Author: ftapr21

Join us on Wednesday 6th April for a full day of APR activities to close off this term. Students will also be able to join online via zoom, if they are unable to make it in person.

In the morning we will be screening the new ‘A Particular Reality: Art, Learning, Antiracism’ film, made by Alice, Francesca and Amrit in collaboration with APR students, alumni and staff.

Students at Kingston will be meeting for a screening in the Main Lecture Theatre at 10AM, with Alice, Amrit and artist Abhaya Rajani.

Students at Goldsmiths will be meeting for a screening in the Goldsmiths CCA Residency Space at 12PM, with Francesca.

In the afternoon, Alice and Abhaya will travel with Kingston students to Goldsmiths CCA, to come together for a regrouping session and workshop starting at 2PM in the Residency space.

During this session we will be introducing to you all a proposal for a dissertation based research project and symposium, happening in the summer term. Following this Abhaya Rajani will be leading a Squiggle Drawing exercise inspired by D.W. Winnicot, to help us work towards thinking collaboratively and loosening the academic barriers around research and writing based work. The rest of the session will be spent exploring collaborative opportunities between students’ dissertation research, and working towards the development of research proposals.

Final year students will have the opportunity to discuss their dissertation projects, and find opportunities to work collaboratively with other students in producing a presentation of their research for a symposium, in conversation with artists within the APR network.

For second years, this is a great opportunity for you to hear about students’ dissertation projects, and workshop your own ideas as you start thinking towards writing dissertations next year.

During this conversation first year students will form a separate group with the intention of welcoming you into APR, holding conversation about APR so far this year, and discussing how we can support you for the rest of your studies.

In March Tara White (Goldsmiths alumni and APR contributor) spoke alongside Kabir Jhala, Harriet Cooper and Dr Rachel Warriner as part of a debate initiated by MA Curating students at The Courtauld, investigating the contemporary conditions of collective practices in art.

You can watch a recording of the debate via the link below.

This Sunday 20th march we will be having another APR x EAWAC meeting, at Goldsmiths CCA in the residency space, from 2-5PM.

This session is open to artists and students who identify as part of the East and South East Asian diaspora. All are welcome to join, whether you have been to our previous meetings or not.

Following on from sessions led by Mi Zhang and River Cao sharing their practices, for this meeting we invite participants to bring a piece of work, image, object or video to share with the group, in a show and tell style. There is no pressure to share something if you do not want to, and this will be an open space for listening, rather than critique. The aim is to open up a broader conversation about art practice and collaborative opportunities for APR and EAWAC in the future.

“East Asian Women Artist Community (EAWAC) is organised by women of colour from the East Asian diaspora, coming together under the commonality of not wanting to exist in the given paradigm. Pursuing art careers in London, we have acknowledged significant under-representation of East Asian women artists – especially when contrasted with the escalating consumption and familiarisation of our culture. Through this community, we aim to actively navigate a common ground and dismantle the framework withholding us by resource sharing, cross-cultural learning, and regular discussions.”

This Saturday 19th March, Gasworks studio artist Michelle Williams Gamaker invites APR’s students to attend an open studios and presentation of the work of Gasworks’ residency artists. Visit the artists in residence in their studios, and hear about their research and work-in-progress, ranging from drawing, installation and textiles to poetry and performance. ⁠The artists will also make some of their recent projects and research available on Gasworks’ website for those who are unable to visit.

www.gasworks.org.uk/events/spring-open-studios-2022-03-19/

12-6PM
Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall Street, London, SE11 5RH

Please join at 3pm to visit the artists’ studios, at 4pm the artists in residence Leticia Ybarra, Katie Numi Usher, Adelaide Cioni and Issay Rodriguez will present their work.

Katie Numi Usher works across performance, sculpture, painting and embroidery to explore blackness and interrogate black female erasure within the both the colonial history of Belize and the present day. She regularly uses online social media platforms as virtual galleries, challenging the gatekeeping of traditional museum and gallery spaces and providing a space and a platform for other Belizean creatives to connect with both their community and the wider black diaspora. 

Adelaide Cioni’s works at the intersection of textile, painting, and performance. The constant elements at the core of her practice are drawing and an absence of narration. Cioni’s work also utilises decorative patterns to engage with a form of shared non-verbal communication that has existed throughout human history.

Issay Rodriguez’s practice revolves around projects that deal with themes such as humanism and ecology which sometimes touch upon sociology and anthroposophy. Her work emanates from the act of drawing as foundation, and is developed into different configurations in the form of tactile and sensory, at times participatory, projects that occupy a space between the tangible and the virtual.

Leticia Ybarra’s work is based on the relationship between the concrete nature of poetry and the capacity of different forms – visual, gestural and textual – to contain and to circulate excess as a characteristic of queer expression.

We are very excited to be welcoming APR students from Manchester School of Art to London next week, on Wednesday 9th March at the Goldsmiths CCA residency space. All are welcome to join!

This will be APR’s first in-person meeting with students from London and Manchester, so we hope lots of students from both Kingston and Goldsmiths are able to join, meet new people and make connections across the three institutions.

The session will begin at 1:30, with an A Particular Reality x The Intersectional Hydra II workshop led by artist Clémentine Bedos. This is the first of four Intersectional Hydra II workshops facilitated by Clémentine with Manchester School of Art, building on the question ‘What makes an intersectional art school?’.

The workshop will run from 1:30-3:00PM, and afterwards there will be time to look around the Testaments show at Goldsmiths CCA & connect in the residency space!

Look forward to seeing you there!

This Sunday 6th March will be our next A Particular Reality in collaboration with East Asian Women Artist Community (EAWAC) event. This session is open to all, as the first in a series of public events platforming the work of East and South-East Asian artists who have been a part of the APR x EAWAC collaboration. This event will be taking place at the Goldsmiths CCA residency space from 2-6PM.

First, at 2PM Mi Zhang will be leading ‘Out of Body’, a sound bar and meditation workshop.

“Sound healing through the cleansing power of white crystal, all attentions on body, mind and soul. After the sound bath we will be doing some exercise and sharing feedback of this experience.”

In the second half of the session River Cao will be screening their film and holding a discussion.

“In addition to APR’s visit on Friday 25th of February to Sadie Coles’ recent exhibition Queerdirect with River and Michelle Williams Gamaker, artist River Cao has agreed to share their experience and the research behind the work “River is My Hometown” (2021), as a part of APR x EAWAC to attract more and wider audiences to the collaboration. They will be screening their film in the CCA resident’s space from 4:30 pm, followed by a talk explaining the work and discussion.

River Cao is a moving image and performance artist based in London. His works arise from a mourning approach. River’s research revolves around the rebuilding of the landscape and the return of the revenants. Using mourning as a method, he creates a series of self-narrative spaces to rethink the emotion of grief.

River’s recent work “River is My Hometown (2021)” was exhibited at Saatchi Gallery “London Grads Now.21” and also nominated in “Selected” 11th program in 2021, which was organised by Film London Jarman Award and Video Club UK, and had screenings across the UK. His work “Forest Picture (2018)” was included in the 2018 Beate album of the Ludwig Museum of Art in Germany and was shortlisted for the Gallery Mcube “experimental short film project”. In late 2019,  “Galaxy TV Online Shopping (2019)” was shortlisted for the China Golden Shuanmazhuan Awards, It was screened at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA London) in the following year, and selected for the 2020 Art & Design Education FutureLab at the West Bund Art Center, Shanghai.”