We invite you to join us for a series of public events as part of the exhibition CONTORT YOURSELF.

Closing Event
2.00 – 5.00pm
ACME Project Space, E2 9JS – Free event, limited capacity

Contort Yourself Closing Event at the ACME Project Space:

Past awards include a postgraduate scholarship from the Arts Council of Ireland in 1997; the Allied Irish Bank artist award in 2001; Open Award at EV+A 1996 and 2001; and a Multi-Annual Bursary award from the Arts Council of Ireland, 2007/2008.

Solo exhibitions include Hoet Bekaert Gallery, Ghent (2008); Gimpel Fils Gallery, London(2008); Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf (2007); Parker’s Box Gallery, New York (2006); and most recently a large-scale permanent installation for the newly opened Cicely Saunders Institute, commissioned by King’s College London in association with the Contemporary Art Society.
Sarah Taylor Biography:

My practice investigates the significance that may be drawn from aesthetic perceptions related to my particular background, which have and continue to inform my practice as a painter.

I seek an interpretation of class perceptions and aesthetic aspiration.

My work involves a process of making visual relationships between images and artefacts, reviewing material compensations and substitutes as introduced during family life that were both part of and relate to the politics of material culture. Painting and other forms of visual representation are explored as signifiers of an expanded field of social aspiration.

Limited capacity for all free events.
To reserve a seat email: info@contortyourself.org

PREVIOUS EVENTS:

26 JUNE 2010
According To…
2.00 – 2.30pm
ACME Project Space, E2 9JS – Free event, limited capacity

Rommi Smith is a poet and playwright who works to fuse spoken word and music together. She has held numerous international residencies for organisations ranging from the BBC to the British Council: BBC Writer in Residence for the Commonwealth Games, British Council Poet in Residence at California State University in Los Angeles. She was Parliamentary Writer in Residence – the first appointment of its kind in history and invited to be chief judge for the Children and Human Rights Poetry Awards at the House of Lords. She has just been appointed Poet in Residence for Keats’s House, in Hampstead, London. Her new book, Mornings and Midnights, about the lives of Jazz and Blues divas, is due from Peepal Tree Press.

www.rommi-smith.co.uk

19 JUNE 2010

According To…

Tanya Harris Squires’ background is in dance, choreography, theatre, directing and performance art. She teaches and choreographs, leads workshops and creates multi-disciplinary performance work which aims to reveal truth as simply as possible and challenge traditional audience/performer boundaries to move the audience’s thinking, ideas and emotions.

Kay Nakagawa originally trained in Japan in dance and music. Since moving to London to study law, she has continued her ballet training as well as ballroom and salsa. Kay is enjoying working on this “According To” project and using her dance discipline as a tool for self-discovery to interpret and analyse her constant struggle – between her ‘real self’ and ‘the expectation of others’.

They will both respond to the exhibition by means of voice, movement, discussion and improvisation prompted by audience interaction.

16 JUNE 2010

In Conversation
Dr Anthony Downey, David Gryn, Prof Irit Rogoff, Dr Alison Rowley
7.00 – 9.00pm

ACME Project Space, map- Free Event

A panel discussion centred on identity trends and categories explored in the exhibition. The role of curators, critics and art professionals in relation to how trends are generated and operate in the art world will also be considered. The session will be chaired by Dr Alison Rowley, and moderated by Ulrika Flink, RCA CCA (Inspire) Student.

CHAIR:
DR ALISON ROWLEY: Reader in Art and Design, Liverpool School of Art and Design.

Dr Alison Rowley is presently at work on a second single authored book titled Common gestures, class acts: studies in ‘young British art’, an analysis of the return in the 1990s of neglected histories of British social and political life since 1945 in key works by artists grouped under the heading ‘yBa’. Dr Rowley’s research interests centers around modern and contemporary art; feminist history, theory and practice in the visual arts and cinema; psychoanalysis and aesthetics; aesthetics and politics and configurations of social class in British art.

SPEAKERS’ BIOGRAPHIES:

DR ANTHONY DOWNEY: Programme Director, MA Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s Institute

Dr Anthony Downey completed his PhD and is currently researching a book on ethics, politics and aesthetics and the production of knowledge in contemporary art. He sits on the editorial board of Third Text, and is a London correspondent for Flash Art and he has also published essays, criticism and interviews in over twenty different publications and has recently given papers and chaired conference panel.

Prof IRIT ROGOFF: Curator, theorist and founder of the Department of Visual Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London

Irit Rogoff is a curator, theorist and organiser who writes at the intersections of the critical, the political, and contemporary arts practices. Her work across a series of new “think tank” PhD programs at Goldsmiths (Research Architecture, Curatorial/Knowledge) is focusing on the possibility of locating, moving, and exchanging knowledge across professional practices, self-generated forums, academic institutions, and individual enthusiasms.

DAVID GRYN: Director, Artprojx

David Gryn is the director of Artprojx which has been promoting artists films since 2001, and has recently expanded his activities by opening an art gallery. He has worked with artists and institutions such as Christian Marclay, Mark Wallinger, Susan Hiller, Willie Doherty, the Gagosian Gallery, White Cube, Matt’s Gallery, Victoria Miro, Tate, Prince Charles Cinema and the Frieze Art Fair.

5 JUNE 2010

Film screening
1.30 – 4.45pm
Rio Cinema, Dalston, map

The first event in the programme will be film screenings of Lover Other (2006) and Guest of Cindy Sherman (2008), introduced by Fatos Ustek, Independent Curator and Critic followed by a Q + A session.

Born 1980 in Ankara (TR), Fatos is currently based in London (UK) as an independent curator, art critic and founder and editor of web-based contemporary art magazine Nowiswere, with Veronika Hauer (www.nowiswere.com).
Currently working on three-part seminars Memory-Image-Object for Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford; compiling London programme for Vision Forum; and researching for the third part of Now, Expanded, a trilogy of exhibitions on the condition of ‘now’.

Both films selected deal with the exhibitions central theme of identity, sexuality and notions of the self. They also explore wider issues of popular and cultural identity and how these affect notions of the self.

FILMS:

Lover Other (15)
(US 2006) Dir: Barbara Hammer. 55 min. Digital.

1920s Surrealist artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore come to life in this hybrid documentary. Lesbians and step-sisters, the gender-bending artists lived and worked together all their lives. Heroic resisters to the Nazis occupying Jersey Isle during WWII, they were captured and sentenced to death.

Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Hammer infuses this film with vigor using photographs, archival footage, dramatic interludes of a ‘found Cahun script’ and unique interviews of Jersey Isle residents who knew the ‘sisters’.

Guest of Cindy Sherman (15) – UK PREMIER
(US 2008) Dirs: Paul Hasegawa-Overacker & Tom Donahue. 88 min. Digital.

This film  takes an eye-opening look at what happens when a sceptical outsider finds himself romantically involved with the ultimate insider. Filmed over 15 years and including interviews with a veritable who’s who of the art and entertainment world (including Ingrid Sischy, John Waters, Robert Longo, Carol Kane, David Furnish, Danny DeVito, and Molly Ringwald), the film paints a vivid picture of the New York art scene that is also a witty, illuminating look at celebrity, male anxiety, and art.

Price:
£4, £3 concessions
For further information on film screening email: jareh.das@network.rca.ac.uk