Jamie Steedman is a contemporary artist from and currently stranded in Glasgow, Scotland, Earth. Graduating with a First Class BA (Hons) in Art & Philosophy from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee, in 2018, Steedman has since been awarded the Alastair Smart Memorial Prize for Contemporary Art (2018), and the Sir William Gillies Bequest Award for his exhibition at RSA New Contemporaries 2019, in the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. He attained an Award of Distinction for his MA Dissertation ‘Case 655735: Enquiry for the Mowbray Monument’ in his first year at Royal College of Art. Steedman has participated in and co-curated various exhibitions and projects across London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Utrecht and Asturias, as well as online. Most recently, he has assumed the role of co-editor in Windfall*, a quarterly arts publication which aims to champion unheard, up-and-coming contemporary artists working across the UK. He is also a co-founder and regular contributor to the semi-monthly radical arts journal FIENDS.
Establishing a very research-oriented methodology, Steedman’s fascination with specific narratives of state history frequently fuse with considerations of contemporary political strategy. Most recently this has revolved around the public swimming pool, and how these spaces work on disparate levels – from the invitation of different public bodies, the state ownership of civic space, relationships to the labour/leisure time cycle, and the afterlives of site and place. Through an increasingly pessimistic Scottish outlook on the instabilities of state power and cultural failures, Steedman utilises a frenzied array of sculpture, print, sound, writing and performance to navigate his labyrinthine concerns with speculative utopianism, nostalgia and the performativity of language.