The following artists, curators and writers will contribute to the day’s proceedings. This is not the full and final programme – further linked events and presentations are currently being negotiated.
Jonathan Dronsfield (Chair)
Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield is Reader in Theory & Philosophy of Art, University of Reading, and sits on the Forum for European Philosophy at the London School of Economics. He has published many articles in the area of contemporary continental philosophy and art theory, and on the relation of art practice to ethics, in particular art's resistance to ethics. He is currently writing a book with Thomas Hirschhorn and Marcus Steinweg on Headlessness.
Sophie Hope (B + B Curators)
http://www.reunionprojects.org.uk
http://www.welcomebb.org.uk
Sophie Hope has worked for a number of visual arts organisations and as a freelance evaluator and researcher, most recently in Hungary developing 'Spaces for Constructive Discourse' at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Transport. In 2000 she founded B+B, a curatorial partnership with Sarah Carrington. B+B provides a platform for discussion and debate on the role of the artist in society. Through consultation, events, exhibitions, research, residencies and workshops, B+B test and critique the role of the artist as an agent for change. B+B argue that art has the potential to change society whilst defending the notion it should be allowed to do what it does best: ask questions without providing solutions and shift understandings without claiming to empower.
Sophie Hope's work inspects the uncertain relationships between art and society. This involves establishing how to declare her politics through her practice; rethinking what it means to be paid to be critical and devising tactics to challenge notions of authorship.
Sophie is currently working on Reunion, a programme of meetings, residencies and exhibitions between artists and curators based in the UK and South East Europe to address the political potential of art practices in Europe (http://www.reunionprojects.org.uk/). She is also undertaking a residency with the Beyond Action Research Programme in Leidsche Rijn a large new housing development near Utrecht in The Netherlands where she is working with residents to produce a one-day performance of life in 2007 told from 1000 years in the future. Together with curator Cameron Cartiere, Sophie is developing a Manifesto of Possibilities for commissioning public art through a series of workshops, to be distributed to policymakers and commissioners in Winter 2007.
Sophie co-founded the curatorial partnership B+B with Sarah Carrington in 2000 and continues to carry out evaluations of public art projects and facilitate workshops (http://www.welcomebb.org.uk/). Past B+B curatorial projects have included Notion Nanny a touring project around the UK with American artist Allison Smith (various venues, 2005-06), Real Estate: Art in a Changing City, as part of London in Six Easy Steps (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 2005), Trading Places – Migration, representation, collaboration and activism in contemporary art (Pump House Gallery, London 2004) and B+B at Home, a six month programme of residencies, exhibitions and events (Austrian Cultural Forum, London 2003). Sophie is currently undertaking doctoral study on the economics of socially engaged art at Birkbeck College, University of London where she is also lecturer on the MA Arts Management and Cultural Policy.
Juneau Projects
http://www.juneaurecords.co.uk
Juneau Projects were formed in 2001 as a collaborative practice by Ben Sadler and Philip Duckworth. Based in Birmingham, they have exhibited nationwide and internationally. Their work engages with people and folk histories, bringing together live work and installation in new interactive combinations. Stag becomes Eagle, a large scale commission for the RSPB, brought together local young people in Purfleet, Essex. In 2006 they worked with a village of farmers in Toge, Japan to create a sculptural honesty box at a nearby beauty spot. The box was stocked with local produce and a specially recorded cd which featured the villagers singing songs and telling stories about their home. I’m going to antler you http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u59/fi_the_ruthless/juneau_imgoingtoantleryou_detail.jpg involved two youth groups forming ‘rival’ bands and Instincts are misleading, you shouldn’t think what you’re feeling, a participatory installation commissioned by FACT Liverpool.
London Fieldworks
(Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson)
http://www.londonfieldworks.com
London Fieldworks have been engaged in a sustained enquiry into human consciousness and its relationship with natural or elemental rhythms, visualised through the charting of sleep patterns and the science of light. Art projects such as Syzygy and Polaria that typically engage with technology and the methodologies of science, have been far reaching both geographically and in terms of the range of collaborators and disciplines involved. Their most recent project Hibernator: Prince of the Petrified Forest opened at Beaconsfield in South London in March this year. The project began with research into the behaviour of hibernating animals which led to an exploration of human hibernation experiments and visitors were able to witness the making of an animation during the show.
Harrell Fletcher
http://www.harrellfletcher.com
Harrell Fletcher has worked collaboratively and individually on a variety of socially engaged, interdisciplinary projects for over a decade. His work has been shown at SF MoMA, the de Young Museum, The Berkeley Art Museum, and Yerba Buena Center For The Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Drawing Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Sculpture Center, The Wrong Gallery, and Smackmellon in NYC, DiverseWorks and Aurora Picture show in Houston, TX, PICA in Portland, OR, CoCA and The Seattle Art Museum in Seattle, WA, Signal in Malmo, Sweden, Domain de Kerguehennec in France, and The Royal College of Art in London. Fletcher exhibits in San Francisco and Los Angeles with Jack Hanley Gallery, in NYC with Christine Burgin Gallery, in London with Laura Bartlett Gallery, and Paris with Gallery In Situ. He was a participant in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. In 2002 Fletcher started Learning To Love You More, an ongoing participatory web site with Miranda July. A book version of the project will be published in 2007 by Prestel. He is the 2005 recipient of the Alpert Award in Visual Arts. His current traveling exhibition The American War originated in 2005 at ArtPace in San Antonio, TX, and traveled in 2006 to Solvent Space in Richmond, VA, White Columns in NYC, The Center For Advanced Visual Studies MIT in Boston, MA, and PICA in Portland, OR. Fletcher is a Professor of Art at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.
Graeme Miller
http://www.artsadmin.co.uk
Graeme Miller is a theatre maker, composer and artist whose work
encompasses site-specific installations, theatre and dance works, all of which reflect a sense of landscape and place. A film with John Smith, Lost Sound, documents the secret life of a small neighbourhood through images, sounds and retrieved music of lost recording tape found hanging in the streets. Linked is a three-mile long semi-permanent sound installation in East London incorporating the voices, memories and testimonies of people who used to live where the M11 link road now runs, Bassline a sound and video installation created for the Vienna Festival and Beheld, an installation which maps places where stowaways have fallen from aircraft.
Paul O’Neill
http://www.situations.org.uk
Paul O Neill is a curator, artist and writer, based in London and Bristol. He is currently Research Fellow with Situations in Bristol, where he is leading Locating the Producers a three year international research project investigating the commissioning and curating of placebased art. Since 2003, he has dedicated his time to researching the development of curatorial discourses during the last twenty years as part of a PhD scholarship at Middlesex University. His paper for the symposium entitled Curating The Spectator: The Organisation of Art's Reception will consider the relationship between curating and its involvement in the structuring of the experience of art.
Nina Pope
http://www.batamemories.org.uk
http://www.bata-ville.com
Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie began their collaboration in1995 since when they have undertaken a series of ground breaking commissions for many major institutions including one of the earliest artists’ projects for the web. Bata-ville: We are not afraid of the future takes the form of a road movie, but the towns at the heart of the film, East Tilbury, Maryport and Zlín, are all ‘nowhere’ places, linked only by past connections to the Bata shoe empire and current government-led regeneration agendas. In real terms, the 42 people who make the journey to Zlín have little in common, yet by the end of the film they describe themselves as the "Bata family …
here on the bus". The film is almost a pilgrimage in search of the origins of entrepreneur Tomas Bata’s utopian vision - a journey to see if this vision might still be relevant for the artists, the passengers and their home-towns. Nina Pope’s presentation will include a contribution from one of Bata-ville’s participants, Mike Ostler.
Adam Sutherland
(Director, Grizedale Arts)
http://www.grizedale.org
Adam Sutherland is Director of Grizedale Arts where he has developed a wide ranging artist centred programme that incorporates the local cultures of the Lake District - historical, political and economic. He has recently curated large scale live and socially engaged programmes at PS1 - New York, Echigo-Tsumari Triennale - Japan and for the A Foundation at the Liverpool Biennale. Future projects include the establishment of an arts TV station with the A Foundation at Rochelle in East London in September, the redevelopment of two hill farms as experimental art and agriculture spaces and participation in a residency programme in rural China with Vitamin Creative Space. He has also written extensively for the visual arts.
Marisa C. Sánchez
Marisa C. Sánchez is the Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Seattle Art Museum. Beginning in late April 2007, Sánchez joined SAM’s curatorial staff, working closely with Michael Darling, the Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Since February 2003, Marisa had been at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) as curatorial assistant in the photography department. In this position she curated a number of exhibits including Two Women Look West, an exhibition of 85 photographs dating from the 1930s – 1960s and The Target Collection of American Photography: A Century in Pictures. Sánchez has also written criticism for publications, and has served on the Board of Houston's Lawndale Art Center where she worked with contemporary artists on exhibitions of their work and co-organized a symposium on alternative art spaces. A native of New Jersey, Marisa holds a Masters in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Supported by Arts Council England
For further information and booking details please contact:
artistsinthecity@reading.gov.uk |
