Mary Kelly's Concentric Pedagogy: Selected Writings, published by Bloomsbury, will be available for purchase from 22 February 2024.
Selected and introduced by Juli Carson, Concentric Pedagogy presents a collection of essential essays, interviews, and never-before published archival materials that trace the development of the teaching of this major artist and thinker from 1980 to 2017. Detailing Kelly's innovative pedagogical programme, the essays are split into three sections: The Method, which focuses on Kelly's renowned method of ‘ethical observation’ within studio critique; The Project, which explores her notion of what constitutes an artistic project; and Project and Method in the Field which presents, for the first time, a transcription of On the Passage of a Few People though a Rather Brief Period of Time, a performative colloquy commissioned by the Tate Modern and moderated by Kelly in 2015; following this transcription is a portfolio of practicing artists previously enrolled in Kelly's Interdisciplinary Studio Area at UCLA.
Concentric Pedagogy highlights how the intersection of teaching, artistic practice, and radical political engagement might transform our approach to all three. It is essential reading for students and teachers of art and design studio practice, art history and theory, contemporary, and feminist art.
Mary Kelly (b. 1941, Fort Dodge, Iowa) lives and works in Los Angeles. Kelly is currently included in Women in Revolt! Art, Activism and the Women’s Movement in the United Kingdom 1970–1990, Tate Britain, London (2023–24), and will inaugurate a new project at the Whitney Biennial 2024, Even Better Than the Real Thing. Her work is also included in numerous public collections, including Tate, London; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; among many others. In 2017, Kelly’s archive was acquired by the Getty Research Institute.
