My name is John Byrne and I am currently Professor of Useful Art at Liverpool John Moores University’s School of Art and Creative Industries. 

This site and blog is initially a response to students and colleagues who have asked for more information on the projects that I am (and have been) involved with. It also offers me an opportunity to bring some of that information together in one place, to identify points of overlap between the projects (past and present), and to develop an on-going blog which signposts and updates my current work/research.

Over the last two decades my work and research has been defined by an interest in the relationship of art to use, use value and the kind of job or labour that the work of art has now become. This, in turn, has led me to become interested in the kinds of challenges that use and use value present to the production, distribution and reception of art that would resist,  engage with, or offer alternatives to the current conditions of global neo-liberalism.

Since 2013 I have been an active member of The Association of Arte Útil (AAU) when I collaborated with The AAU, Grizedale Arts and Tate Liverpool to install and run a temporary ‘Office of Useful Art’ during Tate Liverpool’s ‘Art Turning Left’ show in 2013/2014. Since then, I have also coordinated a series of pop up Offices of Useful Art at Liverpool School of Art and Design, The Granby 4 Streets area of Toxteth in Liverpool, and at the Florrie Institute in Liverpool.

From 2015 to 2018 I took on the role of Co-ordinator for the L’Internationale ‘Constituencies’ Research Strand and was lead editorial on the resulting L’Internationale publication ‘The Constituent Museum: Constellations of Knowledge, Politics and Mediation’ in 2018.

More recently, from 2019 – 2023, I was Researcher and Writer in Residence at the Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester, UK) where I also acted as Lead Researcher and Research editor for the Decentralising Political Economies Project/Platform (www.dpe.tools) which I developed on behalf of The Whitworth Art Gallery in collaboration with the Association of Arte Útil and Liverpool John Moores University.