Alex Coles is an author and academic drawn to the borders between disciplines and genres.
Coles' current writing is devoted to music. Exploring the archetype of the intimate ballad singer, Crooner was published by Reaktion Books in 2023. Developing an analysis of the twisted love song, Tainted Love: From Nina Simone to Kendrick Lamar (Sternberg Press, 2023) followed and was launched with a roundtable debate at the Whitechapel Gallery and featured on Chris Hawkins' BBC6 breakfast show. Tracing the role of jazz as a catalyst in popular music, Fusion! From Alice Coltrane to Moor Mother is published by Sternberg Press in October 2024.
Coles' earlier writing focussed on design and art. DesignArt (Tate Publishing, 2005) triggered a debate about the interface between the two disciplines, while the edited anthology Design and Art (MIT Press/Whitechapel Publications, 2007) contextualised responses to it. The Transdisciplinary Studio (Sternberg Press, 2012) and the EP series (Sternberg Press 2013-) followed. Reviews of these books appeared in The New York Times,Icon,The Journal of Design History and Design Journal.
Essays were commissioned for the following exhibition catalogues and monographs: Konstantin Grcic: Champions (Flammarion, 2011); Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec: Bivouac (Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2012); Olafur Eliasson: Unspoken Spaces (Thames & Hudson, 2016); and Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design (Vitra Design Museum, 2019).
Keynote lectures were presented at the conferences: Transforming Place, Tate Modern, 2013, In Need Of, Design Academy, Eindhoven, 2016, Design & Crafts in Dialogue, Nova Iskra, Belgrade, and Learning and Teaching, The University of the Arts, London, 2018.
Academic posts
Coles is currently Visiting Professor at the 92nd St Y, New York. Between 2011-2023 Coles was Professor of Transdisciplinary Studies, School of Arts & Humanities, University of Huddersfield.
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Sir Richard Julian Long, is an English sculptor and one of the best-known British land artists.
Gillian Wearing CBE, RA is an English conceptual artist, one of the Young British Artists, and winner of the 1997 Turner Prize. In 2007 Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Her statue of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett, popularly known as "Hanging out the washing", stands in London's Parliament Square.
Peter Doig is a Scottish painter. He has settled in Trinidad since 2002.
The Hon. Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art historian and curator.
The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the first publicly funded galleries for temporary exhibitions in London. The building is a notable example of the British Modern Style. In 2009 the gallery approximately doubled in size by incorporating the adjacent former Passmore Edwards library building. It exhibits the work of contemporary artists and organizes retrospective exhibitions and other art shows.
David Hall was an English artist, whose pioneering work contributed much to establishing video as an art form.
Simeon Solomon was a British painter associated with the Pre-Raphaelites who was noted for his depictions of Jewish life and same-sex desire. His career was cut short as a result of public scandal following his arrests and convictions for attempted sodomy in 1873 and 1874.
Transdisciplinarity connotes a research strategy that crosses disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. It applies to research efforts focused on problems that cross the boundaries of two or more disciplines, such as research on effective information systems for biomedical research, and can refer to concepts or methods that were originally developed by one discipline, but are now used by several others, such as ethnography, a field research method originally developed in anthropology but now widely used by other disciplines. The Belmont Forum elaborated that a transdisciplinary approach is enabling inputs and scoping across scientific and non-scientific stakeholder communities and facilitating a systemic way of addressing a challenge. This includes initiatives that support the capacity building required for the successful transdisciplinary formulation and implementation of research actions.
Fiona Banner, also known as The Vanity Press, is a British artist. Her work encompasses sculpture, drawing, installation and text, and demonstrates a long-standing fascination with the emblem of fighter aircraft and their role within culture and especially as presented on film. She is well known for her early works in the form of 'wordscapes', written transcriptions of the frame-by-frame action in Hollywood war films, including Top Gun and Apocalypse Now. Her work has been exhibited in prominent international venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Hayward Gallery, London. Banner was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2002.
Bryan Robertson OBE was an English curator and arts manager described by Studio International as "the greatest Director the Tate Gallery never had".
Liam Gillick is a British artist who lives and works in New York City. Gillick deploys multiple forms to make visible the aesthetics of the constructed world and examine the ideological control systems that have emerged along with globalization and neoliberalism. He utilizes materials that resemble everyday built environments, transforming them into minimalist abstractions that deliver commentaries on social constructs, while also exploring notions of modernism.
Alice Rawsthorn OBE is a British design critic and author. Her books include Design as an Attitude (2018) and Hello World: Where Design Meets Life (2013). She is chair of the board of trustees at the Chisenhale Gallery in London and at The Hepworth Wakefield gallery in Yorkshire. Rawsthorn is a founding member of Writers at Liberty, a group of writers who are committed to supporting the work of the human rights charity Liberty. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to design and the arts.
Tam Joseph is a Dominica-born British painter, formerly known as Tom Joseph. Described as "a uniquely talented, multidimensional artist" by art historian Eddie Chambers, "Tam Joseph has contributed a number of memorable paintings that locate themselves at the centre of socio-political commentary, often making work that shocks as it amuses, amuses as it shocks. Typical in this regard are paintings for which Joseph is universally loved and respected, such as 'Spirit of the Carnival' and 'UK School Report'."
Tim Head is a British artist. A painter, photographer and sculptor, he employs mixed media.
Zarina Bhimji is a Ugandan Indian photographer, based in London. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2007, exhibited at Documenta 11 in 2002, and is represented in the public collections of Tate, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Jasia Reichardt is a British art critic, curator, art gallery director, teacher and prolific writer, specialist in the emergence of computer art. In 1968 she was curator of the landmark Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. She is generally known for her work on experimental art. After the deaths of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson she catalogued their archive and looks after their legacy.
Åbäke is a transdisciplinary graphic design collective, founded in 2000 by Patrick Lacey (UK), Benjamin Reichen (FR), Kajsa Ståhl (SE) and Maki Suzuki (FR) in London, England, after meeting at the Royal College of Art.
Filipa Ramos is a writer, lecturer and curator.
Céline Condorelli is an artist who works between London and Milan and is best known for her publications The Company She Keeps and Support Structures and her artworks which work across the spheres of art and architecture. Support Structures was a co-publication with Gavin Wade. She was shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2017.
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