Practice, Criticality and the Politics of Representation: How can contemporary art practices respond to current political events, the role of the artist and the problematics of representation?
10am-5pm 11 June 2015
Department of Art University of Reading, Early Gate, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6AT
This one-day event looks at a range of contemporary practices and their relationships to current political events. These practices ask questions of patriarchy, entrepreneurship, production, dissemination, fandom, precarity, narration and radical politics. Presentations will explore the limits of art that does not claim a directly activist role in the political realm and its function within a wider public consciousness.
Speakers.
Rachel Anderson; Independent producer and producer of collaborative projects, Artangel.
Chris Fite-Wassilak; Art critic, writer and curator.
Dr. Catherine, Grant; writer and lecturer, Goldsmiths.
Karen Mirza; Arts Mundi nominated artist and founder of No-W-Here.
Damien O’Connell; Artist and lecturer at UAL
Jennifer Thatcher; Art critic and writer Art Monthly.
Rachel Anderson: THE P WORD; Patriarchy in practice, production and presentation. Damien O’Connell and Jonathan Trayner: Emancipated Spectators; Boris Johnson and Animal Aid interpret Hans Haacke’s Gift Horse. Chris Fite-Wassilak: Dead Ends; The disappearance of the Great Southwest Sculpture Park, entrepreneurship, property and art. Jennifer Thatcher: Women, Art and Precarious Labour; What’s happening with women in the art world? The precariat struggle between paid work, family and practice. Karen Mirza: Unreliable Narration; Radical politics and art practice, are the two compatible? Catherine Grant: A Time of One’s Own; Re-enactment as a mode of contemporary feminist art that embraces political and personal histories in order to re-imagine them for the present.
Organised by Post Graduate Research candidates Martina Mullaney and Jonathan Trayner in the Department of Art
artreading.org 