Brent Wilson’s theory of Third-Site Pedagogy, a study exploring the places where teachers think students should make art and the places where students choose to develop their art practice was a key influence in the making of 'Not an Art-Room'. Wilson's research focussed on a 1970’s Birmingham comprehensive school art-room which was a curious dual space. One side of the room housed normal school furniture, but the other side contained an extraordinary collection of paintings, antiques, sofas, carpets, plants, pottery and cabinets of ephemera. Wilson's critique proposed how such an art-room could question institutional ideas of what should or could happen in school and art education. 

 

Influenced by Wilson’s research, my practice has evolved through working collaboratively with students at a uk secondary school. Relocation from a 30-year-old art-room, to a sterile, brand-new classroom provoked an investigation of different pedagogies, questioning how I taught art and how I could teach art.  My research exposed a process of trying to change the new classroom into an art-room, and explored how that might be achieved through a collage of images, objects and overlapping pedagogies. 

 

Working with students in the freedom of afterschool time spoke to Rancière’s ‘equality of intelligences’; questioning pedagogical relations between teacher and student. The images reflect how students and staff embody the school space in ‘un-policed’ time and attach to the different venues they move through during a school day.