Steve Baker

Norwich

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I work with the materials in my local environment. To my surprise, I find myself thinking about landscape quite a lot – probably because I spend much of my time cycling around rural Norfolk. But what I look at, and what turns up in my photographic juxtapositions and occasional site-specific installations are generally small things, overlooked details: the roadkill that’s ubiquitous on Norfolk’s country lanes, for example, or things tucked away behind other stuff in remote medieval churches. I’m drawn to Niklas Luhmann’s idea of art as “improbable evidence” – a record of the almost accidental impact of human presence (including the artist’s presence), registered in my work as little more than the material continuity of feathers, flint, earth, guts, leaves and stone. The presence of dead animals in some of the work may seem to draw it towards contemporary ethical or environmental debates, but – like one particular character in a Don DeLillo story – I “try not to think big thoughts or submit to rambling abstractions.”

Two Things

By Steve Baker

Halted Flight installation

By Steve Baker

Where Things Are

By Steve Baker

Roadside XII

By Steve Baker

Roadside XXV

By Steve Baker

Scapeland XIII

By Steve Baker

Scapeland VII

By Steve Baker

Scapeland VI

By Steve Baker

STEVE BAKER

http://steve-baker.com sbaker1@uclan.ac.uk

Steve Baker is an independent artist, researcher and writer, affiliated to the University of Central Lancashire as Emeritus Professor of Art History. His books include The Postmodern Animal and Artist|Animal. Now based in Norwich, he is an artist member of OUTPOST and a trustee of the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society.

Artwork in selected group exhibitions:

2015 What Does Art Add?: Figuring the More-than-Human World, City Without Walls (cWOW), Newark, New Jersey, USA, 5 March – 3 April.

2014-15 Arche Noah: Über Tier und Mensch in der Kunst, Museum Ostwall im Dortmunder U, Dortmund, Germany, 14 November 2014 – 12 April 2015.

2014 Ecce Animalia, Museum of Contemporary Sculpture, Oronsko, Poland, 8 March – 15 June. Catalogue: ISBN 978-83-85901-99-0.

2013 The Animal Gaze Returned, Sheffield Institute of the Arts Gallery, Sheffield, 2 August – 2 September.

2013 Cley 13: The Flight of the Spoonbill, 14th-century church of St Margaret of Antioch, Cley, Norfolk, 4 July – 4 August.

2013 Forever and Ever (four-person show), Town House Museum and Gallery, Dunbar, East Lothian, 18 May – 20 June.

2012 Screening at the Cosmopolitan Animals conference, Institute of English Studies, University of London, 26-27 October.

2012 Us and Them: Umwelten, Project Space, Melbourne, Australia, 11 May – 7 June.

2011 The Animal Gaze Returned, Cass Gallery, London Metropolitan University, 24 October – 11 November.

2011 Salthouse 11: Ad limina, 15th-century church of St Nicholas, Salthouse, Norfolk, 6 July – 7 August.

2010 Standing Heat, The Front, New Orleans, USA, 13 November – 5 December.

2005 (with Edwina Ashton): Animal Nature, Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA, 25 August – 2 October. Catalogue: ISBN 0-9972053-0-4.

Critical commentary on artwork:

2013 Jane C. Desmond, “Requiem for roadkill: Death and denial on America’s roads,” in Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions, ed. H. Kopnina and E. Shoreman-Ouimet (New York: Routledge), pp. 46-58 (esp. pp. 50-53). ISBN 978-0-415-51748-5.

2012 Julia Schlosser, “Anhalten, sehen: Die Körper überfahrener Tier in der Arbeit Steve Bakers,” Tierstudien, no. 2: special issue on “Tiere auf Reisen,” ed. J. Ullrich, pp. 84-96. ISSN 2193-8504.

2012 Giovanni Aloi, Art & Animals (London and New York: I.B. Tauris), pp. 132-34. ISBN 978-1-84885-525-0.

2011 Susan McHugh, “Stains, drains and automobiles: A conversation with Steve Baker about Norfolk Roadkill, Mainly,” Art and Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods, 4, no. 1: special issue on “Art and animality,” ed. R. Broglio, unpaginated. ISSN 1752-6388.

For details of Baker’s academic publications and talks, go to: http://steve-baker.com

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