Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out

Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy, 18 July—13 October 2013

An exhibition exploring the ideas and ethos of internationally renowned architect and urbanist Lord Rogers of Riverside will open in Burlington Gardens next summer. Timed to coincide with Rogers’ 80th birthday, Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out will examine the far reaching effects that Rogers’ active interest in the politics of social justice have had on architecture and public policy for over half a century. The exhibition will introduce the public to Rogers’ pioneering ideas about architecture and his important, continuing contribution to the way we think about cities and how we live in them. Radical, rational and beautifully crafted buildings together with public spirited urbanism and city planning have marked a career that continues to surprise and inspire. Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out will include previously unseen original material, drawings and personal items and form a unique look into the mind of a towering figure in contemporary creative life; someone described by the Prime Minister as ‘one of Britain’s greatest ever exporters of ideas’.

Exhibition: Sonia Boyce, Scat – Sound and Collaboration

Sonia Boyce, Still from the Oh Adelaide Project, 2010.

INIVA, London, until 27th July 2013

Scat:Sound and Collaboration is an exhibition by Sonia Boyce at INIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts) which explores the significance of sound in art. Presented by Iniva across all the public spaces of Rivington Place, Scat brings together two immersive video works for the first time along with artefacts from the Devotional Collection, Boyce’s archive of CDs cassettes, vinyl records and other ephemera. The exhibition centres on the significance of sound in art and explores how we experience sound, both collectively and intimately. Two immersive video works are brought together for the first time along with the Devotional Collection, Boyce’s archive of CDs cassettes, vinyl records and other ephemera.

For you, only you (2007), in collaboration with Mikhail Karikis and early music consort Alamire, transforms a 16th century musical masterpiece into a contemporary vocal composition. Oh Adelaide (2010), a collaborative work by Sonia Boyce and Ain Bailey, incorporates found footage of jazz singer and entertainer, Adelaide Hall (1901-1993), and mixes her voice with digitised and condensed recordings from the Devotional Collection.

Conference: Encounters, Affinities, Legacies – the 18th Century in the Present Day

Yinka Shonibare, ‘The Swing (after Fragonard)’ 2001, at Brooklyn Museum © Diana Quick

The University of York, 28-29th June 2013

As the field of eighteenth century studies continues to boom within the academy, the eighteenth century – invoked around names like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Adam Smith – is becoming an increasingly frequent interlocutor in contemporary debates in the international media about society, democracy, human rights, and the economy. Whilst social and political commentators are reading our present in dialogue with our eighteenth-century past, cultural appetites for the eighteenth century on page, stage, and screen continue to grow: powerful suggestions that intertwined discourses like (E)nlightenment and modernity, central to so much eighteenth- and twentieth-century thought, remain vital to the social, political and cultural construction of our contemporary moment. This interdisciplinary academic conference and arts festival seeks to explore the complex webs of interconnection between the long eighteenth century and the ‘long’ twentieth century, from 1900 to the present.

Over the course of two days, the historic King’s Manor in the centre of York will play host to leading academics, early-career scholars, and postgraduate students from around the world, as well as showcasing the work of exciting young artists, photographers, designers, and performers from across the UK. Encounters is funded by the University of York’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, Humanities Research Centre, and Centre for Modern Studies. Visit the conference website:
http://www.18thcenturyinthepresent.com/

Tate Britain: Looking at the View

Until 2 June 2013

This thematic display looks at continuities in the way artists have framed our vision of the landscape over the last 300 years. Coinciding with the re-opening of all Tate Britain’s galleries, the selection finds surprising coincidences and remarkable affinities in the way we look at the view, whether near or afar, high or low, from inside or out. Over seventy works by more than fifty artists are included, including familiar names such as J.M.W. Turner and Tracey Emin as well as lesser-known figures of British art history. The exhibition consists entirely of works from the Tate collection and is part of the BP British Art Displays.

Conference: Visual Culture in Crisis – Britain c.1800 – Present

Friday 10th – Saturday 11th May 2013, Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul Building, University of York.

Keynote Speakers: Professor Christopher Pinney (UCL), Dr Eric Stryker (Southern Methodist University), Dr. Chad Elias (University of York), and Corinne Silver (artist).

‘European mastery is always in crisis – and it is this same crisis that defines European modernity’ – Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

The word ‘crisis’ is frequently invoked to assess Britain’s current place in the world: crises in finance, journalism, politics and geopolitics dominate the media, all of which see the term used both to reflect, and manipulate, a sense of uncertainty and confusion on personal, national, and global levels. Taking its cue from Hardt and Negri’s location of ‘crisis’ as central to European modernity, this conference seeks to explore how visual cultures from the 19th century to the present have simultaneously responded to – and emerged from – such successive crises. Crisis might signify avant-garde break-through and embrace of modernity. It might impel artistic breakdown or flight from modernity, anarchic celebration, or resistance in the form of protest. Crisis in visual culture could above all be emblematic of the contingent nature of personal and political identities. As both a product and a precipitant of the inter-state and inter-subjective networks that have emerged in conjunction with imperialism and economic globalisation, crisis can articulate a disharmony between metropole and colony, centre and periphery, state and individual, working constantly to disrupt the geographical, cultural and class boundaries of peoples and nations.

This two-day conference, generously supported the British Art Research School at the University of York and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, aims to begin unpacking some of these issues.  See below for a full timetable of the event, or visit our website for more information: 
http://visualcultureincrisis.wordpress.com/

All welcome – there is no fee.  Please register by emailing visualcultureincrisis@gmail.com

Call for Papers – Modern British History since 1750

Conference on Modern British History: Society, Culture, Politics and Religion since 1750. University of Edinburgh, 10-11 June 2013. Proposals due by 6 May 2013

Following the success of the conferences held at Strathclyde (2007-2009), at St Andrews in 2010, at Dundee in 2011, and at Stirling in 2012, the Modern British History Network will host a seventh major Conference on Modern British History at New College, University of Edinburgh, on 10-11 June 2013. The event is particularly aimed at members of the Scottish universities and the northern English universities although all historians are very welcome. Previous conferences have attracted delegates from across the UK and from overseas. Proposals for papers or registration to attend the event are now invited from researchers working on all aspects of modern British history. The conference aims to represent work covering the whole period since the late eighteenth century with topics in social, cultural, political and religious history. Proposals should be submitted by 6 May 2013 to Dr Juliette Pattinson (juliette.pattinson@strath.ac.uk). Over two days there will be three main papers from senior academics and short papers by other academics and postgraduates, who are equally welcome to speak.

Call for Papers – Identity Construction and Meaning

AAH Call for Papers for Student Summer Symposium 2013, University of Oxford, 20-21 June 2013. Proposals deadline, 1st April.

The concept of ‘identity’ is prolific within the visual arts and in many ways its pertaining issues have shaped the discipline of art history. The biographical approach to reading artists’ work privileged by Vasari in his Lives (1550) has had a lasting influence. The portrait remains an effective medium through which to narrate the historical and contemporary identity of particular institutions and nations, and the art market continues to rely upon authentic attribution. Yet this art history of names remains problematic and by no means comprehensively represents either the discipline of art history or the plural notions of identity that have come to influence it.

During the twentieth century, subjectivity was critiqued and revised: psychoanalysis destabilized the concept of a consistent and whole subject, positioning the self as an illusion of stability and a site of fragmentation; Barthes and Foucault challenged notions of authorship, arguing instead that the reader-viewer be considered in the creation and interpretation of a work. More recently, gender and postcolonial theory has cast light on notions of identity understood as performance and as Otherness, and new technologies, such as the Internet, have altered relations between international communities and provided new platforms for constructing identity.

New Research Project: ‘Art Writing Writing Art’

‘Art Writing Writing Art’  is a new research group that has been set up by 5 History of Art PGRs  at the University of Bristol. It has been established with an aim to provide a place of convergence for researchers interested in the actively shifting and overlapping intersections between art, writing and art history. It hopes to support, consolidate and expand research through peer discussion and exploration. The group has set up a blog as a repository for events, talks, conferences and exhibitions (etc) that might be of interest to all sorts of people thinking around the area. In addition the project is organising a range of events over the coming year. More information can be found here: 
http://artwritingwritingart.tumblr.com

 

Call for Papers – Encounters, Affinities, Legacies: The Eighteenth Century in the Present Day

University of York, 28^th – 29^th June 2013, Proposals Due 19th April

As the field of eighteenth century studies continues to boom within the academy, the eighteenth century – invoked around names like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Adam Smith – is becoming an increasingly frequent interlocutor in contemporary debates in the international media about society, democracy, human rights, and the economy.  Whilst social and political commentators are reading our present in dialogue with our eighteenth-century past, cultural appetites for the eighteenth century on page, stage, and screen continue to grow: powerful suggestions that intertwined discourses like (E)nlightenment and modernity, central to so much eighteenth- and twentieth-century thought, remain vital to the social, political and cultural construction of our contemporary moment.  This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the complex webs of interconnection between the long eighteenth century and the ‘long’ twentieth century, from 1900 to the present.  

Seminar / Exhibition / Performance – Invisible Knowledge: Collaborative Art Practice

Kingston University, 22nd – 23rd March

This two day event focuses on the collaborative work of the leading Irish Live Artist Áine Phillips, showcasing her work with collaborators Alex Chase White (UK), Rachel Davies (UK), Vivienne Dick (Ireland), Spike (UK) and Manuel Vason (Italy/UK). Funded by Culture Ireland and staged by Kingston’s University Visual & Material Culture Research Centre, the programme features three forms of artistic collaboration: a display of photography and film, a performance by Áine Phillips & Spike, and a public seminar.