERM OUTSIDER ART AND WHAT IT MEANS IN THE 21ST CENTURY Call out for submissions to an online exhibition focusing on the term outsider art and what it means to YOU as an artist. kdoutsiderart.com regularly focuses on the ambiguities of the term outsider … Continue reading CALL OUT FOR SUBMISSIONS: Redefining Outsider Art
I feel like I haven’t written a longer piece on outsider art and its accompanying tensions in a long time. A visit to the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester – part of a team day out in my final weeks working for Outside In - took me back four years to the research I was conducting … Continue reading The Story of Art: our collective history
In the UK – despite much progress since the abolition of large psychiatric hospitals and a significant increase in care in the community – stigma surrounding mental health issues is still an incredibly prominent issue. The Mental Health Foundation notes that “people with mental health problems say that the social stigma attached to mental ill … Continue reading The ‘S’ Word: can the arts reduce mental health stigma?
Every now and then I like to twist myself up into knots thinking about the term ‘outsider art’; what it means in today’s context and whether we should even be using it anymore. You can find some of my thoughts under the ‘Outsider Art: Theory and Thoughts’ category (or by clicking here), but in this … Continue reading What Does the Term ‘Outsider Art’ Mean to You?
Has the time finally come to erase the term outsider art? Its all-encompassing - and negatively perceived - character divides many people. I have personally been edging ever closer to this idea over the past few years. However, in perhaps a somewhat hesitant, cautious U-turn, I have been coming round to the idea of using the … Continue reading Reclaiming Outsider Art
Above image: Transient Graffiti on Bath Abbey (courtesy of http://www.suitedandbooted.org) Brian Gibson: "It’s 2015 now and after recent events the world seems a lot more complex … so I'm heading back to the relative calm of late 2014. Like a lot of people over the festive break I got myself hooked into various forms of social … Continue reading Brian Gibson: Real Art… Really?
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