Gavin Butt

Gavin Butt is Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He works on issues of performance and performativity in the contemporary visual arts, as well as on queer theory, queer cultures and their histories.

His book on gossip and homosexuality in US art, Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World 1948-1963, was published by Duke University Press in 2005. Butt also edited the anthology After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance, Blackwell, 2004. He is currently working on a new book project, You Cannot Be Serious! Flirtatious Acts in Contemporary Culture, of which a number of essays have been published: ‘Joe Brainard’s Queer Seriousness, or, How to Make Fun Out of the Avant-Garde’, in David Hopkins (ed.), Neo-Avant-Garde, Rodopi Press, 2006; ‘Scholarly Flirtations’, in Angelika Nollert et al. (eds), A.C.A.D.E.M.Y., Revolver, 2006; and ‘Why I Died for Kiki and Herb: Some Thoughts on Queer Seriousness’, in Henry Rogers (ed.), The Art of Queering in Art, Article Press 2007. In 2006, he collaborated with curators Rosie Cooper and David Lillington on an exhibition held in London, Wild Gift, which showcased new art with an expressly theatrical approach to the serious subject matter.