Anglia Ruskin University

Rebecca Fortnum - Visiting Artist

Date: Wednesday 1 May
Time: 14.00
Venue: Ruskin 203

Rebecca Fortnum is an artist and academic. Her awards include Pollock-Krasner Foundation, British Council, Arts Council of England, British School in Rome and the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her book, Contemporary British Women Artists: in their own words, was published by IB Tauris/Macmillan in 2007.

Rebecca will be talking about her current exhibition at the Freud Museum, London as well as other works.

Her recent exhibitions include 'Translation/Interpretation' at The Drawing Gallery, Shropshire (2011), 'The Imagination of Children' and a solo exhibition, 'Absurd Impositions', both at the Victoria & Albert's Museum of Childhood in London (2011-12), 'Behind The Eyes: making pictures' at Gallery North (2013) and a solo exhibition, 'Self Contained', at the Freud Museum London (2013). Between 2011-12 she contributed to the collaborative project 'Drawing - In and Outside - Writing', an exhibition at Voorkamer in Lier, Belgium as well as two books of the same title published by RGAP and OPAK. She is currently Reader in Fine Art at CCW Graduate School, University of the Arts, London.

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Aesthetics and Ethics: The 'New Politics' and Social Practice

A talk by David Ryan

Date: Wednesday 17 April 2013
Time: 14.00
Venue: Ruskin 203

This talk will look at the rise, over the last 20 years or so, of an increased emphasis on social interactivity and engagement within contemporary art. This intersects with a politicized sense of the social purpose of art practices and their engagement with context. Value then shifts from the art object to the conceptualization of the encounter and its social context or network. In order to navigate these developments recent texts by Nicolas Bourriaud, Jacques Ranciere, Claire Bishop and David Joselit will be examined in relation to examples of practice.

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At the Point of Gesture...

Curated by David Ryan

Date: 23 February - 23 March
Venue: Lion and Lamb, 46 Fanshaw Street, Hoxton, London N1 6LG
Times: Monday 13.00-23.00; Tuesday-Saturday, 12.00-23.00; Sunday 12.00-22.00

Opening: Friday 22 February, 18.00
Artists' Talk: Saturday 23 March, 17.00-18.00

Featured artists: Clem Crosby, Gabriel Hartley, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, David Ryan, Alaena Turner

At the Point of Gesture... brings together five artists who, in their different ways, explore the potential of gesture, materiality and improvisation.

While such approaches have been castigated, deconstructed, and downright avoided in much recent painting practice, these painters focus on, and relish, the nature of paint guided by the body both as a site of potential meaning and disruption.

For more information contact Peter A Jones or or Katrina Blannin.

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Andrea wins prestigious Rome Abbey Award

Andrea Medjesi-Jones, a completing PhD student and recipient of a competitive University-wide GTA studentship at ARU, has just been awarded the Rome Abbey Award in Painting to research and practice at the British School in Rome.

This is a highly significant and competitive award, which is great news for Andrea and also for the Fine Art Research Unit, of which she is a member. Andrea will be continuing her ambitious painting practice in a studio at the British School while also researching into inter- and post-war Italian painting in Rome and Venice, which will develop her recent PhD research.

 

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Complexity in Practice: Art, Science, and the Social

A talk by Michelle Lewis King

Date: Wednesday 13 March 2013
Time: 14.00
Venue: Ruskin 214

Michelle Lewis-King will present a talk on her art practice, which draws critical connections between art, science, human touch, the body, technology, self and other.

This talk will survey work from her early studio based sculptures and installations to current post-studio performance and sound based works and will form an overview of expanded art practice over time. Michelle's current research practice aligns her experiences in the diverse fields of fine art, performance, sound, Chinese Medicine, biomedicine and the clinical practice. Core theories to the discussion are representation, feminism, relational art, the self /other, tactility, complexity and posthumanism. Michelle is a PhD student and part of CoDE at Anglia Ruskin.

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Via di San Teodoro 8 screening

Date: 4 March 2013
Time: 20.00 CET (1900 GMT)
Venue: Logos Tetrahedron, Bomastraat 24-26-28, 9000 GENT

A second Belgian screening of Via di San Teodoro 8 (see below for details).

Ryan will also perform work for Bb clarinet and bass clarinet:

David Ryan: Blindtime (2013), Para (2011)
Christian Wolff: Dark as a Dungeon (1977)

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Two David Ryan film screenings

Date: Sunday 3 March 2013
Time: 20.30 CET (19.30 GMT)
Venue: Q-O2, Koolmijnenkaai 30-34, B-1080 Brussels

With introduction by the artist.

Via di San Teodoro 8

David Ryan's film, Via di San Teodoro 8, explores Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi's (1905-1988) house in the heart of Rome. It investigates different aspects of this house: its spaces, sounds and vistas, and its unique ambience opposite the ancient Roman Forum. It lies somewhere between experimental documentary and the filmic poetic essay, also portraying the early electronic instruments (Ondiolas) on which Scelsi composed and improvised in a rare performance by pianist Oscar Pizzo. Without any dialogue, the film attempts to capture something of what the Hungarian film theorist Bela Balazs alluded to: the possibility of sound and image combining to articulate, "all that has speech beyond human speech, and speaks to us with the vast conversational powers of life... ".

HD Video 40 minutes 2010
Director David Ryan
Cinematography: Tim Sidell
Sound: Emanuele Costantini

Tower: a Composition for Two Musicians and Architecture (2012)

Tower explores the relationship between performing improvised music and the space in which it takes place. In this instance, it features two improvisers; Jennifer Allum (violin) and Ute Kanngiesser (cello) performing in the medieval tower of St. Augustine in Hackney, London. Ultimately it explores the tension between the film as a document of performance and as a thing, a composition, in itself. Ryan's interest is in the way film and video can allow us to inhabit performance in a different way, but also asks questions about the structure of both film and music, sound and vision, and how each of these interact.

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The City and Modernity

A talk by David Ryan and Sammi Fang

Date: Wednesday 27 February 2013
Time: 14.00
Venue: Ruskin 214

This session looks at the rise of the city as both a 'process' for emerging modernism, becoming, in turn, its distinctive iconography and, of late, its expansion into an interchangeable global sites of international exchange. It will explore various filmic representations of the city from the Lumiere Brothers, through to the great symphony series of films in the 1920s and beyond. It will also feature some recent short clips of work-in-progress by PhD student Sammi Fang.

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Sculpture as Music Interface

A talk by Dr Richard Hoadley

Date: Wednesday 13 February 2013
Time: 14.00
Venue: Rus 214

This talk describes the conception, design and implementation of a number of bespoke musical interfaces and their use in performance. It investigates their design and development in the light of these experiences.

Richard will also examine the nature of digital interfaces for musical expression through the use of sculptural forms and ideas, using multiple and diverse sensors, the data from which is used to generate and control multifarious musical parameters in software. It notes any relationships between the sculptural forms and the musical material produced.Recent work linking physical action to the live generation and performance of musical notation is demonstrated.

Dr Richard Hoadley is Senior Lecturer in Music and Performing Arts at Anglia Ruskin University.

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Introduction: Forgetting the Art World (?)

A talk by David Ryan

Date: Wednesday 6 February 2013
Time: 14.00
Venue: Rus 214

This semester individual talks will examine some of these themes in depth- including sound and interactivity, politics and collaboration, and the image of the city. This talk will introduce the address the interconnection of these themes together some of the issues facing current practice in its broader context.

Pamela M. Lee's recent publication Forgetting the Art World looks at a contemporary art scene in which globalization is at saturation point and exhaustion; we can contrast the endless demand of 'post-Fordist' collaboration and dissemination with the slow patience in acquiring skills as outlined in Richard Sennett's influential book The Craftsman. How do we navigate these contradictory demands?

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Medjesi-Jones PhD success

Congratulations to Graduate Teaching Assistant (Contemporary Painting/Fine Art) PhD student Andrea Medjesi-Jones, who has been awarded her Doctorate (pending minor amendments), having successfully completed her viva.

The external examiners felt that it was an original piece that demonstrated a "deep and current knowledge of the subject" and that its negotiated relationship between practice and theory "must be registered as a significant achievement" and "innovation in the material and painterly address to thought."

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Design and Build: Painting and Architecture in Contemporary Art

A talk by Benet Spencer

Date: Wednesday 12 December
Time: 14.00
Venue: Rus 214

Benet Spencer will discuss the current influence of architecture on contemporary painting. Taking as a starting point the series of cityscapes painted by Gerhard Richter between 1968 and 1970, we will look at the way architecture informs the work of a wide range of contemporary artists. The work of the 'New Leipzig School' of painting will be considered, alongside practitioners from Britain and the USA. In comparison, the sculptural language of Deconstructivist architecture, in practices such as Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid, will bring into focus the use computer modelling in both painting and architecture.

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A talk by Rosanna Greaves

Date: Wednesday 28 November
Time: 14.00
Venue: Rus 214

Rosanna Greaves will discuss her recent work, The Rotation Of The Earth Drags The Atmosphere Around With It, a site-specific audio work, spanning four floors of Brixton Windmill. Reflecting upon her wider body of research concerning the role of aesthetics in relation to the development of inland wind farms and the tensions that can be discerned between the differing ways in which old windmills and contemporary wind turbines are reportedly viewed in the landscape.

The recent work reveals her attempt to re-position a physical complaint as an aesthetic experience. Wider themes include the use of site as material implicating the viewers' complicity within the work, abstracted mechanics, environmentalism, Invisibility, language deconstruction and cyclical structuring.

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Reflections on Expanded Cinema

A talk by Simon Payne

Date: Wednesday 14 November
Time: 14.00
Venue: Coslett 117

Expanded cinema: a strain of 'avant-garde' film that typically involves more than one screen/projector and/or elements of performance; a form of cinema in which the live or 'real time' aspect is foregrounded. In this talk Simon Payne will discuss examples of expanded cinema, spanning the 20th Century, from Constructivist propositions in the 1920s, via the Lettriste cinema of the 1950s, through to classic British work of the 1970s and contemporary examples.

Simon Payne is an experimental filmmaker. His work has shown at Tate Modern, the Serpentine Gallery, the Whitechapel Gallery and numerous international experimental film festivals. He also writes on artists' film and video and edits the magazine Sequence. A number of his videos are 'expanded' pieces, hinging on a tense relationship between screen-space and the edge of the frame. He will show and discuss these works in the context of his talk. Simon is a Senior Lecturer in Communication, Film and Media Studies at Anglia Ruskin University.

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Guest Artist: Katrina Blannin

Date: Wednesday 31 October
Time: 14.00
Venue: Ruskin 214

Katrina Blannin is an artist and curator based in London. She studied at Portsmouth under Jeffrey Steele, and undertook her MA at the Royal College of Art. She has written for Turps Banana magazine, and is co-director of their space at the Lion and Lamb in Hoxton. Katrina is featured in the current John Moores painting exhibition in Liverpool. She thinks about her work in terms of her aims 'to achieve, through a paring down of visual ideas, something which investigates perception, intelligibility or clarity. During the process instinct and experience play a role in relation to weight of tone; colour: nuance, consonance and dissonance.' She will talk about both her painting and curating projects.

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Tower - a composition for improvising musicians and architecture

A screening of the new film by David Ryan

Date: Saturday 20 October 2012
Time: 19.00-23.00
Venue: Aid and Abet, Station Road, Cambridge

Includes a talk and discussion, together with live music.

David Ryan's latest film explores the relationship between performing improvised music and the space in which it takes place. In this instance, it features two improvisers (Jennifer Allum, violin and Ute Kanngiesser, cello) performing in the medieval tower of St Augustine in Hackney, London.

Ultimately it explores the tension between the film as a document of performance and as a thing, a composition, in itself. Ryan's interest is in the way film and video can allow us to inhabit performance in a different way, but also asks questions about the structure of both film and music, sound and vision, and how each of these interact. With live performances by Jennifer Allum (violin) and David Ryan (clarinets).

'Tower - a composition for improvising musicians and architecture' is supported by Arts Council England and Anglia Ruskin University.

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Dispersal part 2

A talk by David Ryan

Date: Wednesday 17 October
Time: 14.00
Room: Ruskin 214

The second part of this talk will focus again on questions around the use of space and what we might call the dominance of 'spatial practices' within contemporary art making. In the last session we looked at the dual reading of dispersal in Mallarme's late 19th century poem A Dice Throw - these being: the 'conductor wire', connecting disparate parts, and by contrast, the idea of 'scattering' - fragmenting and breaking unity, each reading operating as a model of thinking around the possible dispersal of a work in space. This week we shall consider Rosalind Krauss's recent critique of installation and her call for a reassessment of the centrality of the medium and what this might entail for current practice.

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Alicia Paz - Visiting Artist

Date: Wednesday 18 April 2012
Time: 14.15
Venue: Ruskin 203

Alicia Paz was born in Mexico City and graduated from U.C. Berkeley, ENSBA-Paris, Goldsmiths College and Royal College of Art, London. She participated in the exhibition Nous nous sommes tant aimés at ENSB-A, Paris in 1999 (curated by Alfred Pacquement, current director of the Pompidou Centre) as well as in Continental Shift at the Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany (2000). Her work was part of John Moores 24, Liverpool Biennial in 2006, and was also featured in East International 2004 in Norwich, England, selected by Neo Rauch and G. Harry Liebke. She has had several solo exhibitions in France, Mexico and Argentina. Over several years Alicia Paz has explored the tension between artifice/illusion and the veracity of actual processes involved in painting, exposing the duplicitous nature of representation.

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The Thing is the Thing

A talk by Benet Spencer

Date: Wednesday 21 March
Time: 14.00
Venue: Ruskin 110

Benet Spencer will discuss his current research interests in relation to his recent curated group exhibition 'The Thing is the Thing', which was exhibited at the ASC Gallery, London in November 2011.

Underlying themes include the relationship between Minimalism of the 1960s and science fiction, and the significance of the revival of the modernist ethic within contemporary Fine Art practice. This will be considered with particular focus on aspects of contemporary sculpture and painting that build on a dialogue between object-based approaches to Fine Art and their relationship to science fiction, technology and the modernist ideal.

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