Team

Jo Volley is an artist and who lives and works in London. Her work is concerned with measurement, light, space and colour as light, and employs a wide range of material and medium. It draws attention to the nature of archiving, historic materials, ideas of craftsmanship, incorporating traditional and contemporary techniques. It explores the relationship between the object and the subject of painting. The intervening space between the idea and the touch; the emotional separateness of making and the expanse of time between these events. She is Slade Deputy Director (Projects) and Coordinator of the Material Research Project & Network and the Material Museum at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL where she studied from 1972-77 and has taught since 1986. A great deal of her practice involves the investigation of methods and materials, mostly those that relate to painting, which are central to her practice and increasingly important in her teaching. She is interested in how the contemporary painter considers, believes or understands that knowledge of methods and materials is relevant to the creative process. A key part of her research creates situations that empower the practitioner by paying attention to the activity of making and reaffirming the understanding of craftsmanship and materials and their implications in aesthetic decision making. In 2012, she jointly developed the Material Research Project (MRP), which along with colleagues at the Slade, which has led to the development Slade Material Research Project Pigment Collection, Scientist and Conservator in Residence scheme and The Pigment Farm. Her most recent funded collaborative research projects include: The Pigment Timeline Project, From Pigments to Solar Power, Colour & Emotion Toolkit, The Pigment Farm and she is currently co-writing an Art School Guide to Material Practice Vol. I: Supports, Surfaces and  Grounds. In 2019, she established and directed Colour & Poetry: A Symposium to celebrate both International Colour Day and World Poetry Day and edits its annual publication Colour & Poetry. Recent exhibitions include Apertures, Fondamenta Gallery, Rome, the result of a residency at  MACRO Asilo (Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome) and The Adjacent Possible, Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg.