Workshop: Prof Stephen Foster, Director, John Hansard Gallery and Helen Sloan, Independent Curator
Current disparities around the role of the individual in research practice, artistic practice, and the sale of artworks are calling into question the ways in which art is purposed, distributed and presented. Over the last decade similar upheavals in music, literature, technology and sciences have been debated widely often looking the role of mass production and reproduction. But what about the unique artwork and its maker that particularly has its origins in the visual arts?
The discussion around distribution of visual arts is in its relative infancy and has been led by the digital arts community it could be argued. The visual arts sector and the market continues to reinforce the saleable object and the celebrity of the artist. Others embrace anonymity and emphasize collective working as a major part of their practice while some adopt an approach to intellectual property as their route to making a living itself based on individual ideas.
John Boorman’s cult film Zardoz was a future scenario in which individual thinking was discouraged as an elite collective forbidden to have individual thought guarded the art treasures from past old masters. This workshop session will focus on the value of the individual in the Cloud and ask whether we risk the loss of important contributions by minimizing the role of the unique thinker. It will also ask whether the art market currently reflects interests in visual arts or is rather an anachronism placing the monetary value of the artifact at the centre. Collective, collaborative and group working is perceived as the method through which changes and innovation are made. Universities are taking a collaborative approach to research while individuals who have achieved success are questioning this approach.
Should the Cloud be steering changes from individual to collective and collaborative practice? Or is still there value in the role of the individual in contemporary practice?
Chaired by Stephen Foster and Helen Sloan, delegates will be invited to drop into the discussion over a 90 minute period, stay for as long as they wish as themes and ideas are drawn out from the discussion. Comments will be written up and disseminated after the conference.
Stephen Foster
Director, John Hansard Gallery
Stephen began his career as an artist, teacher and lecturer, and began his curatorial career as the Director of Axiom, an artist-run Gallery space in Cheltenham, UK. from 1982 to 1987. Since 1987 he has been the Director of the John Hansard Gallery, which is a part of the University of Southampton. Over this time the Gallery has won a substantial reputation for seminal work with artists and curators, including key solo shows by Gina Pane, Michael Snow, Joan Jonas, John Latham, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson and many innovative thematic exhibitions. The Gallery was designated ‘world leading’ for its curatorial research in the last Universities’ Research Assessment Exercise. He was awarded a Professorial Fellowship from the University of Southampton in 2012.
Stephen has a long history of collaboration with many national and international organisations, including Tate Modern; PS1, New York; Newport Harbor Art Museum, Southern California; and Kunsthalle Wien. He has also organised over thirty major international conferences throughout this time, bringing together some of the most important cultural thinkers, theorists and artists.
John Hansard Gallery has also pioneered groundbreaking access and audience development work. It was a founding partner of the Hampshire-wide audiences project Gallery Go (1999-2004), and since 2007 has developed a successful programme of Arts Award delivery, working with young people in partnership with Wessex Youth Offending Team.
Stephen has been Chair of VAGA (Visual Arts and Galleries Association) on three occasions and is currently a Board Member and Treasurer of IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art). Stephen was also a founder of VEKTOR, a European contemporary art archive research project from 2000 to 2003. He was the founding Chair of the Southampton Cultural Consortium and is a Trustee of its successor, the Southampton Cultural Development Trust.
Helen Sloan, Director, SCAN from its launch in 2003 to present
Helen’s career spans over twenty-five years during which time she has curated, commissioned and convened over 200 exhibitions, new works, and events. In her current position at SCAN, she has developed the organisation as a creative development agency working on arts projects and strategic initiatives in arts organisations, academic institutions and further aspects of the public realm. Helen has written on and researched a number of key strands in digital arts including wearable technologies, the intersection between art and science, and arts policy.
Recent commissions include Congregation, an interactive sound and light public art piece by KMA for Shanghai Expo, Inside Out Festival Bournemouth and Tate Britain; Broken Stillness, The Relationship between Digital Arts and Photography/Painting, Salisbury Arts Centre, ISEA 2011 and 12th Istanbul Biennial; a touring one person exhibition with David Cotterrell, Monsters of the Id, at John Hansard Gallery 2012: and Internet of Cars: A Distributed Exhibition curating artistic responses to a research project Sixth Sense Transport (across UK universities Southampton, Edinburgh, Bournemouth, Salford and Lancaster) looking at traffic analysis and the development of mobile phone apps to change behaviour around the use of cars and reduction of carbon footprint. Current areas of interest digital arts and place/environment; models of arts practice in relation to the economy; and creative use of datasets.
Helen has worked as a visiting tutor and researcher at a number of UK universities including Bournemouth University, Sheffield Hallam University, University of Westminster and Arts University Bournemouth. She has been advisor and consultant to organisations such as FACT, Furtherfield, and ICA and currently sits on the boards of E:VENT and Art Space Portsmouth.