Dr Pat Naldi

Biography

Dr. Pat Naldi is an artist and Lecturer in MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. She holds a Ph.D. from Central Saint Martins, an MA in Fine Art from Northumbria University, and a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Maidstone College of Art.

Engaging with the [art] practice of site-specificity as contexts for and as research, Naldi's works are manifested through moving image, performance, live events, installation, publications, photography, website projects, television and radio broadcasts, and writing. Her projects are exhibited internationally such as at Tate Britain; ZKM Center for Art & Media, Karlsruhe; Palacio de la Diputación Provincial de Cadiz; Rome Film Festival; Estorick Collection, London; Adelaide Festival; NGBK Berlin; Performance Space, Sydney; Kate MacGarry, London; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Seville. In her collaborative ground-breaking CCTV project made for television 'SEARCH', she worked with Northumbria Police to gain access to the 16-camera surveillance system installed in Newcastle-upon-Tyne's city center, to film a synchronised walk then broadcast during commercial breaks as twenty ten-second sequences on ITV. This led to the commission 'SEARCH (Adelaide)', working in collaboration with the South Australia Police, to access their 15-camera surveillance system. This work was broadcast on Australia's major television network Channel 7.

Naldi has received numerous awards including the Arts Council England Helen Chadwick Senior Research Fellowship at the British School at Rome, and Oxford University, a Senior Research Fellowship in the Department of Applied Physics, Electronics & Mechanical Engineering, University of Dundee, a Research Fellowship at the University of Western Sydney, funding from The Freelands Foundation, Arts Council England, Australia Council, and Canada Council, and awarded residencies at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, The Banff Centre, Canada, ACME Fire Station Residency, London, and Allenheads Contemporary Arts.

Naldi is regularly invited to deliver lectures internationally, most recently at Frac Bretagne, France; Stockholm University; Rennes 2 University; Tate Modern; University of Turku, Finland; Tallinn and Tartu Universities, Estonia; Freie Universität, Berlin; Tate Liverpool. In 2017 she curated the conference session titled ‘Artist strategies and methods of resistance in the regenerated city’ for the 7th Nordic Geographers Meeting conference at Stockholm University, and the 'Non art is more art than Art art', symposium at Tate Modern, 2018. Her most recent book chapter 'Managing Arcadia: From the King's Cross Estate to the Bretton Estate' in 'British Art and the Environment: Changes, Challenges, and Responses Since the Industrial Revolution' (eds Gould, C & Mesplède, S), was published by Routledge in July 2021.

My interdisciplinary research addresses the geopolitical, environmental, socio‐spatial, and ideological construction and operation of urban and rural landscapes by exploring the politics of power and its symbolic and active enactment – aesthetic, spatial, social, economic – how they affect our experiences and define how we understand and communicate with others and the world around us. In particular, my research develops critical understandings of the socio-political construction of views, and how they shape and position how we relate societally and to public space. My artworks are developed through interdisciplinary research, collaborative dialogue, engagement, and consultation with experts, and communities. This has led me to work with geographers, cartographers, community choirs, game-keepers, architects, police officers, opera singers, and bell ringers.

I was awarded 'The Arctic Circle Artist and Scientist Expedition Residency' for April 2022, where together with a group of international artists, scientists, guides and crew, we crossed the Barents Sea, and sailed the high Arctic archipelago of Svalbard aboard a barquentine tall ship. My essay 'The End of Reference' for NiCHE Network in Canadian History and Environment (August 2022), engages with some of the research I undertook. I will be returning to the Norwegian high Arctic to undertake further research in August 2024.