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Dr Catherine Spencer

Senior Lecturer in Art History

Phone

+44 (0)1334 46 2402

Email

catherine.spencer@st-andrews.ac.uk

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Research areas

My research and teaching from the 1960s to the contemporary moment explores art’s relationships with political formulations, with particular interests including intersectional feminisms, internationalism and transnationalism, technologies of mediation, and abstraction, focusing on the Americas and Europe. Current writing examines the constructs of the border and the trace in connection with art using abstraction in Britain since the 1970s, looking at the practices of Rasheed Araeen, Diego Barboza, Sonia Barrett, Frank Bowling, Rita Donagh, and Veronica Ryan, among others. Supported by an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship, in 2021 I co-organised (with Amy Tobin) the event series with Kettle’s Yard Gallery, and co-curated (with Caroline Gausden, Kirsten Lloyd and Nat Raha) the exhibition at Glasgow Women’s Library. A growing strand of research focuses on feminist photographic practices, and I have a longstanding interest in the abstract painter Jay DeFeo. I regularly write exhibition reviews, and my art criticism has appeared in Apollo, Artforum, Art Monthly, Burlington Contemporary, Burlington Magazine, the International Review of African American Art, and MAP Magazine.Ìý

Previous publications have traced connections between transnational performance art, embodiment, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis, cybernetics and system theory. My book (Manchester University Press, 2020) examines how artists across Latin America, particularly Argentina, the US and Europe transformed performance art into a site of psycho-social analysis during the 1960s and 1970s. Related articles have appeared in Art History, Art Journal, ARTMargins, Oxford Art Journal,ÌýTate Papers and Parallax. With Jo Applin and Amy Tobin I co-edited Ìý(Penn State University Press, 2018); I have also co-edited special issues of Tate Papers and the Journal of Curatorial Studies.

I have seen six PhDs to completion at the Universities of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø and Edinburgh, and currently supervise several other projects relating to the above research areas.Ìý

PhD supervision

• CamilaÌýCavalcante Pereira
• CicelyÌýFarrer
• WilliamÌýHelfrecht
• AlineÌýHernandez
• LucyÌýHowie
• AlexÌýLednicky
• MaryÌýMolina Ergueta

Selected publications

• Spencer, C., 1 Sept 2025, Counter print: the alternative art press in Britain after 1970. Horne, V. (ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 110–135 (Rethinking art's histories).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review

• Spencer, C. E., 1 Nov 2024, Franki Raffles: photography, activism, campaign works. Dean, E. (ed.). Gateshead: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, p. 12-24 13 p.

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

• Open access
  Spencer, C. E., 18 Jul 2024, In: Arts. 13, 4, 123.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Spencer, C. E., De Rycker, S. & Brown, L., 5 Jun 2024

  Research output: Non-textual form › Exhibition

• Spencer, C. E., 1 Dec 2023, Art and knowledge after 1900 : interactions between modern art and thought. Simoniti, V. & Fox, J. (eds.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 178-199 22 p.

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review

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