contact details
email: j.spark@rgu.ac.uk
tel: 00 44 (0)1224 263613

web site: www.judyspark.co.uk

JUDY SPARK

Biographical Statement

Judy Spark maintains a research based visual art practice and lives in Glasgow. She studied Fine Art Sculpture at Glasgow School of Art from 1989 - 1993 since when she has exhibited her work and undertaken residencies regularly in the UK and abroad. She rejoined the staff at Gray's in 2008, having taught at the School previously from 1999 - 2002, and has held the post of Lecturer in Contemporary Art Practices since 2009. She is a member of the Co-Creativity of Hand and Mind research cluster.

Judy was previously employed at Cardonald College in Glasgow teaching courses in CAD and drawing, she was a tutor on the Greater Opportunity of Access and Learning with Schools project (GOALS) at Glasgow University (Ethics and Public Art strands), delivered Government sponsored recycling and energy efficiency education programmes with the Wise Group, and from 2005 - 2007 worked with Hamilton and McGregor Environmental Acoustic Consultants on the Scottish noise mapping project in accordance with the EC's Environmental Noise Directive. In 2006 she completed an MA in Environmental Philosophy at Lancaster University (MA Value and Environment - MAVE) with assistance from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). She became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in 2010.

Her interdisciplinary research interests are grouped around ethical, phenomenological and Eastern traditions of thought in relation to human experience of the 'natural' world; the ways in which that experience is mediated by varieties of technology, and the methods of contemporary art practice in navigating such thought.



Detail: Discovering Dowsing 2010
A series of hand made dowsing rods and pendulums mounted on sticks. The work was installed beneath the canopy of a large beech tree. Viewers were invited to try the rods, then asked to write their experience onto an evolving 'drawing'/map, situated elsewhere in the grounds

Personal Statement

My research is situated in the gap, as a fertile ground, between contemporary understandings of the natural world in scientific terms, and other forms of knowing; especially as explored through phenomenological approaches and certain branches of art, poetry and nature writing. Varieties of Eastern thought, particularly as expressed through Buddhist and Zen practices, is of special interest because rather than attempting a reading of nature, or of the human, its focus is entirely concerned with accepting things as they are. From the position of contemporary western consumer of such world views however, it seems that if there is any hope within these sorts of approaches, a similar 'letting be' would need to take place in relation to the technological and scientific things that have already evolved within that culture.

Employing processes of object construction, photography, drawing and the written word to test or interrogate some of these premises, I seek the possibilities for a critical reappraisal of technology, its relation to the natural, and whether or not it can be accounted for as some form of 'natural' process. The technologies of energy creation, storage and transmission; telecommunications, radio, sound and electromagnetic fields are particularly relevant within the scope of the enquiry. The potential impacts of contemporary space exploration programmes are also of interest; being as they are, inextricably linked by the concepts of nature, science and technology.

I am curious about the ways in which artists operate such interdisciplinary forms of practice, how these methods and practices fit within, don't fit, or expand, the boundaries of current fine art research frameworks, and how they might be supported in the context of teaching and learning. Though I am not yet sure of the relevance of the distinction, my own work forms what I am coming to understand as 'research led practice' as opposed to 'practice led research'.

Birch Clearing 2010 Graphite on paper

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