Art, Music + Chance: The Legacy of John Cage (1912-1992)

• Event date: Saturday, June 19, 2010 - 09:00
• Location: Centre for Contemporary Art
• Event type: Study Day
• Collaborator:s Baltic
• Artists: John Cage Cornelia Parker
• Speakers: Roger Malbert Laura Kuhn Jeremy Millar Helen Baker Cornelia Parker Atau Tanaka Alessandro Vincentelli
• Themes: Contextualisation Performance Curation Contemporary Art
• Tags: Contemporary Art

This study day, in collaboration with the Open University, explored art, music and chance, looking at the vital legacy of John Cage’s experimentation in music, composition and art. Speakers included: Cornelia Parker, artist, Laura Kuhn, John Cage Trust, Atau Tanaka, artist / director of Newcastle University Culture Lab, Jeremy Millar, artist and curator, Helen Baker, Gallery Director at Gallery North and Principal Lecturer in Fine Art, Roger Malbert, Senior Curator Hayward Touring Exhibitions and Alessandro Vincentelli, BALTIC Curator. The seminar was presented on the occasion of three exhibitions at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art being held between June and September 2010.

• BALTIC, presented the first major retrospective in the UK of the visual art of the American composer and artist John Cage (1912-1992). Titled John Cage - Every Day is a Good Day. The exhibition was a Hayward Touring Exhibition conceived by artist, Jeremy Millar and organised in collaboration with BALTIC and the John Cage Trust. It was accompanied by a new publication.
• BALTIC hosted a major exhibition of the work of artist and sculptor Cornelia Parker. A key work was ‘Perpetual Cannon’ – a startling installation composed of 57 suspended musical instruments arranged in a circle.
• Cage Mix – Contemporary Art after Cage is a group show exploring contemporary arts Katja Strunz, Christian Marclay and Graham Gussin amongst others. A starting point for this exhibition was Cage’s own 1957 Fontana Mix – an articulation of Cage’s compositional structures using chance.