Art and the Olympics

The latest issue of the engage journal explores the theme of the impact of the Olympics on gallery culture, education and art practice. It includes a discussion between Simon Pope and Jes Fernie entitled Keeping to the Path: Maintaining ‘Core Purpose’ in Participatory Art Under Conditions of Contemporary Patronage.

The authors respond to the question of whether making work ‘for’ the Games has diverted artists from their core purpose. Pope’s 80-minute film, Memory Marathon, documents a participatory event in which the artist walked through the streets of London talking to local residents about their memories from past Olympic games. The interactions served both to ‘reflect existing social relations and establish new ones.’

Click here for more information.

Play Time: Art in the Park

Jes has been commissioned by the London Legacy Development Corporation to organise a programme of studio visits, talks, walks, screenings and workshops which will take place around the Olympic Park from 2 - 7 July 2012.

The events are part of the LLDC’s programme to launch the new arts and culture strategy and will include artists such as Keith Wilson, Lucy Harrison and DJ Simpson.

Visit the London Festival of Architecture for more information or click here for pdf

Call for proposals

Writtle Calling: 2emmatoc
A temporary radio station by Melissa Appleton and Matthew Butcher
11 - 18 September 2012

Proposals from artists, curators, writers, musicians and farmers welcome.
Deadline: 15 April 2012

Writtle Calling: 2emmatoc is a temporary radio station that will broadcast from the Essex landscape during September 2012. The station will host a series of broadcasts which will culminate in a live public event on 15th September. The radio structure is to be sited in the grounds of Writtle College, Essex, where the first regular public radio broadcasts by Marconi Engineers took place in 1922.

Jes is acting as an advisor to this project.
Click here for more information.

The Starry Rubric Set

The Starry Rubric Set
Edition of 200
Published by Wysing Arts Centre, February 2012
Edited by Gareth Bell-Jones with An Endless Supply
Set in AES Curwen Sans
ISBN 978-0-9539222-3-9

Jes has contributed to a publication produced to accompany the exhibition ‘The Starry Rubric Set’ at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, February to March 2012. The show considered classical astrology as a device to bring together new works made by artists who were in residence at Wysing during 2011 and to introduce the three themes of the 2012 programme: The Cosmos, The Mirror and The Forest. Participants - including artists, non-artists, writers, musicians, academics - were invited to respond to the question, ‘From your position predict two points in motion that will come into alignment’.

Click here for more information.

New talks programme for firstsite announced

Jes has organised a programme of talks for firstsite’s new display of cloud studies painted by Constable during the 1820s and Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII of 1966.  Speakers include Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery; William Feaver, Guardian art critic and co-curator with Lucian Freud of the Constable exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2002; Gavin Pretor-Pinney, author of The Cloudspotter’s Guide; Professor Neil Cox and Alistair Rider, author of a recent Phaidon monograph on Carl Andre.

Click here for more info

Unexpected Encounters

Situations of Contemporary Art and Architecture since 2000 (Turkish only, English coming soon) is out!
Editor: Fatos Ustek

Jes has contributed a text to this book which features artists such as Allora & Calzadilla / Andreas Slominski /Doris Salcedo / Elmgreen & Dragset / Gelitin / Gregor Schneider / Heather & Ivan Morrison / Hector Zamora / James Turrell / Janet Echelman / Jenny Holzer / Jeppe Hein / John Kormeling / Jurgen Bey / Langlands & Bell / Maider Lopez / Mandla Reuter / Matthew Ritchie / Michael Asher / Michael Strasser / Monika Sosnowska / Murat & Fuat Sahinler / Nathan Coley / Nevin Aladag / Olafur Eliasson / Peter Fischli & David Weiss / Renata Lucas / Richard Wilson / Roman Ondak / Sarkis / Tatzu Nishi / Tobias Putrih / Tomas Saraceno / Tue Greenfort / Wolfgang Winter & Bertold Horbelt

Book Concept and Design: Bulent Erkmen
PrePress: BEK

© Zorlu Center, 2011

Hengrove Park commissions programme

Independent curators Theresa Bergne and Jes Fernie are working together to deliver a two year programme in Hengrove Park, south Bristol.  Working with members of the Hengrove and Stockwood Neighbourhood Partnership as well as Bristol City Council, the programme will build on Phase 1 of the public art programme.

Click here for more info

Olympic Park Arts & Culture report published

‘Square pegs and round holes: a report on the ODA Arts and Culture programme’
Published November 2011, Open City
Authors: Jes Fernie and Rachel Fleming-Mulford

This report charts the journey of the Olympic Delivery Authority’s Arts and Culture programme and outlines recommendations and lessons learned that can be used by regeneration bodies, developers, local authorities, curators and Olympic host cities, when embarking on art commissioning schemes and regeneration projects in the future. It also includes recommendations for the future of the Olympic Park in London.

The programme is contextualised through a number of case studies of recent art commissioning programmes both in the UK and abroad including Beyond, in the Netherlands and Sculpture Projects Munster in Germany.

To download a PDF please visit the Open City website.

Wysing event, 3 November 2011

IN-CONVERSATION EVENT
THURSDAY 3 NOVEMBER, 6-8PM
Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn

Come and hear artist Marjolijn Dijkman and eminent archaeologist Christopher Chippindale talk about their individual areas of research, followed by an in-conversation with curator Jes Fernie.

Marjolijn Dijkman is a Dutch artist living in Brussels who is interested in the systems that govern our behaviour and how we order the world around us. Over the past year she has been researching the way we preserve and view history and cultural heritage. Christopher Chippindale is an archaeologist, rock-art researcher, editor and a curator at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology.

This event is programmed in partnership with firstsite and firstsite Associate Curator Jes Fernie as part of The Department of Overlooked Histories in which artists Ruth Beale, Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry, Emma Smith and An Endless Supply are working in-residence at Wysing over a period of six weeks. The final event for the Department will be the alternative conference A Cabaret of Overlooked Histories on 12 NOVEMBER, 2-6PM.

Please visit Wysing Arts Centre for more information.

firstsite is open!

firstsite’s long-awaited new building by internationally renowned architect Raphael Vinoly opened on 25 September. The opening exhibition ‘Camulodunum’, curated by Michelle Cotton, takes its title from the Roman name for Colchester, and features major commissions by international artists Michaela Eichwald, Aleksandra Mir, Karin Ruggaber and Danh Vo. Items of Colchester’s archaeology will be shown alongside artworks which consider the treatment of objects in the museum and contemporary culture as future historical record. Among these are works by Ai Weiwei, Subodh Gupta, Barbara Hepworth, Sarah Lucas, Henry Moore, Cildo Meireles, Grayson Perry, Robert Smithson, Bill Woodrow, and Andy Warhol.

As firstsite Associate Curator, Jes has organised a series of talks and lectures for the opening programme which take the opening exhibition Camulodunum as a starting point for a discussion about Colchester - its history and its present.  Speakers include historians, art and architecture critics and artists.  Click here for more details.

Jes is also working with Scala publications and Jay Merrick, writer and architectural correspondent for the Independent, on a book for Scala Publishers on firstsite’s new building, as well as the historical and topographical context in which it has been built.  The book will be published early in 2012 and will be part of the Scala Art Spaces series.

Visit firstsite’s website: firstsite.