Tom O'Sullivan

Assistant Professor

School: Design Arts and Creative Industries

I am a senior lecturer at Northumbria and teach into the Fine Art programmes at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Currently I am the module lead for ‘Theory into Practice’ at level 5 of the BA Fine Art. . I also supervise, and am an internal examiner, for practice-based PhDs in contemporary art practice and theory at Northumbria.

I have considerable experience as a visiting lecturer at a number of higher education institutions across the UK and Europe, as well as experience as an external examiner on Fine Art programmes at undergraduate and post-graduate levels.

Previous to my appointment at Northumbria (20011), I was a Research Fellow at Grays School of Art at the Robert Gordon University (2003 – 2011) and a lecturer at Cumbria Institute of the Arts (1999 – 2003).

I am a 0.5 appointment and I also work as a professional contemporary artist.

Email Tom

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

I have been working in a collaborative art practice with Joanne Tatham (Royal College of Art) for over 25 Years. Our practice thinks about the forms and languages of contemporary art as a way to consider how meaning is produced. The work is often a configuration of temporary, sited ‘sculpture’ together with constructed texts, performances and images. Taken together, these elements produce spaces for audience reflection on particular contexts and the meanings art might have in these places.

Recent work has responded more explicitly to the conditions of contemporary art’s instrumentalisation in the public sphere and the possibilities for art to enable renewed civic engagement. Other recent projects have involved fiction writing as a device to re-consider and re-position art histories.

Recent projects include The Bitter Cup, a novella produced with Book Works, London in collaboration with Hospitalfield, Arbroath (2019).

https://www.bookworks.org.uk/node/1988

Does the iterative fit, a project for Rostockgata Sculpture Park at Kuntshall Oslo (2019), which repositioned an earlier commission for Kings Cross Projects.

http://kunsthalloslo.no/?p=6494&lang=en

A Proposal To Ask Where Does A Threshold Begin & End, a project for MIMA in Middlesbrough (2018).

https://visitmima.com/whats-on/single/joanne-tatham-and-tom-osullivan-a-proposal-to-ask-where-does-a-threshold-begin-end/

A Successful Proposition for the Great North Exhibition, a commission for The Great Exhibition of the North at BALTIC (2018).

https://baltic.art/whats-on/joanne-tatham-tom-osullivan

I am also involved in the collaborative practice of Neuschloss, a group of artists and curators working at Northumbria University, who are interested in experimental curatorial and collaborative art practice.

https://research.northumbria.ac.uk/CuratorialCollaborativePractices/?page_id=515

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
A Proposal To Ask Where Does A Threshold Begin & End , O'Sullivan, T., Tatham, J. 14 Mar 2025
Easels, O'Sullivan, T., Tatham, J. 29 Nov 2025
The world is reset every night meaning your build will always be temporary, O'Sullivan, T., Liston, K., Guy, L. 10 Oct 2025
The world is reset every night menaing your build will always be temporary, O'Sullivan, T., Liston, K., Guy, L. 18 Oct 2025
Two halves of a given complex, O'Sullivan, T., Tatham, J. 7 Nov 2025
I'm Sorry, Tatham, J., O'Sullivan, T. 7 Jun 2024
We saw the creature crawl away; it was weirdly wreathed in wonder…, O'Sullivan, T., Guy, L. 9 May 2024
Cleaved Into, Jackson, M., Hughes, A., O'Sullivan, T., Guy, L., Liston, K., Danby, C. 8 Mar 2023
LOOP, Liston, K., O'Sullivan, T., Qureshi, A., Reed, G., Sworn, C., Danby, C., Culver, M., Morris, R., Tatham, J. 30 Nov 2023
The Indirect Exchange of Uncertain Value, Tatham, J., O'Sullivan, T. 31 Jan 2022