Praktika Booklaunch

Friday 20th February, 7pm Streetlevel Gallery Praktika: socially engaged art practice Book launch Limited edition book which documents the Critical Workshop on Socially Engaged Art Practice which was held in Huntly in 2008 - conceived by David Harding and Rosie Gibson, in collaboration with Claudia Zeiske of Deveron Arts. As an introduction to this launch, there will be a special and rare screening of a documentary on David Harding’s early work as a ‘town artist’, made by the late W. Gordon Smith and unseen since its first televised outing on the BBC in 1970.

Several of the artists will be in attendance. The book is available for free only at the launch events.

In their introduction to the book, Harding and Gibson write of their motivations in organising the Praktika event: The presentations by artists at recent conferences on socially engaged practice threw up a number of observations, questions and problems about the works they were showing. The first was that there was an enormous amount of work going on, much of it funded by lottery and local government money, and yet it was work that was not discussed, not subject to critique and not even written about outside a local milieu. Secondly a lot of the work was being carried out by younger more recent graduates from the art schools who had yet to develop a mature practice.

And thirdly, as a consequence of this it seemed that the work was still stuck in practices of the eighties as if there had been no development since then. It was as if these artists felt that they were breaking new ground unaware of the long history of practice that preceded them. One might also have discerned a certain lack of the idealism of the social and democratic urges which had fuelled earlier artists. Out of all of this grew the need to do something about it.

We came to the conclusion that what was needed was an opportunity for artists to discuss and critique each other’s work in an atmosphere of trust and respect. It would have to be a formal event that would be documented. It would have to be in camera, that is for the artists only and not a public performance. It would have to be over a short intensive period of time. It would have to be residential, almost like a retreat and that it should take place outside the central belt. Finally that the proceedings must be published. There is very little critical writing on socially engaged practice in Scotland given the enormous amount of it going on. We wanted to be able to say: here is a selection of recent projects in Scotland.’

The book PRAKTIKA contains a synopsis of each of the 12 attending artists projects and a reflective essay by Nuno Sacramento.

For more information contact: Street Level: info@streetlevelphotoworks.org, 0141 552 2151 www.streetlevelphotoworks.org Deveron Arts: info@deveron-arts.com, 01466 792734, www.deveron-arts.com Participating artists: Deborah Beeson/poAToHOM(E)age, Jacques Coetzer/Room to Roam, Sylvia Borda/EK Modernism, Will Foster/Skills Bank, Janie Nicoll & Alex Hetherington/ Meddle with the Devil, Alhena Katsof/A.Vermin, Shauna McMullan/Travelling the Distance, Eva Merz/GET A FUCKING JOB, Anthony Schrag/The Legacy of City Art Projects, Pamela So/The Ricochet Project, Kirsty Stansfield/Object Scores, Iseult Timmermans/Multi-Story