April 28–May 21, 2017
Marking 25 years since the internationally renowned MA programme was established, Curating Contemporary Art (CCA), led by Professor Victoria Walsh, presents the first collection of its new partnership-based MA Graduate Projects.
Defined by its focus on collaborative practice and group project-based work, this year’s projects have been developed both on and offsite in partnership with Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall, Delfina Foundation, Gasworks, and RCA Fine Art (Sculpture).
Responding to changes in the field of artistic and curatorial practice, the new Graduate Project model allows students to explore and experiment with different modes of curating and develop opportunities for working with artists in specific contexts of situated practice and public interface.
This year’s four projects explore the themes of public space, liquid citizenship, nomadic communities and spatial memory through such disparate contexts as an offshore company boardroom, the New Covent Garden Flower Market, the Victorian railway arches of Vauxhall and the practices of Airbnb. Collectively, the projects highlight CCA’s new areas of curatorial attention: Exhibitions and Programming, Urban, and Digital Practice.
The projects are:
April 28–30, 12–5pm
Turn the Tide
Preview and press conference: Thursday, April 27, 6–9pm
Dyson Gallery, Dyson Building, Royal College of Art, 1 Hester Road, London SW11 4AN
Turn the Tide is an offshore company, operating from a boardroom temporarily based in the Dyson Gallery at the Royal College of Art. In this office environment, constructed from newly commissioned and existing works by international artists, members of the public are invited to take ownership of the company by participating in a series of public board meetings. These collaboratively scripted and improvised live events will discuss ideas and experiences of liquidity, capital, citizenship and geographical borders.
Artists: Eva Barto; Julie Béna; Jesse Darling; Martti Kalliala; Christopher Kulendran Thomas; Aron Kullander-Östling and John Menick
May 4–May 6, 11am–5pm
#DoingItInPublic
Preview and performance: Wednesday, May 3, 6–8pm
Panel discussion: Saturday, May 6, 4–7:30pm, followed by performance and closing reception
Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall, 22 Newport Street, London, SE11 6AY
#DoingItInPublic is an exhibition conceived for Beaconsfield’s industrial Arch Space addressing notions of public space and place-making in post-industrial society through two new commissions by emerging artists studying on the Sculpture programme at the Royal College of Art. Encompassing installation and daily performance the artists’ works engage with Beaconsfield’s neighbourhood, including New Covent Garden Flower Market, to reflect upon the accelerated regeneration of the Vauxhall and Nine Elms localities.
Artists: Paloma Proudfoot and Jakob Rowlinson
May 12–18, 12–6pm,
Itinerant Assembly
Performative installation
Preview: Thursday, May 11, 6:30–8:30pm
Hackpad event: May 18, 7–9pm
Additional events to be announced soon
Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall St, London SE11 5RR
Itinerant Assembly investigates the productive potential of temporary meetings of people in real and virtual space, framed against the voluntary and forced nomadism that defines the lives of many people today. It also considers how digital technologies enable and sustain hyper-mobile communities, creating networks of people who are able to collaborate across different countries and time zones. Gasworks’ international artist-in-residence programme and its location in a rapidly developing area of London act as the starting point for a series of public “assemblies” which include artist-led events, a newly commissioned immersive environment and a live Hackpad conversation with international contributors, which enact ideas around nomadic practices and temporary togetherness.
Artists: Emma Haugh; (play)ground-less; They Are Here; and more to be announced
May 20–21, 12-6pm
Open House
Delfina Foundation, 29–31 Catherine Place, London, SW1E 6DY
Open House responds to Delfina Foundation’s acclaimed international artist-in-residence programme during which creative producers live and work at the Foundation’s base in Central London. Drawing on the personal memories of participants’ residency experiences over the last eleven years, writers, curators, artists and performers, have been commissioned to produce temporary interventions in the private and public areas of the Delfina space. Over a single weekend this programme of vibrant participatory and performative work will catalyse the Foundation’s architecture, to explore ideas of “being in residence,” the intersections between public and private, and what it means to collect intangible experiences, rather than physical artifacts.
Artists: Manal Al Dowayan, Mudar Alhajji, Kathrin Böhm, Leone Contini, Srajana Kaikini, Yazan Khalili, Hala Muhanna, Judy Price, Alessandra Saviotti, Laura Wilson
For more information see: www.rca.ac.uk
