Dominic Walker

Dominic Walker is a cultural geographer interested in exploring the role of art in institutions, culture and society, based at the University of Exeter in Devon, UK. His current work considers how people comprise institutions, and how practitioners such as artists instigate behavioural change through inviting reflection on existing structures. The project focuses on a select group of artists – one of which being the Studio’s very own Richard Pell – operating at the intersection between materiality, institutions, science and technology, and culture. These artists experiment with conceptions of an institution with the goal of changing mass attitudes. The research seeks to explore marginal institutions engaging with the implications of archival, collecting and curatorial processes.

Walker has co-convened, chaired a session, and presented papers at the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers Annual International Conference (2015, 2016), in addition to presenting at the American Association of Geographers’ Annual Conference (2016, forthcoming 2017), alongside guest lectures in Pittsburgh (2015) and Exeter (2014, 2015). In exploring the work of artists, he was a Visiting PostNatural Fellow at the Center for PostNatural History in Pittsburgh and a Resident here at the Studio (2015). He has collaborated with artists Neal White, Tina O’Connell and curator Antony Hudek at Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2015), and was commissioned to produce an exhibition for Ceredigion Museum (2012). In 2015 he published in Society and Space, the online extension of the geographic journalEnvironment and Planning D, and is preparing a further two papers for submission in 2017. He is currently preparing a chapter for Cara Courage and Anita McKeown’s (eds) as yet unnamed Routledge book on creative place-making (forthcoming).