Portfolio / Artist Research

Artist Research Practice

An ongoing body of work exploring space, material, perception and experience through installation, exhibition and publication.

About the Practice

Dr Craig Thomas has maintained an active artistic research practice alongside his design and academic careers for over two decades. The work is concerned with the fundamental questions that interior design and spatial practice raise - but pursued through art rather than commission.

The practice is led by curiosity rather than brief: an investigation into how we perceive and inhabit space, what materials communicate beyond their structural function, how time, light and the body interact in designed environments.

This research directly informs Craig's teaching and design practice - making Interior Design Evolution not just a course but a view of design informed by the deepest possible engagement with its underlying questions.

Works

Installation & Exhibition Works

Body-focused, immersive artwork

Labyrinth endeavours to elicit a potent, visceral and precise bodily response by directly targeting our universal, automatic and involuntary body systems that we use to make sense of our world.

Reality Version 1.5

Site-responsive audio-visual environment

Reality Version 1.5

Triggered by the potential of weaving a narrative-driven, virtual world into the solidity of the architectural fabric.

Body-focused, immersive artwork

Phantom endeavours to elicit a potent, visceral and precise bodily response - a sudden, involuntarily feeling of short-lived uncertainty.

As Above So Below

Site-responsive audio-visual environment

As Above So Below

Produced for an epic group show of experimental, photography, video, film, sound and live action, As Above So Below was concerned with the exchange, relay and connection between the participant and the environment.

Site-responsive audio-visual environment

Chandelier explores the dialogue between the ephemeral nature of the image and the solidity of the architectural mass.

Site-responsive ceiling projection

Gathering was the first public show exploring the notion of an artwork being triggered by a sense of place and the idea of making connections between the artwork, the place, and the viewer.

Experimental short film

Murmur is an experimental short film using footage captured from the infinite number of regular, everyday natural phenomena that surround us.

A sonic art piece by SocialCLUB, Craig Thomas and Mark Collins-Wren collaborated with the classically trained, experimental pianist Hazel Lee.

Between Now and Then

Between Now and Then

Short film produced during 2nd year of the MA at Uwic. Wicket Gate is a study of filming within a particular site, or sense of place, and an exploration of editing techniques.