Installation

Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey, Stranded

Part of the series 'Art & Alchemy: Transformation & Contemporary Art'. A two day conference across Cambridge and Norwich exploring ideas of alchemy and transformation, and the role of crystals in contemporary artistic practice and theory from Graeco-Roman Egypt to Surrealism and contemporary art.

Gill Perry, Gangs and Crystals at Home in South London: Roger Hiorns's Seizure, 2008

Part of the lecture series on 'Art & Alchemy: Transformation & Contemporary Art' A two day conference across Cambridge and Norwich exploring ideas of alchemy and transformation, and the role of crystals in contemporary artistic practice and theory from Graeco-Roman Egypt to Surrealism and contemporary art.

Discussion 1 This symposium explores the controversial status of Futurist movements in art history, and some of their ‘avant-garde’ practices. Speakers engage with various forms of Futurist art, performance and film, including the use of manifestos and demonstrations. Italian Futurism will be viewed in relation to other radical art practices across Europe. The Futurists’ disdain for traditional values and their pursuit of an ‘art of modern life’ will be explored in relation to prevailing concepts of modernity and ‘avant-garde’ utopias.

Matthew Gale and Gill Perry, ‘The raging broom of madness’: making an exhibition of Futurism  The presentation covers some of the ideas, issues and decisions that went into making Futurism at Tate Modern. It covers a range from conception to installation, including such concerns as how to present the manifestos and what happened to Balla's dog?

David Cottington, Futurism and The Avant-Garde  It is a commonplace of art history to observe that Italian futurism was among the first moveFuturism and The Avant-Gardements of the artistic avant-garde. But these terms, and the implications for understanding both futurist art and its significance for western modernism, are not often examined. What was ‘the avant-garde’, why did it emerge when it did, and what influence did it have on the sudden appearance of futurism on the European cultural stage?

Sophie Howarth, Gill Perry and Claire Bishop, Discussion 2

Robert Morris, Mike Nelson and Martin Fried, Installation Art and the Post-Medium Condition  Claire Bishop argues that installation art is exemplary of 'post-medium specific art', in other words, art whose medium is so expanded that it no longer has much to do with traditional art historical genres such as sculpture and painting.

Sophie Howarth, Paul Wood, Matthew Gale, Dominic Willsdon, Discussion 1

Paul Wood, Expanding Concepts of Sculpture  For most of the twentieth century, sculpture seemed to be the poor relation of modernist art compared to painting. After the crisis of modernism in the late 1960s this changed, as painting lost its position at the centre of contemporary art to be replaced by a multiplicity of three-dimensional practices. Paul Wood starts the day with a brief overview of some aspects of the modernist theory of sculpture leading up to the challenge to it in the sixties.

Sophie Howarth, Introduction  This study day explores the various art practices that have been described as sculpture during the modern period, with particular reference to their avant-garde and aesthetic status. The talks consider the way in which the category of sculpture has been reworked or challenged through concepts such as the 'readymade' as well as through performance and installation art and site-specific commissions.