Ottis Sturmey is a practice-based Fine Art postgraduate researcher at De Montfort University. His doctoral research examines the structural underrepresentation of working-class-origin creatives within the UK Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), with particular interest in the cultural absences that may result when people are excluded from opportunities to participate in, produce and have creative work recognised.
His research draws upon practice-based and autoethnographic approaches and is informed by his own trajectory as a mature working-class-origin practitioner. Current creative practice incorporates installation, sculpture, textiles, object-making, writing and an experimental play, using these forms to explore questions of class, cultural legitimacy, access, exclusion and absence.
Ottis has a long-standing background in art practice, exhibition production and higher education. He completed a BA (Hons) Fine Art and MA Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University and subsequently worked there as a gallery and workshop technician, freelance artist technician and Hourly Paid Lecturer in Decorative Arts.
His earlier artistic activity includes representing Nottingham Trent University and Team England at the 13th Harbin–Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Competition in China in 2008, where the team's sculpture Under Growth received Second Prize. Later that year, following his MA Fine Art degree show, he was selected by artist S Mark Gubb for Axis MAstars 2008, a national programme through which art professionals identified artists to watch from UK MA degree shows.
Alongside his doctoral research, Ottis currently works within De Montfort Students' Union's Advice team as a Membership Services Administration Assistant, providing student-facing administrative and support services.