Collections and Identity Conference - call for papers

Collections and Identity

Egham Museum & Royal Holloway University Centre for Public History

Friday 2^nd May 2014

Egham Museum is hosting a one-day conference on ‘Collections and Identity’ at the Proctor & Gamble Innovation Centre, Egham.  The conference is aimed at Postgraduate Museum Studies Students, and will explore questions surrounding museum collections, their function, value, and future.

Key Note Speakers include: Maurice Davies, Head of Policy and Communications, The Museums Association; and Ellie Miles, Interpretation Officer at the British Museum.

Deadline for Abstracts is 31^st January 2014

Paper deadline is 28^th February 2014.

Submissions: curator@eghammuseum.org

Culture Clash? Contemporary arts in historic contexts

Hi everybody
I thought you'd like details of a conference I'm speaking at in February. Below is the official blurb and programme.

Culture Clash? Contemporary arts in historic contexts

Royal Museums Greenwich, London, February 14, 2014

To coincide with the latest in a series of contemporary interventions, 
Yinka Shonibare MBE at Greenwich, Royal Museums Greenwich is hosting a 
one day conference to explore the role of contemporary art outside the 
white cube.
In recent years it has become increasingly popular for museums and 
historic buildings to invite living artists to respond to their 
buildings or collections by curating, creating or performing on site. 
What has been the impact of this popular collaborative trend for 
artists, museums and their audiences?

Themes addressed by the conference include: the artist as curator/the 
curator as artist; contemporary art, memory and commemoration; the 
relationship between artists, museums and the market; artists’ 
residencies and audience engagement.

Programme

09.00–09.50: Registration and refreshments

10.00–11.30: Session 1: Approaches and Challenges

New Visions of the Sea: Assessing the Legacy of Contemporary Art at the 
National Maritime Museum, 1999–2009
Helen Hillyard, National Gallery

The Challenges Faced by Local Authority-Managed Museums and Settings
Julien Parsons and Martin Thomas and, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, 
Exeter

Contemporary Arts, Historic Contexts… and the Law
Dr Antoinette Maget Dominicé, University of Lucerne

11.30–12.00: Coffee and tea break

12.00–13.00: Session 2: Interpreting and Animating Sites and Collections

Talking Back: Artists Working with Natural History Collections from 
Australia, China and India
Bergit Arends, independent curator

The Haunting of a Shrine: Contemporary Art at the Brontë Parsonage 
Museum
Nick Cass, University of Leeds

13.00–14.00: Lunch

14.00–15.30: Session 3: Collaboration, Dialogue and (Mis)Understanding
Disturbing the Comfortable
Melissa Hamnett, V&A

How Do We See Each Other? Dialogue and Exchange in Native American 
Curatorial Methodologies
Helen Shaw, University of York

Playing with the Past
Jonathan Carson and Rosie Miller, Carson & Miller

15.30–15.45: Break

15.45–16.45: Keynote: to be confirmed

17.00–19.00: Reception and curator tour of Yinka Shonibare MBE at 
Greenwich in the Queen’s House

The fee is £50 (concessions £40) and includes lunch and refreshments. 
For more information and booking form please contact research@rmg.co.uk 
or call 020 8312 6716 or visit www.rmg.co.uk/researchers/conferences

Artist Michael Landy in conversation with Richard Calvocoressi 30 November 2013

Henry Moore Lecture Theatre, Leeds Art Gallery
5-6pm
Free

Join artist Michael Landy and Richard Calvocoressi (Director of The Henry Moore Foundation) discussing their mutual and longstanding fascination with the work of Jean Tinguely (1925–91). The talk will begin with a screening of Michael’s documentary film H2NY (Homage to New York). This event follows the Henry Moore Institute conference Pyrotechnic Sculpture and coincides with its exhibitions Dennis Oppenheim: Thought Collision Factories, Jean Tinguely: Spiral and Stephen Cripps: Pyrotechnic Sculptor.

Michael Landy is an artist who lives and works in London. He graduated from Goldsmiths College of Art in 1988, exhibiting at Freeze in the same year alongside the cohort that would come to be known as the Young British Artists. Landy’s work came to wider public attention in 2001 with Break Down, an installation in a former branch of C&A at Marble Arch, in which he catalogued and destroyed all of his possessions. He returned to this theme in 2010 with Art Bin at the South London Gallery, where the public were invited to dispose of their ‘failed’ artworks. Most recently, the exhibition Saints Alive displayed his engagement with the representation of saints in the permanent collection of the National Gallery through drawing, collage and a series of monumental kinetic sculptures.

Richard Calvocoressi has been Director of The Henry Moore Foundation since 2007. He was formerly Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh (1987-2007), where he acquired important international collections of dada and surrealist art from the estates of Roland Penrose and Gabrielle Keiller and was instrumental in attracting the Anthony d’Offay gift to Edinburgh and London. He recently co-curated the exhibition Bacon Moore: Flesh and Bone at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He has also organised exhibitions of, or published on, Georg Baselitz, Reg Butler, Lucian Freud, Anselm Kiefer, Oskar Kokoschka, Paul Klee, René Magritte, Lee Miller and Jean Tinguely. He is an expert member of the Comité Magritte, a member of the Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné Committee, a trustee of The Art Fund and a member of the U.K. government’s Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art. In 2008 he was awarded a CBE for services to the Arts, particularly in Scotland.

Book online at: http://www.henry-moore.org/hmi/events/pyrotechnic-sculpture/book-a-place-at-this-talk-online

'Edmund de Waal: Make Pots or Die' BBC imagine series.

Hello everyone! Whilst I was at home over reading week I sat down with my mum and sister to watch this documentary on Edmund de Waal. Both my mum and sister had read his recently renowned book 'Hare With The Amber Eyes', which I hope to finish once university reading comes to a close! Whether you have read the book or not, it is a great documentary about such an interesting man. I really enjoyed learning how his academic research informed his artistic practice. It was a very inspiring watch, which I thought might be ideal as a cold weekend viewing! So, here it is...

Watch here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b03hcmmp/

BBC introduction:
"Edmund de Waal is the bestselling author of the Hare With The Amber Eyes, a family memoir that captured the hearts of millions. But he isn't just a writer; from the age of five he has been making thousands and thousands of pots. After 45 years, he is exhibiting his work for the first time in America and researching his next book, a globe-spanning journey through porcelain. imagine... follows Edmund over a remarkable year"

How to help first year students?

So I am a first year student and enjoying my history of art degree thoroughly, however I want to see some art. Northern England is rich with museums, galleries, exhibitions-the like. But, being new to this area I have no idea where to go, what is good, or even what's on. Now lecturers say just 'get out there', buts it's hard to explore an area that you are completely unfamiliar about, as well as in a position where you're just getting to grips on how to do laundry. As an avid reader of this blog, I think it would be fantastic to get older students who have done this a bit more to do a '20 places to go before you leave uni' for this blog. Even provide a brief review? I know I've got some first years reading this blog and would definitely find it useful if this thing could crop up every now and then?

Any comments or ideas?

Exhibition project: interpreting collections

When I moved here from Canberra, Australia this past September, I was a bit nervous about how intensive and challenging the MA program in Art Gallery and Museum Studies would be at the University of Leeds. So far, I have been proven right about the rigorous program, but this intensity has been softened by its fun and interesting intellectual engagement. The challenges the program presents me with simply make the completion of each step more rewarding.

The first day of the program included an introduction to our exhibition project for the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery. Imagine my concern when I learned the details:

• 12 brand new masters students 
• 5 weeks 
• 2 display cabinets 
• 141 pieces of Yorkshire pottery 
• ￡50 

The organisation of our exhibition was formed around deadlines for our ‘client’ (the gallery), formal learning sessions and informal group planning meetings.

The formal learning sessions with University Research Fellow extraordinaire Helen Graham got us thinking about how to bridge the gap between the objects and our audience. This informed the interpretation strategies we used in our exhibition.

The main interpretation tool which we found invaluable in our process was the development of a ‘Big Idea’. We used several of the strategies suggested in Beverley Serrell’s Behind It All: A Big Idea in Exhibit Labels: An Interpretative Approach. The ‘Big Idea’ can be summed up as a clear and concise idea that we are delivering to the audience, an idea that the visitor can easily recognise in the exhibition and something that they can take away with them. Basically, an exhibition isn’t successful if you can’t recognise the message that the curator is trying to deliver! The ongoing dialogue of a successful exhibition has the following elements:

• Big Idea or Theme (objects) 
• Interpretation strategies 
• Audience 

Taking all of this into account, we began thinking about the collection of objects we had to work with and conducted preliminary research on Yorkshire pottery. We made our first selection of 25 objects for our handling session with Curator Layla Bloom and the gallery staff.

Collection handling session

Brainstorming for our ‘Big Idea’ began, and we discovered a common thread of interest amongst our group members was the function and use of the quirky ceramics. We have all seen plates, teacups, teapots and bowls, but what about the jelly moulds, pickle dishes, spice castors and knife rests? Today, we can scarcely even recognise these objects, let alone consider putting them on our tables.

We divided our group into different teams responsible for research, writing, marketing and display with myself as the group organiser. The research group began the contextual research, in which they made informative excursions to the Doncaster Museum, Leeds City Museum, Leeds Central Library Special Collections and the Leeds University Library Special Collections.

The contextual research that our team conducted allowed us to compose our title and confirm our ‘Big Idea’, tag line and audience.

Title 
From Pantry to Table: The Preparation and Presentation of Food in 18th and 19th Century Yorkshire

Big Idea
Ceramics were essential for fine dining in Yorkshire during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Tag Line
The exhibition showcases ceramics essential for the ideal fine dining experience in Yorkshire during the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection highlights objects significant in the creation and storage of food, as well as those used for display and table decoration.

Audience
We determined our target audience for the exhibition based on consideration of the existing audience research conducted by the gallery. We decided the display did not have enough scope to attract a new audience, so we targeted the over-55 age group and those with an interest in cooking, dining and tableware. We hoped to evoke nostalgia by presenting familiar objects and to encourage engagement with the unfamiliar. 

 
Once we had established the foundations of our exhibition, we began to structure our interpretation hierarchy. We had a great session with Michael Terwey, Head of Collections and Exhibitions at the National Media Museum, during which we learned how to develop and implement an interpretation plan. 

Our final interpretation plan, with the Big Idea featured along the top of the board

Interpretation Strategies
Each of our groups implemented the use of interpretation strategies to reach our audience. Our main strategies were:

• conducting research about the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery's principle audience 
• composing clear, concise text to accompany our display, including an introductory panel, laminated page, and individual labels 
• creating icons to establish visual links between our texts and displays 
• developing consistent 'branding' used on all printed materials (both on marketing materials (leaflets, advertisements, and emails) and in the exhibition itself
• distributing promotional leaflets to locations frequented by our prospective audience 
• contacting and liaising with local cultural organizations 
• raising curiosity through the 'mystery object' postings on our Facebook page 

Preparation icon

Presentation icon

This opportunity to practically apply the theory we have been learning in our modules has been an extremely valuable experience. Our exhibition, ‘From Pantry to Table’, opened on the 29 October with a private viewing and will be open at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, Parkinson Building, University of Leeds until 7 December, so please do take a look. 

We are now moving on to the visitor feedback stage of the project so any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated and prove very valuable to our learning experience. Also, Like us on Facebook!

From Pantry to Table marketing leaflet

Our exhibition shares the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery's education space with 'Through the Keyhole: The Camden Town Group Re-interpreted’, a display of works on paper presented by our fellow classmates. Their exhibition offers a thought-provoking look at how this group of Edwardian male artists portrayed working class women in the domestic space. 

Ji Hyung, Rosie and Danielle on exhibition installation day

Beverley Serrell (1996) Exhibit Labels: An Interpretative Approach. AltaMira Press, California.

More on MA Museum Studies field trip to London

Thanks again to Dr Km Sloan, curator of prints and drawings, and curator of the Enlightenment Galleries at the British Museum for talking to the MA students about the development of the Enlightenment Galleries at the BM.

Here's the group, with Kim explaining the interpretation in the Enlightenment Galleries - we all very much appreciated having such an expert on hand at the BM!
Mark

Art Market London Trip

It was a busy week this week - Thursday and Friday, with the Museum Studies MA students in London, at various museums (see Libby's blog entry below!)....we did a LOT of museums (as usual!)...and Monday with the BA students on the Art Market module for a walking tour of the 'cultural geography' of the London art markets of the 18th and 19th centuries....

BA students at Christie's Auction Rooms in London

We did a big perambulation around St James's...and along Pall Mall...and up Bond Street...popped into Christie's, Sotheby's and various galleries, including PACE, Fine Art Society..etc....

More BA students at Christie's Auction Rooms, London

Well done to the students for undertaking all that walking....!
Mark

MA London Trip

This is just a quick post, on behalf of everyone who came, to say thank you to Mark, Abigail and Helen for all the museums you took us to, the fascinating talks you gave/arranged for us and the conversations they inspired. We've had a great time (despite the sore feet!) We'll be blogging more about our thoughts on the trip soon.

Henry Moore Institute Pyrotechnic Sculpture Conference 30 November 2013

This one-day conference coincides with the Henry Moore Institute exhibitions Dennis Oppenheim: Thought Collision Factories, Jean Tinguely: Spiral and Stephen Cripps: Pyrotechnic Sculptor. All three sculptors extended the boundaries of sculpture not only by employing purpose-built mechanised objects and kinetic contraptions, but also through pyrotechnics. Each turned to fireworks, explosives, flares, fires and other kinds of combustibles and detonations to make temporary sculptural works, the sparks of which shone brightly across the landscape of contemporary sculpture in Europe and North America during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Fire, flare and smoke were all harnessed for visual, sonic, material and spatial effects, in fascinating, ambitious and imaginative ways, with associations and meanings that extend well beyond their more literal ‘dematerialising’ qualities. This conference will consider examples of pyrotechnic sculpture found across the modern and contemporary period, through original research on the deployment of kinetic sculptural form and use of activated assemblage, accounts of temporality and ephemerality, the conjunction of object and event, modes of staging, display and re-display, and the on going life of this work today.

10.30am
Reception – Registration

10.45am-1pm
Seminar Room

Welcome

Katinka Seeger (Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel)
‘Explosion as an Artistic Tool’

Marin Sullivan (University of Leeds)
‘Purging by Fire: Alberto Burri, Arte Povera, and Postwar Italian Art’

Claire Louise Staunton (Flat Time House)
‘The Act of Burning, Exploding and Destruction in John Latham’s Sculptural Work’

1pm-2pm
Boardroom – Lunch

2pm-4.15pm
Seminar Room

Mari Dumett (The Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC)
‘The Volatile Matter of Jean Tinguley’s ‘Homage to New York”

Rozemin Keshvani (Independent Writer/Curator)
‘Five Artists – The use of Explosives and Gun Powder to produce Transient Installation and Sculptural Works’

Ursula Ströbele (College of Fine Arts, Berlin)
‘Sculpture as Performance? Pyrotechnics in the work of Anish Kapoor, Roman Signer, Cyprien Gaillard, Andreas Greiner and Armin Keplinger’

4.15pm-5pm
Boardroom – Tea/coffee

5pm-6pm
Seminar Room

Artist Michael Landy in conversation with Richard Calvocoressi

Tickets £10/£5 concessions.
Bookings can also be made via our website: http://www.henry-moore.org/hmi/events/pyrotechnic-sculpture/book-a-place-at-this-conference

Reith Lectures 2013 – ‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’

Reith Lectures 2013

Grayson Perry: Playing to the gallery

‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’ (Episode 3 of 4)

This year the BBC Reith Lectures delve into our increasingly globalised landscape, characteristic of the twenty-first century, exploring the implications that this has on the role and place of art in contemporary society. The series delivered by Turner-Prize winning artist Grayson Perry tasks us with such topics as ‘what is the role of art today?’, ‘what are the limits of contemporary art?’, ‘how are judgements made about quality and who makes them?’

Grayson Perry has created a series of drawing exclusive to the 2013 Reith Lectures.

So far this year’s lecture series has sought to address and define the nature of what art is and question its parameters. ‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’, instead tackles the nature of the role of art today. The third Reith Lecture in the series, broadcast from Londonderry’s Guildhall, the UK’s City of Culture 2013 poses the question ‘Is revolution in art dead?’ To what extent does the consideration of ‘revolution’ as a defining concept in art and calling card of avant gardism still hold weight in the world of contemporary art or are artists simply perpetuating what has already been done?  In an age of mainstream media where we are forever being bombarded with imagery, Perry asks if art has lost its ability to shock - have we really seen it all before?

There is a tendency to hold up ‘art’ as a kind of melting pot of innovative newness, yet contemporary art often falls victim to the fad in a futile search for the next new thing. The once outrageous and subversive rapidly diffuse into the everyday – revolution commodified. Its representation in mainstream media tells us that it is avant garde or cutting edge or revolutionary, that the artists who produce it are radical, that the galleries that show it are game-changing. A new paradigm is always being set by these shows that ‘everyone’ is talking about, the hype in turn further perpetuated by the media.

Perry claims that we have now reached the ‘end state’ of art, that since the mid-sixties and early seventies artists have run out of things to try, producing a state where anything can be art. He goes on to argue that this doesn’t mean the end of art itself, just the end of this notion that it is still possible to step beyond the boundaries of what art can be. Can there still be originality in art, or is innovation now only a form of tweaking? – certainly a dilemma for the post(post)modern artist.

Perry describes this concept of revolution as being fundamental to the idea of being an artist and by extension the very DNA of art itself, yet revolution in art has ceased to be the defining idea. In light of this, where is art situated in our culture today? Has art now reached a state where we have finally run out of ‘isms’? If the twentieth century was ‘the age of manifestos’, what will come to define the twenty-first century or has the art world already stepped into the breach with a whole host of new ‘isms’? Pluralism...Globalism...Commercialism...

Perry considers the possibly that now is it technology that has replaced art as a source of innovation and as capable of inciting revolution. In a role reversal art now follows technology rather than leads it. He asks if technology changes the way that we look at art and what this means for the status or role of art (and the artist) in society.

Art will inevitably continue to evolve, yet perhaps the role of art in contemporary society is shifting and that which shocks or provokes revolution is the task of culture beyond the art world...is the age of the avant garde truly over?

‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’ is now available to download from BBC Radio4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f9bg7

The fourth and final lecture in the series ‘I Found Myself in the Art World’ will be broadcast Tuesday 5^th November, 09:00 BBC Radio4.

'Imaginary Exhibitions' conference at the Henry Moore Institute 6-7 November 2013

***Only £5 for students*** Book HERE

This two day conference explores imaginary exhibition projects, ranging from the utopian to the tentative, the immaterial to the highly materialised, through to those hampered by logistics or inscribed with impossibility from their inception.

This is a development of the Institute’s on-going research into 'Sculpture and its Exhibition Histories'. Through this project we address how developments in sculpture have impacted upon the spaces of exhibition, how the material conditions of the display of sculpture have played increasingly important roles in the meaning and making of sculpture as an art form, how the modes of presenting sculpture have shifted and how curatorial practice has impacted on the understanding of sculpture, and vice versa.

This conference seeks to look beyond formal records and more familiar images of sculpture and exhibitions by looking at the place of the 'imaginary exhibition' within this narrative. The motives and scales of such projects vary and instances of these 'imaginary exhibitions' are to be found internationally, across the modern and contemporary period. This turn to the ephemeral, invisible and ill-fated will draw out the eccentric and idiosyncratic in the shadows of art history, as opposed to the more usual highly-polished exhibition surface.

Wednesday 6 November

11.30-1: Session 1: The Imaginary Spaces of 1930s sculpture
Chair: Jon Wood (Henry Moore Institute)

Annabelle Goergen-Lammers (Hamburger Kunsthalle)
‘Alberto Giacometti: Progetti Per Cose Grandi Nel Aperto’

Sophie Martin (University of Bristol)
‘‘Constructing Space’: Transcribing sculpture in Circle; International Survey of Constructive Art (1937)’

1-2: Lunch in boardroom

2-3.30: Session 2: Sculpture’s Staging and Scenography
Chair: Lisa Le Feuvre (Henry Moore Institute)

Paola Nicolin (Luigi Bocconi University)
‘The ‘Me’ You Will Never See: Maurizio Cattelan Backstage Exhibition at Guggenheim New York’

John C. Welchman (University of California, San Diego)
‘Rigging: The Imaginary as Studio-Production in the work of Paul McCarthy’

3.30-4.15: Tea in boardroom

4.15-5.45: Session 3: Exhibitions without sculptures
Chair: John C. Welchman (University of California, San Diego)

Filipa Ramos (Independent Curator)
‘I Would Prefer Not To – A Taxonomy of Artists Without Works’

Jeremy Millar (Artist/Royal College of Art)
‘Sculpture of the Space Age’

5.45-7: Wine reception and publication launches: Sculpture and the Vitrine and My Life by Anton Lesseman, with John Welchman and Paul Becker, respectively

Thursday 7 November

9.30-11: Session 4: Unrealised and invisible exhibitions
Chair: Rebecca Wade (HMF Post-Doctoral Fellow, Henry Moore Institute)

Tania Doropoulos (Royal College of Art)
‘The 1959 Situationist International Dynamic Labyrinth at the Stedelik Museum’

Dawna Schuld (Indiana University)
‘Nothing to Show for It: Art and Technology in the age of de-materialization’

11-11.30: Coffee break

11.30-1: Session 4: Invisible and unrealised exhibitions
Chair: Lisa Le Feuvre (Henry Moore Institute)

Birgit Eusterschulte (Freie Universität)
‘From a Measured Volume to Indefinite Expansion: Robert Barry’s Presentation of Inert Gas Series in California’

Penelope Curtis (Tate Britain)
On not exhibiting Robert Morris’ work

Lunch 1-2pm

2-3.30: Session 5: Photographic and digital imaginary exhibitions
Chair: Uta Kogelsberger (Newcastle University)

Magdalena Wroblewska (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut)
‘‘Le muse imaginaire’: between material object and its virtual representation’

Angela Bartholomew (Vrije Universiteit)
‘Marble Public and the Agency of Media(tion)’

3.30: End of conference

Reith Lectures 2013 - 'Beating the Bounds'

Reith Lectures 2013

Grayson Perry: Playing to the gallery

‘Beating the Bounds’ (Episode 2 of 4)

The 2013 series sees an exploration of the role and place of art in the global landscape today, addressing a wide range of issues and questions concerning the role of art in society, the limits of contemporary art and how judgements are made about quality.



Grayson Perry has created a series of drawings exclusive to the 2013 Reith Lectures.

In this second instalment from this year’s Reith lecturer Grayson Perry, broadcast from St. Georges Hall, Liverpool, Perry examines what the boundaries of art are, or rather what constitutes art. What exactly does and perhaps equally importantly does not qualify as contemporary art? Has this question been answered already? Perhaps the art world would argue that it has. Perry points out that today there is an almost complacency about this fundamental question – Is this art? – with a widely circulated notion that anything can be art now in a ‘post-post modern’ society, the end of art where absolutely anything goes...

The crux of Perry’s second lecture argues that there are boundaries that remain with regards to what can and cannot be art; however the limits are now blurred. Perry suggests that the boundaries that remain lean towards (in his words) the ‘sociological, tribal, philosophical and even financial’. What are the motivations for making art? Obviously there’s the ‘art for art’s sake’ claim, but also the economic incentive of proclaiming something as art is difficult to ignore, with so much money changing hands in the art market.

It is one thing to categorise something as being art, but is it possible to negate an object deemed a work of art and make it non-art once again? Perry suggests that a work of art perhaps is no longer a work of art once it becomes famous and takes on an almost celebrity-like persona (such as the Mona Lisa), or once it is only viewed in terms of is monetary value above all else and becomes as Perry eloquently puts it ‘a great lump of money on the wall’.

The concept of art and what could and couldn’t be considered art was widely taken for granted until the arrival of modernism and artists started to question the nature of art and Duchamp and his ‘readymades’ opened up the possibility for anything to be art if the artist declares it as such. Since the 1960s anything can be art and art has become a very broad concept, where shock-value has become commonplace and increasingly extreme. Yet, the idea of the ‘traditional’ still pervades, with painting and sculpture retaining their status as ‘high art’.

Perry breaks down the boundaries of what is and what isn’t art with a checklist or recipe for an artwork... and here they are:

Grayson Perry’s ‘boundary markers’ for whether or not something is art...

1.      Is it in a gallery or an art context?

2.      Is it a boring version of something else? (idea that art is not pleasurable)

3.      Is it made by an artist?

4.      Photography – Problematic (how do you tell if a photo is art? – size, subject, value)

5.      Limited edition test

6.      The handbag and hipster test (who are the people looking at the ‘art’ – rich and educated?)

7.      Theme Park + Suduko (Are people queuing to look at it?)

8.      Rubbish dump test (Throw it on a rubbish dump and if people walking by notice it’s there and wonder why the ‘art’ is there)...except if the rubbish dump is itself the art!

9.      The ‘Computer art’ test (Is it frustrating and does it make you pause and think rather than simply react)

These novel criteria for working out if something is art demonstrate that boundaries are formed not by what art can be but instead where, who or why it is art.

‘Beating the Bounds’ is now available to download from BBC Radio4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03dsk4d

The third lecture in the series ‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’, will be broadcast Tuesday 29^th October, 09:00 BBC Radio4.

Visiting Artist Talk | Penelope Curtis | 23.10.13

Reith Lectures 2013 - Democracy Has Bad Taste

Reith Lectures 2013

Grayson Perry: Playing to the gallery
‘Democracy Has Bad Taste’ (Episode 1 of 4)

What are the Reith lectures? Launched in 1948 by the BBC to honour the contribution of Lord John Reith to public service broadcasting, the Reith lectures are an annual radio lectures series delivered by leading figures which address important contemporary issues. Since the first lecture delivered back in 1948 by the philosopher Bertrand Russell ‘Authority and the Individual’, series have been delivered by figures such as Aung San Suu Kyi (2011), Nickolaus Pevsner (1955), Robert Oppenheimer (1953), Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks (1990), and Dr Steve Jones (1991).

This year the honour of delivering the Reith lectures has been bestowed upon Grayson Perry, Turner Prize winning artist & self-proclaimed satirical social commentator, who models himself as a modern day Hogarth. Perry’s topic for this year’s Reith lectures is by no means the artist’s first foray into reflecting on the relationship between social class and aesthetic taste as evident in his series for Channel 4 ‘All in the best possible taste’ and the series of six tapestries produced in the process. The tapestries took centre-stage at this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition entitled ‘the Vanity of Small Differences’, a modern take on Hogarth’s A Rake’s progress.

The title of this year’s series ‘Playing to the Gallery’ can itself perhaps be interpreted in several ways - Playing to the gallery, literally meaning to aim to please or satisfy the general public, yet at the same time referencing the art world in which Perry is himself a part, where such importance is placed on the ‘gallery’ and elite judgements made about the objects housed within it. At a more basic level, Perry as a visual artist delivering the lectures to a live audience - his very own physical public gallery - at Tate Modern could be perceived as being a performance which ‘plays to the crowd’.

The aim of these lectures is according to the artist, to provide anyone the basic tools necessary to ‘judge’ art. Although in his address, Perry acknowledges that this is perhaps a difficult task and that not everyone can ‘appreciate’ art straight away on first viewing and that often it takes time to get used to long winded arty words and conventions and also understanding its history.

 

Grayson Perry has created some exclusive drawings for the 2013 Reith Lectures.

Perry attempts to address the relationship between quality and popularity. Is good art popular? – Perry makes reference to Hockney’s recent retrospective at the Royal Academy, which although very ‘popular’ perhaps didn’t appeal to the taste-makers or those Perry calls ‘the chorus of validation’ - the dealers, collectors and curators - who tend to set the criteria for the judgement of taste. This panel make judgements about quality and determine what we, the public will see on the walls of a museum or gallery.

In a time where public art is becoming increasingly visible, artists like Damian Hirst are their own PR machines, and if this summer is anything to go by, visiting exhibitions has reached new heights of popularity. Is art becoming more or less democratic and how can we tell? The lecture’s assertion that democracy has bad taste, where popular art doesn’t necessarily follow the ‘good’ taste of Perry’s chorus of validation is a result of the closed nature of the art world, which continues to substantiate its authority to make judgements about taste.

Grayson Perry has created some exclusive drawings for the 2013 Reith Lectures.

Perry’s first lecture explores the channels through which art must pass through before it ultimately finds itself in museums and galleries and Biennales and what this tells us about taste – if a work of art is in a national collection or exhibited at an internationally renowned venue is it good art? - and do we the public have to like it just because we are told that we should? 

The first instalment from Grayson Perry (for anyone interested) is now available to download from BBC Radio4 via http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03969vt (the entire back catalogue of Reith Lectures are also available online with the exception of 1992, when the BBC for some unknown reason couldn’t find anyone to speak!)

The next lecture ‘Beating the Bounds’ will be available to download from today.

TOUCH AND TWEET! A Stedelijk museum exhibition

Ever since attending Magriet Schavemaker's talk on 'The potential of Augmented Reality' (Tate Modern, August 2012), I've had the Stedelijk museum website as a permanent fixture on my bookmarks tab! (Margriet is Head of Collections at the Stedelijk).

Located in Amsterdam, Stedelijk is a museum that puts innovation at the center of their collection use and exhibition design. These are images from their current exhibition: Touch and tweet! Made up of two works by Hellicar & Lewis, and one by dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde.

Devoted to interactive installations, the exhibits are responsive to each viewer's touch and movement. This reminded me of the 2009 V&A exhibition 'Decode: Digital Design Sensations', which similarly showcased the latest (exciting) developments in digital and interactive design. The exhibition includes 'The Hello Cube' (previously exhibited [and designed for] Tate Modern, 2012), which responds to physical movement and sound in the gallery as well as commands sent to it from Twitter.

I especially like the middle image below: 'Feedback'. I like how it's fragmented visual appearance mirrors the multiplicity of it's permanently shifting and reactive form. I also think it's just a really great image.

Click here to watch a video of the exhibition.

 Dan Roosegaarde, Dune, 2006-2013

Dune (2013) by Daan Roosegaarde is an interactive landscape of light that responds to movement and touch. It can also be installed outdoors where it can help to create a greater sense of safety in badly-lit areas. With this, the work falls into the category of social design. Dune is made out of recycled polymer and LED lights operated by interactive software.

Feedback

Feedback (2010) is inspired by the halls of mirrors you find at fairgrounds and theme parks. The software manipulates your digital image in response to your movements. The installation documents the images that are generated so they can be re-used later on. 

Somantics

Somantics (2010) is a series of different software modules designed to boost autistic children’s self-confidence. By enhancing their awareness of their physical potential, the modules encourage the children to become more independent. Visitors can move about in front of the camera and see how the shapes in the projection change in response to their movements.