Michelle Ussher

I am a dynamic and adaptable teacher who brings twenty years of professional international exhibiting practice to student studios. I deliver an inclusive, ethically driven, and playful approach to teaching painting anchored in rigorous practice-based enquiry. My teaching fosters critically engaged studio environments grounded in open dialogue, mutual respect, and creative risk-taking.

Pedagogically, I work at the intersection of contemporary painting, feminism and philosophy and reinforce learning through making. I integrate decolonial, feminist and queer theory into studio contexts to connect making, thinking and professional practice as dynamically interwoven. I embed practical tasks in documentation, presentation, and application writing, and I connect students with practitioners and exhibition opportunities. Through these activities, I enable students to test ideas in real-world situations and contribute to broader socially engaged painting cultures.

My current research is informed by Catherine Malabou's contemporary theory of plasticity to examine how material behaviours such as gloopiness and slipperiness operate as affective categories in feminist and queer expression. These material attitudes correspond to critical orientations of "Indifference", "Reparative Criticism", and "Audacity", informed by choreographic, literary, and speculative feminist and decolonial practices.

My work challenges the fixity of representational and art-historical narratives to reframe feminine and queer embodiment as porous, fugitive modes of form-making that resist and inhabit dominant structures. Combining theoretical and material enquiry, I employ painting, ceramics, sound, performance and collaborative workshops, which unsettle medium-specific hierarchies and re-centre marginalised aesthetic knowledge as critical invention. This hybrid approach positions my work as relationally entwined with postcolonial and indigenous perspectives, embedding it within contemporary critical discourse.

I disseminate this research through exhibitions, peer-reviewed writing, symposia, and public programmes. By situating practice within broader critical debates, I generate reciprocal feedback between theoretical propositions, studio experimentation, and public engagement. My ambition is to articulate marginalised artistic practices as radically active, relational disciplines capable of negotiating shifting cultural, political, philosophical, and historical terrains.