Concerned with specific spaces and histories, Mike Ricketts develops projects that explore the uncertainties and paradoxes of contemporary public space.

By asking questions, following unlikely leads and making propositions, Ricketts often runs into bureaucratic structures such as those associated with urban regulation and planning, which he then uses as both subject and location for his work. Shaped by the day-to-day operation of such structures, both at their fringes and in everyday scenarios, the form of Ricketts’ work varies but often manifests itself as talisman-like objects and small rebellions as much as explorations of regulations and rules. Projects have involved residents fly-posting across a market town, the production of a film recounting the artist’s attempts to access a prison ship, and the shutting down of a public exhibition by the CEO of an urban development quango.

Significant projects include the performance lecture The Vessel, at Her Majesty’s Prison The Verne, Portland, 2012, and the subsequent exhibition The Vessel, Works|Projects, Bristol, 2013; Notes from Nowhere, Foreground, Frome, 2012; So it Goes, Exeter Pheonix, 2015.

Dr. Ricketts is Associate Head of Department: Art, The School of Art and Design, at the University of the West of England, Bristol.