Photomonitor » Talks

Publishing Weekend (25/26 May 2013)

photomonitor — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:18:47 +0000

Book Fair, Symposium & Artist-led Events

Saturday 25 & Sunday 26 May

All events take place at Chapter

Booking: 029 2030 4400 / www.chapter.org

This weekend-long event, organised through a partnership between Ffotogallery and Chapter, puts the focus on publishing, from artists’ DIY activity through to larger, established publishing houses, magazines and galleries.

Publishing Fair

Saturday 25 May, 11am – 5pm & Sunday 26 May, 10am – 5pm

Free Admission

The publishing fair welcomes all to celebrate, explore and engage in a wealth of international contemporary book arts and print practice. On Saturday there will be a series of Q&A sessions with selected contributors and throughout the weekend will be various launches and signings.

Click here for more info

Photobook Symposium

Sunday 26 May, 11am – 5pm

£15 earlybird (before 1 May); £20 thereafter

BOOK NOW

This event will open up creative dialogue and enquiry into documentary and art photography publishing today, with a lively programme of presentations and panel discussions. Bringing together photographers, publishers and other industry specialists, debate will centre around shifts in publishing as practice; the mechanisms of production and distribution; legacies, contexts and considering exhibitions of photobooks. Ken Grant will also be back by popular demand presenting new 5 minute Book Reviews.

Ticket price includes tea and coffee and a packed lunch.

Click here for more info

Off The Page

Saturday 25 May, 6pm / £2.50

Curated by artist Samuel Hasler, Off the Page is an off beat and lively evening of artworks as spoken word and performance, featuring Tim Bromage, Sam Playford-Greenwell and Marie Toseland. Each will introduce their work using unique and personal methods of presentation. An hour of space to enjoy the stranger margins of contemporary art and language.

Click here for more info

Zine-a-thon

Saturday 25 May, 11am – 1pm or 2 – 4pm / Free (ages 12+)

Join artist and DIY record label founder Mark Thomas and learn how to make your own photocopied zine. Zines (short for “fanzines” or “magazines”) are self-published paper booklets of words and images. Tracing the history of zines from their roots in the underground music scene to the present day, we will explore how zines can be a fun and creative means of expression. Please bring any photographs or images you would like to include in your zine.

Click here for more info

Zinesters

Sunday 26 May, 5pm / £5

Shape Records and Chapter present a programme of performances from bands and artists who have self-published zines as part of their practice. There will be a live zine created at the event that audience members can contribute to – with photos, thoughts, drawings – and take home at the end of the evening.

Click here for more info

Cardiff Print Workshop

Sat 25 & Sun 26 May / 11am – 5pm

Market House, Market Road, CF5 1QE

To coincide with the Publishing Weekend at Chapter, Cardiff Print Workshop will be opening to the public with a new exhibition and sale of handmade artist books.

Click here for more info

Book Binding Workshop

Sat 25 & Sun 26 May, 10am – 1pm / £15 (including materials) / age 16+

Cardiff Print Workshop

Take home your own handmade books, fantastic for presents! Learn how to fold, stitch and bind handmade books. You will learn to make two types of books, a traditional side bound book, useful as a notebook, or photo album, and a Concertina book, a fun experimental book which can include hidden pockets or paper cut outs.

Click here for more info

Between Art and Science / Archaeological photography and representation of the past in 19th century Italy

photomonitor — Sun, 12 May 2013 12:18:54 +0000

Dr. Jeremy Tanner, Professor at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, will discuss archaeological photography and the representation of the past in 19th century Italy.

Dr. Tanner’s talk is presented alongside the current exhibition at Daniel Blau, 79 AD: A Photographic Visit to 19th Century Italy, conceived in response to the British Museum’s major exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Daniel Blau’s exhibition contains original nineteenth century photographs of Pomeii alongside images documenting other archeological sites, art and architecture in Italy.

This talk is open to the public and free to attend. Please arrive promptly as seating is limited.

Wednesday May 15th, 2013
7:00-8:00 pm

51 Hoxton Square
London, N1 6PB

Lise Sarfati in conversation with Sean O’Hagan

photomonitor — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:35:07 +0000

Brancolini Grimaldi are delighted to announce Lise Sarfati will be talking about her work including recent projects SHE and On Hollywood with Guardian and Observer photography critic Sean O’Hagan.

Acclaimed photographer Lise Sarfati was born in France and started taking photographs aged just 13. She followed the completion of her Russian Masters degree at the Sorbonne with a decade in the Soviet Union, before moving to California in 2003. She now splits her time between Paris and the United States. Her work is inspired by the people and culture of her adopted nation, particularly focused on life in small-town America, where she can create relationships with her subjects, gain their trust and create a true portrait of their lives.

Her work is in several important collections including Museum of Modern Art San Francisco, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. Her work has been exhibited internationally at major galleries and public institutions including Los Angeles; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris: Maison Rouge, Paris; FOAM, Amsterdam; Photographer’s Gallery, London and Nicolaj Center of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen.

A retrospective of her work will be in Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris in 2014.

Lise will be signing copies of her latest book, SHE, published by Twin Palms after the talk.

The event is free, but space is limited. Reservation essential.

RSVP: elisa@brancolinigrimaldi.com

Tuesday 7th May

Doors open: 6.30pm

Event begins: 7.00pm

Book signing: 7.45pm

Symposium: The Photograph

photomonitor — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:24:16 +0000

To celebrate the opening weekend of Diffusion: Cardiff International Festival of Photography , this one-day symposium explores questions around ‘The Photograph’ and the status and meaning of the photographic object in visual culture. The keynote speech by internationally renowned artist Richard Wentworth will be followed by three panel sessions – Create, Curate and Collect – chaired by Professor Mark Durden (University of Wales Newport), Lisa Le Feuvre (Henry Moore Institute) and Christiane Monarchi (Photomonitor).

We invite the audience to explore with our speakers current trends in collecting photography, new contexts for curating the photographic image and the conundrum of photography’s ambiguous place in contemporary art.

Tickets £30 / £20 (students), plus booking fee

BOOK NOW

Programme

10.30 – 11.00 Registration and coffee

11.00 Welcome (David Drake) and Keynote from Richard Wentworth: On photography and the contemporary urban landscape

12.00 Panel Discussion: Create

The conundrum of photography’s ambiguous place in contemporary art

Moderator: Mark Durden, Professor of Photography, University of Wales Newport

Speakers:

Gideon Koppel (artist)

Trine Søndergaard (artist)

Daniel Blaufuks (artist)

13.00 Lunch break

14.00 Panel Discussion: Curate

New contexts for curating the contemporary photographic image

Moderator: Lisa Le Feuvre (Henry Moore Institute)

Speakers:

Sue Steward (curator/critic)

Deirdre MacKenna (Director, Stills)

Greg Hobson (Curator of Photographs, National Media Museum)

15.00 Tea break

15.30 Panel Discussion: Collect

Which way for the future of photography collecting?

Moderator: Christiane Monarchi (Editor, Photomonitor)

Speakers:

Michael Hoppen (collector/gallerist)

Jeffrey Boloten (ArtInsight)

Louise Shannon (Digital Curator, V&A)

Chris Littlewood (Director, Flowers Gallery)

Sebastien Montabonel (art advisor, Montabonel Fabres)

16.30 Closing remarks

17.00 End of symposium

Art, Election & History – Artist talk and reception

photomonitor — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:17:32 +0000

What is the role of the artist in the portrayal of political events?

Please join Flowers Gallery for a private reception and artist talk with Nicola Green and Simon Roberts on 26th March 2013, as part of the current exhibition Nicola Green: In Seven Days… / Simon Roberts: The Election Project which continues until 13th April.

Drinks will be served from 6pm.

The artists will be in conversation from 7pm.

Please RSVP to charlotte@flowersgallery.com

Creative Photography and Commerce

photomonitor — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 10:23:57 +0000

The Royal Photographic Society, in partnership with the University of the West of England and supported by The Photographic Angle and the Watershed, Bristol, is presenting a day of lectures and portfolio reviews from well-known photographers and industry professionals. Creative Photography and Commerce takes place at the Watershed on Friday, 22 March 2013 and aims to help at students and early career photographers develop their careers within the industry. The lectures are open to everyone.

For many photographers their professional work is very different to their personal work and the day encompasses all genres of photography within the creative industries ranging from art and documentary to commercial and editorial photography. The RPS has brought together the best in the business to give a series of lectures (open to all) and to offer advice and portfolio reviews of for photographers aged 35 and under.

The Royal Photographic Society’s Director-General Dr Michael Pritchard commented: “Making a career in photography is challenging and making a commercial success of your photography can be much harder. The Society is pleased to bring together established photographers and industry professionals to give the photographers of tomorrow the benefit of their experience. This is the first time such an event has been held in the South West and we hope that those just starting their careers will take advantage of what will be a great day”.

The lectures will examine the relationship between personal work and commercial practice through the eyes of some of the most progressive individuals in the field, including Chris Floyd, Rhea Thierstein, Olivia Gideon Thomson, Laura Pannack, Kate Peters and Toby Smith who will discussing their own work and how the marriage of creativity and commerce works for them.

Portfolio reviewers include: Anthony Holland Parkin from Getty Images, Zoe Whishaw, the Guardian’s Roger Tooth, Clare Hewitt, Ben Roberts, Steve Ledger-Lomas, Angus Fraser, Thom Atkinson and Ashley Jouhar.

The event takes place at the Watershed, Bristol, from 10 am to 5 pm, and costs: £25 lectures only (open to all) and £55 for lectures and portfolio reviews (students and photographers 35 years and under).

To book click: http://www.rps.org/workshops/view/2959

Symposium: Photography and the Book

photomonitor — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:16:30 +0000

The Royal Photographic Society with the University of Bolton and Chethams Library, present Photography and the book symposium on Saturday 16 March 2013 at Chethams Library Manchester

Photography and the book
In recent years there has been rapid growth in the field of photo-books and with that considerable interest in the photo -book not only as a collectable artefact, but also as a preferred or alternative way of exhibiting and distributing photography. This symposium will discuss the historical context of the photobook, the practicalities of getting published, the effects of self-publication and a consideration of whether the photo books are improving in quality and what makes a great photobook. This symposium will lead by four leading commentators on photography.

Schedule

0930 -1000 Registration

1000-1015 Introduction Ian Beesley & Michael Powell

1015 -1115   Colin Harding: Curator of Photographic technology NMM.The Historical development of the photobook from Fox Talbot to Tony Ray Jones.

1115-1130    Tea Break

1130-1230 Dewi Lewis: Publisher and curator of photography. The logistics of publishing,funding, and publisher selection.

1230 -1400 Lunch break

1400-1500 Chris Coekin: Photographer as publisher, why self publish, production decisions and how they connect to subject/ideas/inspiration.

1500-1600 Geoff Dyer: Author and critic, “The on going moment” where the idea came from, the tradition its is part of, its problems and its themes

1600-1700 Panel discussion

1700 -1900 Drinks reception, exhibition of photo books by MA photography graduates from the University of Bolton.

During the day they will be the opportunity to take tours of the library and exhibition Godlies, Merries and Pleasant Histories: the chapbook tradition 1731-2013‘

There will also be an exhibition of contemporary photo-books.

Click here to book tickets through the Royal Photographic Society’s website (£25 RPS members and students, £30 non-members)

A Talk by Dr. Caroline Blinder

photomonitor — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:06:23 +0000

“Crazed voyageur of the lone automobile” - Jack Kerouac on Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959)

In 1959, Jack Kerouac wrote an introduction to Robert Frank’s collection of photographs The Americans. This introduction, marked by a belief in everyday American life as a critical and radical entry into the poetics of photography, sets the scene for a particular reading of Frank’s images, one in which a particular Beat aesthetic is measured vis-a-vis the lyrical quality of Frank’s images. Nonetheless, to this day the importance of Kerouac’s writing as a guide post towards a deeper understanding of The Americansremains unexplored.

This lecture therefore re-examines Kerouac’s introduction and Frank’s photographic vision of America by taking into account how concepts of space and temporality are used in the book overall to define photography as ‘Beat’ as well as transcendent. By looking closer at Kerouac’s fascination with the mnemonic and iconographical power of the photograph, Frank’s transcendent eye is defined in terms of an ability to show the “everything-ness” of America; both an homage to and critique of a nation.

While Kerouac stresses the romantic version of the photographer as American flaneur, Frank himself was able to locate certain patterns of American identity without Kerouac’s tendency towards nostalgia. Commonly read as an iconic piece of photographic history in the context of the Cold War, the overall constellation of The Americans must therefore be read in the light of the written commentary that accompanies it.

Dr. Caroline Blinder is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London. Recent publications include: New Critical Essays on James Agee and Walker Evans: Perspectives on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 2010, ‘Brassaï’s Chair, Henry Miller and The Eye of Paris’ in Text and Image Relations in Modern European Culture, 2011, ‘Sitting Pretty: Modernism and the Municipal Chair in the Work of Kertész and Doisneau, in Regarding the Popular: High and Low Culture in the Avant Garde and Modernism, 2011, ‘The Bachelor’s Drawer: Art and Artefact in the Work of Wright Morris’ in Writing With Light – Words and Photographs in American Texts, 2009, ‘Not so Innocent: Vision and Culpability in Weegee’s Photographs of Children’ in Photographs, Histories, and Meanings, 2009, and chapters on James Agee and Wright Morris for Fifty Key Writers on Photography, 2012.

This talk runs from 6:30 pm at 51 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB.

Daniel Blau Gallery’s talks are open to everyone. Book early to avoid disappointment, as numbers are limited.

Tickets cost £6 and are available for purchase by clicking “BUY TICKETS” on this Daniel Blau Gallery webpage.

Talks Programme

photomonitor — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:47:50 +0000

The 6th edition of FORMAT International Photography Festival presents a selection of the best of international photography in a diverse programme of exhibitions and events. FORMAT is curated by Louise Clements, Artistic Director of QUAD & FORMAT, hosted & organised by QUAD and the University of Derby.

Beginning at 2 pm on 6 March 2013 with the first talk by James A. Hudson, seven separate talks in the FORMAT13 programme continue throughout the month of March. A summary of the events and venues follows below. For booking and enquiries please visit formatfestival.com

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James A. Hudson

6 March | University of Derby, Markeaton Street, Auditorium 1 | 14:00 | FREE

Hudson lived in Oslo in Norway for 5 years and for some of that time worked for the Norwegian Employment service photographing in factories, building sites and offices.

Oliver Woods

13 March | University of Derby, Markeaton Street, Auditorium 1 | 14:00 | FREE

Woods has been a freelance photographer since 2005, trained as an artist and radio journalist. He now divides his time between photography and working as a producer at the BBC World Service.

Belén Cerezo

13 March | Artcore | 17:30 | FREE

Join artist Belén Cerezo as she discusses her new FORMAT 13/ Synapse Arts residency commission ‘Living Water’, linking to the river Derwent and her research into archives at the Silk Mill, and Derby Local Studies Library.
Book through QUAD Box Office 01332 290 606 or at formatfestival.com

Photography day hosted by the Guardian Picture Desk

16 March | QUAD | 11:00 – 16:00 | £20

Talk led by Guardian Head of Photography Roger Tooth and award-winning Guardian photographers, with a focus on photojournalism, editing and the range of photography in newspapers today. Portfolio reviews by Guardian editors and photographers: bring your portfolio, join in the discussion or just come to listen.

Book through QUAD Box Office 01332 290 606 or at formatfestival.com

Special Performative Talk by Brian Griffin

23 March | Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Gallery 1 | 15:00 – 17:00 | FREE

Amidst the steady gaze of one hundred static eyes, Brian Griffin will perform a sequence of informative dialogues about the Still Waters portrait exhibition

Photoforum: photographers Huw Davies and David Moore

28 March | Fat Cat Café Bar | 18:30 – 20:30 | £3

Past Work Revisited talk with FORMAT13

Bring in work from your photographic past and share it with Huw and David, in discussion with Paul Hill. Book through QUAD Box Office 01332 290 606 or at formatfestival.com

University of Derby 2012 Photography Graduates

30 March | Banks Mill | 14:00 | FREE

Exhibiting artists Lauren Spencer and Simon Weldon will discuss their work and ideas and how these relate to the main FORMAT13 theme of FACTORY.

Book through QUAD Box Office 01332 290 606 or at formatfestival.com

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For a full listing of exhibitions and venue, see FORMAT13 exhibition listing or www.formatfestival.com for further events and workshops through March and April.

Heidi Specker – Gallery Talk and Film Screening

photomonitor — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:15:19 +0000

German artist Heidi Specker’s latest series, Termini, is currently on display at Brancolini Grimaldi until 16 March. It in ranges in subject matter from the home of Surrealist artist Giorgio de Chirico in central Rome to the apartment of dandy, designer and architect Carlo Mollino in Turin and to the fascist era architecture of the EUR district. Surfaces, buidlings and objects are transfigured, starting with the precision with which they are photographed. The image, which is often close-up, modifies space proportions, isolating the subjects fomr the context and making them absolutes.

Specker will be giving a free talk about her work including the current show, but also exploring previous projects including Im Garten and Concrete.

Following the talk, there will be a special screening of Michaelangelo Antonion’s L’Eclisse, which was shot in and around the EUR district of Rome and explores some of the themes also shared by Specker’s work.

RSVP: averil@brancolinigrimaldi.com

For more information on Heidi Specker’s Termini please see the exhibition listing.

Bridget Coaker, Julie Cockburn and Aliki Braine in Discussion

photomonitor — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:12:11 +0000

Bridget Coaker, Director of Troika Editions and Night Picture Editor at the Guardian and Observer newspapers, will discuss with artists Julie Cockburn and Aliki Braine the rise of craft and artistic interventions within photography and how their own interventions of hole punching, cutting, collaging and embroidery have pushed the boundaries of what we consider art photography to be in the 21st Century.

2012 witnessed a proliferation of exhibitions in London which underlined a discernible shift in what we now define as photography. No longer thought of as craftless, reliant on the technical qualities of the camera or hidebound by the documentary genre, photography has blossomed into an expressive medium celebrated for its ability to describe purely visual ideas.

A graduate of Central St Martins where she studied sculpture, Julie Cockburn’s work defies categorization. An artist working with photography, but her mixed media creations directly challenge our perception of what photography is. Represented by Flowers and the Photographers Gallery, included in the BJP’s Paper Rocks and Scissors exhibition and the Photography as Object show at the Sumarria Lunn gallery all place her firmly within the British photography scene. But Julie has also won the Jerwood Prize for Drawing in 2010 and the Marmite Prize for Painting and it is this collision with other art forms that makes her work so exciting.

Aliki Braine studied Fine Art at the Ruskin School, University of Oxford before going onto to do her MA at The Slade and finally completing an MA in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. It is this grounding in both the practice and theory of art that she combines in her work and draws upon while exploring the recurrent theme of the painted landscape.

In his essay “Wilful Damage” John Hilliard highlights Aliki’s concern to show the photograph as an object. Through interventions such as making holes in the negative, scratching the surface of the emulsion or drawing on the film with typex, Aliki systematically damages or obliterates the negative, drawing our attention to its material presence and the specificity of the photograph itself.

Bridget Coaker is a picture editor based in London, where she works for the Guardian and Observer newspapers and is also Director of Photography for the contemporary photography gallery Troika Editions. She has curated a number of exhibitions and in 2009 was Director of the Hereford Photography Festival where she presented the photography of European photographers working with the image of the child in “Seen But Not Heard” and curated the retrospective show of photojournalist and filmmaker John Bulmer.

Bridget is a visiting lecturer at UK Universities, including the University for the Creative Arts, University of Derby and the Hereford College of Art. In 2011 she joined the steering committee of the FORMAT International Photography Festival and participated in the North East Photography Network Symposium – Photography Publishing and the Future of the Photo-Book. Bridget has also written about photography including for the online art photography magazine, 1000 Words, The Daily Telegraph and is a contributing writer for the book “Exhibiting Photography” published by Focal Press.

This talk runs from 6:30 pm at 51 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB.

Our talks are open to everyone. We recommend booking early to avoid disappointment, as numbers are limited.

Tickets cost £6 and are available for purchase by visiting the Daniel Blau Gallery website.

In Conversation with Francesco Zanot

photomonitor — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:35:52 +0000

At this special gallery event, Domingo Milella will be introducing his work, discussing his current gallery show and giving an overview of his photographic practice.

Leading photography critic and curator, Francesco Zanot, will introduce and moderate the event.

The event is free, but space is limited. RSVP is essential.

Please rsvp to Averil Curci: averil@brancolinigrimaldi.com / 0207 493 5721

Photoworks Desert Island Pics – talk with Simon Baker at London Art Fair

photomonitor — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:10:39 +0000

As part of the London Art Fair’s talks programme, Dr Simon Baker, Curator of Photography and International Art at Tate is asked which eight photographs he would take with him to a desert island. The images are projected and discussed live, revealing fascinating stories about Simon – and photography itself. The host of this ongoing series is artist, writer and lecturer Stephen Bull.

Photoworks is the UK’s leading agency for photography. Funded by Arts Council England, Photoworks encourages debate and inspires new thinking about photography. The organisation commissions new work, curates exhibitions and events, produces one of the UK’s largest photography festivals; the Brighton Photo Biennial, publishes books, limited editions and the photography and visual culture journal, Photoworks.

Book your place now

Photography Focus Day – Talks at London Art Fair

photomonitor — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 22:19:52 +0000

London Art Fair has built up a strong reputation for photography within the Main Fair, Art Projects and also in Photo50.

Photo50 is an exhibition of contemporary photography featuring fifty works, curated this year by Nick Hackworth, Director of Paradise Row. Find out more

Main Fair galleries exhibiting contemporary photography include Jack Bell Gallery, Purdy Hicks, Crane Kalman Brighton, SALON VERT and Sarah Myerscough Fine Art and The Cynthia Corbett Gallery. Strong photographic presentations are also expected within Art Projects from COLE, Hannah Barry Gallery, The Wapping Project Bankside, Troika Editions and Orion Contemporary.

View all exhibiting galleries

This year’s Photography Focus Day will take place on Wednesday 16 January, with talks, tours and discussions on this day will examining contemporary photographic practice and market concerns.

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Talks

Mirror to the Soul: Empathy Through Photography
PhotoVoice

12.00-1.00

Book your place now

Does photography have unique qualities that help us to see things from other people’s perspectives? Or feel an emotional connection with situations or people that other art forms cannot create?

This one hour discussion will look at approaches taken by different photographers and practitioners to use photography as a way to connect people across distances, convey sensitive or personal issues, and prompt a sense of involvement in situations that are alien to the audience.

Chaired by Matt Daw, Projects Manager, PhotoVoice.
Speakers include Spencer Rowell, Photographer and Founding Editor of Uncertain States Newspaper; Helen Cammock, Project Manager of ‘Having Our Say Too’ project with sexually exploited young people and former Director of the Brighton Fringe Festival; Del Loewenthal, Photographer and Professor of Counselling and Psychotherapy, University of Roehampton and Laura Pannack, Photographer

Is ‘Still Life’ Still Relevant in Contemporary Photography?

1.30-2.30

Book your place now

‘Still Life’ may have been routed in classical painting and the whole genre of ‘nature mort’ but what we see in contemporary photography now is a radical outburst, as ‘Still Life’ evolves to encompass a third dimension, photographing installations and interpreting subjects for their sculptural qualities. How should we define this new work and is ‘Still Life’ the most appropriate term?

This panel discussion will be mediated by critic and curator Sue Steward.

‘A Cyclical Poem’

3.00-4.00

Book your place now

Nick Hackworth, Director of Paradise Row gallery, and curator of this year’s Photo50 exhibition entitled ‘A Cyclical Poem’, discusses the exhibition with some of the artists involved: Ian Beesley, Paul Hill, Dorothy Bohm and Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen.

Contemporary African Photography

4.30-5.30

Book your place now

This panel considers why the profile of contemporary African photography has increased in recent years, how galleries and institutions are securing new work and whether these artists are the authentic voice of a nation. This session is chaired by Sheyi Bankale (Editor and Creative Director of at Next Level magazine) and the panel includes critic and curator Sue Steward and curator Renée Mussai (Autograph).

In association with Next Level.

Photography Past and Present – Afternoon session

photomonitor — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:37:27 +0000

Delve into photography’s past with this short practical workshop inspired by the National Gallery’s current exhibition Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present

This is a unique opportunity to experiment with 19th-century lenses used by the earliest photographers and create your own black-and-white exposures.

With Paul Lipscombe, Senior Lecturer at The Arts University College at Bournemouth, and researcher in the field of early photography.

Date: Saturday 12 January

Time: 2 – 4.30 pm (A repeat of the morning workshop)

Location: Pigott Education Centre Rooms 2 and 3

Cost: £18/£15 concessions – all materials and equipment provided

Booking: Through The National Gallery website

Photography Past and Present – Morning Session

photomonitor — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:51:37 +0000

Delve into photography’s past with this short practical workshop inspired by the National Gallery’s current exhibition Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present

This is a unique opportunity to experiment with 19th-century lenses used by the earliest photographers and create your own black-and-white exposures.

With Paul Lipscombe, Senior Lecturer at The Arts University College at Bournemouth, and researcher in the field of early photography.

Date: Saturday 12 January

Time: 10.30am–1pm This workshop is repeated from 2–4.30pm

Location: Pigott Education Centre Rooms 2 and 3

Cost: £18/£15 concessions – all materials and equipment provided

Booking: Through The National Gallery website

‘Seduced by Art’: Maisie Broadhead Masterclass

photomonitor — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 23:10:51 +0000

Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present is The National Gallery’s first major exhibition of photography. This groundbreaking show explores the relationship between historical painting, early photography of the mid-19th century, and some of the most exciting work being done by photographers today.

On 8th December, join artist Maisie Broadhead, currently exhibiting in Seduced by Art, who will discuss the theory and concepts behind her work.

Participants will also experience the unique opportunity to sit in on a live shoot of Broadhead’s new work, inspired by a painting in the Gallery’s collection.

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Tickets:

£50/£40 concessions – includes entry to the exhibition Seduced by Art.

Spaces limited – tickets must be booked in advance through The National Gallery’s website booking page.

Time and Place:

Saturday 8 December, 11am–4.30pm

Sainsbury Wing Theatre

Conference: The Shadow of Language

photomonitor — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:52:28 +0000

The Shadow of Language brings together thinkers and artists from the UK and China. The conference aims to discuss and explore the rich relations between the verbal and the visual, with particular reference to the still and the moving image.

Last year, the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts organized a conference at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, to which two artists teaching at RCA were invited. The title of the conference was Yingxiang Today. It translates as Shadow Image, a word that is used to denote photography. We are now reciprocating with a conference that produces a different shadow: the shadow that language casts upon images and representations.

The Shadow of Language is not a thematic subject. This is not about collecting instances of linguistic shadows and the way in which they affect visual signs. Instead, the title acts as a springboard for the artists and thinkers that we have invited. Their contribution is a response that will produce its specific shadow-effect. Placing emphasis on the word shadow, also places emphasis on light. It indicates a metaphor of language as a light source that endows the objects it encounters with a shadow. Language may illuminate as much as it can obscure, keeping the image in darkness, away from the demands of clarity and communication.

The dependence between image and language may be taxing. It may trigger a desire for independence. Let the image be silent and purge language from images! But these calls for purity always fail. Language always ends up using images or metaphors and images are endlessly caught up in meaning and signification. When confronted with the question of translation, the relation between image and language is again exacerbated. Are images above language, are they the Esperanto some dream about, or are images, like a dream, a form of rebus in which image and language are intertwined?

Losing one’s shadow or selling it to the Devil is equivalent to losing one’s mind like in Peter Schlemihl, the novella by Adalbert von Chamisso. In Cyrano de Bergerac’s State and Empires of the Moon, noses are used as sundials and their shadow indicate the time. In Freud’s conception of melancholia, we read that the shadow of the object falls upon the ego. The shadow is an indexical sign as much as a metaphor. Like shadows, photography and film are predicated upon a certain relation to light.

The conference will provide a research context for a reflection upon the persistence and the necessity of shadows in art and in language. It aims to call into question the demands for clarity, efficiency and instrumentality that produce a shadowless world.

- Prof. Olivier Richon, Royal College of Art

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The 6th Annual Conference of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design in collaboration with Image and Language Research, Royal College of Art.

Wednesday 21 November

9.30 Registration. Tea/ coffee, introduction and first presentation

Welcome: Ute Meta Bauer, Dean of Fine Art, Royal College of Art

Introduction: Olivier Richon, Royal College of Art: Image, Language and Shadow

Keynote: Marina Warner, University of Essex

The Ambiguous Life of Shadow

In the Twenties in Berlin, Lotte Reiniger created a series of silhouette films, including a masterly comic Cinderella (1922) and the longest animation feature yet made for the cinema, The Adventures of Prince Ahmed (1926). Her cinematic storytelling reveals the ambiguous life of shadow, and its range of spectral and deathly symbolism. When she was exiled from Germany, and survived by making films for children’s television on the BBC and in the USA, she had to self-censor her vision in order to avoid the sinister undertones that her medium could express.

11.30 Mark Nash, Royal College of Art

Image and Discourse

My presentation will look back at some of the theories about cinema and the moving image as a universal language, with a particular mention of Soviet linguists (Yuri M Lotman) discussion of inner speech, Eisensteins intellectual montage and so on ending up with Lacans ‘the unconscious is structured like a language’ which was the bedrock of 1970s and 1980s film and visual art theory. I will then segue into the post-structuralist Foucauldian notion of discourse and the ways in which the art work and the experience of the work are discursively shaped and increasingly indistinguishable one from the other – no art work without language. Or rather what would the work of art today be without language

12.30-2.15 Lunch break

2.15 Isaac Julien, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe

The Shadow of Capital

How might what this conference calls a ‘Shadow of Language’ obscure an understanding of Capital for the general public just as it prevents artistic attempts at representation? With reference to the current financial crisis I will discuss a critical turn back towards Marx, discussing how and why the stakes have changed. I will also analyse current forms of media discourse around the financial crash. With reference to PLAYTIME: CAPITAL, an artwork that is currently in development, I will discuss my research process and search for a conceptual framework that might allow me to picture Capital. Ultimately, I will show how our best hope for making Capital visible and removing it from The Shadow of Language is through a mutual dependence of image and language, albeit one where language acts to illuminate rather than obscure the image.

3.00 Lv Shengzhong, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing

What Does the Term Image Mean for Artists?

A concept of image was first introduced to China in 1990 by Professor Mijka from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HFBK) in his lectures at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. Since then, theoretical discussion and art practice addressing the image thrived in China. The paper will address the issue of image in relations to its Chinese historical references and contemporary art context, and share thoughts and ideas on image art from an artist and art educator’s perspective.

3.45 break

4.00 Jananne Al Ani, London College of Communication

Shadow Sites

The work explores the disappearance of the body in the contested and highly charged landscapes of the Middle East. Taking the form of an aerial journey, the films show sites bearing traces of natural and man made activity as well as ancient and contemporary settlements and structures. From William Holman Hunt’s 1854 Scapegoat to the media images of the 1991 Desert Storm campaign, the Middle Eastern landscape has been depicted as uninhabited, barren and without sign of civilization. In response to the military use of digital technology and satellite navigation devices, I produce films that recreate in form the aerial vantage point of such missions while taking an altogether different view of the land surveyed.

4. 45 Zheng Bo, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou

Visibility

I will approach the notion of visibility through the Village Documentary Project organized by filmmaker Wu Wenguang in which ten villagers from different parts of China participated. Informed by Jacques Rancière’s notion of visibility, the introduction of the video camera allows the villagers to assume an insider-outsider identity with a stranger visibility to rural politics; it facilitates self-learning and cultivates a sense of equality.

6.00 Opening

The Unseen: Gao Shiquiang; Lu Yang; Xiao Yu; Wang Yuyiang

Curated by JIANG Jiehong, BIAD In association with Image and Language Research, RCA RCA off-site project of The Fourth Guangzhou Triennial

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Thursday 22 November

9.30 Tea/coffee

10.00 Keynote: Alexander Garciá Düttmann, Goldsmiths College

Let The World Go To Wrack And Ruin, There Is No Other Politics

In her film Le camion (The Lorry, 1977), Marguerite Duras famously says: “Que le monde aille à sa perte, c’est la seule politique”, which can be translated as: “Let the world go to wrack and ruin, there is no other politics.” How can this sentence be related to the dissociation of word and image that, according to Deleuze, characterises Duras’ films and modern cinema? And how can it be related to the sentence “Let cinema go to wrack and ruin, there is no other cinema”, a sentence Duras includes in an abstract she wrote when preparing the shoot of Le camion?

11. 00 Mitra Tabrizian, University of Westminster

Dislocation

I will discuss some recent works in relation to what we might call the ‘crisis of contemporary culture’. Shot at the headquarters of JP Morgan, City London, 2008 alludes to the financial crisis. Set against the derelict and disused factories of Leicester and Loughborough, the project Leicestershire (2012) attempts a historical ‘documentation’ and tribute to the forgotten citizens who helped build what were once major industrial cities. The work goes beyond the tradition of ‘landscape’ and ‘document’, instead, it uses ‘documentary form’ to address abstract ideas of cultural and political dislocation, of being simultaneously both part of a city and excluded from it.

11.45 Francette Pacteau, Royal College of Art

On Reflection

A musing on the experience of living in a foreign language in a country that is not one’s own. The play of possession of, and dispossession by, the other tongue imagined as a reflexibility of illumination and obscurity: each language casts its changing shadow on the other, and is shadowed by the other as if by an irksome dopplegänger.

12.30- 2.15 Lunch break

2. 15 Gao Shiquiang, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou

Moving Image Creation as Method

As a moving image creator and experiencer, I draw lessons from the “hermiting” (yinyi – being playful in solitude) tradition of Chinese literati paintings and attempt to propose a strategy of “hermiting in moving image.” Through multiple, personal, subjective, and generative languages and actions, we can resist the homogeneous reality sculpted by the increasingly spectacularised moving image.

3.00 The Unseen

The theme of this exhibition is straightforward, despite its suggestion of obscurity. Its title, the Unseen, a simple term with easy access, is a point of departure for a vast range of possible meanings that touch on the complexity of ways of seeing, blindness and envisaging, especially with respect to visual art. The Unseen, focusing our attention on the invisible, or even the uncertainties of their existence, by no means precludes the visible. In Chinese, it can be translated as jian suo wei jian, literally, ‘to see the unseen’. The Unseen refers to the limitations of our sensory organs, the narrow confines of human perception on the one hand; on the other, paradoxically, it gives rise to observations that transcend familiar experience.

Panel discussion with artists Lu Yang, Xiao Yu, Wang Yuyiang, Gao Shiquiang and Jiang Jiehong, curator of the Fourth Guangzhou Triennial and director of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.

Chaired by Rut Blees Luxemburg, Royal College of Art.

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Information for attendees:

Cost: £25 per day, booking available through the RCA website: www.rca.ac.uk/shadow

Location: RCA Battersea, Dyson Building, Hester Road, London SW11

Further information: RCA Photography Programme: 020 7590 4414; photography@rca.ac.uk

Lorenzo Durantini in conversation with Darren Harvey-Regan and Joshua Citarella

photomonitor — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 11:49:42 +0000

Brush it in is a colloquial expression for a wide variety of alterations made to digital images after they have been captured. The transition from analogue to digital post-production yielded an incredible expansion of existing techniques for image manipulation. Adobe Photoshop was originally developed as a digital emulation of the physical techniques of the darkroom. It quickly developed its own specific vocabulary and it is precisely this language that Brush it in engages with.

As digital image making became ubiquitous within popular culture, so did the awareness that digital post-production tools exercised more power for deception than the photographic act itself. Mass-produced commodities inevitably disappoint in an economy increasingly based around images. Objects are subjected to a haptic half-life; the pleasure they produce is inversely related to the power of the image.

An ever secretive and loosely defined field, digital post-production has invariably sharpened the crisis of faith in photographic representation. This loss of faith has levelled the playing field; all manipulative strategies are at once simultaneously expected and disavowed. The artists in this exhibition are instigating what could be called the beginnings of a post-Photoshop engagement with photography. What was once a novel and paradigm shifting digital process has become a banality; it is used everywhere and by everyone. Brush it in hopes to further dismantle the mechanism of image manipulation by highlighting its relationship to sculptural and material interventions.

Talk: Join Lorenzo Durantini, the curator of Brush it in, in conversation with artists Darren Harvey-Regan and Joshua Citarella at Flowers Gallery.

Date/Time: 20th November, 18.30

RSVP: This is a free event. Please RSVP via email: info@flowersgallery.com

Conversation Series: ‘Seduced by Art’

photomonitor — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 14:25:51 +0000

Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present is the National Gallery’s first major exhibition of photography. This groundbreaking show explores the relationship between historical painting, early photography of the mid-19th century, and some of the most exciting work being done by photographers today.

Conversation Series: ‘Seduced by Art’

What connects the history of painting, the earliest decades of photography, and work by some of the most innovative photographers active today? This topic is explored in a conversation between Seduced by Art curators Christopher Riopelle and Hope Kingsley:

Encounters: Connecting Artists, Past and Present

Christopher Riopelle and Hope Kingsley in discussion

Friday 9 November, 6.30–7.30pm

Sainsbury Wing Theatre

Tickets are available for £6 (£4 concessions) through the National Gallery’s website .