Dr. Anthony Downey
Programme Director, MA in Contemporary Art

Anthony Downey is the Programme Director of the M.A. course in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. An editorial board member of Third Text, he has published essays, criticism and interviews in numerous international journals. His research activities and teaching focuses on African and Middle Eastern artists, collaborative and participative art practices, human rights, bio-politics and migration, and the potential for an ethics of contemporary art practices.

He has recently lectured and published essays on contemporary Iranian visual culture; postcolonial theory and contemporary African artists; Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben and Alain Badiou; and the work of Teresa Margolles, Artur Zmijewski, and Renzo Martens.

He is currently researching a book on the “asesthetics of the real” which examines artists who engage with issues such as community, ethnography, human rights, re-enactment, migrations, and terrorism. For select bibliography and downloads see below.

Email: a.downey@sothebysinstitute.com

Select Bibliography

“An Ethics of Engagement: Collaborative Art Practices and the Return of the Ethnographer”, in Third Text, issue 100, 2009, pp. 593-603.

The Lives of Others: Artur Zmijewski’s ‘Repetition’ and the Aesthetics of Surveillance’, in Conspiracy Dwellings: Surveillance in Contemporary Art, Edited by Outi Remes and Pam Skelton (Cambridge Scholars Press: Cambridge, forthcoming 2010)

“Zones of Indistinction: Giorgio Agamben’s Bare Life and the Ethics of Aesthetics,” Third Text, issue 97, 2009. This essay is to be republished in Open Space, ed. by Gulsen Bal, Vienna, 2010, and Cultural Theory, ed. by David Oswell (Sage Publications, 2010).

“Thresholds of a Coming Community: Photography and Human Rights”, Aperture, issue 194, spring 2009).

“The Afterlife of the Corpse: Teresa Margolles and the Ethics of Commemoration”, in Understanding Art Objects (Lund Humphries: London, 2009).

“Children of the Revolution: Contemporary Iranian Photography”, Aperture, issue 197, winter 2009.

‘Diasporic Communities and Global Networks: The Contemporaneity of Iranian Art Today’, in Different Sames: New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art (Thames and Hudson: London, April 2009), ISBN-10: 0954508343

’At the Limits of the Image: Representations of Torture in Popular Culture’, Brumaria, 10, Spring 2009.

‘Towards a Politics of (Relational) Aesthetics’, Third Text, issue 86, vol. 21, no. 3. May 2007.

‘Yto Barrada, “A Life Full of Holes: The Strait Project” ’, Third Text, vol. 20, Issue 5, (Routledge, 2006), 617-626.

‘Critical Imperatives : Notes on Contemporary Art Criticism and African Cultural Production’, Wasafiri, no. 47, (Routledge, 2006).

‘Curating Africa: ‘Africa Remix’ and the Categorical Dilemma’, Wasafiri, no. 46, winter 2005.

‘The Spectacular Difference of Documenta 11’, Third Text, Issue 62, 2003.


Click here for a list of forthcoming publications.

Click here for a list of further selected publications.