Trained as a fine artist and art historian, Gavin Butt is a writer and creative researcher who explores the connectedness of visual art, popular music, queer culture and performance.
Butt was formerly Professor of Visual Cultures and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London, Attenborough Chair in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Sussex, and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art Cultural Studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
Currently I am co-chair of Northumbria's Contemporary Arts Research Forum.
Across his diverse output, he is interested in how the social worlds and aesthetic preoccupations of visual artists can be connected, sometimes in surprising ways, to those within popular music, queer culture and performance.
His latest book No Machos or Pop Stars is a detailed cultural history of the subversive influence of UK art school on popular music culture, telling the story of how fine art painters and performers became post-punk and pop music pioneers. Alongside this he has compiled an LP of unheard and rare art school music The Art School Dance Goes On: Leeds Post-Punk 1977-84. He is currently researching a related volume exploring experimental art school scenes across English regions.
Gavin has written widely on queer art and culture, showing how LGBTQ+ artists have challenged us to think again about how aesthetic judgements are routinely linked to social ones. He has published essays on artists and performers Oreet Ashery, Joe Brainard, Mel Brimfield, Shirley Clarke, Samuel R. Delany, David Hoyle, Kiki and Herb, Larry Rivers, Andy Warhol and others.
He often works collaboratively with other authors and artists on creative projects too, including as co-director of feature film This Is Not a Dream. With writer and curator Heike Roms, he is currently developing a collaborative research project exploring what can be learned from late-twentieth century art schools in the UK and how their histories can inform the crisis in contemporary art education.
Details of all the above can be found on gavinbutt.com
- Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
- Mixed Up: Music and the Art School, Butt, G. 14 Feb 2025
- Cheerful and Militant Learning in Bradford: Reviewing the Pedagogy of Albert Hunt, Butt, G. 4 Sep 2024, National Association for Fine Art Education (NAFAE) annual conference
- The Art School Dance Goes On: Leeds Post-Punk 1977-84, Butt, G. Jun 2023
- Becoming the Oroboros, Butt, G. 28 Oct 2022
- Live Class: Art School and Militant Learning in Bradford, Butt, G., Roms, H. 7 Jul 2022, Live Art
- No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk, Butt, G. 18 Oct 2022
- Wrecking New York: How Jayne County Made a Scene in the 1970s, Butt, G. 12 Jul 2022, Approaching Downtown
- Just a Camp Laugh? David Hoyle’s Laden Levity, Butt, G. 28 Jan 2020, Live Art in the UK, London, United Kingdom, Bloomsbury
- Without Walls: Performance Art and Pedagogy at the ‘Bauhaus of the North’, Butt, G. 2020, In: Theatre, Dance and Performance Training
- Bauhaus Imaginista, Butt, G. 15 Mar 2019
- Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
- Invited talk: WFMU interview about No Machos or Pop Stars 2023
- Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: Punk Scholars Network Conference 2022
- Invited talk: Bleak, My Favourite Cliche? A Conversation on British Post-Punk 2022
- Oral presentation: In conversation with Victoria Horne about No Machos or Pop Stars 2022
- Oral presentation: In conversation with Jon King about No Machos or Pop Stars 2022
- Other: Becoming The Ouroboros 2022
- Invited talk: In-conversation with Prof. Siona Wilson about No Machos or Pop Stars 2022
- Other: NO MACHOS OR POP STARS: WHEN THE LEEDS ART EXPERIMENT WENT PUNK. INTERVIEW WITH GAVIN BUTT. 2022
- Steven Grainger Start Date: 01/10/2025 End Date: 17/10/2025
- Conal McStravick ‘Learning in a fantastically public medium…’: Stuart Marshall and Sound, Video and Television as Art and Activist Media, 1968-1993. Start Date: 01/10/2022
- Steven Grainger Start Date: 01/10/2025
- Conal McStravick ‘Learning in a fantastically public medium…’: Stuart Marshall and Sound, Video and Television as Art and Activist Media, 1968-1993. Start Date: 01/10/2022 End Date: 17/10/2025
- Craig Johnson The No-Audience Underground: Navigating Degrees of Autonomy in an Experimental Music Scene Start Date: 01/10/2022
- Craig Johnson The No-Audience Underground: Navigating Degrees of Autonomy in an Experimental Music Scene Start Date: 01/10/2022 End Date: 17/10/2025
- History of Art PhD June 01 1998
- History of Art MA October 01 1990
- Fine Art BA (Hons) July 01 1989
Curating, filmmaking and project organising
