Next week US artist Clifford Owens is a guest in the department as a visiting professor. On the evening of Wednesday 9 October at 18:00 he will be showing a performance in the Robert Boyle Lecture Theatre, room G42 in the Armstrong building (University map ref:22). This is a rare opportunity to see performance art live and thoroughly recommended for all students.
Clifford’s work brings the significance of liveness and presence into dialogue with the photograph. It acknowledges the complexities that come with a compulsion to record events and asks questions about the existential anxieties that accompany the camera. His own body is a crucial player in this. His practice takes the legacies of emergent performance art making from the ‘60s and ‘70s in which we see the artist’s body as the site of the work and pulls it into a conceptual dynamic with themes of race, masculinity, class and the fragility of social structures.
His project Anthology features performances scores—written or graphical instructions for actions—that Owens solicited from a multigenerational group of African-American artists. Twenty-six major artists have contributed scores — including Pope.l, Kara Walker and Senga Nengudi — many of whom composed new works specifically for Owens and his project.
TALKER is a self-published interview zine about performance by Giles Bailey. Each issue features a long-form interview with an artist who works in an innovative way with live practice.
Two-week fully-funded placement with Alwan wa Awtar, Cairo (25 January – 9 February 2025)
In this fully-funded internship with Alwan wa Awtar you will be working alongside Alwan wa Awtar’s staff with young people delivering art workshops and art projects.
Established in 2005, Alwan wa Awtar (A&A) is a non-governmental organisation based in Cairo, Egypt that offers artistic and non-formal educational services to children and youth in different community settings, both urban and rural. A&A’s goal is to enrich children and youth social and cultural wellbeing as well as awaken them to their full potential as dignified, authentic and skilled individuals, who actively engage with their own development and that of their communities.
Across the years, A&A has developed a unique experience in operating highly participatory learning spaces in multiple communities (namely Mokattam, Ezbet El-Nasr, & Kafr Hamza) adopting “arts for development” as its core methodology. Today, A&A runs three service units: the Mokattam community space, the Montessori child corner, as well as the Knowledge Hub which brings A&A’s know-how to various entities active in the cultural, educational and developmental field across Egypt. Since its inception, A&A has worked with more than 10000 children and youth, 250 mothers and 50 partners.
The aim of the Bartlett Sustainable Practice Award is to inspire students to explore practice-led approaches to climate conscious and sustainable making. There will be several prizes available which will be awarded through open submission to UG and MFA students for practices that reflect critically on materials use, repurposed material, longevity and the articulation of ideas in relation to sustainable making.
Call out to all Fine Art students (who plan to stay in Newcastle over the summer) First Meeting: Friday 17th May 2024, from 1pm Where: Windsor Terrace Fine Art Garden / 14-15 Windsor Terrace NE2 4HE Contact: Sean Rodrigues E-mail: seanrodrigues99@gmail.com
Although the academic year is nearing the end for many people, the growing season is only really just starting to kick into gear. This is a call out to anyone in the school of arts and cultures who’d be interested in doing regular garden activities as part of a group, and is planning on being up in newcastle over the summer, even if its only for part of it. This would take place in the back yard of Windsor Terrace, which is currently the building that houses studio spaces for Fine art MA and PHD students. The aim is to have somewhat regular sessions where people can meet up and do some gardening or just enjoy the space, and should hopefully be a way to stay connected with colleagues in the university over the summer off – season.
First meetup will be this Friday 17th May from 1pm. Lunch will be involved, which may already include some produce from the garden itself – additional contributions to the lunch are also welcome. Weather permitting we can even get outside and do some jobs in there, but if you just want to be in a green space away from computer screens and white walls for a bit then that is absolutely fine too.
OPEN STUDIOS Thursday 9May 2024 (4-8pm) in the Fine Art studios!
If you have not been involved in OPEN STUDIOS before this is when we tidy up ALL of the studios and you present work in progress in your studio space. Those of you sharing studios with Year 4 students please be mindful of the fact that final year students will stay in the studios in preparation for the degree show until all Year 1-3 have moved out.
Open studios is a social event – not assessment– it is entirely up to you what you present in your space. This might include sketchbooks, documentation, work in progress or completed pieces . As you know, the Year 1-3 assessments take place the week after (w/c 13 May), so it will also mean we have tidy spaces ready to present work for assessment.
Health & Safety and Security: You need to have your space ready by 3.30pm on Thursday 9th May for a Health and Safety walk around by Joe – so think carefully about any equipment you may need and any health & safety checks and risk assessments you may need to organise. If you are not sure then speak to your tutor or module leader. Be especially careful of running electric cables across walkways and blocking fire corridors and exits.
You are responsible individually for your own work, so you need to consider ethics, & check any electrical equipment you are using and – very importantly – turn it off at the end of the event. You may want to discuss Open Studios (health & safety, signage, security etc) with other members of your studio and work collaboratively.
Open Studios 2024
Start 4 PM, Windsor Terrace, See MFA studio and meet MFA students join us for drinks in the garden/ Windsor Terrace
5-8 PMKing Edward VII Building Fine Art BA studios STUDIOS HAVE TO BE VACATED AND EVERYTHING SWITCHED OFF BY 8PM!
You are cordially invited to a student-led exhibition event concluding the project ‘Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Ancient Technologies – Bloomery Iron Smelting’. The event will be taking place on
Thursday 25th April, 5.30-7.30pm, The Long Gallery, Fine Art Department, King Edward VII Building.
Archie Ogus | Ardra Nair | Brandon Pearce | Elizabeth Oughton | Frank Pretorius | Kitty McKay
Preview: Thursday 24 April, 6 – 9pm
25 April– 4 May 2024
Some Assembly Required brings together the work of six Newcastle University MFA students at Slugtown, Newcastle upon Tyne. Featuring new works by Ardra Nair, Frank Pretorius, Elizabeth Oughton, Brandon Pearce, Archie Ogus and Kitty McKay the show makes visible the collaborative nature of group exhibitions, and considers what might be achieved when artists embrace their differences and produce work in divergence.
Eschewing tight thematics, Some Assembly Required explores contrasting relationships towards the purpose of exhibition building and meaning making. The works in this exhibition span a range of media and references; including painting, urban cartographies, and class and queer politics. Through bringing these diverse practices together in this exhibition, the show aims to both flatten the hierarchies of prescribed value, and to adopt the position of a playful experiment into the messiness of curation as creative practice.
A Red Table painted 70 years ago. So what…? We want to know from you. A response to Red Table 70 years later. Bring your painting, sculpture film performance to the XL Gallery on 7 March, 10 AM. Red Table Project
Workshop with painter Maggie Ayliffe (Liverpool John Moores) and Christian Mieves
Between 1952 and 1957 the Fine Art Department set the foundation for a painting collection, as part of the Hatton Gallery. This collection , called the “teaching collection”, was an integral part of the Fine Art department. We want to use the opportunity to revisit the unique resource and want to ask, how the use of language encountering paintings has changed in in the decades.
For this reason, we invite you, as part of the Painting Forum, to take part in the project, to access the archive at our doorsteps and respond creatively to a painting from the collection.
Take part in the exhibition and workshop with painter Maggie Ayliffe.
Key Dates: 7 March 2024, 10 AM : Submission 8 March 2024, 10 AM: Painting Forum
Next Painting Forum:
Fri 8 March 10 AM, XL Gallery
Join us for the Painting Forum on Fri 8 March, 10 AM. The forum is open to everyone, no need to sign up. In the forum we will speak with painter Maggie Ayliffe, Liverpool, and we will have unique opportunity to look at Patrick Heron’s Red Table from the Hatton Archive.
Exhibition: A Red Table
As part of the painting forum there will be an exhibition. You still have a chance to submit a piece of practice for the exhibition (see details below). The extended deadline is Thursday 7 March, 10 AM at the XL gallery.
Painting + is a place for regular studio discussions about painting, an exchange of ideas and texts dealing with the everyday task of painting.It started in autumn 2019 with a series of informal discussions on painting with Newcastle University Fine Art students from all years (Undergraduate and Postgraduate).
This year we will have a series of conversations with painters, practical painting workshops and reading group meetings, discussing texts dealing with the idea of painting. Every forum meeting we will discuss paintings or a text (see Readings for previous discussions).
Future Climates: Artists and Curators respond to the Climate Crisis is a new series of talks developed in collaboration between Art Monthly and the School of Arts and Cultures,Newcastle University. The series brings together international artists, curators, writers to reflect on how cultural practices can respond to the climate crisis and its complex, societal, political, economic, historical entanglements with a specific focus on practices and thinking that go beyond aesthetic and conceptual engagement and set about making a real-life difference.
Talk 2 Lise Autogena and Maya and Reuben Fowkes
chaired by Chris McCormack
30 April 2024, 17.00 Newcastle University Fine Art Lecture Theatre
Lise Autogena is a Danish artist and Professor. Since the early 90’s her collaborations with Joshua Portway have explored impacts of the economic, geographic, technological, and societal systems we have created. Projects include, for example, ‘Most Blue Skies’ that uses real-time changes in the atmosphere to visualize and locate the bluest sky in the world, Black Shoals; Dark Matter visualises the world’s financial markets as a night sky of constellations. Recent work has documented the question of uranium mining in Greenland and in 2020 Autogena established the non-profit organisation Narsaq International Research Station (NIRS), which hosts scientific and cultural research projects in South Greenland. Her projects have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide including Tate Britain and the Gwangju Biennial amongst many others.https://www.autogena.org
Maja and Reuben Fowkes are art historians, curators, and directors of the Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London. Their publications include Art and Climate Change (Thames & Hudson, 2022), Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar (Sternberg Press, 2021) and Maja’s The Green Bloc: Neo-avant-garde Art and Ecology under Socialism (CEU Press, 2015). Recent curatorial projects include the exhibitions Colliding Epistemes at Bozar Brussels (2022) and Potential Agrarianism at Kunsthalle Bratislava (2021). Their Horizon Europe research project into the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) is supported by UKRI and they are co-founders of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art. www.translocal.org
Chair: Chris McCormack is a writer and associate editor of Art Monthly. He has devised and participated in numerous talks and events, including for Newcastle University as co-devisor of ‘The Producers’ and the Paul Mellon Centre in London. He is the editor of Charlie Prodger’s monograph (Konig), commissioning editor of ON&BY Andy Warhol (MIT/Whitechapel), project editor of Talking Art 2 (Ridinghouse) and has written extensively on art, and contributed numerous essays for catalogues including James Richards’ Requests and Antisongs, Queer Spaces (RIBA) and the MIT/Whitechapel anthology Moving Image. He has also collaborated with artists including Hilary Lloyd, Oreet Ashery, Ursula Mayer and Jade Montserrat.
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Talk 1 Amal Khalaf and Oliver Ressler
chaired by Neil Bromwich
12 March 2024, 17.30 Newcastle University Fine Art Lecture Theatre
Introduced by Chris McCormack and Uta Kögelsberger
Amal Khalaf is a curator and artist and currently Director of Programmes at Cubitt, Civic Curator at the Serpentine Galleries, and co-curator of the forthcoming Sharjah Biennial in 2025. Recent projects include Radio Ballads (2019-22) and Sensing the Planet (2021). She is a founding member of artist collective GCC, a trustee of Mophradat, Athens; not/nowhere, London and Art Night, London. In 2019 she curated Bahrain’s pavilion for Venice, in 2018 she co-curated an international arts and social justice conference called Rights to the City in 2016 she co-directed the 10th edition of the Global Art Forum, Art Dubai.
Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker whose installations and projects in the public realm address issues of democracy, racism, climate breakdown, forms of resistance and social alternatives. Ressler’s has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein; MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; SALT Galata, Istanbul; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Seville; Museo Espacio, Aguascalientes, Mexico and Belvedere 21, Vienna and in more than 400 group exhibitions, including Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris and the biennials in Taipei, Venice, Athens, Kyiv, Gothenburg, Istanbul and at Documenta 14, Kassel, 2017 amongst others. www.ressler.at
Chair: Neil Bromwich is part of the Glasgow based collaborative duo Walker & Bromwich and Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University. At the core of their practice is the exploration of the role art can play as an active agent in society, with a specific focus on climate justice. Walker & Bromwich have exhibited work at documenta-fifteen, SEA + Triennale Jakarta, Thessaloniki Biennale, Greece, MCA Sydney; Tate Britain; V&A London; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art; Glasgow International; Edinburgh Art Festival, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. Their most recent initiative sets about creating a new platform for the exchange and production of new work withing the context of climate justice in collaboration with the Indonesian non-profits arts organisation Rodha Among Karsa.