lain is Reader in Visual Art Practice and a painter who occasionally works in enamel, a printmaker, a maker and publisher of artist's books and a writer. He has a BA Hons. Fine Art from Leeds University, an MA from the RCA and has taught in art schools across the UK. He has a particular interest in issues of memory, place and identity as relating to contemporary art and has published on this and on individual artists, including Ken Kiff, Andrea Thoma, Helen Gardner, Sian Bonnell, Kate Mellor and Amal Ghosh.

He is currently Director of Studies, for the Taught Research Programme for the Faculty of Art, Media and Design at the University of the West of England, Bristol and from 1999 to 2001 was award leader for the faculty's MA Landscape Studies. He is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Lincoln, an external examiner for MA awards at Falmouth School of Arts and Oxford Brookes University and the DFA at the University of East London and a member of the AHRB Peer Review College. He currently supervises six practice-based research students, has acted as an external examiner for research degrees at Derby, Leeds, Ulster and Brighton, and represents UWE, Bristol on the Steering Group of the New Route PhD Consortium.

lain co-convenes LAND2, a national network of artists associated with Higher Education who work not only in painting, print and photography but a variety of other media and are concerned with radical approaches to land and landscape, with a particular focus on memory, place and identity. LAND2 had its first conference and group exhibition at Dean Clough, Halifax in November 2004.

lain's professional practice has included working as a project coordinator and participating artist on four public art and design projects for Lloyds TSB (in Bristol, Birmingham and London), on behalf of Creative Urban Space Projects (CUSP). He is also the internal coordinator for CUSP, continues his personal art practice, has published on educational issues in refereed journals and anthologies, and currently sits on the editorial board of The Journal of Visual Art Practice for the National Association of Fine Art Education and the electronic journal of the European League of Institutes of the Arts.

2005

a) 'Towards a Polytheistic Relationship to Landscape: Issues for Contemporary Art' in Landscape Research vol 30 no 1

b) 'Recovering Landscape: an art between seeing and hearing' in JVAP (forthcoming Autumn 2005).

c) One of 7 contributors to Imaginal Regions (international collaborative research project) essay published at http://www.imaginalregions.co.uk

d) (with Amanda Wood) 'Creative Practices and the "Stigma of the Therapeutic": an issue for postgraduate pedagogy?' Chapter Ten in Miles, M (ed) New Practices New Pedagogies: a reader London and New York: Routledge pp. 117 - 131.

2004

a) 6 works selected for reading, writing & 'rithmetic curated by Sian Bonnell for TRACE, Sherborne House, 24th Jan - 8th Feb

b). Between Carterhaugh and Tamshiel Rig: a borderline episode Artist's book published in an edition of 500 by Wild Conversations Press for TRACE. 167 pp. 62 colour 13 b& w images. ISBN 1 902595 06 8 (Copies in the collection of the Tate, Victoria & Albert Museum and the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection, John M. Flaxman Library, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and private collections). Exhibited in the international touring exhibition Arcadia id est: artists' books, nature and the landscape touring Europe, Australia and the USA 2005-2007, see http://sphere.uwe.ac.uk/websites/bookarts/arcadia.

2003

a). Catalogue essay for Kate Mellor Une Semaine de Bonheur Photographic work at TRACE, Weymouth. 5th – 20th July 2003

b). 2 works selected for On the Edge: Ninth Biennial International Juried Touring Exhibition (sponsored by the Enamelist Society, USA). August - October, 2003. The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington; Gallery Mack, Seattle, Washington; The Centre for Contemporary Crafts Gallery, Portland, Oregon.

c). ‘Re/visiting, Re/visioning, Re/placing’ in Judith Tucker: Resort at ONLY ATELIER, September 4 – 20, 2003. Wein, Austria pp. 7-8 ISBN 1 900687 15 1

   
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