Martha Hellion and Martha Hawley, close friends of and collaborators with Ulises Carrión, will present a unique performance together on the night of the opening. The evening will continue with drinks and Bolero music from Carrión's collection.
---- My name is Ulises. What’s yours? Saturday 12 June 2010 12.30 – 3.30 pm
This two-part seminar will provide an historical context to Ulises Carrión's practice and explore how it relates to contemporary artists’ books and publishing strategies. The first part will take the form of a conversation between Martha Hellion and Martha Hawley followed by presentations by writer and curator Clive Phillpot and artist Alun Rowlands.
---- 45 Revolutions per Minute Wednesday 23 June 2010 7 – 9 pm
Guy Schraenen, a curator and publisher who collaborated with Carrión to produce his sound works, will discuss Carrión's performances and sound works. This will be accompanied by a screening of The Death of the Art Dealer, the documentation of the performance The Robbery of the Year and a presentation of the sound works Hamlet for 2 Voices and 45 Revoluciones por minuto.
----- Lilia Prado Festival Saturday 26 June 2010 6 – 9 pm
In 1984, De Appel Arts Centre hosted Ulises Carrión's four-day event, Lilia Prado Superstar Film Festival, a screening of five films starring the Mexican actress, to which she was also invited. Prado was little known in the Netherlands at the time and this event was Carrión's attempt to situate his past culture in that of his present. Ulises Carrión’s retelling of the event, The LPS File, will be screened alongside Luis Buñuel's Subida al cielo, and tequila cocktails.
----- Publication Launch at KALEID Editions Friday 2 July 2010 6 – 9 pm
KALEID Editions will host the launch of the accompanying publication designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio.
KALEID Editions, 23 – 25 Redchurch Street, London E2 7DJ
All events are free. Please RSVP to Barbara Rodriguez Muñoz at b.rodriguez-munoz@network.rca.ac.uk as places are limited.
Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners is the first solo presentation in the UK of the work of Mexican artist, writer and publisher, Ulises Carrión (1941-1989), curated by the first year MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in collaboration with Martha Hellion. Comprising an exhibition, series of events and publication and will invoke the spirit of Carrión’s practice through the activation of his provocative propositions and methodologies.
Incorporating concrete and visual poetry, mail art, videos, sound works and ‘bookworks’, Carrión’s diverse practice focused on language as a raw material and the exploration of alternative forms of distribution and communication. Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners, the video work from which the exhibition takes its title, is built around marginal patterns of everyday information exchange, or gossip.
Carrión’s practice emerged from Fluxus and concrete poetry circles in Mexico before he moved to Europe in the mid-1960s. He promoted a transnational dialogue with his mail art projects and initiatives such as Other Books and So, active as a bookshop in Amsterdam (1975-1978) and subsequently as an archive. Apart from hosting exhibitions, performances and the making and publishing of artists’ books, the shop also functioned as an informal meeting point for artists and publishers.
Informed by the structure of Other Books and So, The Showroom’s exhibition space will double as a flexible platform for performances, seminars, talks, screenings, and a display of the different elements of Carrión’s practice alongside rare archival material. This material will be presented in a modular display system conceived by Fay Nicolson and Oliver Smith, which takes its inspiration from the cardboard vitrines designed by Martha Hellion for the Fluxshoe exhibition that toured the UK in the early 1970s. The display structure will also house a range of contemporary artist books that continue in the spirit of the ‘bookwork’, as well as re-editioned versions of Carrión's own ‘bookworks’ and contextual material on his practice.
An accompanying publication designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio will provide documentation of the exhibition project and events programme, together with newly commissioned texts setting Carrión’s work in context. This will be launched on Friday 2 July 2010 at KALEID Editions.
This project is realised with the kind support of the Monique Beudert fund.
With special thanks to Martha Hellion, without whom this project would not have been possible.
With thanks to the Mexican Embassy (London), the Netherlands Media Art Institute (Amsterdam), Chelsea College of Art & Design Library, Archive for Small Press and Communication (Bremen), Ibid Projects, The Block and Yume Pictures.
Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners is a project based on the work of Mexican artist, writer and publisher, Ulises Carrión (1941-1989).Comprising of an exhibition, series of events and publication, the project aims to reanimate Carrión’s practice for a contemporary audience in a way that reflects his own ideas, methodologies and idiosyncrasies.
Carrión, whose work has rarely been shown in the UK, emerged out of Fluxus and concrete poetry circles in his native country before moving to Europe in the mid-1960s.His diverse practice is underpinned by a concern with alternative strategies of distribution and communication.As such, he promoted a transnational dialogue prior to the inception of the Internet with his mail art projects and initiatives such as Other Books and So, which was active in Amsterdam from 1975 to 1978 and subsequently became an archive.This informal space for exhibitions, performances, collaborations and the making and publishing of artists’ books also served as a meeting point for artists and publishers. Alongside his commitment to self-publishing, he was also one of the first to theorise on artists’ books.
This project is curated by the first year MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in collaboration with Martha Hellion, with the kind support of the Monique Beudert fund.
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Tim Pritchard Gallery, Royal College of Art Sculpture Building
15 - 25 Howie Street, SW11 4AS
From Wednesday 10 - Sunday 14 March 2010 Opening Thursday 11 March 2010, 6.30 - 8.30pm
Display brought together work by five artists from across the Royal College of Art: Marie Angeletti (Photography), Aki Ilomaki (Painting), Robert Lye(Sculpture), and Fay Nicolson& Oliver Smith (Printmaking). Each of these artists addressed issues of display formally or conceptually. Tim Pritchard Gallery’s status as a hybrid gallery / studio space highlighted the works’ trajectory from raw material to art object, muddying the distinction between what is considered work-in-progress and the end result.
Curated by a handful of first year MA Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art.
Marie Angeletti
People, Material Things, Nature, 2009
C prints
Dimensions variable
Aki Ilomaki
Nature, 2010
Mixed media
Dimensions variable
Robert Lye
The Rules, 2010 (from the ‘Performance’ archive)
Mirror, glass, beard cuttings grown throughout the duration of the ‘Performance’ project, hard wood, digital C print, frame, digital print, potted pine plant
Dimensions variable
Fay Nicolson & Oliver Smith
A Provisional Model for Expansion and Collapse, 2010
Risograph, laserjet and screenprint on paper, corrugated cardboard and archival glass
Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire, UK. 15 - 18 February 2010.
A four-day retreat of talks, performances and workshops, which looked at the theme of distribution as a common thread, programmed by the first year Curating Contemporary Art MA students, Royal College of Art.
The retreat pointed to the models that have revolutionised distribution – from the printing press to the internet and digitisation – and the evolutionary forms of social change that open up or are constrained by these changes in communication. We explored how artistic practices, literature and film have addressed these issues. Guests and events included:
Mark Essen (Artist, UK) Record Exchange and Celebration, live performance. Essen set up a record exchange space whereby participants were invited to bring records, videos, magazines and other paraphernalia for exchange.
Mark Essen (Artist, US) For the duration of the retreat the participants were invited to play Flywrench (2007) and Scrap Collector (2008), video games created by the artist.
Maria Fusco (Director of Art Writing, Goldsmiths and the Editor of The Happy Hypocrite), conducted a writing workshop exploring exercises in writing in first, second and third persons.
Mindaugas Gapševičius (Artist and curator), gave a presentation on o-o, the first Lithuanian new media art platform on the net and explored important tendencies in digital / networking arts from different viewpoints.
Emma Hedditch (Artist), lead a video workshop focused on thinking about self-reflexivity both within her own practice and contemporary art practice, in relation to issues of distribution and self-representation.
Francesco Pedraglio (Curator, writer and co-director of FormContent) in conversation with Daniella Saul (Curator). Pedraglio gave a presentation, All Right / All Wrong, which explored the distribution of history and knowledge through subjective literary methodologies. Saul presented her research on her upcoming exhibition at FormContent, which explores issues of contemporaneity in art.
Mike Sperlinger (Head of Distribution, LUX) in conversation with Karen Alexander (Senior lecturer, Royal College of Art) addressed the challenges of distributing artists' moving image today.
Film screening programmed by CCA of Space is the Place, 1974, featuring Sun Ra and directed by John Coney.
