Dr. Anthony Gardner

Prof. Gardner is Head of the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford, where he teaches Contemporary Art History and Theory and is a Fellow of The Queen’s College. He has published widely on subjects including postcolonialism, postsocialism and curatorial histories, and is an editor of the MIT Press journal ARTMargins. Among his books are Mapping South: Journeys in South-South Cultural Relations (Melbourne, 2013), Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art against Democracy (MIT Press, 2015) and, also through MIT Press in 2015, the anthology Neue Slowenische Kunst: From Kapital to Capital (with Zdenka Badovinac and Eda Čufer), which was a finalist for the 2017 Alfred H. Barr Award for best exhibition catalogue worldwide. His latest book, co-authored with Charles Green (University of Melbourne), is Biennials, Triennials and documenta: The exhibitions that created contemporary art, published by Wiley- Blackwell in 2016.

 

Relevant (selected) publications

1.) Gardner, A. (2015). Politically unbecoming: postsocialist art against democracy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

2.) Green, C., & Gardner, A. (2016). Biennials, Triennials, and documenta: the exhibitions that created contemporary art. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.

3.) Gardner, A., et al & Moderna galerija (Ljubljana, Slovenia) (Eds.). (2015). NSK from Kapital to capital: Neue Slowenische Kunst, an event of the final decade of Yugoslavia (First edition). Llubljana, Slovenia : Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England: Moderna galerija, Museum of Modern Art ; The MIT Press.

4.) Gardner, A. (2012). De-Idealizing Democracy: On Thomas Hirschhorn’s Postsocialist Projects. ARTMargins, 1(1), 29–61.

5.) Gardner, A. (2010). Aesthetics of emptiness and withdrawal: contemporary European art and actually existing democratization. Postcolonial Studies, 13(2), 179–197.

Relevant (selected) projects and activities

1.) Editor of ARTMargins (MIT Press and online; peer-reviewed journal);

2.) Consultant for The South Project (Melbourne) and Editor of Mapping South: Journeys in South-South Cultural Relations (Melbourne: The South Project Inc., 2013);

3.) Convenor (with Catherine Wood and Kathy Noble), Tate Modern (London), and Lina Dzuverovic, Calvert 22 Gallery (London) of a performance-event by Laibach and conference Neue Slowenische Kunst: A Historical Perspective at Tate Modern, 14 April 2012.

4.) Convener of project and conference, Art in a Time of Catastrophe: Ecologies of Resistance, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, December-February 2019 (with Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan);

5.) Contemporary art critic, member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art since 2008