ayesarah

[ayesarah]

Lara Almarcergui

Lara Almarcegui has built up an artistic practice around exploring the material aspects of land and urban space. For over twenty years, she has worked in different cities, identifying abandoned, unused, or forgotten sites and examining the contemporary transformation processes brought about by social, political, and economic change. At a time of widespread urban renewal in Europe, Almarcegui has created guides to wastelands in the cities she has worked in, sometimes even instigating their legal protection. In recent years, Almarcegui has turned her attention to construction sites, in particular the composite materials used in the construction of new buildings and the cyclical relationship between land and architecture. 

Lara Almarcegui lives and works in Rotterdam. Almarcegui has completed commissions for numerous international biennials and represented Spain at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013). She is represented by Gallery Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam; Parra y Romero, Madrid and Mor Charpentier, Paris.

The works that Lara Almarcegui has been developing over the course of nearly twenty years are situated at the border between urban renewal and urban decay, and make visible what tends to escape general notice. On the one hand, Almarcegui focuses her attention on abandoned spaces and structures in the process of transformation; on the other, she investigates the different connections that can be established between architecture and the urban order. The work of Lara Almarcegui poses questions about the current state of the construction, development, use, and decay of spaces that are apparently peripheral to the city. In her large- scale projects she provokes a dialogue between the different elements that make up the physical reality of the urban landscape, in its constant transformation through demolitions, excavations, construction materials, and contemporary ruins.

Lara Almarcegui is a conceptual artist whose work touches on building materials and their eventual dereliction. Both subjects are tied to Almarcegui’s interest in processes of urban transformation brought about by political, social, and economic change—ideas that she began to study sedulously in the mid-1990s. “Wastelands are important,” Almarcegui says, “because they are the only places in the city that remain without definition.” In some projects, she bundles the information she gathers into “guides”, about the past, present, and future of specific lots. In others, she presents installations of construction materials in ordered piles, or in mountainous heaps. For a Frieze Art Fair project in 2006, Almarcegui made a work consisting of the exact materials and their quantities used to construct the Fair’s tent.

[ayesarah]

Rosa- Johan Uddoh

Rosa-Johan Uddoh is an interdisciplinary artist working towards radical self-love, inspired by Black feminist practice and writing. Through performance, writing and multi-media installation, she explores places, objects and celebrities in British popular culture, and their effects on self-formation. Collaboration is key to Rosa's work, often working together with children, activists and other artists through performance, writing and multi-media installation, and their effects on self-formation and explore themes that impact our communities and share knowledge. Her first book, 'Practice Makes Perfect', co-published with Bookworks and Focal Point Gallery is coming soon in 2021.

Rosa is a lecturer in Performance at Central Saint Martins. She was a finalist for Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2021. Rosa was the Liverpool Biennial and John Moores Univerity Fellow 2018-2019 and was the Stuart Hall Library Resident for 2020. She was a Sarabande: Lee Alexander Mc Queen Scholar. 

Using performance, installation and writing she explores an infatuation with places, objects or celebrities in British popular culture, and the effects of these on self-formation. Particularly, Uddoh is interested in Black performance in popular culture – how it can expand or constrict the way Black people move through space. Her experiences as a Black woman in Architecture and living in a former colonial centre, London, have generated her acute understanding of the way in which space is materially built and socially structured, and how this affects the way we relate through our bodies, behaviors and sense of self.

Uddoh’s work utilises humor, appropriation and parody as tools used by diasporic subjects for creative resistance. Each of her performances appropriate a particular popular media format, working with people’s preconceived ideas as a gesture towards taking ownership of mass-media. Her first book, Practice Makes Perfect, a collection of scripts and scores explores these themes, will be co-published by Focal Point Gallery and Bookworks in 2021.

Practice Makes Perfect is focused on the timely subject of childhood education in Britain. Rosa-Johan Uddoh looks at how schooling forms an early understanding of what it means to be British, but also at what within this is marginalised or left out. Responding to current debates about Black history within the National Curriculum, Uddoh has approached creating new work for this exhibition as therapeutic ‘wish fulfilment’ in a time of uncertainty and tension.

The exhibition includes a major new work by Uddoh - a large-scale collage - which investigates the historical figure of Balthazar. According to tradition, Balthazar was one of the three biblical Magi and later a Saint, who offered the gift of Myrrh to Jesus. Depicted since medieval times as a lone black figure in artistic imagery of the Nativity scene or ‘Adoration’, this King is often the first time school children encounter a Black person of importance in a performance.

Historically, Balthazar is also a figure through which white artists and their patrons in Europe first constructed ‘Blackness’. Through her research, with the assistance of Nasra Abdullahi, Uddoh has found and catalogued around 150 historical ‘Balthazars’ featured in ‘Adoration’ paintings made throughout European history. Thinking about the real, Black European sitters for these paintings, Uddoh’s billboard-style collage brings these Black kings together in friendship groups on a long march of solidarity to change the West.

[ayesarah]

Pádraic E. Moore

Pádraic E. Moore is a writer, curator and art historian based in Brussels. Moore’s research interests focus on the influence of esoteric philosophies on the literary and visual arts. A recent study considers how occult organisations, such as the Theosophical Society, offered a vital catalyst for change in late 19th and early 20th-century art. Moore’s projects often explore how contemporary culture has embraced aesthetics and ideals informed by esoteric traditions; chronicling the work of artists who refer to or follow this tradition is an integral aspect of his practice.

He is currently a selector for EVA International platform commissions. EVA is Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art and leads in the commissioning and curating of contemporary art by Irish and international artists. The Platform commission initiative fosters the production of new work by artists that will be presented as part of the next chapter of the biennial in 2023.

Recent curatorial projects include Tour Donas by Lucy McKenzie at Temple Bar Gallery Dublin and The Museum of Ancient History, a group exhibition at University College Dublin. He has organised curatorial projects in institutions including W139 Amsterdam, 1646 Den Haag, Irish Museum of Modern Art; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.

Moore’s practice is shaped by the belief that visual art enables alternative modes of interaction in a world increasingly led by technological rationality. His curatorial methodology is meticulous but subjective, and it is informed by an acute awareness of the artist’s position. Moore’s research interests focus on the influence of esoteric philosophies on both the literary and visual arts. Recent research, undertaken by Moore, considers how occult organizations, such as the Theosophical Society, offered a catalyst for change in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art. Moore’s projects often explore how contemporary culture has embraced aesthetics and ideals informed by such esoteric traditions. Relating the work of artists who refer to or follow this tradition is an esential aspect of his practice.

[ayesarah]

Joanna Zielińska 

In her artistic practice, Joanna Zielińska explores the relationship of objects, surfaces and spaces as they vacillate between abstraction and representation – between found objects and artistic agency. This arises out of a collision between the digital photograph, the computer and the various cloth or paper surfaces on which they are printed. They have the appearance of being made in such a way that the artist’s presence is almost erased. She is interested in what is left when references to human intervention and temporal time stamps are erased. How and what do these geometries, the light that illuminates them and the mechanical nature of their creation resonates and signify?

Joanna Zielińska is an art historian, exhibition maker and performance curator. The ideas of performative exhibition and performative artwork are fundamental in her curatorial research. Her practice is based on performance, theatre, performative literature, and visual arts. She is also interested in provoking a discussion on the identity and activity of 21st-century museums. This approach is less bounded by a physical space than by the idea of community, the significance of new media, and the public sphere.

She works as a senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp. From 2015 to 2020, she was the Head of the Performing Arts Department at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. She is the former Chief Curator at Cricoteka, the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor in Kraków, Poland, where in 2014 she curated the inaugural exhibition for the opening of the institution’s new building. Joanna Zielińska is the former Artistic Director at the Znaki Czasu Centre of Contemporary Art (CoCA) in Toruń, Poland, where she curated the inaugural exhibition for the opening of the institution’s new building and the institution’s program during 2008–2010.

Since 2011, she has been working on a long-term research project on the artist’s novel, in collaboration with Spanish artist David Maroto. Its central question is how a literary genre such as the novel becomes a medium in the visual arts. As its cornerstone, The Book Lovers have created a collection of artists’ novels with a parallel online database (both in collaboration with M HKA) and complemented it with a series of exhibitions, performances, publications, and a pop-up book store, hosted by international institutions such as De Appel in Amsterdam, Raven Row in London, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, CCA Glasgow, and the EFA Project Space in New York, among others.

When asked how she would define her practice she answered "I’m working very transdisciplinary and using different formats for my work. For me, it’s important to create my own methodology which is based on different disciplines. Because I’m working with people from theatre very often, and also with people from the literary world because of the Book Lovers project that I am co-curating with David Maroto. I’m creating my own path and I have my own interests as a curator. Most of what I do is site-specific and also I’m using process-based media. I don’t like to stick to the very traditional formats. When I’m curating an exhibition, I would always choose a performative piece over a traditional exhibition with artworks hanging on the walls."

[ayesarah]

Shwetal Patel

The author, Shwetal A Patel, is a writer and researcher who works at the intersection of contemporary culture, exhibition practices, and development studies. Currently, Patel's interests lie in the idea of 'hyper-local' and 'hyperconnected' at this moment in time, and its implications for the field of curating, as well as practitioner practice more broadly. In his most recent publication, OnCurating 46, he delved into some of these questions; he is currently working on a book entitled "How to Biennale!". '(The Manual)' is a work in progress that aims to assist practitioners in 'making and sustaining' interactive arts platforms in the digital era. In his talk, Patel will discuss his experience of participating in the biennials of Kochi and Oslo in order to demonstrate the different effects these types of events have on local communities - a topic that is so relevant given our location in Liverpool, home to the Liverpool Biennial.

Shwetal Patel is a founding member of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and has been active in the arts in Europe and Asia for over two decades. With a practice-based PhD from the University of Southampton, Winchester School of Art, he contributes regularly to academic journals, conferences, and other platforms. Patel is also a member of OnCurating (Zurich University of the Arts), an advisor to Kolkotta Centre for Creativity, and a trustee of Milton Keynes Museum.

At Queen Mary University of London, Patel studied social sciences while also experimenting in the fields of music, fashion, art, and cinema. After moving his base to Italy, Patel was invited to Kochi to help develop India's first contemporary art biennial; a non-profit initiative conceived by artists and led by artists. In 2012, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale was launched and it has been considered an influential platform for contemporary art in Asia ever since. The artist Patel has been appointed as an advisor to Oslo Biennalen, a new initiative to bring art into public spaces, in 2019. In addition to pursuing a doctorate at the University of Southampton, Patel has lectured and presented papers at museums, universities, and biennales around the world.

[ayesarah]

27th October

Girls Like Us: Jessica Gysel, Katja Mater and Marnie Slater

For this weeks guest leaker we had the pleasure of talking to the founders of the ‘GIRLS LIKE US’ magazine.‘GIRLS LIKE US’ is an independent magazine which spotlights on an international ever growing community of trans people and women within culture, arts and activism. The magazine explore personal stories, essays and visuals it unfolds feminist legacies in writing and arts. Combining politics with pleasure, the magazine is mapping collaborative routes towards a non-patriarchy.

It was started up between 2008-2010. The founders started off working with company Kutt but didn’t like their ideals and way they worked so decided to branch off and that is how they made their own magazine and that’s how ‘GIRLS LIKE US’ came to be. Overall they have released 20 issues since they launched and worked with many amazing artists/creatives since.

They then talked about some key principles of the magazine with an alphabetical acronysm:

A-Agency

B-Bodies

C-Collectives

G- Generations

H- Her/Their Story

I- In real life

…

Jessica talked about how the magazine features advertisements and collaborations with big brands such as Saint Laurent, Adidas and American Apparel.

The magazine experiments with different editorial approaches such as classic interviews, time coded interviews, editing conversations into manuals, Q&A’s, Diaries, Printed exhibition and healing processes.

[ayesarah]

6th September

Janis Rafailidou

For our second artist talk we had artist/filmmaker Janis Rafailidou. Janis is based in Athens, Greece and Amsterdam but most of her work is based in Greece. Her body of work combines film, video installation and sculpture. Started off the talk by explaining she used to horse ride when she was younger and how she had a horse named Mentos who she loved dearly. A lot of her work links to about how his death affects her still to this day and impacts most of her pieces. She talks about learning to understand landscapes and communities through the death of Mentos.

In one of her films you can see a large body being extracted and mirror image of landscape links to mentos being buried in the ground. Throughout her talk and showing of pieces you can start to see a pattern and that is the repetition of burying which has a strong presence in her art.

Trilogy of Burials: Three Fore-wells

Firstly, features a man wearing a fur coat then proceeding to take it off and bury it. Second scene is a dog burying a man. This is symbolic as Janis’s father is a gravedigger and I think the body being buried by the dog represents him. Lastly, a woman and man burying their last surviving pet. This series as a whole serves as a balance between naturalism and oddness and altogether works as a 3 channel arrangement.

She then talked about how her parents used to rescue animals from streets and look after them and eventually they’d end up burying many in the back garden of their family home. Another real life experience she related to her work, she related this particular memory to her piece ‘8 Kilos of Art’ and this became a repetitive series/piece of work for her.

‘Gravediggers’ (2014) film which she made is a film which features an actor that resembles her father and it shows him driving through landscapes and discovering/finding roadkill, hunted or abandoned animals and either collecting, rescuing or burying those animals. The continuation of this film is feature film ‘Kala Azar’ which shows a man collecting dead animals to cremate and gives ashes to owners animals and I feel like Janis is trying to say that it is impossible to tidy/clean up the environment and what we destroy as human beings pose a danger to balance the reality of landscapes and actuality that exist in landscapes.

Requiem Series

1. Requiem to a shipwreck. Shows clips of abandoned shipwreck and then shows old rails/train tracks that haven’t been used for 20 years and she used raises as a solution of/for camera.

2. (2016) Requiem to a fatal accident. Premature death of pigs.

3. Brass band performing in chicken factory playing to the chickens.

Another film she showed was of hunters training to shoot and the sound of the bullets and gunpowder making the dogs in the nearby crazy. You then hear the clashing of barking and shooting. ‘Waiting for Time to Pass’ a shirt 4 minute film shows dog inside of car, with windows shut and no ventilation. The dog starts to get anxious and the windows become foggy due to the breaths of the dog locked inside.

A piece I particularly liked from her was the ‘Lacerate’ piece which she did as a commission. Herself and 8 others artists where asked to do work on domestic violence and gender violence. In the film it shows the inside of clearly a rich, aristocratic family house decorated in the style of Renaissance and decorated with fine ornaments. Hunting dogs are loose in the house and just wandering around while a dead man presumed to be the owner of the house is on the floor. Janis didn’t want to represent the woman as weak or a victim and the piece makes you question whether it was the dogs that killed him or his wife.

[ayesarah]

29th September

Nick Bastis

First zoom artist talk from guest speaker/ artist Nick Bastis. Nick is a young American artist who specialises in sculpture and he aims to produce sculptures that works as an independent piece of work but when viewed with other pieces of work or media your perspective and interpretation of it changes and in that way the art reproduces itself because it keeps changing as a piece of work and that’s like how it’s imitating itself and other things around it.

He showed a video of a woman walking on a loop and the rhythm of the woman walking and repetition of the video enforces that concept. The background dialogue alters the way you perceive the footage and the inclusion of background noises and audio change the way we were viewing the art. So what I interpreted is he is saying there is an importance to adding features to work and that changes the way we view an original concept and pieces that can evolve over time to change the original meaning entirely that’s why I was confused about the video and audio choices because their inclusion contradicted each other and therefore didn’t make sense/come together. But it was less about the view of it but more about the rhythm of the woman walking, people talking and video looping, it changed over time as it loops with changing audio.

He concludes with his original starting point that “everything repeats itself over time, and one piece of media will change meaning” and I think that is interesting because it could relate to a lot of things in the real world.