About

 

Owen G. Parry (he/him/Dr)

 

I am a London based artist and researcher in contemporary art, visual cultures, and performance studies. I completed a PhD (AHRC funded) in visual cultures at Goldsmiths in 2014, I was post-doctoral fellow (digital scholarship) at The Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh 2018-19. I am currently Senior Lecturer in Critical Studies Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. 

 

I have an artistic and curatorial practice with international exhibitions and performances, and a critical writing practice with publications in peer reviewed books, journals, and online. My work has been commissioned for public programmes internationally in UK, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Finland, Canada, South Korea and USA. 

 

My research emerges from a fascination and engagement with queer performance, vernacular theory, pop celebrity, and occultism, and where such practices are combined, re-purposed or fictionalised to generate new aesthetic assemblages, counter-myths, and speculative imaginaries. I am interested in art's relationship to 'non-knowledge', alternative pedagogies and to ‘imagining otherwise’ through experiences of the queer, collective, affective, and embodied kind. My current project 'Poor Theory' explores how “the weird internet” including fandom, memes, magical practices, and conspiracy theories have moved from the margins to become increasingly central to life in capitalist ruins. It builds on my previous influential Fan Riot project (2016 - ongoing), which explores how fans drove the internet and includes artworks, performances, international publications and a 'fan club' series.

 

Recent projects and collaborations include 'Causarious v0cation', 'Extracurricular' (2024); 'Free Transfer', 'Boopa/Chelsea' and 'Performance Haiku' (2022); 'This is Not a Game' and 'Dali's Paranoiac Critical Pizza' (2021); 'Myth Lab Drinxx' (2020); ' A performance hangout (off offline)' (2019); 'PooR life by dog people' (2018); 'fic.the.sky' and 'Helpin 2do stuff with a dance' (2017) 'Larry!monument' and 'Larry performance AU' (2016); 'The 3 Annas' (2015) and more. Publications include 'Eight Poor Copies (electric speech)' (Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, 2024); 'Freedom is a Performance Hangout* (*Click on this fake sweat distraction technique to release infinite scroll) (Performance Research, 2023); 'Shipping (as) Fandom and Art Practice' (Fandom as Methodology, MIT, 2019); 'Yoko Ono Fanfiction' (The Creative Critic, Routledge, 2018); 'Fictional Realness: Towards a Colloquial Performance Practice' (Performance Research, 2015) among others.