Dr Roman Vasseur
Faculties, deparments and locations
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Fine Art
- School of Arts
Course Leader MFA Fine Art
- Email:
- r.vasseur@kingston.ac.uk
About
I am an artist and academic. I have exhibited in the UK at Cubitt Gallery, Jeffrey Charles Henry Peacock Gallery, the ICA, Battersea Pump House Gallery, the Austrian Cultural Foundation, London, and abroad at Project, Dublin, KX Gallery, Hamburg and Los Angeles for example. In 2008-2011 I completed the project Let Us Pray for Those Now Residing in the Designated Area where I was commissioned to work as lead artist for an English Post-War New Town, interpreting its original vision and acts of statecraft. Past work has for example, involved transporting a crate of earth from Transylvania to London and then Los Angeles and the re-creation of a dance sequence promoting Mercedes cars.
My research and art have extended into the fields of urbanism, informatics, posthumanism, cinema, feminist literary criticism, medievalism and political philosophy. I completed my PhD in the Art Department of Goldsmith's College in 2018. Entitled: I Am The Sun And Cannot Be Gazed Upon Fixedly (Art and the Spectral Power of the Derivative) the research claimed that contemporary art and cultural production, more broadly, are irrevocably changed now that the information logic of the financial derivative is seeded in and transmitted by culture's objects. Examples of cinema from the early 1970s onwards were used to affectively map how the spectral, but impactful, reign of the financial derivative has taken hold, and how its violent rearranging of time and space can be rethought.
I have published writings with Urbanomic Press and Mute Magazine for example and presented lectures and participated in panel discussions at Tate Britain and the ICA.
I conduct PhD supervision and welcome practice-based PhD projects from artists whose area of research touches on urbanism, informatics, posthumanism, cinema, feminist literary criticism, medievalism and political philosophy for example.
Qualifications
- MA Sculpture, Fine Art. Royal College of Art
- BA (Hons) Fine Art, Sculpture. Chelsea College of Art & Design
- PhD Art, Goldsmith's College, University of London
Domains
Course director
My artworks encompass installation, sculpture, curation, painting, video, temporary architectures and writing. The works attempt to understand how it is that certain sites and cultural artefacts are at the same time informational, ideological and material. For this reason cinema is used as a way of thinking a spectral but forceful materiality. I worked for a number of years as a curator and project manager for art and architecture projects, was instrumental in setting up landmark non-gallery, artist run Arts Council funded projects as well as guest curating for the Austrian Cultural Foundation, London. In 2000 a work involved the transportation of a crate of earth from Transylvania to Los Angeles via London and New York -in the process returning a material to its cinematic point of origin. In 2007 I was commissioned to work on the revision of the master plan for a post war new town. As part of that role I curated and contributed to a series of temporary events, artworks and architecture. The projects were designed to disinter the statecraft of the town's original vision and bring that vision to bear on the statecraft of our present. I am currently working towards a video and publication stemming from this project entitled: Let Us Pray for Those Now Residing in the Designated Area. Another on-going video work entitled: I am the Sun and Cannot be Gazed Upon Fixedly attempts to think the information-power of the derivative and its effect on culture and its objects.
I have held solo exhibitions at Cubitt Gallery, London, and Project, Dublin. My work has been included in group-shows at such venues as the ICA, London, Battersea Pump House Gallery, EAST International 06 and the Bildmuseet at Umeå. I have published articles with Mute Magazine, the Journal for Visual Arts Practice (JVAP) and with Urbanomic Press including on such subjects as the Artists Placement Group (APG). I have contributed to conferences and panel discussions at UK venues including Tate Britain, the ICA and Milton Keynes Gallery.
Publications
Let us pray for those now residing in the designated area
Vasseur, Roman (2011). London, U.K.: (kynastonmcshine)
My Matter
Ayache, Elie and Vasseur, Roman, 2016, Journal of Visual Art Practice (15), 2-3, pp 107-115
Site and materiality
Vasseur, Roman (2015). In: Mackay, Robin, (ed.), When site lost the plot. Falmouth, U.K.: Urbanomic Media Ltd., pp 5-12
Let us pray for those now residing in the designated area
Vasseur, Roman (2012). In: Phillips, Andrea, (eds.) and Erdemci, Fulya, (eds.), Social housing, housing the social: art, property and spatial justice. Berlin, Germay: Sternberg Press, pp 183-201
Public art in Essex: Genius Loci the first three years: evaluation
Vasseur, Roman (2010). Chelmsford, U.K.: (Essex County Council)
Intro to symposium
Vasseur, Roman(2014). In: Neo-Medievalisms: Goldsmith's Art PhD Symposium, 27-29 Jan 2014 :London, U.K.
Designs towards a meeting place for future events of universal truth
Vasseur, Roman (2013).
Dead stock
Vasseur, Roman (2013).
Let us pray for those now residing in the designated area (Art and the New Town)
Vasseur, Roman (2008).