Ronald Binnie
Working primarily as a painter, but also in photography and printmaking, my principal motivation is to explore what it means to be human and how we relate to non-human species. Through both practical and theoretical work, I contend that there are inseparable connections between the development of human rights, the struggle to attain those for non-human species and the historical, contemporary and discontinuous classification of what it means to be ‘human’ and ‘animal’. My studio practice and research are deeply embedded in the particular area of posthuman discourse that deals with the anti-anthropocentric repositioning of the human species, issues of speciesism and particularly an understanding of multi-species cultural relationships.
In 2005, I gained a First Class Honours Degree in Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College of Art and went on to attain the MFA in Painting in 2011. In 2020, I attained my Doctoral Thesis, entitled The Body in the Gallery; Posthumanist Ethics and the Use of Nonhuman Animals in Contemporary Art.
I have exhibited throughout the UK, including in Edinburgh at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Printmakers Workshop and Talbot Rice Gallery, the Roger Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow, Frameless and the Strand Gallery in London. I have also exhibited internationally including at the National Museum of Urban Sculpture in St. Petersburg and the Peanut Gallery in Adelaide as part of the Animal Intersections event in 2017.
In 2020, I was one of twelve winners of the Royal Scottish Academy’s RSA Pandemic Award, created in response to the COVID-19 outbreak to assist artists with the creation of new work.
In addition to my art practice, I teach Visual Culture to undergraduate students at Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh University and short courses in Environmental Art and in Contemporary Art Research and Practice. I was chairperson and Lead Curator of the Black Cube Collective, an independent arts organization committed to providing open opportunities for emerging artists and recent arts graduates.
Click on the thumbnail images below to view examples of Ronald’s artwork.
