Dirty Practice, a research project initiated by Christian Mieves and Maggie Ayliffe in 2015, sets out to explore critically the current artistic framework where manual skills and studio based practices are denigrated in an increasingly institutionalised HEI environment. This is partly mirrored in the educational structures (and spaces) found in the new HEI environment where Fine Art departments are increasingly relocated into non-purpose-built, inadequate office type spaces without workshop support.
It is also reflected in the way the artist studio has often been, in a simplifying fashion, linked to a specific art movement and specific type of art work, where the studio ultimately has become a target of the institutional critique or a ‘pathology of the modern.’ This is the third iteration of the Dirty Practice research project, which has started in 2015 Dirty Practice: Artist/ Teacher; Dirty Practice: The Role of the Studio (2016), Dirty Practice: Who cares? (2018) ‘Don’t Wash your Hands’ (2019) and ‘Working from Home’ (2020).
Images from previous Dirty Practice events:
Dirty Practice Online Residency 2020 (4 Dec 2020)
Dirty Practice Residencies 2018 and 2019
