Naomi Salaman

Photography, lens-based media and film and photography theory have been central to the development of my practice, which has been rooted in the history of modernity, mass production and distribution of visual culture and questions of subjectivity.   The digital shift — both ubiquitous and difficult to grasp — continues to inform my interest in the history of technology and the evolving space of the digital.

Artworks such as For Cherry Grose (1986), considered the critique of the patriarchal nuclear family in second wave feminism that informed my politics but that was colour blind in the context of the Brixton Riots of 1985. Satellite Sex(1990), considered a BBC documentary about the emergence of satellite broadcasting of sexually explicit material, in a country (the UK), which until then had had a very high level of censorship for pornography. Changed Pressmarks of the Private Case (2000) was an investigation of the history of pornography in the British Library system of classification, as they moved over to digital records. Projects such as What She Wants (1991-1994), was an open call exhibition and publication of women artists' erotic images of men. Postcards on Photography (1998-9), was an investigation of the generic photography gallery in the UK, funded by the Arts Council until they began to be closed in the 1990’s.  Looking Back at the Life Room (2000-2008) was a PhD thesis and a number of exhibitions on the ideology of the life room in the history of art education. 

I have a sustained commitment to feminist critique, as well as to the arguments within feminist history, as Joey Soloway says her ‘favourite thing is feminist argument’. My focus is on areas of contention in the politics of representation, the history of vision, and the structures of art education and visual culture. My research drive is to do with trying to make ideology visible and combines historical, archival, and critical approaches. 

I supervise projects in contemporary art practice that engage critically with feminist perspectives and histories, cultural politics, and the politics of representation. I welcome research that interrogates the institutions of art practice and art education, explores the intersections of lived experience with visual and material culture, and/or addresses the shifting conditions of media and technology and visual/digital  experience. 

Naomi Salaman is a British artist, curator, writer and lecturer whose work has a particular focus on feminist critique, the politics of technology, history of vision and the structures of art education and pedagogy. Her practice is known for its engagement with the relation between theory and practice, photography and lens based media, materialist critique and the interrogation of institutional and cultural frameworks. She has attracted Arts Council and AHRC funding for her art exhibitions, curatorial and publishing projects, and studying for her PhD. She has a doctorate in Visual Arts Practice, from Goldsmiths College, on the history of art theory in the art school, supervised by Victor Burgin. She has shown her art work and installations over four decades, along side teaching in various fine art and photography contexts. She has published in academic journals and is currently developing SWEETSHOP WINDOW GALLERY an artist run gallery in Lewes, where she lives.

In a fine art studio context teaching is less about instruction and more about tuning in to what students are up to with their work, and bringing to their potential new work, ideas and questions, maybe art references or books, films and articles that relate to their work and may help broaden and firm up their direction, or maybe thoughs about technical and formal methods of making.