Dr Nicholas Ferguson

Qualifications

• PhD. Art. Goldsmiths, University of London
• MA Art. Chelsea College of Art and Design
• BA Hons. Practice and Theory of Visual Art. Chelsea College of Art and Design
• BA Hons. Theology, Oxford University

Research

My Doctoral thesis, Indifference. Art, Liberalism and the Politics of Place (2015), examines the legacy of classical liberal thought in contemporary art commissioning. Through a series of cross readings between philosophy, aesthetics and political geography, it traces a relationship between place making art practices and classical liberalism's conceptualisation of the way territory might function in a market society. In tandem with this enquiry, and by way of methodological tool for the interrogation of spatial politics, the thesis  develops a philosophy of indifference. It contends that indifference, alongside disinterestedness and objectivity, should be understood as part of an historical attempt to develop a critical modern subject that might transcend the self and disrupt both public and private power. By extension, it asks whether he artist's indifference to place might contribute to an artistic strategy to negotiate and contest the cultural forces that market place for the consolidation of private advantage.