Photography

Dada to Surrealism: Continuity  Speaker: Martin Gaughan, writer and former Head of the History and Theory of Art at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff .This talk traces some of the issues which informed work in the different Dada centres, establishing their origins and concerns, and considering how the relationships between the different moments can be characterized.

Steve Edwards, USSR in Construction  Speaker: Steve Edwards, Research Lecturer in History of Art at The Open University. This talk looks at Russian art from just before World War 1 until the middle of the 1930s, considering the relation between Constructivist art and the politics of the period. In the wake of the 1917 revolution many avant-garde artists identified with the aims of the Bolshevik regime. Some artists took up teaching or administrative roles in the new state and many tried to find appropriate ways to respond to the transformation of social relations.

Steve Edwards, Mohini Chandra, Marcus Verhagen and Dominic Willsdon, Discussion 2  This video recording from the Contemporary Art and Globalisation Study Day features a panel discussion between speakers.

Mohini Chandra and Dominic Willsdon, Travels in a New World  In exploring the nature of diaspora and visual culture, through installation based art work, texts and other publications, Chandra’s practice involves a multiplicity of cross-cultural dialogues with disciplines such as history, anthropology and geography, suggesting new ways of mapping cultural experience through personal memory.

Steve Edwards and Dominic Willsdon, Photography and Social Space  In an era of increasingly global capitalist production, photographers have become more and more preoccupied with documenting social spaces. Steve Edwards’ talk considers the work that has emerged from both the documentary tradition and the legacy of conceptual art.

Suman Gupta, Sonia Boyce, Paul Wood, Dominic Willsdon, Discussion 1  This video recording from the Contemporary Art and Globalisation Study Day features a panel discussion between speakers.

Introduction. Topics explored in this study day include the changing history of modern western art’s relationship to the rest of the world; theories of globalisation; and the status of photography in relation to globalisation. One of the most important factors to affect contemporary art has been cultural and economic globalisation. Increasingly, international art exhibitions draw their contents from all over the world, and artists address a wide range of subjects relating to this developing situation.

Melanie Manchot, Kathy Battista, Gill Perry, Gavin Butt, Dorothy Rowe and Catherine Grant, Discussion 8  A discussion between Gavin Butt, Dorothy Rowe and Catherine Grant along with questions from the audience.

Catherine Grant, Baby Butches and Reluctant Lolitas: Performances of Adolescence  Collier Schorr and Hellen van Meene are contemporary photographers who are both known for their seductive, glossy portraits of adolescent girls, coming to prominence in the 1990s with a number of other women photographers who focus on the adolescent in their photography. Their portraits play with traditional voyeuristic modes of looking, with the older female photographer taking the place of the voyeuristic male and the model taking the place of 'Lolita'.

Melanie Manchot, Artist's Presentation  Melanie Manchot will talk through a selection of recent works in relation to a performative approach to photography and portraiture. She will discuss her use of cameras, both moving and still, as tools to create encounters on the threshold between staged and documentary practice. Many of these works are made with strangers, often in public spaces, and aim to articulate relationships between the individual and collective space.