Christopher Stewart (artist)
Encyclopedia
Christopher Stewart is a visual artist who works with photography and moving image.
in 1998. He was the recipient of the London Photographers’ Gallery RCA Student Award. The London gallery Gimpel Fils
represented him following his graduate exhibition. Work that was developed from an initial series of photographs made whilst at the Royal College went on to be exhibited at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
in Bradford, the Victoria and Albert Museum
in London, the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, and the Whitechapel Gallery in London as well as other international venues.
American urban theorist Mike Davis
, author of City of Quartz
, says Stewart’s work articulates “the constitutive ground of our current unease” and that his “photographs detonate our Orwellian anxieties”.
Writing in Portfolio, Curator of Photography at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television Patrick Henry said that “Stewart strips documentary of its didactic function, photographing scenarios which themselves occupy a grey area between reality and fiction” and that his images were a “parody of documentary and its quest to enlighten us about the world”. Martin Herbert in the October 2006 Art Forum review of Stewart’s 2006 exhibition Observations at Gimpel Fils said that Stewart sidesteps “the potholes of politicized art”.
Group exhibitions include Something That I’ll Never Really See (Photography from the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection) at the National Gallery of Modern Art
in New Dehli 2011; Darkside II curated by Urs Stahel at the Fotomuseum Winterthur
, Switzerland 2009; Kill House, Theatres of War, Krakow Photomonth, Poland 2007; Observations at Open Eye Gallery Liverpool 2006; Contemporary Complexities, Martin Z. Marguilies Gift at the Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida
2007; Fabula curated by Patrick Henry at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
, Bradford 2003; Suspendidos at the Canal de Isobel II Gallery in Madrid 2001.
2010 Langford’s Basic Photography Ninth Edition, Focal Press, ISBN 9780240520353
2009 The Photograph as Contemporary Art 2nd ed., Thames & Hudson World of Art Series, ed. by Charlotte Cotton, ISBN 9780500204016
2009 Darkside II, Fotomuseum Winterthur/Steidl Press ISBN 9783865219251
2008 Super Border, Source Photographic Review, UK
2007 Kill House, Krakow Photomonth catalogue
2005 Insecurity, Seesaw Magazine, edited by Aaron Schuman - www.seesawmagazine.com
2004 The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames & Hudson World of Art Series edited by Charlotte Cotton, ISBN 0500203806
2004 Portfolio Magazine, essay by Patrick Henry ISSN 1354-4446
2004 Five: curated by GavinTurk – The Labyrinth of the Gaze, ISSN1477-6774
2003 Christopher Stewart, essays by Mike Davis and Joanna Lowry, catalogue published by Centro de Arte de Salamanca, ISBN 849571941X
2003 Fabula exhibition catalogue, National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, ISBN 0948489227
2001 International Sponsorship Programme Art Cologne catalogue ISBN 3929769891
2001 EXIT Magazine #1 ‘Crimes & Misdemeanours’ ISSN 15772721
2000 Imago 2000 catalogue, Salamanca ISBN 8478009248
2000 EAST International catalogue ISBN 1872482228
2000 Big Torino catalogue, Turin, ISBN 8871803000
1999 Portfolio Magazine # 30 ISSN 13544446
1998 Creative Camera Artists’ Pages Oct/Nov ISSN 00110876
and Tony Ray Jones and the focus of Stewart’s essay was an analysis of the last decade of British photography.
After teaching at the University of Westminster
and the Kent Institute of Art and Design, he was Principal Lecturer and foundation head of the academic area of Photography, Moving Image and Sound at the University of Brighton until 2008. At the University of Brighton
, he was also Director of the MA in Photography.
From 2008, Stewart directed visual art departments in Australia, first at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
in Melbourne and subsequently at the National Art School
in Sydney.
External links =
Career
Stewart graduated with an MA Photography degree from the Royal College of ArtRoyal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
in 1998. He was the recipient of the London Photographers’ Gallery RCA Student Award. The London gallery Gimpel Fils
Gimpel fils
Gimpel fils is a London art gallery founded by the brothers Peter and Charles Gimpel on 26 November 1946 in honour of their father, the art dealer and collector, René Gimpel, who himself was the son of a Parisian art dealer and an acquaintance of Marcel Proust. Since 1972, it has been located at...
represented him following his graduate exhibition. Work that was developed from an initial series of photographs made whilst at the Royal College went on to be exhibited at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
The National Media Museum is a museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Part of the National Museum of Science and Industry, it was the 20th most popular museum in the United Kingdom in 2009, with 613,923 visitors.The first head of the museum was Colin Ford who was succeeded by Amanda...
in Bradford, the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
in London, the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, and the Whitechapel Gallery in London as well as other international venues.
American urban theorist Mike Davis
Mike Davis (scholar)
Mike Davis is an American Marxist social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California.-Life:...
, author of City of Quartz
City of Quartz
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles is a 1990 book by Mike Davis examining problems facing Los Angeles. The underlying material was originally intended as a Ph.D. submission in completion of the requirements for his history doctorate, but it was rejected...
, says Stewart’s work articulates “the constitutive ground of our current unease” and that his “photographs detonate our Orwellian anxieties”.
Art
Stewart’s work is concerned with hierarchies of vision, surveillance and contested territories. From the 1990s to the mid 2000’s he examined the global phenomenon of privatised global security - utilising this modern hyper-industry as a metaphor for analysing global insecurity. Subsequent projects from the mid 2000’s have included Kill House, an analysis of US based disciplinary vernacular structures utilised for the training of private special-forces prior to deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan and Super Border, photographs taken along the route of the newly opened 300 million euro External Integrated Vigilance System on the southern Andalucian coast in Spain.Writing in Portfolio, Curator of Photography at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television Patrick Henry said that “Stewart strips documentary of its didactic function, photographing scenarios which themselves occupy a grey area between reality and fiction” and that his images were a “parody of documentary and its quest to enlighten us about the world”. Martin Herbert in the October 2006 Art Forum review of Stewart’s 2006 exhibition Observations at Gimpel Fils said that Stewart sidesteps “the potholes of politicized art”.
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions include Super Border at Gimpel Fils, London 2009; Observations at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool 2006; International Sponsorship Program at Art Cologne in 2001; Imago 2000 at the Palacio de Abrantes Salamanca, Spain 2000.Group exhibitions include Something That I’ll Never Really See (Photography from the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection) at the National Gallery of Modern Art
National Gallery of Modern Art
The National Gallery of Modern Art is the leading Indian art gallery. The main museum at New Delhi was established on March 29, 1954 by the Government of India, with subsequent branches at Mumbai and Bangalore...
in New Dehli 2011; Darkside II curated by Urs Stahel at the Fotomuseum Winterthur
Fotomuseum Winterthur
Fotomuseum Winterthur was founded in 1993 and is dedicated to photography as art form and document, and as a representation of reality. Fotomuseum Winterthur is on the one hand an art gallery for photography by contemporary photographers and artists...
, Switzerland 2009; Kill House, Theatres of War, Krakow Photomonth, Poland 2007; Observations at Open Eye Gallery Liverpool 2006; Contemporary Complexities, Martin Z. Marguilies Gift at the Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
2007; Fabula curated by Patrick Henry at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
The National Media Museum is a museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Part of the National Museum of Science and Industry, it was the 20th most popular museum in the United Kingdom in 2009, with 613,923 visitors.The first head of the museum was Colin Ford who was succeeded by Amanda...
, Bradford 2003; Suspendidos at the Canal de Isobel II Gallery in Madrid 2001.
Publications and catalogues
2011 The Critical Dictionary, Black Dog Publishing, ed. David Evans ISBN 978-19073174912010 Langford’s Basic Photography Ninth Edition, Focal Press, ISBN 9780240520353
2009 The Photograph as Contemporary Art 2nd ed., Thames & Hudson World of Art Series, ed. by Charlotte Cotton, ISBN 9780500204016
2009 Darkside II, Fotomuseum Winterthur/Steidl Press ISBN 9783865219251
2008 Super Border, Source Photographic Review, UK
2007 Kill House, Krakow Photomonth catalogue
2005 Insecurity, Seesaw Magazine, edited by Aaron Schuman - www.seesawmagazine.com
2004 The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames & Hudson World of Art Series edited by Charlotte Cotton, ISBN 0500203806
2004 Portfolio Magazine, essay by Patrick Henry ISSN 1354-4446
2004 Five: curated by GavinTurk – The Labyrinth of the Gaze, ISSN1477-6774
2003 Christopher Stewart, essays by Mike Davis and Joanna Lowry, catalogue published by Centro de Arte de Salamanca, ISBN 849571941X
2003 Fabula exhibition catalogue, National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, ISBN 0948489227
2001 International Sponsorship Programme Art Cologne catalogue ISBN 3929769891
2001 EXIT Magazine #1 ‘Crimes & Misdemeanours’ ISSN 15772721
2000 Imago 2000 catalogue, Salamanca ISBN 8478009248
2000 EAST International catalogue ISBN 1872482228
2000 Big Torino catalogue, Turin, ISBN 8871803000
1999 Portfolio Magazine # 30 ISSN 13544446
1998 Creative Camera Artists’ Pages Oct/Nov ISSN 00110876
Curating and writing
Stewart curated the group exhibition Private at the Hockney Gallery whilst a student at the Royal College of Art in 1997 which included the work of Clare Strand and Maggie Lambert. He curated Infraliminal at Stills Gallery for the Edinburgh Fringe in 2001 which was reviewed in the Guardian Newspaper and included the work of Rut Blees Luxemburg, Sophy Rickett and Juan Delgado. He has curated and written exhibition introductions for a number of shows for university galleries including Edition, an exhibition of sixty prototype and dummy books at the University of Brighton during the Brighton Photo Biennial 2006 and a group exhibition at RMIT’s School of Creative Media Project Space in 2008. His most recent catalogue essay was commissioned from the Krackow International Photomonth Festival in Poland in 2010. The Festival’s focus was on British Photography and included exhibitions by John StezakerJohn Stezaker
-Overview:Stezaker attended the Slade School of Art in London in the 1960s. In the early 1970s he was among the first wave of British conceptual artists to react against what was then the predominance of Pop art....
and Tony Ray Jones and the focus of Stewart’s essay was an analysis of the last decade of British photography.
Teaching
From 1994, Stewart taught practice, history and theory in London including a short course on the history of photography to MA students at the Royal College of Art covering pre-histories of photography and the history of photographic portraiture in the nineteenth century including the utilisation of photography in science and pseudo-scientific discourses such as eugenics, anthropology and criminology.After teaching at the University of Westminster
University of Westminster
The University of Westminster is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. Its origins go back to the foundation of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1838, and it was awarded university status in 1992.The university's headquarters and original campus are based on Regent...
and the Kent Institute of Art and Design, he was Principal Lecturer and foundation head of the academic area of Photography, Moving Image and Sound at the University of Brighton until 2008. At the University of Brighton
University of Brighton
The University of Brighton is an English university of the United Kingdom, with a community of over 23,000 students and 2,600 staff based on campuses in Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings. It has one of the best teaching quality ratings in the UK and a strong research record, factors which...
, he was also Director of the MA in Photography.
From 2008, Stewart directed visual art departments in Australia, first at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
RMIT University
RMIT University is an Australian public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. It has two branches, referred to as RMIT University in Australia and RMIT International University in Vietnam....
in Melbourne and subsequently at the National Art School
National Art School
The National Art School is an art school in Sydney, Australia. It is a Public Company Limited by Guarantee with a board of directors. It has Institutional Registration and Course Accreditation supported by the DET Higher Education Directorate....
in Sydney.
External links =