2012-01-10

Panel Discussion: Matter in Hand at Kingsgate Studios

Material and process is central to the art practice of many artists today. During this three week event, the Kingsgate Emerging Artists will host a series of exhibitions and talks which explore ways in which artists make their mark via specific materials, methodologies and processes related to photography, drawing, sculpture and ceramics.

Kingsgate Gallery, 110 - 116 Kingsgate Road

Show One: Point of Touch curated by Eva Masterman
Private View 11th Jan 6pm - 8pm
Artists: Henrik Potter, Georgia Roger and Lisa Stockham
12th - 15th Jan, 12pm - 6pm Artists Talk: Sunday 15th Jan, 3pm

Show Two: 2.5D curated by Ella Bryant
Private View 18th Jan 6pm - 8pm
Artists: Joshua Bilton-Buckle, Ella Bryant, Olivia Gardia, Darren Harvey-Regan and Orestis Karvaris
19th - 22nd Jan, 12pm - 6pm
Artists Talk: Sunday 22nd Jan, 3pm

Panel Discussion: How are Materials and Process Important to an Artist’s Practice? Chaired by Jack Tan and featuring speakers Christy Brown, Rose Gibbs and Bonnie Kemske
25th Jan 6pm - 9pm
Free: places limited - matterinhand@ymail.com to book your place

Workshop: Pentagonal Geometry and Islamic Pattern, led by William Riding
28th Jan 10am - 2pm
Cost £20: email matterinhand@ymail.com to book your place

2012-01-06

'What if' - article on improvisation and poiesis in Ceramic Review Jan/Feb 2012 issue

Objects for a Landscape: A special look at the work of Gordon Baldwin in light of his recent exhibition at York Art Gallery, Objects for a Landscape. In this six-page feature, David Whiting reveals the sources of his imagination through themes as diverse as the landscape, autobiography, and poetry, and in doing so comes closer to understanding his sculptural vessels.

What if … Jack Tan embraces this mysterious question.

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Guest panellist on 'Culture with Robert Bound' (Monocle24)

New year can mean a new start, so this special episode of Culture with Robert Bound asks how to get started in the creative industries

2011-03-17

When Hate Came To Town

This film, which is part of our Connecting Through Change programme was produced by JUST West Yorkshire following the EDL march in Bradford last summer. It includes interviews with EDL supporters, leading activists and leaders from the city’s public, civic and faith institutions, and assesses Bradford’s response to the EDL.

It was shown at the National Media Museum on 28 February 2011, at a public meeting organised by the Bradford Resource Centre and JRF. This was the first in a series of seminars which aims to bring together Bradford stakeholders to discuss issues arising from current social policy and issues relevant to Bradford.

- from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, footage by Just West Yorkshire, with contribution from Jack Tan, Leah Capaldi and Kirsty Tinkler.

2011-02-10

2010-11-29

Conference Paper for ‘Concentrationary Imaginaries / Imaginaries of Violence in Contemporary Cultures and Cultural Forms’ - University of Leeds (13-15 April 2011)

Effacing the Image: aesthetics and the concentrationary image

How does aesthetic theory offer a framework for understanding the face as a site of racist violence?

Abstract:

This paper begins with a discussion of Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of the image’s Distinct and Presentational characteristics. It then proposes a link between these and the Other as image, using photographic portraits of the face from contemporary art and the news media as a vehicle for discussion. The paper posits two aspects of the face:

1. the face as Presentational image, one that escapes interpretation; and

2. the face as Representational image, one that is fully knowable.

Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the face as the site of community, the paper proposes an ethical approach to confronting concentrationary images that is derived from aesthetic theory. It examines the mechanism of racist violence to the person as image. It concludes by opening up questions about the implications of such violence as an act of effacing the Presentational image of the Other.

The full programme and submitted papers will be available on Leeds University’s website shortly:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cath/cont_men2/cont_mem_2.html

2010-11-21

Parody vs Sincerity discussion at Studio RR18 on 21 Nov 2010.

Discussion Notes:

“… a good painting possesses a consciousness of its genre that allows it to transcent it without parody or irony, reflecting a positive reactivated sense of tradition, not a received experience of the past.”

Parody as distance - Parody as positional.

Awareness of irony = parody.
Awareness of the position = parody.

There is a double positioning in parody - you have to stand outside - parody represents to you in a way that is critical of what is inside - Antonioni / Duttman.

Parody is where the viewer is invited to stand outside with you.

Content in parody art - there is a balance that has to be struck between humour and social comment. Get the complexity and the balance right.

How does ‘parody’ or ‘sincerity’ as an aesthetic factor operate in a work of art?

Sincerity is:

to lay the heart on the line;
to say ‘this is what I believe in’;
uncool;
sentimentality;
shows that the artist is ‘ignorant’.

If we make art without irony, it is deemed to be ignorant/innocent. As if we have not looked around to see what other people are doing/saying.

In our computer age/information age, can we be ignorant/innocent, can we accept ignorance/innocence?

Naive Art - Outsider Art: innocent, sincere - work made in a bubble?

Johanna Drucker - ‘Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity’ - there are no rules to break.

Parody is a way of navigating a post-structural world where everything has been broken down, where everything is known, or should be ‘in the know’. As such it is the only possible position left. Where everything has been made ‘equal’ or flat, where there is no landscape, ‘knowingness’ is the only valuable currency, hence irony/parody is the default position.

Jessica Flood Paddock - ‘Big Lobster Supper’.

Claire Bishop on irony.

Humour gives you a different optic. It reorientates the subject-viewer positioning.

Jack Tan