Visual and Material Culture at Northumbria University

03/12/2024

Just gone live: a special issue of Arts journal (online, open access), titled “The visual arts and sustainable agriculture in Britain”. I'd be delighted to have a chat with anyone who would like further details. Link below; feel free to share.
All the best, Rupert

Special Issue in journal Arts: The Visual Arts and Sustainable Agriculture in Britain

28/03/2023

Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography celebrates Native culture while confronting settler colonialism.

24/02/2023

Tate Modern and Hyundai Motor announce that El Anatsui will create the next annual Hyundai Commission. El Anatsui, 2019. © Aliona Adrianova. Courtesy October Gallery, London One of the most distinctive artists working today, El Anatsui is best-known for his cascading metallic sculptures constructed...

19/01/2023

📣 Register for our upcoming Exhibition Histories symposium 'Precarious Solidarities: Artists for Democracy (1974–77)’!

Date: 2 February 2023
Time: 10:00–17:00 (GMT)
Location: Online

*Please note: updated timing. February 1st has been called as a strike day for universities alongside other public sector workers in the UK. In recognition of this, the programme will take place on 2nd February only.*

This symposium takes Artists for Democracy as a starting point to explore the entanglement of artistic practices with transnational solidarities shaped by migration and political mobilisation. Artists for Democracy formed in London in 1974 to give ‘material and cultural support to liberation movements worldwide’. The founding group included Guy Brett, John Dugger, David Medalla and Cecilia Vicuña, and their first major initiative was the ‘International Arts Festival for the Chilean Resistance’ (1974). The group then reconvened in a squatted building at 143 Whitfield Street as a space for exhibitions, events, meeting and organising.

Drawing from approaches in exhibition studies, this gathering will approach these histories through an intersection of multiple overlapping agencies and conditions of possibility – artistic, social, political, historical and geographic – to explore what we can learn from Artist for Democracy’s histories today. Contributors will include George Clark & Cuong Pham with An Viet Archive, Wing Chan, Jane England, Charles Esche, Hannah Healey, Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, María José Lemaitre & Caroll Yasky (Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende), Lynn MacRitchie, Courtney J. Martin, Arianna Mercado, Adeena Mey, Jonathan Miles, David Morris, Nii Kwate Owoo, Vijay Prashad, Jun Terra, Yaiza Hernández Velázquez and Cecilia Vicuña.

🔗 in the bio for the registration link!

[Photo: Artists for Democracy, stickers created by several artists, among them Cecilia Vicuña and David Medalla, for the Arts Festival for Democracy in Chile, held at the Royal College of Art in London, 1974. Courtesy of Cecilia Vicuña’s archive.]

12/01/2023

Open Call: Stuart Hall Library Artist Residency 2023 Click here to apply iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and the Stuart Hall Foundation are pleased to announce the sixth Stuart Hall Library Artist Residency commencing in May 2023. This residency is a funded opportunity for an artist b...

11/01/2023

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jan/10/i-get-knocked-down-leedss-year-of-culture-rises-from-the-ashes-of-brexit?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Leeds’ bid to be European capital of culture was scuppered when Britain left the EU – but the city is carrying on regardless with dancing, barn-building and statues to local heroes

11/01/2023

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/jan/10/design-museum-show-saris-modern-reinvention-met-ball?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Design Museum exhibition to feature more than 90 saris, including first one ever worn to Met Ball

11/01/2023

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/jan/10/shipbuilding-ian-macdonalds-teesside-in-pictures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

From swans on the River Tees to beaches covered in snow, these images show the painstaking process that goes into the Middlesbrough photographer’s work

22/12/2022

Open Call for Baltic Bothy Residency 2023 📣 We’re supporting an emerging artist based in the North East of England (County Durham, Northumberland, Teesside or Tyne and Wear) to undertake a week’s residency at Sweeney’s Bothy on the Isle of Eigg, in partnership with Bothy Project.

Deadline: Sun 8 Jan, 23.59

Submit ➡️ bit.ly/3v7AwFL

22/11/2022

'Works on the Floor' symposium, Yale Centre for British Art - online, 16th December:

Quantock Wood Circle (1981) by Richard Long is a floor sculpture consisting of 285 weathered and broken pine branches collected by the artist from the Quantock Hills in Somerset, near his hometown of Bristol, England. Following the artist’s instructions, the sticks are placed in any combination in...

31/10/2022

27/10/2022

HOME Artist Film Lab: Worldbuilding

DEADLINE: Tue 1 November

Are you an artist working with film, video or moving image in the North of England? Join the second edition of the HOME Artist Film Lab taking place Thu 1 – Fri 2 Dec 2022!

The HOME Artist Film Lab is a space for artist filmmakers to explore, learn and share together. The lab will bring together a cohort of 10 artist filmmakers for a series of artist-led workshops, talks, discussions, and screenings, inspired by ideas of speculative fiction and worldbuilding – how do we build worlds with moving image and sound? How can these worlds inspire new ways of thinking about our own worlds?

The lab is free, but please note it is limited to 10 participants.

This is an amazing opportunity to develop new skills, learn new tools, take with you ideas for your own practice and most of all, make connections with other artist filmmakers in the region.

Apply now: https://bit.ly/3SrBMg9

Image credit: Amy Gough (artist and participant of the first edition of the HOME Artist Film Lab).