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

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.

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.

Brazil Blog

Hello!

My name is Solomon Szekir-Papasavva and I'm currently writing a blog on the 9th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The blog focuses on issues surrounding the interpretation and curation of contemporary art, and the extent to which the Bienal's general audience is being engaged.

http://artinterpret.wordpress.com/

I graduated from the Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA at Leeds University in 2010, having focused my research on exhibition design and curation. I started working soon after as an education session leader at the Thackray Museum (Leeds), where I also developed a new formal education session on the workhouse. 

Since coming to Brazil last year I have learnt much about the museum sector and cultural interpretation and engagement in Porto Alegre. Here there is not the same tradition of large-scale, state-funded cultural projects and institutions as in the UK, but there is a lot of potential for growth. That is why I have been working free-lance: curating a collective exhibition of local artists, developing education sessions, and writing a blog on the 9th Bienal do Mercosul. I hope you find it interesting, and if you do, please share it with anyone else you think might like it!