NEWS RELEASE: Rebecca Fortnum appointed Head of Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art

Professor Rebecca Fortnum who, it has been announced, will take up the post as Head of the School of Fine Art at the GSA in June 2021

The artist, curator and academic Rebecca Fortnum has been appointed Head of the School of Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art it was announced today, Wednesday 3 March 2021. Rebecca Fortnum is currently Professor of Fine Art and Research Lead in the School of Arts & Humanities at the Royal College of Art (RCA). 

 

 

 

Rebecca Fortnum’s academic career has included University of the Arts London, where she was Reader in Fine Art, and Middlesex University, London where she was Professor of Fine Art.   She led the Master of Fine Art programmes at both these institutions. She has been a visiting artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Senior Lecturer at Norwich School of Art and Wimbledon School of Art and, most recently, a Visiting Research Fellow in the Creative Arts at Merton College, Oxford University. 

As an artist Rebecca Fortnum has shown work in exhibitions across the world, including solo shows at Natalie Barney Gallery, Freud Museum London and the V&A’s Museum of Childhood, and in group shows at 601 Space (New York) and Flowers East (London) and Royal Academy Summer show. Rebecca Fortnum was also instrumental in founding the London artist-run spaces Cubitt and Gasworks.

Rebecca Fortnum has a research interest in contemporary artists’ processes and publications include a book of interviews, Contemporary British Women Artists: In Their Own Words, (Bloomsbury, 2007) and On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, (co-edited with Lizzie Fisher, Black Dog, 2013). Her most recent books are A Companion to Contemporary Drawing (Wiley Blackwell, 2020) which was co-edited with Kelly Chorpening and a monograph, A Mind Weighted with Unpublished Matter, (Slimvolume, 2020). Rebecca Fortnum is also the Founding Editor of the Journal of Contemporary Painting.

Announcing the appointment, Professor Penny Macbeth, the GSA’s Director said:  “We are delighted to welcome Rebecca Fortnum as our new Head of the School of Fine Art.”

“These are unprecedented times as we continue to respond to the impact of Covid on creative education. In Professor Fortnum we have found an outstanding candidate who brings the extensive experience as an academic leader that will enable us to take the School of Fine Art forward addressing the current challenges whilst developing innovative approaches to future learning and teaching.”

“As a practising artist she also has an insight and expertise in making and curating that will be inspirational to our students as they develop their own practice.”

“I am truly excited to be joining The Glasgow School of Art, one of the global leaders in art education,” says Professor Fortnum. “As an artist I have long been aware that GSA has nurtured generations of talent of international renown, and I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to contribute to this illustrious lineage.”

“I am looking forward to working with staff and students across the GSA and to collaborating with Glasgow’s wider cultural community on the next chapter in the history of the School of Fine Art, as well as contributing to the vibrant contemporary art community for which Glasgow is internationally known.”

Rebecca Fortnum will take up the post as Head of the School of Fine Art on1 June 2021

Ends

 

For further information contact:

Lesley Booth, 

0779941 4474 

press@gsa.ac.uk

 

 

Note for Editors

Rebecca Fortnum biography

Rebecca Fortnum is an artist, writer and academic. Fortnum studied at Camberwell College of Art, Corpus Christi College, Oxford (where she studied English), Newcastle University (MFA) and Kingston University (PhD). She has had solo shows at the Natalie Barney Gallery (2021), Semmer, Berlin (2015, two person), Freud Museum (2013) and the V&A’s Museum of Childhood (2012), as well as numerous group shows including most recently, ‘Motherline’, Flowers East (London), ‘Sleepy Heads’, Blyth Gallery (London), ‘49.5’, 601 Art Space (New York), ‘Phantom Limn’, Dovecot Studios (Edinburgh) and the Royal Academy Summer (Winter) Exhibition (London). A monograph, Self Contained, with essays by Maria Walsh, Graham Music and Louisa Minkin was published by RGAP in 2013. In 2019 she was elected Visiting Research Fellow in Creative Arts at Merton College, Oxford, where she developed her painting project, A Mind Weighted with Unpublished Matter.  This was published by Slimvolume in 2020, in a book designed by the Fraser Muggeridge Studio with contributions by Gemma Blackshaw, Melissa Gordon and Richard McCabe.         

 

Fortnum has held an Abbey Award at the British School in Rome, individual awards from the Arts Council of England, the British Council and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation amongst others, and has received research funding from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, KU Leuven the Association of Flemish Universities as well as a Space for 10 award for mid-career artists. Her book of interviews, Contemporary British Women Artists: In Their Own Words,was published by Bloomsbury in 2007 and On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, a book of essays that examines contemporary artists’ processes, which she co-edited with Lizzie Fisher, was published by Black Dog in 2013. She is the Founding Editor of the Journal of Contemporary Painting published by Intellect.  Her most recent book, A Companion to Contemporary Drawing (2020), co-edited with Kelly Chorpening, includes her chapter, ‘A Dirty Double Mirror: Drawing, Autobiography and Feminism’, which explores the feminist potential of the ‘autographical’ in work by Frances Stark, Emma Talbot and Nicola Tyson.  

 

She has been a Reader in Fine Art at University of the Arts London (Camberwell Chelsea Wimbledon) and Professor of Fine Art at Middlesex University, where she led the research programme in Fine Art and the Master of Fine Art programmes and is currently Professor of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, where she has been Research Lead for the School of Arts and Humanities since 2016.