Professor Keith Wilson

Professor of Sculpture

I make public exhibitions that expose the complex power relations inherent in everyday human interactions, producing sculptures that are dramatized by visitors, who have to navigate around seemingly authoritative pieces of highly ordered sculptural material. By simultaneously channelling bodies and ordering abstract ideas, my works encourage interpretative resistance and imaginative reordering of the encounter according to the visitor’s own perversity of mind. I look to sculpt social spaces, connecting not only people but also materials and ideas across space and time, redrawing many of the urgent issues we face using direct sculptural means.

I have worked on curatorial ventures such as Modern British Sculpture (Royal Academy, London 2011), The Object Sculpture (Henry Moore Institute, Leeds 2001), made major public works such as Steles (Olympic Commission, Queen Elizabeth Park, Stratford 2012-) Park Hill Plinths / Sculpture Park Hill (Park Hill, Sheffield 2017-) Sign for Art (Leeds University Campus, 2014-) Hopscotch (Trumpington, Cambridge 2019-) and gallery projects including Calendar (MAC, Belfast 2016) The Object Library (Graduate Center, CUNY, NYC 2018-) Things (Wellcome Collection, London 2011) Galvanised (Milton Keynes Gallery, 2004) Make it Snow (Milch, London, 2001) and Theft by Finding (Camden Arts Center, London 1995).

Professional Service history: Trustee: Camden Arts Centre 1998-2005, Trustee: Whitechapel Art Gallery 1997-2001, Chair of Trustees: Art House Foundation 2008-2016, Founding Member: Rural Cultural Forum 2007-2016, Advisory Board: Art Sheffield 2012-2016, Project Champion: S1 Artspace museum/gallery development project 2012-

Academic history: Foundation at Bournville College of Art (Birmingham, 1984) followed by BFA at the Ruskin, (Oxford University, 1988) then MFA at the Slade Sculpture Department, (UCL London, 1990). Awarded Laura Ashley scholarship to study at the Slade in the sculpture department (tutors Alison Wilding and Phyllida Barlow), won a Boise Travel Award for final exhibition. Awarded RSA Art and Architecture Award in 2002, an Arts Council Oxford-Melbourne Fellowship in 2011. Artist in residence, subsequently Executive Director of the Center for the Humanities, City University of New York 2016-2022. I was made professor at SHU in 2014, having joined Fine Art at Reader level the previous year, and have contributed to each REF cycle, having previously worked as Reader at University of Westminster (1999-2006), senior tutor in the Royal College of Art’s sculpture dept (2001-2010), Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martin’s (1996-2001) and as regular visiting lecturer at the Ruskin, the Royal Academy, Chelsea, Slade, Brighton and Wimbledon Schools of Art. I have been external examiner on PhD candidates for the Universities of Oxford and Ulster, where I was also external examiner for their Fine Art MA.