Art Postgraduate Symposium
June 25, 2012 § Leave a Comment
PROGRAMME
Wednesday 27th June 2012, G09 Old Whiteknights House, Reading University
10.00 – 10.20 Registration and Uploading Power Points
10.20 Welcome
First Panel Chair: Barbara Berrington
10.30 – 10.50 Jane Williams: Boris Anrep’s Mosaic for Augustus John.
This early commission by the mosaicist Boris Anrep for the home of Augustus John portrays both the artist and his family. Anrep depicted them in a reverential manner which is more closely aligned in spirit to his religious works rather than his society portraits.
10.50 – 11.10 Alison Boyd: The Significance of the Location and Planning of Southampton Civic Centre.
This presentation will consider the choice of site and the comprehensive plans for the area surrounding Southampton Civic Centre (1929-39) as these highlight the hopes and aspirations of those responsible for the project and are an indication of a considerable investment in the future of the town.
11.10 – 11.30 Holly Barton: Illustrations of war in photographs and artist’s interpretations: an example of the transition between media in the British Illustrated Press from 1915.
This paper will explore how different media of illustration were used to support and consolidate one another, and how the limitations of photography were circumnavigated in the early years of the war. The transition will consider how photography, even when censored, suggested authenticity, while illustration continued the narrative, and filled the lacunae in scenes of battle that could not be caught on camera.
11.30 – 11.45 Questions
11.45 – 12.00 Tea/coffee break
Second Panel Chair: Clair Drever
12.00 – 12.20 Donna Yamani: Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum: History, Memory and Community Uniting in the Twenty First Century.
This paper will consider how Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum has included installations which explore and challenge the historical aspect of the site and the development of the term ‘community art’ and what ‘community’ means to artists and residents of the city. The artists to be discussed here are Katerina Seda (Over and Over, 2008) and Matthias Einhoff (Celebration, 2009).
12.20 – 12.40 Kevin O’Connor: Betwixt Belief and Doubt.
Research focuses on firstly, how the artist and artwork although experiential, are believed to be rational in origin, and as such, are the subject of belief and doubt. Secondly, how the belief and doubt that surrounds artist and artwork centres on the nature of the subjectivity of their connection.
12.40 – 1.00 Kate Corder: Cultivation Field.
Kate’s recent research has centered around Cultivation Field as a curatorial project, the focus of which extended from the Cultivation Field Postgraduate Symposium that took place last September at the University of Reading. This presentation will consider curation as practice or medium, the wider area of Cultivation Field as a discourse or field of interest in art and how this fits in with Kate’s own allotments research studies.
1.00 – 1.15 Questions
1.15 – 2.00 Lunch in the Art History Reading Room
Third Panel Chair: Donna Yamani
2.00 – 2.20 Clair Drever: Underground Film in London, 1960’s and 1970’s.
Ideas of temporality, image and the materiality of film permeated the culture of The London Film-Makers Cooperative in the 1960’s and 70’s. They made significant innovations with multi-screen films and expanded cinema events, producing works whose essence was defined by their ephemerality. How are such expressions of immediacy remembered in the twenty first century?
2.20 – 2.40 Giulia Mezzi: Camillo Boito’s restoration of Donatello’s Altar in the Basilica del Santo in Padua.
Donatello’s Altar underwent several modifications since its original conception designed in the 1440’s. This presentation focuses on Boito’s reconstruction and restoration of the altar (1895), which has been documented by the same architect in an original volume published in 1897.
2.40 – 3.00 Glenis Kerr Elliot: Memory and Memorial: The Radcliffe Camera in Oxford.
This paper looks at the concept of encyclopaedia and memory and the classical basis of education in late seventeenth century Britain, and suggests that for patrons, trustees and architects the tombs of emperors were inspiration for this memorial to Dr John Radcliffe in his university city.
3.00 – 3.15 Questions
3.15 – 3.30 Tea/coffee break
Fourth Panel Chair: Glenis Kerr Elliot
3.30 – 3.50 Barbara Berrington: Habits of Performance.
A Dominican Friar appears in almost every fresco of Fra Angelico’s decorative programme at San Marco Convent. His dress identifies and separates him out, proclaims his role and his social purpose. But what performance practices did the habit embody for strict observant Dominicans in the Florence of 1450 – and how is this portrayed?
3.50 – 4.10 Rebecca Gill: From Heretics to Saints: the church of San Barnaba, Milan.
This paper will address how the Barnabite Order, having been accused of heresy by the church of Rome, sought to redefine themselves through the architecture of their mother church, San Barnaba, designed by Galeazzo Alessi in 1561.
4.10 – 4.20 Questions and concluding comments
4.30 and onwards A glass of wine in the Art History Reading Room
Merzbarn Residency
June 25, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Merzbarn Residency, a set on Flickr.
Images from the Merzbarn Residency, June 2011. Our students with Pil & Galia Kollectiv spent a week convening reading groups, screening films and talks from visiting artists in Cumbria. see: http://www.merzbarn.net
Platform Graduate Award
June 22, 2012 § Leave a Comment
We are delighted to announce that Alana Francis and Hannah Mills (both BA Fine Art) have been selected for the inaugural Platform Graduate Award 2012. The award is part of a partnership between University of Reading and Museum of Art Oxford.
The Platform Graduate Award aims to support graduate professional development and nurture new talent. The programme has come from a coalition of visual arts organisations in the South East (Aspex, Modern Art Oxford, Milton Keynes Gallery and Turner Contemporary) and has been initiated through Turning Point South East see: www.turningpointnetwork.org.uk/south-east/
Platform will showcase the work of six to eight recent graduates at each organisation through a series of one-week presentations or short group exhibitions over the summer/early autumn 2012. The graduates are selected from within the immediate geographical reach of the host organisation – Modern Art Oxford will include Oxford Brookes University, The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, Oxford and University of Reading. The graduates are selected from 2012 degree show presentations.
The successful Platform Award artist will receive a bursary of £2,500 (towards studio accommodation across year), mentoring and access to Directors and curatorial teams of the partnering organisations throughout the year.
Cultivation Field Event
June 19, 2012 § 1 Comment
CULTIVATION FIELD Third Thursday 21st June by invitation from Jelly
Cultivation Field Exhibition
8th – 22nd June 2012
At: 3rd Floor, 42 Market Place, Reading, RG1 2DE
and
The Keep, 571 Oxford Road, Reading, RG30 1HL
Open: 8th June 12:00-16:00; 9th to 22nd June 12:00-18:00 (42 Market Place is closed on Tuesdays)
Cultivation Field – Third Thursday 21st June 18:30-21:30 at The Keep, with presentations by:
Sarah Lewison will be talking about work with AND AND AND http://andandand.org (featured at Documenta 13 Kassel, Germany), on Monsanto hearings and other cultural practices in defense of soil and diversity. Some experiments and speculative exercises that challenge the hubris of new agricultural technologies that presume humans are able to understand and therefore control life’s complexity.
Alexandra MyGlynn: Doing more than simply drinking tea. The talk will consider the origins of the agrarian movement in former communist countries of ex-Yugoslavia and displaced women for example from Bosnia and elsewhere who have come together through international gardening projects to be ‘doing more than simply drinking tea’ as a necessity for their own cooking and self-esteem.
Charlie Tweed: The Isles of Grain, Kent (performance film, a 7 minute preview of an event that will be at the Whitechapel on July 26th)
Maria Deegan: Bombus Accessio (performance)
Sophie Payne-Gifford: The Global Challenges to Agriculture: Is it all doom and gloom? Climate change, water security, population stress: Global agriculture has a number of challenges it must meet over the next decades. Sophie will discuss these challenges by reviewing the academic and grey literatures. Sophie is a PhD student focusing on innovation and the regulation of pesticides and is based in the University of Reading’s School of Agriculture.
http://www.cultivationfield.org
Cultivation Field Exhibition:
Cultivation Field explores plant and land cultivation through diverse art practices. Plant life could be considered a low-tech material, because it is vegetation, but in the second decade of the twenty-first century plant life is in constant production as part of consumerist high tech industry. Cultivation Field looks at the cracks in land cultivation systems, collective engagement within local communities, plant based objects and methods of production.
Participating artists: Robyn Appleton, Tom Baskeyfield, Shameela Beeloo, Rebecca Beinart, Camilla Berner, brook & black, Rob Carter, Rachael Champion, Andrew Dodds, Maria Deegan, Adi Gelbart, Fritz Haeg, Maria Hofstadler, Tom Ingate, Ulrika Jansson, Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Rosalie Kim, Gayle Chong Kwan, Sarah Lewison, Alexandra McGlynn, Stéphanie Nava, Raquel Estrada-Nora, Phil Newcombe, Caitlin Parker, Julian Perry, Minna Pöllänen, Janette Porter, Sneha Solanki, Stih & Schnock, Jo Thomas, Carly Troncale, Charlie Tweed, Jane Cradock-Watson, Elizabeth Wewiora
Cultivation Field is curated by artist Kate Corder, PhD candidate at University of Reading
Cultivation Field is supported by Arts Council England, Earley Charity, University of Reading, Jelly, Open Hand Open Space, Sutton Seeds, Laura’s Organics and Office For Contemporary Art Norway
Left of Place – Mary Maclean
June 14, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Mary Maclean explores the space of borders and thresholds in the everyday structures within architectural environments. The photographic images suggest a backdrop to a series of routines and exchanges implicated in the surfaces of architectural space. How is the image tied to its space? Can it be split, re-positioned, shuffled or extended? Here a possible disorientation is suggested where the space might be alternately revealed or blotted out. A sequence of images, provisionally positioned so that their surfaces are stacked behind or in front of one another suggests a temporary alignment. Their interplay is cut by a different order, one that interrupts, un-fixing the viewpoint, where a fluid state of endlessness extends beyond the moment of a situation.
