A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

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Mathew Wilson

Lecturer

Contact

Bio

BFA, 1990 Hull College of Art, England; MFA 1994, School of the Art Institute, Chicago. Exhibitions: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Renaissance Society, University of Chicago; Chicago Cultural Center. Bibliography: Catalogue, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. Collections: Gabriel Mayer, Munich, Germany; Aaron Levine, Washington, D. C.; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Victoria and Steven Burns, Los Angeles, California. Awards: Community Arts Assistance Grant; Illinois Arts Council New Performance Forms Artist Fellowship; Illinois Arts Council, Artist Projects Grant; Illinois Humanities Council.  

Personal Statement

Industry of the Ordinary (IOTO) created their first project for Patriot's Day in 2003, where we organized nearly 100 volunteers to drop white clothing on Daley Plaza in Chicago. It was intended that the combined weight of this clothing would match the average weight of an adult American. The work was political in intent, firstly to draw attention to the fiction of truly public space in the city and, for Patriot's Day, to ritualistically drop an 'American Body' to the ground.The project has now grown to include work that addresses a variety of subjects in a wide range of media. In addition to publicly sited performance works IOTO create installations sculpture, text, photography, video, and sound pieces that are dedicated to an exploration and celebration of the customary, the everyday, and the usual.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This studio course focuses on themes, practices, contexts, and questions undertaken by contemporary artists and designers. Research Studio I is a course that asks students to begin to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities. This course engages with cultural institutions including: museums, galleries, libraries and archives as resources of critical engagement.

Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems.


Assignments in this course are faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary and idea based. The projects are designed to help students recognize their work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Students will experience a wide range of research methods and making strategies. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

Class Number

1230

Credits

3

Description

This studio course focuses on themes, practices, contexts, and questions undertaken by contemporary artists and designers. Research Studio I is a course that asks students to begin to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities. This course engages with cultural institutions including: museums, galleries, libraries and archives as resources of critical engagement.

Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems.


Assignments in this course are faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary and idea based. The projects are designed to help students recognize their work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Students will experience a wide range of research methods and making strategies. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

Class Number

1287

Credits

3

Description

The course Research Studio II builds on the learning outcomes from Research Studio I, asking students to continue to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities.

This spring the entire Contemporary Practice department will have a shared umbrella topic for our RSII courses: Contemporary Now. All RSII classes will engage with the present and what is happening right now. With the world moving so fast - a pandemic, fires burning across the US west, people marching in the streets across the globe, and the storms that seem to keep coming, it is critical we ask questions of ourselves as artists, designers, educators and cultural producers: What responsibility do we have at any moment in history? How can the diversity of our practices: research, study, making and actions, address the present and design the future we want to see?

In RSII courses students will investigate this shared departmental thematic through the intersection of their own practice and the pedagogical practices of their faculty. All RSII classes are interdisciplinary, faculty have provided a subtitle, and a short description to describe the lens through which their class will explore the theme of Contemporary Now.

Class Number

1221

Credits

3