Contaminated, implicated

Alice Channer invited me to write an experimental text in response to her exhibition at Turf Projects in Croydon, London (25 July - 31 August 2019).

I assume a reptilian stance and crawl through the facade of the gallery on my belly, viewing the sculptures from a low vantage point.

Picking up on themes in Alice’s work, it’s about environmental catastrophe / plastic / fossils of the past and future / end times.

There’s a lovely reading of it here + the text.

Please join us on 29 August 2019 for a celebratory closing event at Turf Projects. I’ll be doing a reading and there’ll be drinks.

29.08.19
18.30 - 20.00
Turf Projects
Units 46-47, Trinity Court (Ground Floor)
Whitgift Shopping Centre
Croydon CR0 1UQ

Brendeland & Kristoffersen talk at Skissernas Museum, Lund

You are warmly invited to an evening talk by Geir Brendeland at Skissernas Museum, Lund on 5 September 2019.

Geir will present ‘Hage’, a new public garden for Brunnshög in Lund, due to be completed next spring. The walled garden will be open to all and will provide a space for local people to congregate, cook, talk and exchange ideas.

Norwegian architects Brendeland & Kristoffersen have developed an international reputation for their body of projects including innovative housing, exhibitions, and public interventions.

‘Hage’ is part of the Råängen programme of art and architecture commissions, organised by Lund Cathedral, curated by Jes Fernie & Jake Ford.

Thursday 5 September, 19.00–20.00
Skissernas Museum, Lund
Sweden

Image: Råängen event, Skissernas Museum 2019

The Annotated Reader

I was invited to contribute to ‘The Annotated Reader’, a publication-as-exhibition conceived by Ryan Gander and Jonathan P. Watts. Launched during Frieze London 2018, the project has now embarked on an international tour, with the aim of disseminating knowledge freely and equally.

‘Imagine you’ve missed the last train. Is there one piece of writing that you would want with you for company in the small hours? Perhaps this text transformed your thinking. It might be a mantra continually returned to. Perhaps it is a text you felt should be read by younger generations or that you wish you’d encountered as a student.’

This question was posed to 300 artists, academics, writers, musicians, and designers, inviting them to suggest a piece of writing and then annotate it. The annotations add a further layer to the texts, demonstrating and suggesting ways of reading, displaying thought, complicating the relationship between image and text, reading and looking.

I annotated a chapter called ‘Being Chased’ in Annie Dillard’s book ‘The Abundance’ (2016).

The Coming Community: New Towns, Art and Place

MK Gallery is hosting a symposium which will consider the potential for art in new and expanding communities. It will explore the legacies of art and culture in the first generation of New Towns and consider what might be learned from such examples.

I’ll be chairing a session that looks at post war new towns such as Harlow and Milton Keynes, and the role that public sculpture played in their development. More details here.

Image: Henry Moore’s Harlow Family Group 1954–5 outside St Mary of Latton Church, Harlow. Henry Moore Foundation Archive.

Audacity and what to do with it

I’ve written a text for the very handsome new Milton Keynes Gallery catalogue about audacity / the original plan for Milton Keynes / Nils Norman + Gareth Jones’ work with 6a architects + graphic designer Mark El-khatib.

Order a copy here.

Intervene / Shift / Compel: The artist’s role in public life

”What I want to do is intervene in the fabric of society” Stephen Willats

How can artists contribute to a discussion about the way we live in the 21st century? What are the mechanisms that artists, curators and commissioners use to make democratic, active public spaces that address urgent, political and social issues? Can such projects bring about societal change or just a shift in perception?

I’ve organised this afternoon event at Moderna Museet Malmö, 28 Feb 2019. Artists and curators from Sweden, Norway and Britain will present a series of international projects that create a framework for discussion.

More info here.

A synopsis of the seminar can be read here.

Image credit: The Bower of Bliss, Linder, 2018, Southwark station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo: Thierry Bal, 2018.

Tomorrow, Today: Art, Architecture and the Future

I’m chairing a session with Amalia Pica and 6a Architects at a Whitechapel Gallery symposium on 15 February 2019.

The event is part of the public programme for Is This Tomorrow? - the current exhibition at the gallery which takes as its model the landmark Whitechapel exhibition This Is Tomorrow (1956).

More details here

Image: Amalia Pica + 6a Architects, Is This Tomorrow?, Whitechapel Gallery, 2019. Photo: Rafael Ortega

Curator in Residence, Flat Time House

I’m Curator in Residence at Flat Time House in Peckham, south London, for bits of January and February 2019. I’ll be developing my Archive of Destruction project.

I’ll be rifling through the Flat Time House archive, looking into the work of John Latham (particularly his Skoob Towers project - see pic), as well as reading material commissioned and gathered by FTH (specifically the NOIT journal and Ivor Davies documents). I’ll also be working on funding applications for a three year programme with organisations in London, Great Yarmouth and Amsterdam.

Photo: one of John Latham’s Skoob Tower Ceremonies (1964-68). Image courtesy of FTH.

House Taken Over book launch

BalinHouseProjects would love you to come to the launch of our book ‘House Taken Over’, the culmination of a year-long project about:

artists making work beyond the institution
the artist as host in a domestic setting
systems of control
bypassing the market economy
collective play

The book is edited by Jes Fernie and includes contributions from writers Holly Corfield Carr and Lorena Muñoz-Alonso, artists Harold Offeh and Martin Cordiano, and theatre director Ada Mukhina. It is beautifully designed by Sarah Boris.

Thursday 10 January, 2019
6 - 9pm
Welcome speech at 7pm

Matt’s Gallery
92 Webster Road
London SE16 4DF

RSVP to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Rathbone Square commissions

We now have photos of Alison Wilding and Robert Orchardson’s commissions for Rathbone Square, London. It’s fantastic to see the drinking fountain being used throughout the hot summer months and the movement of people through the gates at Newman Street and Rathbone Street.

More information on both commissions, plus photos here.

Photo: Robert Orchardson, ‘Infinite Geometry’, 2018. Rathbone Square gates. © Thierry Bal