Dr. Michael Cooter
Pronouns: he/him
Born: Epsom, England
Home: London, England
Class Titles & Seminars Taught
'Objects: display, narrative and structural agency'
'How do we work and what do we make work about?'
'Putting it in the window: the exhibition and display'
'The amateur and the minor'
'Things: building and maintenance'
'Institutional Critique'
Services
Visual Art Critique: a detailed analysis and evaluation of an artist's work. (allows for social & critical discourse, analysis, interpretation, and artist direction, provides exposure to contemporary art history, yields artist networks, collaborations and relationships).
Small Group Seminars: provide participants with a supportive, inclusive and creative environment to engage with various artforms, encouraging positive social interaction, a strong sense of community, and artistic expression of each individual.
Exhibitions
Evaluate Exhibitions and Make Them - Mike Cooter
Esteemed artist, writer, and lecturer, Dr. Mike Cooter will survey art exhibition histories and contemporary debates around art exhibitions. The seminar will be contextualized by continual references to specific case studies, considering closely entwined relationships between exhibitions, design, architecture, politics, and commerce. Together you will discuss the practicalities of exhibition-making and consider how artwork speaks through context – and how this relationship can be structured. In addition, this seminar will explore ways in which the field is evolving and examine new dynamic approaches to exhibition-making.
Artist's Statement
Mike Cooter's work investigates the structural agency of objects, be they sculpture, cinematic props or other anthropological artefacts – objects co-opted or created to drive narratives, fictional or otherwise. He makes exhibitions (often incorporating loaned artefacts and works made by others), objects, lectures and texts.
Bio
Mike Cooter is an artist, writer, lecturer, and educator based in London. He holds a BA (hons) Fine Art from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, MA (Sculpture) from the Royal College of Art (London) and a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London. His current research interests include the history of exhibitions and display; ontology and new materialisms; the presentation of anthropological and socially fabricated artefacts in contemporary art and museum collections; the sociology of science and theories of invention; animation, experimental and industrial film and new media; and post-modernity in art, architecture, literature and design. His writing has been published by Art Agenda, Mousse, The Exhibitionist and Princeton University Press (forthcoming) amongst others. Since 2016 he has taught Critical Studies at Goldsmiths (London), on the MA in Experimental Film at Kingston University, as Lead Consultant at Sotheby’s Institute and lectured internationally, most recently at Princeton University (USA), the Academy of Media Arts (Cologne) and Ashkal Alwan (Lebanon). He has been involved in the preparation of over 150 exhibitions in commercial galleries and public institutions.