Exploring the role of the artist in relation to the environment, climate change and the forces of nature.
For fifty years Roger Ackling consistently made objects by burning wood – focusing sunlight through the lens of a hand-held magnifying glass to scorch repeated patterns of lines on the surface of card and wood. Best known for his work on driftwood collected from the beach at Weybourne near his home on the North Norfolk coast, later works feature discarded or low value materials of a more recent industrial past.
Sarah Casey’s recent work responds to the precarious nature of glacial archaeology, using sediments released from melting ice and drawings that are erased by the heat of alpine sun. Both artists explore the relationship between humans and their environment: between the earth-shaping forces of time, weather and geology and the agency of artists whose work is produced in collaboration with these processes.
Recent years have seen an efflorescence of art practices that engage with climate and the creative and destructive forces of nature. This symposium will address a wide variety of connected subjects such as artistic responses to coastal erosion, curatorial climate-focused challenges, the agency of materials, glacial engagements with contemporary art, the development of digital technologies, astronomical photography and interaction with fungal bodies. It will also look at key artists working in this area including Abbas Akhavan, Ilya Dogov, Joan Jonas, and Kerem Ozan Bayraktar.
Programme:
10am Arrivals, tea and coffee.
10:20am Welcome and Introduction
10.30 Session 1
Chair: Amanda Geitner, Norwich University of the Arts
Veronia Sekules, GroundWork Gallery
‘A Long View of Art and Environment’
Julia Kantelberg, Rijksmuseum Polder
‘Exhibiting Landscape at the Rijksmuseum’
Dr Roter Su, independent filmmaker/academic
‘When It's Gone, It's Gone’
11.45 Session 2
Chair: Professor Dean Hughes, Artist/Birmingham City University
Deborah Mueller, University of Vienna
‘Cosmological Abstraction and Environmental Forces in early Ecological Art’
Anna Voke, Institut Acte, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
‘Forms of Chance in Contemporary Ceramics’
Dr Silvia Neri, Université Paris 8
‘Contemporary Land Art: The Open-Air Museum of Arte Sella’
1pm Lunch served in The Studio
2pm Exhibition Tours AG & SC
3pm Session 3
Chair: Professor Sarah Casey, Lancaster University
Dr Joanne 'Bob' Whalley, University of the Arts London
‘Glacial Thinking: Art, Time and the Spectral Forces of Ice’
Liberty Quinn, artist
‘Digital Fractures: Visualising Environmental Change in Antarctica’
Dr Melanie King, artist/curator
‘Ancient Light: Rematerialising The Astronomical Image’
4pm Coffee served in The Studio
4.30pm Session 4
Chair: Dr Sean Ketteringham, Henry Moore Institute
Dr. Valentin Diakonov, The Whitworth, University of Manchester
‘Growing Out of Art: Gardening and Experimentation in the Disciplinary Margins’
Haeweon Yi, Theatre maker/writer/researcher, Manchester
‘Theatre of Decomposition’
Dr Morven Gregor, Mount Stuart Trust
'I miss the days when the weather was a literary device': Abbas Akhavan's snapdragon’
5.30 – 7pm Drinks Reception in The Studio
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(+ programme – attached)
