Frank Wasser is a contemporary Irish artist, writer, and educator whose practice spans performance, installation, text, and critical theory, engaging deeply with issues of institutional power, authorship, and the politics of art production. His work is characterized by its conceptual rigor and critical approach, often interrogating the role of art institutions and the frameworks that shape contemporary artistic discourse. Wasser has collaborated with, exhibited at, and worked within several leading institutions across Europe, including Tate Modern, the Royal College of Art, University of the Arts London, and IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art). These collaborations serve as both the subject and context for his ongoing exploration of how cultural institutions shape knowledge, value, and artistic identity.
Wasser’s engagement with pedagogy, both as an educator and within his artistic practice, further complicates his critique of institutional power. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Wasser approaches education as a dialogic process, questioning the hierarchical transmission of knowledge within academic and artistic settings. His performative lectures, often staged in institutional contexts, blur the boundaries between teacher and student, artist and audience, turning the pedagogical encounter into a site of critical engagement and collective inquiry.
As a writer and critic, Wasser extends his artistic critique into the realm of art theory and criticism, frequently contributing to discourses on the politics of art, the role of the artist, and the function of art institutions in neoliberal society. His writing reflects an acute awareness of the ways in which contemporary art is enmeshed in larger socio-political and economic structures, critiquing the complicity of art institutions in perpetuating capitalist ideologies and market-driven imperatives.
This website is currently under construction. For a full portfolio and full CV, please email Francis.wasser@gmail.com
Upcoming: Askeaton Contemporary: https://askeatonarts.com/current/
Latest Criticism:
]
Visual Artsist Newsheet: December 2023
Latest Curation:
Crit with Jasmine Johnson, Liam Gillick and Cem A.
Wasser is Lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, London Metropolitan University and a D.Phil candidate at University of Oxford.
SPLIT (ZER0-HOUR FRAGMENTS) - A book by Frank Wasser
Available September 19th 2023 from https://mabibliotheque.cargo.site/THE-CONSTELLATIONS
Slowly turning the first page of a book stolen from the museum gift shop, I read this quotation from Marina Vishmidt set in italics in the centre of the page: ‘Anything that is not work can be art’. The opportunity to fully consider the devastatingly appropriate nature of this short sentence is immediately withdrawn by my line manager rumbling to me sharply through my walkie-talkie earphone that ‘reading is not permitted while guarding the work.’
This series of distractions collates the sparse written fragments of a zero-hour contractor and associate lecturer seeking agency through the acts of writing and making. Initially it was written on a smart phone between 2013 and 2018, while the writer (the worker) worked zero-hour contract jobs in universities, museums, and art institutions in London. The nameless protagonist is only named by the many name badges he is obliged to wear. SPLIT is a tapestry of observations, fictions, and confabulations from inside the institutions sustaining, controlling, and propagating the flow of capital and culture through living bodies. Each fragment charts the deterioration of the worker through industrial action, toward illness, debt, and inevitable death.
‘Like with a game of Exquisite Corpse, the further you get into the narrative sequence the more its subject disassembles. Chopped up by standard ugly work relations at every art institution going, our Fraser/Zero hero temp ricochets between description and seismographic pathos. Do you, or I, remember the worldlessness of this constant scramble from your/my days on the circuit? Maybe reading this will feel like a sleep paralysis, like being precarised into literal pieces.’
- Marina Vishmidt
Loading Bay is a webpage for writing by artists, an online dock – a space of exchange. Curated by Frank Wasser, the commissions collectively convey the materiality of language by teasing out a deft register of content and forms.
The title of this project positions an online analogue of the National Sculpture Factory’s loading bay. Loading bays are commonly encountered in factories, commercial units and industrial structures. Functioning as integral parts of a facility, they serve the purpose of providing entry points to staging areas, sites of production, storage rooms, and in this instance, art works.
These commissions offer artists the space to consider and act upon the implications of writing as a sculptural form. The inaugural artists Joseph Noonan-Ganley and Francis Whorrall-Campbell are followed by commissions by Oisín Byrne, Kelly Lloyd and Frank Wasser in June 2023.
Loading Bay is accompanied by an exhibition and live event running at the National Sculpture Factory from June 23rd – June 24th 2023. Opening reception: June 23rd 18:00, followed by live performances and launch party at 21:30.
You can view/download the commissions by clicking here.
THE GIRL WHO KILLED THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF (PART ONE) AND (PART TWO) (2014-2016)
THE GIRL WHO KILLED THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF is a science fiction screenplay and ongoing work that takes the form of printed material and audio installation within an expanded context. The screenplay takes place in the same universe as the 1983 film Born in Flames. The screenplay is set in a not-so distant future in the aftermath of the events that take place in the film Born in Flames (1983). Born in Flames is a 1983 documentary-style feminist science fiction film by Lizzie Borden that explores racism, classism, sexism and heterosexism in an alternative United States socialist democracy.
Image of the promotional poster for Born in Flames (1983) Lizzie Borden
Currently two parts of the screenplay have been published. Part three will be published in Autumn 2016.
Part One was also included in How To See Clearly From A Distance (2014) by Jennie Guy. The project was commissioned by Galway University Hospital as part of TULCA 2014. Artist Jennie Guy asked a selection of artists and writers to read out texts that they have written, chosen with a particular context in mind. Available online and advertised via posters in the hospital for the duration of TULCA 2014, these voices offered a series of narratives that stray between the mundane and the imaginary, simultaneously distant and intimately present.Contributing artists and writers included: Hu Fang, Fergal Gaynor, Jennie Guy, Russell Hart, Léa Lagasse, Tamarin Norwood, Leila Peacock, Alan Phelan and Frank Wasser. You can listen to a reading of this part by visiting the following page: https://soundcloud.com/howtoseeclearly
PART ONE
Part One was published as paart of an artist book published on the occasion of Jason Dunne's Emerging Artist Award Exhibition at Siamsa Tire Gallery, Tralee, Co.Kerry, Ireland.
An Egg in the Sky by Jason Dunne
Published by Siamsa Tire Gallery (2013)
107 Pages, 14.5 x 20cm, Soft cover,
Edition of 100
Contents:
Drawings by Jason Dunne
'An Egg in the Sky' by Jason Dunne
'The Girl Who Killed the Boy Who Cried Wolf', a screenplay by Frank Wasser
'My Fathers', an excerpt from a theatrical script by Joseph Noonan-Ganley
Designed by Studio Hato with Ai-Lun Huang
PART TWO
PART TWO of the screenplay was published as part of the second issue of Paperwork magazine.
http://www.paperworkmagazine.com
PaperWork is a self published art writing print and event magazine. It is organised by Sarah Charalambides, Jessa Mockridge and Catherine Smiles.
PaperWork is designed by Stinsensqueeze, and printed by Two Press.
Contact at paperworkmagazine@gmail.com
Paperwork Magazine is stocked at the following locations
MOTTO
FRUITMARKET GALLERY
45 Market Street
Edinburgh
EH1 1DF
GOOD PRESS
Based at Mono
12 Kings Court
Glasgow
G1 5RB
AYE-AYE BOOKS
Sauchiehall St
Lanarkshire
Glasgow
G2 3JD
TATE MODERN
Bankside
London
SE1 9TG
INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS
The Mall
London
SW1Y 5AH
X MARKS THE BÖKSHIP
Matt’s Gallery
42 – 44 Copperfield Road
Mile End
London
E3 4RR
FOYLES
107 Charing Cross Road
London
WC2H 0DT
TENDERBOOKS
6 Cecil Court
London
WC2N 4HE
LUMINOUS BOOKS
CHOISI- ONE AT A TIME
Artphilein Editions SA
via Ferruccio Pelli 13
CH-6901 Lugano
Switzerland
