New works by Lee Campbell, Rory Flynn, Adrian Lee and Carali McCall
+ artist discussion 16.00-18.00 Saturday 22nd October 2016
+ artist discussion 16.00-18.00 Saturday 22nd October 2016
This event curated by Dr. Lee Campbell presents a combination of art performance, performative lecture and reflective discussion. It aims to contribute to an area of contemporary art practice relating to how practitioners have not only made works that go beyond pure visual sensation and incorporate, or are wholly dedicated to, non-visual aspects, often prioritising the haptic, orality, sound elements and other sensory components (Coles, 1984; Marks, 2002; Paterson, 2007), but how practitioners have deployed the concept of visual impairment and blindness as informing the work’s form and content, and by doing so generate public pedagogy of what it may mean to experience interrupted/removal of sight.
The event, extending Campbell’s recent event You Don’t Need Eyes To See, You Need Vision in London aims to add to the rich contextual history of artworks made by artists and performers who challenge aspects of visuality within their practice. For example, Artur Zmijewski’s work Blindly at Tate Modern, London in 2014 explored what it means to imagine and represent without relying on the sense of sight. In Sight (Un)Specific, Campbell, Flynn, Lee and McCall attempt to extend existing practices and produce creative responses that make positive usage of visual deprivation as a means to think more deeply about how we perceive the operations of certain concepts in the world.
Furthermore, this quartet attempts to test the viewer’s understanding of how we may theorise, articulate and demonstrate what may be classed as a dominance of visuality over other senses (Jay, 1993; Crary, 2000) and provoke discussion as to what it might mean to live in a society, which Martin Jay has described as ‘occularcentric’ or ‘dominated’ by vision (1993:3). Works made as part of this event will be reflected upon and disseminated during a conference paper that Campbell, Lee and McCall will give as part of The Future of the Document: documenting performance, Interdisciplinary Symposium Monday 31st October 2016, at City, University of London.
The event is free to attend. This event contains, at times, low levels of lighting. The event will be documented using video and still photography.
contact:
Lee Campbell
lcampbell@lincoln.ac.uk
+44 7917 363235
Metal at Chalkwell Hall Chalkwell Avenue
Southend on Sea, SS0 8NB
chalkwell@metalculture.com
+44 [0] 1702 470 700
Notes on the artists:
Dr Lee Campbell is an artist, curator and academic and teaches at Central Saint Martins and University of Lincoln. His practice plays with the parameters of contemporary art that draw attention to the performative and the participative within an art historical vernacular and seeks to interrogate how we may construct meaning between politics of space and the politics of artist/performer/protagonist articulated through visual and verbal languages. His doctoral thesis Tactics of Interruption: Provoking Participation in Performance Art made a contribution to knowledge in participative performance practice and the positive deployment of using interruptive processes; this is in order to provoke participation within the context of Performance Art as well as gain a better understanding of the operations of power relations at play. Campbell will be artist-in-residence at Metal, Southend in April 2017 http://www.leecampbellartist.blogspot.co.uk
Aiming to complexify the viewer/artist relationship through intentional awkwardness and discomfort between protagonist and audience, Rory Flynn is an artist who uses performance in relation to the body, sculpture and humour. Flynn graduated with a Fine Art degree from Loughborough University in 2016 and has since performed as part of Tactics of Interruption, Toynbee Studios, London (June 2016) MASS. Truman Gallery, Brick Lane, London (July 2016) and You Don’t Need Eyes To See You Need Vision, The Queen’s Head, London (September 2016).
http://www.roryflynn-performanceartist.com/
Adrian Lee is an artist working primarily in video, performance and sculpture. He explores the material that surrounds us by reworking and re-examining the trappings of our culture. His practice investigates the processes of communication and persuasion used on both domestic and international scales. It appropriates numerous visual and aural languages, re-circulating their symbolic components to disrupt the logic of our assumptions. He reorganises familiar elements from multinational corporate advertising, to vernacular promotional material, via the icons of art history and the rhetoric and actions of those with power and influence. He is also a part-time lecturer at Central Saint Martins.
http://www.adrianlee.info
Dr Carali McCall is a Canadian-born, London UK-based artist; awarded her Ph.D. at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, UAL (thesis title, A Line is a Brea(d)thless Length: introducing the physical act of running as a form of drawing). Her practice addresses how duration, and imposed restrictions on the body can contribute to a greater awareness of what it means to draw. Approaching the body as a tool, she embraces the idea that the artist is not only physically present in the act of drawing, but also brings an experience to something that exceeds the object of art (be it through the body in live performance, video or sound recording, or photograph).
http://www.caralimccall.com
References
Coles, P. (1984). Please Touch: An Evaluation of the ‘Please Touch’ exhibition at the British Museum 31st March to 8th May.
Crary, J. (2000). Suspension of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture. Cambridge: MIT.
Jay, M. (1993). Downcast eyes: the denigration of vision in twentieth- century French thought. Berkeley; London: University of California Press.
Marks, U, L. (2002). Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. London: University of Minnesota Press.
Paterson, M. (2007). The Senses of Touch – Haptics, Affects and Technologies. New York: Berg Publishers.