Larne Abse Gogarty is an Associate Professor and Head of History and Theory of Art at the Slade School of Fine Art. Larne’s primary research interests lie in modern and contemporary art, as well as theories relating to Marxism, race and gender. Previously, she was the Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte at the Humboldt University, Berlin (20016-2018). She has also taught in the History of Art Department, UCL, Chelsea College of Fine Art and Goldsmiths College. Larne completed her PhD in the History of Art department at University College London in 2015, which was a comparative history of social practice art during the 1990s, and cultural work produced within the proletarian avant-garde during the 1930s in the United States. Larne completed an MA at UCL in 2010, and a BA at SOAS in 2008.

Her PhD research led to her first book, Usable Pasts: Social Practice and State Formation in American Art with the Historical Materialism book series (Brill 2022). In 2023, she published her second book, What we do is Secret: Contemporary Art and the Antinomies of Conspiracy with Sternberg Press. What we do is Secret addresses aesthetic and intellectual affinities between recent art and conspiracy, proposing a theory of conspiracy that is not primarily concerned with conspiracy theory. This inquiry takes shape across chapters on the politics of post-internet art aesthetics; the sublime and possessive individualism in recent “critical” art; Cady Noland’s security fences, and silkscreens of the Symbionese Liberation Army; and mutuality, secrecy, and improvisation in the work of Ima-Abasi Okon.

Larne frequently works collaboratively, and is in the organising group for the Marxism in Culture seminar. In 2024, Larne co-organised the symposium Not Now: Modernism, Nativism and Fascism in American Art and Culture with Stephanie Schwartz and Kevin Lotery. In 2018, she organised the conference “Eccentric, realist, populist, procedural: The Politics of Figuration in American Art”, which took place in May at the Humboldt Universität. In 2016 she co-organised ‘Reality Check: a symposium on art, psycho-politics and the limits of community’ (University College London) and in 2011, co-organised the conference ‘Performance and Labour’ (UCL and Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston). She regularly writes criticism, mainly for Art Monthly.

My research broadly concerns the relationship between art and politics. In 2022 I published my first book, Usable Pasts: Social Practice and State Formation in American Art (Brill 2022). This book addresses the mythic and material afterlives of the New Deal in order to write a new history of social practice in the United States. I analyse projects by Suzanne Lacy, Rick Lowe and Martha Rosler in relation to experimental theatre, modern dance, and photography produced within the leftist Cultural Front of the 1930s. The book’s comparative methodology allows for a multi-temporal approach to contemporary art history that avoids nostalgia, or an excessive valorisation of the present. This also relates to my other major interest in theories of history, and how these inform art history and theory.

My second book, What we do is Secret: Contemporary Art and the Antinomies of Conspiracy, was published with Sternberg Press in 2023. Written in the wake of the far-right populist turn in Europe, the US, and beyond, this book addresses aesthetic and intellectual affinities between recent art and conspiracy, proposing a theory of conspiracy that is not primarily concerned with conspiracy theory. Here, conspiracy is not used pejoratively but is instead examined as an accusation levelled at varying modes of political thought and action, from often opposing quarters, because it is seen as undermining “common sense” and reasonable behaviour. This inquiry take shape across chapters on the politics of post-internet art aesthetics; the sublime and possessive individualism in recent “critical” art; Cady Noland's security fences and silkscreens of the Symbionese Liberation Army and mutuality, secrecy and improvisation in the work of Ima Abasi Okon. Across these chapters, I explore the relationship between culture and contemporary liberalism, following on from David Lloyd's proposition that through its compensatory qualities, the aesthetic sphere naturalizes forms of life lived under the rule of property. What kind of art can work against this? Can art exist as a conspiracy capable of corroding that rule?

Other topics I have written on include an essay on usefulness in contemporary art and politics for Third Text; an essay on Mark Bradford’s work in the American Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale for the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, and I recently contributed to a roundtable on contemporary culture and neo-fascism for Third Text. I have written catalogue essays on Sam Gilliam, Alice Neel and for the exhibition "Constructing the World: Art and Economy 1919-1939." I sometimes write about non-art related matters, most recently the essay "Communist Feelings" for the New Socialist, co-authored with Hannah Proctor. I also regularly write criticism, mainly for Art Monthly.

My current teaching at the Slade includes leading and co-teaching (with studio staff) an introductory course for all first year undergraduate students (BA and BFA) and a BA2 course called “Aesthetics and the (un)making of the Modern Human”. I also supervise BA Independent Studies and MA research essays and reports, and co-convene the MA2 research seminar.

In the past I’ve taught courses including:

Performance after Institutionalisation

Video Art and the Politics of the Popular since the 1980s

American Art and the Stakes of Criticism, 1933-1980

Blackness in American Art and Visual Culture

Utopia and Dystopia in California Art and Culture

Performance and Social Transformation

Modernism and the Avant-Gardes