Artist: Claire Price
Date: Wednesday 10th October,
Claire Price is an artist living and working in London. She studied BA Fine Art Painting at Central St Martins from 1990–93, and MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths 2012–16. This year she has had solo exhibitions at ASC and Flowers Gallery, London and exhibited in the group exhibition ‘Women can’t paint’ at Turps Gallery.
Claire Price used the idea of “using the body to create art”. She used the idea by seeking to maintain a conversation with the history of painting.
During the talk, she mentioned a quote by Mark Fischer “Research has to go through a body, it has to be lived in some sense transformed into some sort of life experience –to become whatever we might call art”. During the talk, she broadly mentioned her experience and her discoveries of using the body as a new media of art.
I mainly appreciate her ways of doing art by using the body. It has been a breakthrough for artists like me who was trained in a traditional way of doing art and made me realised that I could always challenge myself by doing something that has never done before. Claire Price has developed her style of body painting during her route, it also inspired me to develop my own style and try to step out of my comfort zone.
Artist: Ralph Dorey
Date: 17th October
Ralph Dorey is a Gateshead-based artist and researcher Uma Breakdown writes on horror, art and play. Having received an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2008 they are presently in their third year of PhD candidature at Northumbria University,
Ralph Dorey played several horror scenes from movies and series from the start of the talk, talking about his passion for the genre of horror art. He mentioned the ways of how he created horror art by using computer technologies with the accompaniment of heavy metal music.
The genre of horror art is not always my cup of tea, as from the artist playing several horror movies and some irritating metal music had already made me feel quite ill. Although the artist has disappointed me, I still have learned to use my own imaginations to create fantasies paintings and used different technologies to create art in order to increase the creativeness.
Artist: Ami Clarke
Date: 24th October
Ami Clarke is an artist, writer, educator, and founder of Banner Repeater.
She works within the emergent behaviours that come of the complex protocols of platform capitalism, focussed for many years on the interdependencies between language and code, amid the unacknowledged currency of data. Earlier works explored how these dynamics contribute to undermine the very process of democracy itself, through psychological profiling, and targeting, at a granular scale. Recent work projects near future developments of data mining companies such as Cambridge Analytica, via A.I. learning language through negotiation skills whilst trading in the ultimate data of her biocode.
Ami Clarke is one of the performance artists I have ever seen performing on stage, her long performance of reading random words like a computer has shocked almost all of the audience. The performance took almost 25 minutes by set in a dark environment with random words appearing on the screen. After the performance, all of the audience gave her a big applause.
This is my first time to witness the performance and it shocked me very deeply. The performance looks long, unmeaningful, pointless and scary. As I think the performance has been an awkward way to judge the definition of performance art. As Ami Clarke is the founder of “Banner Repeater”, she used it as a way to perform her works on stage which made me understand every artist has their own way of presenting their works
Artist: Simon Bill
Date: 31st October
Simon Bill (born 1958, Kingston-upon-Thames) is a contemporary English visual artist (painter) who lives and works in London. He studied art at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London from 1977–1980 and at The Royal College of Art, also in London, from 1982-1985.
The study of visual perception, as described by the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, seeks to answer the question Why do things look as they do? This talk looks first at an array of cultural phenomena – The 80s ‘Thatcher Illusion’, Op Art in the 60s, various kinds of 3D imagery like the 90s ‘Magic Eye’ craze, recent internet memes like ‘The Dress’, and the sci-fi movie ‘The Matrix’. It then gives a survey of visual perception as it figures, unusually, in both halves of academia. We approach the treatment of perception in philosophy mainly through Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Phenomenology of Perception’. The last part of the talk gives an introductory account of the current cognitive and neuro- psychology of perception, illustrated with many of the ‘optical illusion’ images neuroscience uses as research tools, such as Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s ‘rotating snakes’.
Simon Bill started the talk by introducing different art theories, he mainly explained how the art theories work in different ways. He used the talk and taught the audience many things around the visual perception which looks like a lecture to the students. But most of all, I have learnt some art theories from him and understand some of his works are based on oval shapes which could represent himself as a unique style from his own. Also his works have inspired me of making a special thing to represent myself in my own paintings.
Artist: Maggie Roberts
Date: 14 November, 2018
Maggie Roberts aka Mer is a British artist who lives and works in London (with a studio in Capetown since 2006). Her career until then consisted of a solo and then collaborative artist(0rphan Drift), showing extensively in London, Europe and USA and Canada, whilst teaching on various Fine Art BA courses in and around London, most notably Goldsmiths and Central St Martins. She currently teaches a seminar, ‘Virtual Worlds’ at CSM, lectures at art schools all over England, is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths University, London and a research fellow with BCU, Fine Art Research, Birmingham.
Maggie Roberts is a special artist who did things that others did not, her ways of presenting the sound work and performance work really surprised. During the talk she presented her ideas through her powerpoints and showed us some of her performance works in public by watching other people’s reactions. That way of presenting really surprised me and I couldn’t believe that the team could dress up in different costumes and walk outside and recorded it.
The artist’s way of presenting herself with her works is rather special, she used the ideas from nature and collected it and put it to her works as inspirations. I think through this talk I can learn from collecting different sounds and from some images in order to create a new performance work included with sound and art.
Artist: Pheobe Collings James
Date: 21-11-2018
Pheobe Collings James is known for her work as a visual artist and a fashion model. Goldsmiths graduate Phoebe Collings-James has excelled in both industries. Born in London but now living and working in New York, Phoebe has modelled for labels such as Burberry, Gucci and Louis Vuitton and has also exhibited her work at several galleries around the world including Company Gallery NYC, Arcadia Missa and The Tate in London and Cookie Butcher in Antwerp. Using illustration, sculpture, poetry and painting to address and understand the collective experience of blackness, ‘womanism’ and cultural identity, Phoebe aims to decode the diaspora she has experienced as a mixed-race woman through her West-Indian British roots. Sitting down with her in her Brooklyn studio before a poetry reading in downtown Manhattan, Phoebe is even more beautiful and passionate in person. Keen to know more about the woman behind the powerful and poignant work, we talk with Phoebe about her experiences as a black woman, the different ways her work has taken shape since leaving school and why finding your own community is an important part of being an artist.
Pheobe Collings James is another extreme artist that I have seen so far during these talks. She introduced her ways of physical and hearing ways of practice, in order to produce a video sound work. We watched one of her video sound works, it contained the facial movement and also the disturbing sound at the background. It is another special way of the performing artist. Her works really reflected the ways of her thinking and also the ways of the music she listened to( as she played some of the playlists that she listens.
As this is another sound artist, I think some of the ways might be extreme and a bit disturbing for me, as I am personally a composer, pianist and artist, I cannot accept some disturbing noises and some of the repeating content reminds me of Ami Clarke, the artist who was known for the repeater.
Artist: Philomene Pirecki
Date: 5 December,2018
The photographs, installations and paintings of London-based artist Philomene Pirecki (British, b. 1972) revolve around how determinative context and time is for perception, sensory experience and memory. She addresses how images can act as their analogue, through degrees of proximity; unpredictably accumulating, persisting, mutating or disappearing.
Pirecki’s work often moves between originals and copies, such as in the ‘Image Persistence’ photographs of digital image files of her own work that she no longer owns, photographed directly from her computer screen. Deliberately using these residual digital shadows of the absent original works, she rematerialises them into a new physical form. The original work depicted becomes a ghostly event, lost in the very process of trying to capture and retain it. Her ‘Grey Text Paintings’ address the idea of visual language in which she conveys the differences between the “same” color in terms of name and what is actually seen in the physical world. She paints the words “grey” and “gray” as monograms, working vivid colours wet-into-wet, which increasingly mix together into grey.
Philomene Pirecki’s works are mainly related to photographs and the works lies to the new physical form. personally I think this artist is quite interesting and the ways of reproductions are also a good idea for me when creating an artwork. As I usually sometimes make some reproduction works from impressionists masters like Van Gogh.
Artist:Soheila Sokhanvari
Date: 23 January, 2019
Soheila Sokhanvari is an Iranian-born artist whose multidisciplinary work weaves layers of political histories with bizarre, humorous and mysterious narratives that are then left to viewer’s own sensitivity to complete. Sokhanvari is drawn to traumas that linger in the collective consciousness or cause mass amnesia, and yet resist conventional representation. Playing with the relationship between the artwork and its title, Sokhanvari severs the signifier from the referent so that the resulting artwork functions as an aesthetic skin to a complex, buried issue.
Soheila Sokhanvari is the first political artist I saw in the artist’s talk. I found her subject very interesting and inspiring as I am very interested in political issues and the influences of politics around art. She took several political examples to start the talk and she showed some of the interviews of the figures of the figures that are related to the political issues. Last but the least, she showed some artworks in the painting history and some of her artworks that were influenced by the fact of political issues.
I appreciate this artist would stand up and speak to her own people by using her works and the influence of a powerful message of political issues. She inspired me that I can try some topics related to politics and try out more to the area of politics.
Artist: Harold Offeh
Date: 30 January 2019
Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh, often employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture and is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Modern, Studio Museum Harlem, South London Gallery, MAC VAL, Kulturhusset Stockholm and Kunsthal Charlottenborg.
Harold Offeh introduced his works and the projects that he had done over the years, he is working on some performance and the art practices all over the galleries of Europe which he wants to employ humour. In my opinion, the works are special as it contained different elements of creativity in it, as the artist is working in a wide media which can express himself in many ways.
The artist has made me realised the possibility to work further, that I can actually work in different media to explore the possibility to explore my strengths and discover more media in order to support my art study.
Artist: Patricia L. Boyd
Date: 6th February 2019
Patricia L. Boyd lives and works in New York. Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Joins, Cell Project Space, London (with Rosa Aiello, 2019); Other Mechanisms, Secession, Vienna; 1856, Melbourne; Good Grammar, Potts, Los Angeles (all 2018); Operator, 80WSE, New York; Us, 3236RLS, London; Mechanisms, The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco; AEROSOL, 500 Capp Street Foundation, San Francisco (all 2017); Metrics, Modern Art Oxford (2015). She has received moving image commissions from EMPAC, The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy (2015-16); and Frieze Film, London (2013).
Patricia L Boyd’s works mainly related to feminism, body art and also sculpture with some sketches. Her works reminded me of Claire Price, the artist who is also approached to body art. Patricia’s work is mainly in an exhibition recently which is held in Reading, London, presenting her works related to the topic of body art.
I believe the artist is approaching a way that is creative and also unique, as she is the artist who wants to discover more about the studies of body art. Even though I am an artist who wouldn’t dare to let my artworks related to the topic of sexism and body art, but I will let myself to explore more in this range of areas.
Artist: Sandra Sterle
Date:13 February 2019
Sandra Sterle works across film, installation, interventions, photography and performance. Born in 1965, in Zadar, she is now professor of performance art and video at the Arts Academy in Split, Croatia. Graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Academy of Visual Art in Zagreb and continued her studies at Department of Film and Video at Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf, 1995-96. Her works have been exhibited and performed in numerous international art institutions and are part of the public archives and collections of MMSU, Rijeka, Art Gallery, Split and private collections.
Sandra Sterle’s works mainly focused on film works, photography and art. Her areas are around performance art and film productions. Her film works with the topic of the unstable nature of technological art. Her creative productions have been of her notable works and made her earned her reputation.
Her works have been new to me and the area of film works and performance art seemed to me are unique and the artist inspired me to try something on the area of film and performance art, even though I have no experience on it.
Artist: Julia Crabtree
Date: 27 February 2019
Julia Crabtree is working with her partner-William Evans.
Julia Crabtree and William Evans have been collaborating exclusively for over a decade, developing expansive sculptural works through ongoing material research. Their work is situated at the intersection between the representational strategies of sculpture, design and architecture, with all of these fields treated as a common site of production. Primarily working as makers, Crabtree and Evans de-skill craft-based fabrication processes, breaking down systems of established knowledge as a means to reject the precedent of monumental gestures. The artists are interested in entropy, where disorder is fertile throughout the characteristics of the materials they choose. In their work, architectural scale is undermined by purposeful homespun techniques, digital image form soft upholstered landscapes and lumbering memory foam cup eroticised forms.
Materiality embodies connections with human hybrid origins and their messy entanglements, from the half-wild and half-manufactured ecosystems that produce our food to the gut biomes that digest it. Crabtree and Evans reflect upon the macro and the micro, from the seismic landscape to an amoebic microorganism at a time when nature and bodies are evolving, comingling and collapsing.
I mainly appreciate Julia’s work of making different sculptures as her study. Especially sculpture is a form of art that I am not that keen to. I saw some works that she presented during her talk and the sculptures are mainly in stick forms and I think that could fully represent the artist’s style of creating art. I found that really impressive by looking different kind of sculptures’ form and seeing them as a form of art which is built in a curtain style.
I have learnt that I could start something new like sculpture, as Julia introduced sculpture to me in a way that I can see sculptures can be done in different forms and the variation of sculptures. It inspired me to make something really different and I will consider to let sculptures to be a part of my studio study.
Artist: Tai Shani
Date: 6 March, 2019
Tai Shani’s multidisciplinary practice, comprising performance, film, photography and installation, revolves around experimental narrative texts. Shani creates violent, erotic and fantastical images told in a dense, floral language which re-imagines female otherness as a perfect totality, set in a world complete with cosmologies, myth and histories that negate patriarchy. These alternate between familiar narrative tropes and structures and theoretical prose in order to explore the construction of subjectivity, excess and affects of the epic as the ground for a post-patriarchal realism.
Tai Shani’s on-going project Dark Continent Productions that proposes an allegorical city of women, is an experimental and expanded adaptation of Christine de Pizan’s 1405 pioneering feminist book, The Book of the City of Ladies within which Christine builds an allegorical city for notable women drawn from a medieval conception of history, where fact, fiction and myth are blurred. This non-hierarchical approach also determines the construction of the characters and narrative of Dark Continent.
Tai Shani was born in London. Shani has presented her work extensively in the UK and abroad, recent exhibitions and commissions include, Glasgow International (2018) Wysing Arts Centre (2017); Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2016); RADAR commission, Loughborough University, (2016), Serpentine Galleries (2016); Tate Britain (2016); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2015); Southbank Centre, London (2014-15); Arnolfini, Bristol (2013); Matt’s Gallery, London (2012) and FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais and Loop Festival, Barcelona (2011); The Barbican, London (2011); ICA, London (2011)
Tai Shani made a lot of performance work, some of them are not my cup of tea, but some of them are quite interesting, some works are influenced by different film works. For example, the work of “Coming Soon” was made with Annabell Frearson, was inspired from a scene from the movie “Frankenstein”. The scene reminds me of the play I watched 2 years ago which is named “Franky”
Tai Shani made things in different medias like in performances and installation. That inspired me again to put myself to performance art, as I personally compose music and play the piano. Tai Shani’s talk has made me realise that I can put my compositions as an performance art and develop that to a full art performance accompanied with music. To sum up, I think Tai Shani’s talk is interesting and mostly inspiring as she introduced something really different to me.
Artist: John Russell
Date: 13th March, 2019
John Russell (b.1963) studied History of Art at Goldsmith’s College of Art and Fine Art at Slade School of Art and Saint Martin’s School of Art. He was a co-founder of the artists’ group BANK, of which he was a member for ten years participating in over fifty exhibitions and events, as well as several publications. Since leaving BANK in January 2000, Russell has worked both independently and collaboratively in producing exhibitions, curatorial projects, and publications as artworks including editing and designing the collectively written trilogy Frozen Tears, a crossbreed between bestseller and horror series comprised of texts by Art & Language, Ulrike Meinhof, Lucie McKenzie, Fabienne Audéoud and others. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at venues including Bridget Donahue, New York (2018); High Art, Paris, France (2017); Kunsthalle Zürich(2017); and in group exhibitions at Viborg Kunsthal, Viborg, Denmark (2018); Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2018); Galerie Crèvecoeur, Paris (2018); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2017); Artists Space, New York (2014); The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK (2013); ICA, London (2011); Focal Point Gallery, Southend, UK (2011); The Grey Area, Brighton, UK (2011);
Through John Russell’s talk, I can see that his works are mainly around installations of sculptures and made with pictures reproductions. His works is really different and I can see the different variety of medias that he tried, for example, he used some performance works to express himself and some video works that tells a story.
However, I can also see that he used an extreme way to express in his art practice, I saw some works contained violence, mature content and some vulgar content. Even though he tried out so many medias. His use of using an extreme way has slightly made me disagree. But overall, I have learnt that his use of creative media is very wise, he knows how to use editing to make a new art piece which brings the new secondary reproduction.
Artist: Barbara Walker
Date:20th March
Barbara Walker is a British artist based in Birmingham in the UK. Her work is informed by the social, political and cultural realities that affect her life and the lives of those around her. Growing up in Birmingham, her experiences have directly shaped a practice concerned with issues of class and power, gender, race, representation and belonging. Her figurative drawings and paintings tell contemporary stories hinged on historical circumstances, making them universally understood and reflecting a human perspective on the state of affairs in her native Britain and elsewhere.
Barbara Walker’s works are mainly related to the subjects of people who are in black ethnicity, the artist likes to use the subject in order to express the message of social, political problems in order to show most topics in order to show the problems related to race. She works in many medias as she used portraits and many other photograph documented works. She used many ways to express her topic around the race issues especially for black ethnicity.
Barbara’s talk today made me realised of different issues in our modern societies, will the problems of racism still exists in our future? The artist used many examples and the works of her own to express the problem and I was inspired that I will have plans to make a different topic of my art practice that is related to social political issues, as I am an artist, composer, pianist who understands the world’s issues and several ways of helping it. As a result, the only way I can make a reaction to the talk today is to make a series of artworks related to social problems plus adding my compositions in order communicate in both art and music by decrease the barriers of people.
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