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.
An exhibition curated by the first year MA Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art, Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, Stevens Building, Jay Mews, SW7 2EU, Opening Wednesday 9 December 2009, 6.30 — 8.30pm, exhibition continues 10 — 18 December 2009
Suns Neither Rise Nor Set brought together work by Vanessa Billy, Richard Hughes, Nina Beier & Marie Lund, The Atlas Group / Walid Raad, Richard Rigg, and Kim Rugg. Using everyday objects, archival materials and collage techniques, these works call into question the processes through which reality and illusion are constructed in visual communication and perception.
Vanessa Billy’s Suns neither rise nor set (2008), from which the exhibition took its title, alludes to the fact that everyday events such as the rising and setting of the sun, are not objective truths but part of a subjective system of symbols and narratives that supports our understanding of reality and perceived position in it. Whereas Billy looks to expose such fictions, The Atlas Group / Walid Raad, claim new ones. Their renegotiations of contested historical memory take the form of presentations of archival documents of Lebanon's recent past, which are themselves of questionable authenticity.
Nina Beier & Marie Lund also engage with notions of the archive. In The Archives (2008), the content of second-hand peace posters is buried beneath the weight of a fold, denying the original authors their protest and quashing past, unrealised hopes for the future. Along with Kim Rugg’s A Single Balloon Drifting Skywards (2008), an evocative reconfiguration of the language and graphic conventions of a daily newspaper, Beier and Lund’s series points towards the hierarchies in place in the distribution of information and how these can affect our interpretation of events.
The reworking of everyday objects is also apparent in the playful and illusory propositions of Richard Hughes and Richard Rigg. Rigg has made a precise but flawed replica of his own desk, whereas Richard Hughes presents us with a shattered clock face, which provocatively questions the authority of time.
In different ways, each of the artists in this exhibition interrogate or deconstruct weighty or complex notions. In doing so, they bring to light the uncertainties that pervade the production and reception of knowledge, helping us to visualise the oscillating line between fact and fiction.
Wednesday 27 January from 6.30pmSenior Common Room, Darwin Building Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EUFree Admission. Booking is essential. Places are limited.
RSVP to Barbara Muñoz b.rodriguez-munoz@network.rca.ac.uk
Organised by first year MA Curating Contemporary Art students at the Royal College of Art, London. A salon discussion exploring the current and possible future effects of the economic downturn on the production and presentation of contemporary art.
Speakers include:
Anne-Sophie Dinant, Associate Curator, South London Gallery Lina Dzuverovic, Co-founder and Director of Electra Candida Gertler, Co-Director and Trustee of Outset Contemporary Art Fund Julie Lomax, Head of Visual Arts, Arts Council England Christian Mooney, Director, Arcade Fine Arts Gallery Elizabeth Neilson, Curator and Head of Collection for 176 Zabludowicz Collection Lawrence Ohana, Strategic Advisor to the Arts Francesco Pedraglio, Caterina Riva, Pieternel Vermoortel , Directors, FormContent Soraya Rodriguez, Founding Director, Zoo Art Enterprises Sally Tallant, Head of Programmes, Serpentine Gallery
Where do we go from here? brings together prominent art professionals to explore alternative strategies and modes of negotiating the place of contemporary art in the future. Departing from the exploration of the mechanisms behind the exponential growth that the UK art scene experienced over the last decade, the discussion will be an open-ended attempt to outline the potential models of art organisations operating in an uncertain financial climate.
Over the last ten years, the UK art scene has undergone exceptional changes, rapidly becoming one of the most influential centres for contemporary art. The relationship between the public and private sectors has been a pivotal factor in this development. Through this discussion we would like to explore to what extent the current financial climate will change the contemporary art landscape in the UK. At what level will the public and private sectors have to interact in order to ensure the vitality of the art scene? And what might be the possible organisational, financial and curatorial strategies that will configure the art scene of the future?
