These events took place during Michaelmas term, 2009
Public lecture with Ruth Maclennan
She's normal. She's an artist.
Day: Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Time: 6:30-8:00pm
Venue: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building
Ruth Maclennan will discuss two works, Capital and Valley of Castles (Hunting Eagles) which she filmed in Kazakhstan in 2007. Capital is set in Kazakhstan's Astana. A woman addresses the founder-ruler of a dream city that promises a glossy but oppressive future by erasing the past. Valley of Castles (Hunting Eagles) follows the artist's journey to the village of Nura in South-eastern Kazakhstan to film traditional Kazakh eagle hunters. After the journey, against a dramatic landscape of snow-capped mountains, the film moves into a different register as the hunter sets the golden eagle free over an empty canyon. This work explores the invention and performance of cultural identity, and the projection of expectations on to people, and on to the cinematic image itself.
Capital and Valley of Castles were commissioned for the exhibition Central Asian Project, at Cornerhouse, Manchester, and at SPACE, London. In addition it has been screened at the New York Underground Film Festival (March 2007). It toured to Tengri Umai Gallery in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and to the Tashkent Biennale of Contemporary Art, Uzbekistan, in October 2008.
Ruth Maclennan's work includes video installations, photography, bookworks, drawings, live events, and curatorial projects. Her works show the performance of power relations and explore the collision of perspectives—in front of the camera, within social and physical architecture, and through the behaviour of the camera itself. Her video works filmed in Kazakhstan explore how people perform cultural identities, the political dimensions of landscape, and the construction of utopia, as well as the underlying complexities of the encounter between West and East.
Public lecture with Barbara Walker
Drawing and portraiture
Date: Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Time: 1:05-2:00pm
Venue: Shaw Library, Old Building
Barbara Walker addresses the personal, social and political factors that impact on the formation of the identity of the UK's African-Caribbean community.
Living in Birmingham , she has witnessed at first hand a curious and potent collision of several different factors that together contribute to the forming of this identity in British society today.
Birmingham has for decades upon decades been a very multicultural city, though more recent influxes have served to add layer upon layer to that multiculturalism. Her work analyses the attitudes that form the identity of the Black community in British society today.
Barbara Walker lives and works in Birmingham. She has developed a practice which is concerned with the social and political issues with particular reference to history and cultures in contemporary society. Recent exhibitions include Unit 2 (2006), Signal Gallery ( 2008), Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, (2008), Wolverhampton Gallery, (2008), Contemporary Art Society (2009), East International 09 (2009). Walker has also been the recipient of a number of funding and research awards. In 2008 she completed a three month Triangle Art Trust, International Residency at the Bag Factory, Johannesburg , South Africa.
Public lecture with Dominic Allan
Dominic from Luton
Date: Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Time: 6:30-8:00pm
Venue: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building
Dominic Allan will discuss his recent exhibition, 'The Irresistible Lure of Fatty Gingo' at Transition Gallery, London and his ongoing series of photographic works, 'Dominic from Luton.' He'll reflect on his experiences making site-specific artworks in artist-run spaces in London, performance based work including Mr.Softee (seaside Superhero) and Arts Council East funded project, 'Dodgem.'
Dominic Allan was born in Luton in 1977. He graduated from Chelsea College of Art in 1999, specialising in sculpture. Since then, he has continued making artwork about an obsession with coming from Luton. This has provoked the use of materials as diverse as: customised dodgem cars, gold-leafed lollypop sticks, home-made seaside superhero outfits and children covered in joggle eyes. Recent projects include, 'The Irresistible Lure of Fatty Gingo' Transition Gallery, London.
Public lecture with Daphne Wright
Daphne Wright: prayer project
Date: Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Time: 1:05-2:00pm
Venue: Shaw Library, Old Building
"Daphne Wright's work manoeuvres things into well-wrought but delicate doubt – shifting between taughtness and mess, it sets imagery, materials and language in constant metaphorical motion.
Using a wide range of materials – plaster, tinfoil, video, printmaking, found objects and performance – she creates worlds that are beautiful and rather eerie which feel like the threshold to somewhere new." - Frith Street Gallery
Daphne Wright will discuss her most recent film work Prayer Project in relation to her wider practise. Discussing her earlier sculptural installations and her movement between different materials Wright will present her current investigation into film.
Daphne Wright's work was the subject of a solo exhibition at Limerick City Art Gallery in 2006. Wright has been involved in several important international group exhibitions, notably 0044 touring PS1, New York; Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 1999/2000 and From a Distance: Approaching Landscape at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
She has had major solo exhibitions including Where Do Broken Hearts Go? at the Douglas Hyde Galley, Dublin in 2000; These Talking Walls at the New Art Centre Sculpture Park and Gallery, Roche Court, Wiltshire; Nonsense and Death at the Sligo Art Gallery, Sligo, Ireland and Sires at Frith Street Gallery, London in 2003.
A solo show of Daphne Wrights work will be opening at Frith St Gallery in Jan 2010.
Public lecture with Max Houghton
Silence visible
Day: Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Time: 6:30-8:00pm
Venue: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building
Documentary photographs play a crucial part in the writing and remembering of history, yet their truth status is always in question. As camera phones make everyone a witness to events, it is an interesting moment to reflect on how photographs can retain or regain their power.
By looking at writing created to appear with photographs through the works of W G Sebald and James Agee, as well as contemporary examples, we can see how the fluid exchange between the visible and the articulable permits a rich audiovisual archive of history in the present.
Max Houghton is Course Leader of MA Photojournalism at the University of Westminster and also works at Foto8, where she edits 8 magazine and recently co-curated an exhibition for the New York Photo Festival 2009. After training as a journalist in 2001, she worked as a researcher for the Guardian newspaper on social issues before taking a closer interest in photographs, specifically documentary images and the relationship between writing and photographs.