Jared
Pappas-Kelley.

Art, writing
& independent spaces.

Dr Jared Pappas-Kelley is an artist, writer, and curator whose work spans moving image, literature, and the creation of independent cultural spaces. His writing examines art, destruction, and the relationship between making and undoing.

He is co-founder and Creative Director of Pup & Tiger in Canterbury, bringing together exhibitions, publishing, editions, and public programmes. In 2025, he curated Soft Territories: Crossing One, presented online through Dennis Cooper and Delere Press.

His books include the novel Stalking America (Delere Press, 2023), the collected writings To Build a House that Never Ceased (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), and Solvent Form: Art and Destruction (Manchester University Press, 2018). His essays and interviews have appeared in OnCurating, The Rumpus, and Manchester University Press’s online writing. His work and projects have also featured in The Guardian, Cabinet, and Art Monthly.

From 2015 to 2023, Pappas-Kelley taught fine art at Teesside University, serving as Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for MA Fine Art. His work in art education included conversations with visiting artists for the university’s Critical Perspectives series. Earlier roles included teaching at the University of Lincoln and Tacoma School of the Arts, and graduate teaching assistantships at the European Graduate School.

He also founded Invert/Extant, an independent press and platform for artist writing and conversations. Its Transmissions programme and publications brought together artists and writers including Uta Barth, Liam Gillick, and Bracha Ettinger.

His record includes a contribution to The Making of… at SFMOMA in 2013; participation in An Exchange with Sol LeWitt at MASS MoCA, curated by Regine Basha, and The Weaklings at Five Years, London, curated by Dennis Cooper, both in 2011; and work in Tacoma Art Museum’s collection exhibition The Surrealist Impulse (2008–09).

From 2001 to 2007, he directed ArtRod in Tacoma, working alongside Michael S. Lent on Tollbooth Gallery, Toby Room, Critical Line, and Don’t Bite the Pavement. These programmes brought together exhibitions, publishing, and screenings. He edited and published Toby Room; he and Lent received a shared AMOCAT award in 2005. Tollbooth Gallery also featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’s classroom curriculum on public art.