RCA talk

I’ll be speaking at the forthcoming Curating Contemporary Art and Design: Archives and Collections Intensive at the RCA.

My contribution will consider the status of the Archive of Destruction as a curator-led, self-initiated project, existing beyond an institutional framework. I’ll discuss the playful way in which modes of destruction in the archive have been arranged (fear, love, greed, boredom etc) in order to critique the system of categorisation often employed by museums.

Writing residency in Ireland

I’ve been invited by Askeaton Contemporary Arts to carry out a research residency in September 2022.

I’ll be talking to artists, visiting artworks, and looking through archives to develop a text on the subject of unseen, abandoned, and unfinished projects, to be published by Daly & Lyon to celebrate five years of practice.

Photo: Lily Van Oost textile work.

Archive of Destruction Reader I launch

I’m very excited to launch the first Archive of Destruction Reader

Tuesday 4 October 2022
6.30 – 8.00pm
Flat Time House

I’ll be saying a few words with Gareth Bell-Jones (Director, FTHo) and Jo Melvin (curator and writer) at 7pm.

The Reader includes conversations, texts, stories, artworks, and pictures by artists, curators and writers, including Joe Namy, Marianne Wagner, Katharina Fritsch, Nicole Eisenman, Kasper König, Britta Peters, Vanessa Onwuemezi, Marysia Lewandowska, Horacio Zabala, Candice Purwin, and Joanna Rajkowska.

This will be an informal affair. Everyone welcome!

New text for Mona Yoo installation

I was commissioned by Talbot Rice Gallery to write a text on Mona Yoo’s work. I invite audience members to navigate a notional installation by the artist in the Sculpture Court of Edinburgh College of Art.

We’ve been meeting sporadically on zoom over the last couple of years, talking about ghosts, erasure, malleable time, sculpture, and the urban fabric of Edinburgh.

Mona was artist in resident at Talbot Rice Gallery throughout 2020 - 22. The programme is part of the Freelands Artists Programme.

New commission by Rhys Coren

Rhys Coren’s new nine-meter long terrazzo artwork for Hanover Square in London has been unveiled!

It’s called ‘Everyone I’ve Ever Known’ and is Rhys’ first large-scale public commission. It’s an upbeat, joyful contribution to the streets of central London and references Rhys’ longterm interest in music, popular culture, cartoon imagery, and the public realm. In many ways the work is a bit of visual music.

It was commissioned by developers GPE and sits behind the soon-to-be-opened Bond Street Crossrail station near Dering Street.

I’ve been working on it since 2017. It’s insane how long these project take to realise.

Photo: Rhys with the work and his son Calder, 2022

New teaching role

I’m currently teaching on the BA Culture, Criticism, and Curation course at CSM, covering subjects as broad as gender studies, feminist art practice, exhibition making, Black performance art, and post-internet art.

Assembly talk

I’ve been working with UP Projects, Flat Time House, and Liverpool Biennial on a programme of online talks about socially-engaged practice.  The next one is on 18 May and we’ll be discussing the ways that these projects can inspire structural change.

The conversation will involve a discussion about the relationship of artists and communities to the structures that shape society. How can the incredible range of knowledge, experience and practice that artists, curators, creative practitioners, and communities bring to these projects be used to challenge existing power structures?

More information here.

Watch a recording of the talk here

Portrait by Robin Silas

Råängen event

Working with Nothing: artists & architects building a new neighbourhood

The Råängen programme of art and architecture commissions in Lund is at once very strange and very straight forward. Join us for a discussion about its character, with three artists and architects from Barcelona, Glasgow, and Trondheim who are involved in the programme.

Chair
Kieran Long, Director, ArkDes

Speakers
Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores, Flores & Prats Architects
Nathan Coley, artist
Geir Brendeland, Brendeland & Kristoffersen Arkitekter

18 January, 2022, 12.00–13.15 CET

Watch the talk here. 

Drawing by Flores & Prats - ideas for Råängen buildings

Hage launch

Hage, a new public garden for Råängen , has opened! Designed by Norwegian architects Brendeland & Kristoffersen, this walled space in Lund, south Sweden, is the first permanent commission for the Råängen programme and is open to all.

Over the coming years, a new neighbourhood will grow up around the space, which will shift from being an object in the landscape to a local park for a new community.

Watch a film about the making of Hage here

Photo: Peter Westrup

Archive of Destruction talks

The Archive of Destruction talks organised to celebrate the launch of the project, are now available to watch online.

A SERIES OF UNEXPECTED INCIDENTS
22 June 2021
Speakers: Maja Bekan, Kristina Norman, Jes Fernie

Many of the artworks in the archive are catalysts for conversations around political and environmental turmoil, social ills, colonial oppression, and institutional conservatism. For the first event of this series of talks, two of the artists whose work is in the archive presented their projects and discussed the political, historic, and social contexts in which they were realised. Jes Fernie gave an overview of the Archive of Destruction.

EVERYTHING WILL BE INTERRUPTED
14 July 2021
Speakers: Eloise Hawser, Marysia Lewandowska, Vanessa Onwuemezi, Jes Fernie

The Archive of Destruction includes a series of commissioned essays by writers, artists, curators, and academics. For this event, Jes Fernie was joined by three of the contributors to discuss their response to archive, and their texts.

The talks were held in partnership with Flat Time House.

Image: still from video, Everything Will Be Interrupted (Jes Fernie, Gareth Bell-Jones, Vanessa Onwuemezi, Eloise Hawser, and Marysia Lewandowska)