BRITISH ART NEWS THE NEWSLETTER OF THE BRITISH ART NETWORK August 2022
CONTENTS Convenor’s Coordinator’sIntroduction……………………………………………………………………………….3 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………5 2012/2022 – A Decade in British Art Curating……………………………………………….7 Invitation to contribute #1 – British Art UnCanon…………………………………………11 Invitation to contribute #2 2012 online resource……………………………………….12 BAN Membership Survey………………………………………………………………………………13 Ingrid Pollard in Devon project…………………………………..…………………………………14 Contacting BAN…………………………………………………………………………………………….17 The British Art Network is supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with additional public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
The British Art Network (BAN) promotes curatorial research, practice and theory in the field of British art. Our members include curators, academics, artist researchers, conservators, producers and programmers at all stages of their professional lives. All are actively engaged in caring for, developing and presenting British art, whether in museums, galleries, heritage settings or art spaces, in published form, online or in educational settings, across the UK and beyond.
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Our rather delayed Summer newsletter – arriving in September and after the close of the meteorological season (although within the astronomical season, strictly defined, I think) focuses on our annual conference coming up in November. Last year, the annual conference explored Genealogies of Black Curating in Britain, with guest convenor Paul Goodwin. The recordings and wonderful commissioned films from Raju Rage and Rita Keegan remain available online, here, together with Paul’s reflections on the programme’s centering of the agency and trajectories Black curators in British art worlds and beyond. This year, marking the 10th anniversary of the British Art Network, we have invited three distinguished guest convenors – Sonia Boué, Bryan Biggs and Victoria Walsh – to organise panels exploring different aspect of the curatorial over the last decade. Focussing variously on questions of difference and neurodiversity, locality and globalism, decolonisation, decentering, and the sites of production of curatorial knowledge, these sessions promise to generate multi faceted and complex perspectives on British art curating. As I explore in the short essay below, the year 2012 provides a fascinating benchmark for understanding where we are now, in terms of curatorial practice and the wider political and cultural context of our work as curators and Alongsideresearchers.theconference programme, Niyaz Saghari is working on a short interview based film exploring these themes, and we are developing a new online resource documenting 2012 as a year in British art and planning to expand the British Art UnCanon with new articles relating to the year. As set out below, we are inviting proposals for the UnCanon and suggestions of relevant materials for the online resource. We hope you will want to contribute, and that you will be able to complete the Membership survey which we are planning to conduct this Autumn, which we outline below. Elsewhere, Lizzy Harris reports on recent activity, including the two-day trip to Manchester with the Emerging Curators Group which involved a succession of fascinating visits and presentations, many reflecting directly on the abiding questions of who gets to be a curator? and how should we curate, now?
ONVENOR’S INTRODUCTION
The success of that trip was down in large part to the careful planning undertaken by Lizzy and by Danielle Goulé, who joined us as BAN Administrator in April 2021 but who has now moved on to an exciting new
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4 position with Canopy Collections. Many of you will have had contact with Danielle, including most recently the members of our YCBA/BAN Curatorial Forum, which she took in lead in organising and which takes place in New Haven this October. I am sure you will join me in thanking Danielle for all her work for BAN, and also in welcoming at this point Rosalind Stockill who is joining Tate as Head of National Partnerships, providing cover for Heather Sturdy who continues on maternity leave. Rosalind will be working with Lizzy Harris on BAN from the Tate side. While I continue as Convenor of the British Art Network, my role at the Paul Mellon Centre has expanded to Head of Grants, Fellowships and Networks. We will be appointing a replacement for Danielle soon, as we prepare for a busy Autumn which will include our new round of bursary opportunities, for Research Groups and the Emerging Curators Group, the Curatorial Forum and Annual Conference, as well as the range of Seminars we are supporting this year. As ever, information on forthcoming and past events can be found on the Finally,website.we are pleased to highlight below an important initiative relating to new work by Ingrid Pollard, developed by talking on corners, whose Creative Producer, Lorna Rose, was a member of the Emerging Curators Group in 2020 21. If you have new projects which you think would be of interest to the Membership, do let us know as we can post items on our News section on the website, highlight via our mailings, or include in the Newsletter as below. Martin Myrone BAN Convenor
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COORDINATOR’S INTRODUCTION
On day two we travelled out to Bury Art Museum. Tony Heaton (a member of our BAN Steering Group) and Gina Warburton, Collections and Exhibitions Assistant led an engrossing conversational tour of the galleries and Tony’s exhibition Altered, we we heard about Tony’s sculptural practice and activism. In the afternoon we travelled onto Manchester Art Gallery where we met with Kate Jesson, Curator who took us on a revealing tour of the galleries, hearing
Members of the ECG deep in conversation during the visit to Manchester Art Gallery, June 2022
In June the Emerging Curator’s Group came together in person in Manchester. The programme’s theme was ‘navigating the curatorial’, using the British Art Show as a starting point We visited a range of organisations and invited curatorial colleagues at these different sites to respond to this theme. The result was a fascinating and wide-ranging dialogue sustained across two days. When selecting places to visit, Danielle and I wanted to reflect a wide range of organisations and venues going beyond the usual museum contexts and into the surrounding boroughs of Manchester. The first part of day one took us to HOME, where we met with Clarissa Corfe who had recently joined as their Creative Producer: Visual Arts. Here the conversation took us to the question of what the role of a curator is, and the differences in being curator of a programme and of a collection. We reflected on how we have seen the roles of ‘curator’ and ‘producer’ change and expand in recent years. Clarissa shared her own professional journey in curatorial and talked about HOME’s use of the job title Creative Producer instead of Curator. In the afternoon we travelled over to Paradise Works in Salford, an artist led studio community, where we met with Jez Dolan. Jez took us on a tour of their studio and exhibition space, and we talked through the history of artist run spaces, their history of relocating out from the city centre, the community they work with and the highs and lows of being a freelance artist/curator.
The 19th century bronze Japanese urn by Seifu which towers over the art gallery at Bury Art Museum a monumental object whose acquisition and interpretation stimulated much discussion during the ECG visit. Photo: Bury Art Museum
6 how they are navigating their programme development and rethinking their displays. We discussed approaches to researching difficult or unknown histories of objects collection, taking us back to the conversation on day one about curatorial roles. Alongside tours at each venue, we had the opportunity to connect this year’s ECG cohort with members of the wider British Art Network, meeting over lunch at HOME and at a dinner at Bundobust. Martin, Danielle and I would like to thank all our invited guests, Alice, Gina, Tony, Kate, Nikita, Dominic and Poppy who all gave the group invaluable insights into their roles and how the programmes at each of their organisations are developed. We are now approaching the last workshop session for this year’s cohort, which will focus on skill sharing and funding research. Applications for the Emerging Curators Group for 2023 will be opening very soon, along with the invitation to propose some new Research Groups please watch out for mailings and check the BAN Website for updates As September is now here, the BAN team are looking forward to the hybrid seminar series led by members of the British Art Network, which will be taking place in the next weeks. The fifteen seminars supported by BAN funding this year are led by Network members and address a wide range of critical themes in the field of British art curating from the medieval to the contemporary with the aim of generating new and generative connections, thinking and reflections. Information about the date and venue for each seminar can be found on the Seminars page of the British Art Network
BANLizzywebsite.HarrisCoordinator
A Decade in British Art Curating
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This year’s BAN Annual conference will continue our project of ‘rethinking the curatorial’, using the 10-year anniversary of the Network as an occasion to reflect on a decade in British art curating
The British Art Network was officially launched on 21 December 2012, an initiative organised by Tate and supported by Arts Council England, that aimed to foster connections and develop skills and knowledge among curators of British art. That precise date was, oddly enough, predicted to see the end of the world, according to the widely reported (but wholly spurious) Mayan calendar. In the run up to 21 December 2012 there was a proliferation of web articles and media coverage of the anticipated apocalypse an end of the world as long envisaged by, for instance, John Martin in the 19th century (featured on the cover, here). But as everyone from NASA to the BBC was pleased to point out, that did not come to pass not in any real sense, anyway. But in retrospect, 2012 itself looks like a seminal year, perhaps a turning point. From the (unexpected) success of the London Olympics and Paralympics to the (wholly expected but still shocking) exposure of grotesque life of the recently dead Jimmy Savile, from the conviction of Stephen Lawrence’s racist murderers at the beginning of the year to the Diamond Jubilee, we can observe (or recall) a range of landmarks/firsts/lasts/occasions which would provide reference points for thinking about what has changed and stayed the same over the last decade. During the last months there has been recurring press and media commentary connecting and contrasting the Jubilees of 2012 and 2022, using the former year as a benchmark for charting changing social attitudes, accounting for the repercussions over the last decade of the shake up of the NHS in England in that year or charting attitudes towards migration and race after the introduction in April 2012 of the idea of the ‘hostile environment’ by the then Home Secretary Teresa May. This was the year, also, of the publication of Britannia Unleashed, a political tract which infamously lambasted British workers as ‘the worst idlers in the world’ while heralding
Looking over curatorial activity in 2012, we can note that there were gestures towards a ‘globalising’ of British art (although generally focussed only on exchanges between Britain and Europe) and several exhibition and display projects that connected figures from different eras in ‘transhistorical’ curatorial gestures, including a number placing modern and contemporary art in heritage settings. There were signs of growing disquiet with the proliferation of curatorial training courses and of superstar curators. In general, there are indications of how questions of social justice and equity were becoming more pressing and apparent within mainstream curatorial practice, even in the context of London’s national institutions. Most critically, perhaps, the Paralympics and accompanying cultural programmes jump out as a turning point in disability representation. And there were already signs that mainstream London institutions were at least starting to acknowledge the marginalised histories of Black artists. We can make the case that 2012 was a real turning point in these regards, the beginning of the ‘reality check’ or reckoning that gained momentum in subsequent years with #MeToo and BLM. As the cultural critic Mark Fisher observed, referring to the exposure of Jimmy Savile, ‘By the end of 2012, the 70s was returning, no longer as some bittersweet nostalgia trip, but as a trauma’. And as Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, wrote recently ‘The past decade has been one in which many of us realised that Britain was more divided, anxious and fragmented than any of us would want yet perhaps not as divided as we had told ourselves’.
8 some form of new culture war, authored by, among others, Liz (then Elizabeth) Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. In the visual arts sector, there were firsts, new developments and turning points the opening of the Tanks at Tate Modern and the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, the first ‘Untitled’ Festival at the Southbank Centre, the premier of John Akomfrah’s Unfinished Conversation at Bluecoat, Liverpool, the first Frieze Masters, the first major photography show at the National Gallery, London, the mooted emergence of ‘OWAs’ (Older Women Artists as opposed to the YBA’s) and the commemorative BLK Art Group Conference at Wolverhampton in October. There were major (or at least, big) shows of Hockney, Freud, Bacon, Turner and the Pre Raphaelites – and some expressions of unease even in the mainstream press about the male dominated canon these embodied.
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Tony Heaton, Monument to the Unintended Performer, 2012 a monumental commission helping mark the 2012 Paralympics (Photo: Dave King) Using this vantage point, BAN’s annual conference programme for 2022 will explore a decade in British art curating, offering multiple perspectives on curatorial practices and knowledge production, reflecting on the material and social forces at work over these years, and considering the innovations and missed opportunities. Referring to the archive of cultural activity in 2012 itself as a point of reference and engaging with an expanded view of the curatorial field in the decade since, the programme will offer reflections, questions and challenges for British art curating now. The programme will involve four sessions in November, including in person and online events guest convened by Sonia Boue, Bryan Biggs, and Victoria Walsh as well as a new online resource documenting 2012 as a year in British art (see below), and a commissioned film exploring the conference themes by Niyaz MartinSaghari.Myrone
Curating in the contemporary: the art school, museum, and the academy, convened by Victoria Walsh, in person and online, venue TBC 22 November
Perspectives on a decentred decade – local and global, convened by Bryan Biggs, Bluecoat, Liverpool and online 24 November
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Beyond othering curatorial practice and the neurodiversity paradigm, convened by Sonia Boue, online 17 November
Reflections on a decade in British art curating – chaired by Martin Myrone, BAN Convenor, Tate Britain, London, and online More information on the individual sessions and how to book your place will be issued soon. Do look out for further mailings and updates on the dedicated page of the BAN website.
BAN Annual Conference, November 2022 Please save the date for the following sessions 15 November
A Decade in British Art Curating
Invitation to contribute #1
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The British Art UnCanon, BAN’s ‘virtual collection’ bringing together images from across the history of British art now includes 30 articles, with more on the way. Ranging from Tudor portraiture and Georgian silver to contemporary video art and protest culture, the images are accompanied by short commentaries produced by Members and exploring a theme or question of their choosing. To help mark BAN’s 10-year anniversary, we would like to commission 12 new articles by Members addressing images relating to the year 2012 works made, exhibited or interpreted in that year, or commenting on the historical events of that moment. We would aim to include up to 12 articles of this nature in the UnCanon, in time for the annual conference in IfNovember.youareinterested in contributing a piece and could produce something by the end of October, please write to BritishArtNews@paul mellon centre.ac.uk, suggesting the image of work you would want to write about. Commissioned articles will need to be around 300 500 words long, and contributors will receive a fee of £100.
The British Art UnCanon, “12 from 2012”
To accompany the 2022 BAN Annual Conference, we are developing an online resource that will document the whole of the year 2012 in British art curating. Taking the form of a calendar, the resource will provide short notices of events, exhibitions and displays, openings and closings, key publications and occasions around the UK and beyond. A ’rough cut’ of the calendar can be seen here – this is work in progress so isn’t fully operational and may not work properly on some devices. Clicking on a specific date should open up a page with one or more notices on its, recording the events in question and quoting briefly from or linking to published sources.
Invitation to contribute #2 2012 online resource
Do take the opportunity to look through the calendar in its draft form – and ask yourself, what do you remember about 2012? Are there specific events or developments in 2012 that you think should be included in the calendar? Suggestions are welcome just write in to BritishArtNews@paul mellon centre.ac.uk.
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This Autumn we will be conducting a survey of the entire membership, to help us understand better who our Members are, where and how you work, and what you expect and want from the Network With our membership now exceeding 1,400 individuals, having doubled in number over the last two years, this is a great opportunity to get an overview of the curatorial field and the roles that BAN can play. Understanding how Members of different backgrounds and affiliations do or don't engage with the programme is a key question for us. The information and insights derived from the survey will help inform our strategic planning for future bursaries, programming and other opportunities. When it was conceived in 2012, the British Art Network was squarely focussed on people with ‘curator’ in their job title, generally working with collections in regional or national contexts. We know that our Membership now include artist researchers, conservators, academics, art workers, producers and programmers as well as curators as such, working in a wide range of contexts, and we know that the way that people in the sector are working and identifying continues to change. The Survey will gather information from across the Membership in anonymised form, giving us a more detailed understanding of the composition of the Network, and of the state of curating now. Alongside the critical and reflexive thinking being undertaken around our Research Groups and Seminars, and in the Annual Conference, the Survey will contribute to our ongoing work around rethinking the curatorial. Please look out for future mailings.
BAN Membership Survey
Beginning on 20 September with Prof. Divya P. Tolia Kelly, the series will run every Tuesday 6.30 7.30pm for five weeks. These online talks and Q&A sessions with writers, scholars, artists and curators are presented to draw out and honour the complexity and breadth of Pollard's extensive and varied work. The free online speaker series is a key element of a wider project focused on Pollard, devised by Dr Ella S. Mills, Creative Director of talking on corners. Project partners including Natural England, Devon & Exeter Institution, Libraries Unlimited, Thelma Hulbert Gallery and University of Plymouth have developed an extensive programme of events across Devon, working towards bridging the gap between curating and audience engagement. You can see the calendar of events here.
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Photo: ©Naomi Williams
Installation view of Three Drops of Blood, Thelma Hulbert Gallery.
Ingrid Pollard in Devon Project
talking on corners, in partnership with University of Exeter’s Arts & Culture, is excited to present a new, free, online speaker series focused on the creative practice of photographic artist Ingrid Pollard, Turner Prize nominee (2022).
A central part of the wider programme is Pollard’s new solo exhibition, ‘Three Drops of Blood’, currently exhibited at partner Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton (6 Aug 29 Oct 2022). This new body of work, commissioned by talking on corners supported by public funds from Arts Council England, illustrates the intimacy, care, nuance and technical skill of Pollard’s practice as one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists and has been described as perhaps her best work yet. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to see her work in the Southwest and features photography, print, mixed media, installation, text and found objects.
The Ingrid Pollard Speaker Series is generously supported by the Paul Mellon Centre, Arts and Culture University of Exeter, Association for Art History, University of Exeter Geography department and Thelma Hulbert Gallery.
To coincide with the speaker series, a virtual reality tour of ‘Three Drops of Blood’ will be released in mid September! About talking on corners talking on corners (toc) is a DIY, experimental visual art curating and producing practice underpinned by rigorous critical thinking and research. We curate exhibitions, work with visual artists and organisations commissioning artists, host residencies, talks and study days, as well as offering research, grant writing and consulting services. toc is Creative Director Ella S. Mills, and Creative Producer Lorna Rose.
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‘Three Drops of Blood’ invites us to consider the complex affects and relationships of the historical importation and travel of plants and people, folklore and tradition, asking us to unpack the resulting resonances on place and power. It is a deeply layered exhibition interweaving themes of space time, resonance, touch and the materiality of memory. The new work has been created in response to Ingrid's research in the UK, including Devon. Pollard honed in on botanical gardens and local lace making, as well as the unique historical collections of books at the Devon and Exeter Institution. Drawing out her interests in classification, knowledge, leisure, trade and money, these themes can be unfolded far beyond Devon, into conversations spanning generations and geographies.
INGRID POLLARD, THREE DROPS OF BLOOD SPEAKER SERIES PROGRAMME
20 September ‘Three drops of blood’: examining Ingrid Pollard’s world of nature, lore and race’ Divya P. Tolia Kelly, Professor of Geography and Heritage Studies, University of Sussex
27 September 'Ingrid Pollard: Land Art and Landscape' Joy Sleeman, Professor of Art History and Theory, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL
11 October 'Darkroom Frottage and the Sensual Matter of the Photograph' Ajamu X, Artist and Activist, Royal College of Art
18 October 'Showing Up', 1984 1991 Writers Laura Guy and Mason Leaver Yap discuss Ingrid Pollard's photographic work from the 1980s and early 90s Advance booking is essential – for more information and to register see here
4 October In Conversation: Ingrid Pollard and Paul Gilroy. Join Ingrid and Paul as they walk and talk in the Devonshire countryside discussing birds, forest bathing, and folklore.
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CONTACTING BAN
For more information on the British Art Network and all the Research Groups, including their contact details, visit the BAN website
The British Art Network is supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with additional public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
IfBritishArtNews@paul-mellon-centre.ac.ukyouwouldliketobecomeaBANmember, please complete our Membership form. For general enquiries, you can email BritishArtNetwork@tate.org.uk
For comments, suggestions and proposals for the British Art Network Newsletter, and for events or news for our News page, you can email
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Lizzy Harris, Coordinator (Maternity Cover), British Art Network, Tate lizzy.harris@tate.org.uk
You can also contact the British Art Network team directly:
Martin Myrone, Convenor, British Art Network, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art mmyrone@paul mellon centre.ac.uk
Cover and back cover images details from John Martin, The Great Day of his Wrath, 1854. Tate N05613 Creative Commons CC BY NC ND (3.0 Unported)
