House of Books and Friends is bringing back their ‘Lunchtime Lecture’ series, and are excited to welcome Professor John Byrne to discuss his book ‘Useful Art: How Activist Artists Can Change the World.’

The talk will begin at 1pm and last for 1 hour.

About the Book

Does art have to be beautiful? What if it can be useful instead? In this cutting-edge book, John Byrne shows how the concept of ‘Useful Art’ is helping artists and communities fight back against the neoliberal takeover of our spaces, services and lives.

Exploring an international selection of projects, exhibitions and activism, this important new work champions the shift from aesthetics to use value, challenging traditional ways of seeing the world symbolically through art. Reaching beyond the financial logic of the art world, Byrne shows how Useful Art can offer an artistic toolkit for implementing radical change.

John Byrne is Professor of Useful Art at Liverpool School of Art and Creative Industries. For over a decade he has been at the forefront of research into art and use value, working with world-renowned artists and curators to explore how art can resist, engage with or offer alternatives to the current conditions of global neoliberalism.