Bio

Robert Manners is an artist, curator and educator based in the south west of the UK.

Robert has been a lecturer on the BA (Hons) Painting Drawing & Printmaking programme at Arts University Plymouth since 2016 and is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Robert’s research is primarily practce led with interests in materiality and pedagogic strategies through process, materials and critical thinking.

“I am interested in the edges, the peripheries or the boundaries of where one thing becomes another. This interest, certainly in my practice, is not just theoretical, it is a critical part of my working methodologies. This is reflected in the blurring of the disciplines of painting, printmaking and sculpture combined with a deep interest in materiality as a tool of enquiry into the very idea of what a painting actually is and what it might be.”

Always working in series, Robert’s practice has explored concepts of the readymade and its relationship to the practice of painting. Pedagogic research has included instigating an international collaboration with students from AUP and The Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong where strategies for teaching and learning within the creative space of the ‘unknown’ were explored.

Robert has set up an artists’ led gallery in Bristol, been commissioned by Bristol Museum and Art Gallery to curate and deliver a series of site-specific sculptural installations and is a founding member of N-E-W, an artists’ led organisation that has received Arts Council funding to deliver curated contemporary art performances and exhibitions in the south west.