Exhibitions, conferences and events

Sixth event in this seven-part series: Rescheduled date - 9 October 2023

Armenian painterly modernity and the Union of Armenian Artists (1916-21)

Speaker: Sato Moughalian, City University of New York Graduate Center

This talk considers the artistic formations of four Armenian painters who came to maturity before the Great War, and the proto-national institution they founded in 1916—the Union of Armenian Artists—in the wake of the Ottoman Young Turk regime's 1915-18 campaigns of anti-Armenian mass violence, dispossession, and forced migration, the constellation of events that has come to be known as the Armenian Genocide. What role did mass violence play in an artistic turn toward the national frame? Until 1915, the four artists—Russian-Armenians Vardges Sureniants (1860-1921), Yeghishe Tadevosyan (1870-1935), and Martiros Sarian (1880-1972), and Ottoman-Armenian Panos Terlemezian (1865-1941)—who were born and raised in diverse Armenian cultural nodes, studied in state and private academies across Eurasia, and participated in varied collectives and movements, including the Peredvizhniki, Mir Iskusstva, and Blue Rose. Their encounter in the autumn of 1915 at the site of refugee encampments, crystallised the formation of an Armenian-identified national art institution that mounted six major exhibitions between 1917-21, years marked by multiple wars, famine, a short-lived independent Armenian Republic (1918-20), and its subsequent Sovietisation.

The exhibitions themselves, catalogues and other ephemera, and vigorous debates in the Armenian press over a national art, constituted an ecosystem of identity that manifested, in the modern period, the longstanding Armenian construct of nation, a shared mentality maintained even in the absence of a territorialised state. Although the organisation was denounced in the Soviet period and largely suppressed from public memory, the Union of Armenian Artists offers an example of national identity creation on the cultural plane, both distinct from and entangled with the concurrent and more widely studied efforts of its hegemonic neighbours.

Sato Moughalian is a PhD student in Modern European History at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, where she will continue to research Armenian visual culture and its intersections with mass violence and state formation, from the late-19th century through the early Soviet era. She recently completed an MA in Liberal Studies at the same institution; this talk draws from her thesis. She is also a professional flutist, with more than 40 chamber music recordings, and the author of Feast of Ashes: The Life and Art of David Ohannessian (Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press), a biography of her ceramicist grandfather. The book was longlisted for the 2020 PEN America/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Biography Award and a finalist for the American Association of Publishers' 2020 Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) Awards in Biography & Autobiography.

[Image: Martiros Sarian, Constantinople Street at Midday, 1910, oil on panel, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.]

Regenerative Listening Symposium: 20 July 2023, 10am – 6.30pm

A collaboration with the Listening Academy 

Co-convened by Dr Lucia Farinati (Kingston School of Art) and Brandon LaBelle (The Listening Biennial)

Speakers: Leah Bassel (Coventry University), Brandon LaBelle (The Listening Biennial), John Levack Drever (Goldsmiths University), Melania Calestani (Kingston University), Laura E. Fisher (CEO of Traumascapes), Lucia Farinati (Kingston University), Maddalena Fragnito (Coventry University), Johanna Motzkau (The Open University), Luis Sotelo Castro (Concordia University, Montreal), and Soundcamp.

This symposium explores the cross-cutting role of listening in art, activism and social care and its potential to facilitate change in times of crisis. Understanding listening as a form of solidarity and a labour of care, the symposium explores the cross-pollination of political and creative practices that intersect with socially engaged art, transitional justice, healthcare research and cultural activism.

The significance of this study day consists in an inter-disciplinary methodology and perspective on listening which will connect research on this subject from political theory and clinical psychology to performance, visual art and sonic studies.

Listening has long been considered as a cultural, political and clinical activity that can be practised, learned and cultivated. In socially engaged art the focus on dialogue and audience participation has been a listening-centered practice giving voice to marginalised subjects. In 1970s practices of feminist consciousness raising, new protocols for group listening and speaking were recognised as a powerful political action and a vital form of political therapy. In all forms of talking therapy listening has been recognised as the core skill of professional training. But in moments of crisis (financial, ecological, Brexit, Covid, Ukraine…) what is the role of listening and why might listening matter? What happens when verbal communication or dialogue, understanding and reciprocity, compassion and empathy are under threat due to isolation, lack of care and hope?

This symposium aims to re-contextualise distinct traditions of listening in politics, social and creative practice and analyse when and how their potential for social transformation is blocked at the point that a dramatic shift in perspective - without losing the attention (the listening) - becomes necessary. The cross-pollination between art, activism and social care can unlock the potential and renew the strength in each domain by asking:

• Can art create a safe space for listening to narratives of trauma and loss?
• Can listening within activist movements constitute, in and of itself, an act of healing.
• Can creative methods of listening support inclusive health and new forms of social and health care?

Listening can be envisaged as a bridge, or a journey that we can't take alone (Bickford, 1996), a creative, regenerative experience of reconnecting with others after times of self-isolation.

Moving Muybridge: Transatlantic Dialogues: 2-3 March 2023

International conference

This international conference showcases the latest research on Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), whose multi-faceted work continues to have significance across moving-image cultures, photography, digital animation and the visual arts globally. Centring on the transatlantic movements of Muybridge, his work and ideas, and the diverse Muybridge collections in the US and the UK, the conference brings together leading scholars, curators, filmmakers and artists to share knowledge about the overall significance of Muybridge holdings in both countries and to reflect on the future of Muybridge studies.

Held in Kingston upon Thames – the birthplace of Muybridge in 1830 and where he returned for the last decade of his life until his death in 1904 – the conference marks the recent relocation of Kingston Museum's Muybridge Collection to a purpose-built archive at the University's award-winning Town House building.

The proceedings open on Thursday 2 March with drinks and an early evening screening of Exposing Muybridge (2021), written and directed by the award-winning filmmaker Marc Shaffer.

Research presentations on Friday 3 March include invited Muybridge scholars, artists and curators and will conclude with a Roundtable Discussion with invited speakers.

The conference is organised by Kingston University's Visual and Material Culture Research Centre in partnership with Kingston Museum and The Stanley Picker Gallery, and is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

For further detail on the Conference, please visit the Stanley Picker Gallery website.

Image: Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxiscope Disc, c.1893. Kingston Museum and Heritage Service

• When: Thursday 2 March, Friday 3 March, 2023
• Venue: In-person at Town House, Penrhyn Road, Kingston University KT1 2EE

Creativity in the Lockdown Home: Crafting, Parenting, Researching

In this second event of a three-part series taking place over May–June on the theme of HOME, members of KSA's Visual and Material Culture Research Centre will be in conversation with guest speakers exploring various forms of creativity that emerged in the Covid-19 lockdown home, from crafting and its flourishing on social media to the challenges and opportunities presented by parenting while working from home. The conversations will be followed by a discussion and opportunity for audience questions.

Craft at Home: Exploring Social Media Content Creation as a Craft

Has the recent popularity in domestic craft practice been influenced by social media? While the multiple lockdowns pushed more people towards their screens to connect and many used this unprecedented time at home to learn a craft, this period only accelerated an already growing phenomenon being fuelled by the Instagram craft community. Content creation is a creative output and making successful content for social media requires a unique set of skills and know-how. From the comfort of their couch and through the palms of their hands, crafters are not only making with material, but also using their mobile phones to upload content of their making for their social media feed. Making is a way of connecting and this discussion will feature a short talk by three content creators @daisyBow_Craft, @SteelAndStich and @ArtistColette exploring connections between craft and social media, with a focus on the home as a site for this creative practice.

Child-led Creative Disruption in the Lockdown Family Home

As well as the merger of spheres and the new visibility and acceptance of children in the background during defined 'work' time in households lucky enough to be able to work from home, the Covid-19 lockdowns brought children and their rhythms to the fore of our everyday: having to rethink habits and priorities, learning to work together and play together, and embracing the collaborative meaning-making made possible by 'letting go'. This discussion-based research event between researchers and parents Anna Johnson and Lina Hakim proposes to look into this phenomenon and, drawing on insights from the perspectives of the speakers' research interests and pursuits, to consider whether it might provide an opportunity to rethink the role of children as meaningful contributors in creative/research practice.

Date: Thursday 26 May 2022, 1 to 2.30pm
Location: Online.

Women's Studio Museums

Part of The Henry Moore Institute's Researching Women in Sculpture Research Season.

Dorich House is the former studio-home of the sculptor Dora Gordine and her husband, the Hon. Richard Hare, scholar of Russian art and literature. Completed in 1936 to Gordine's design and now Grade II listed, the museum forms a rare example of a preserved modern studio-house created by and for a woman.

In this workshop, held in Gordine's former studio-home, Fiona Fisher (Curator, Dorich House Museum) and Jonathan Black (co-author of Dora Gordine: Sculptor, Artist, Designer) explore the practice and career of Dora Gordine. The speakers will also consider the museum's role as a centre to support contemporary women's creative practices and the representation of women in studio museums more generally.

Date: Wednesday 11 May 2022, 9.30am to 12.30pm
Location: Dorich House Museum

Between the Visible and Invisible

Maraya Art Centre is pleased to announce its exhibition, 'Between the Visible and Invisible' curated by Dr Azadeh Fatehrad. It features the works of a group of seven international artists that includes Pia Sandstrom (Stockholm), Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin (London), Chooc Ly Tan (Paris), Nikolaus Gansterer (Vienna), Leah Fusco (London), Vladimir Nikolic (Belgrade) and Oliver Ressler (Vienna). The exhibition's opening will be held on Saturday 15 September, 2018, at 7pm and will host a live performance by Chooc Ly Tan at 8pm. The show will run until Saturday 24 November 2018.

Date: 15 September - 24 November 2018
Location: Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE

Berlin Bodies – Anatomising the Streets of the City

Professor Stephen Barber's new book Berlin Bodies presents an original conception of the corporeality of urban cultures, focusing on Berlin's scarred strata, manifested in film. The public event included screenings of rarely-seen Berlin films from the 1890s onwards and a Q&A.

The Whitechapel Gallery, 20 April 2017

Thinking through Making: 140 Years of Kingston School of Art

A Heritage Lottery-funded documentary film, directed by David Kew, focusing on the history of Kingston School of Art. Panel discussion led by project leaders, Professor Fran Lloyd and Dr. Robert Knifton, focused on the art school experience. Speakers: John Carter RA (Fine Art alumnus), Mike Nelson (Professor of Fine Art) and Elinor Renfrew (Head of Fashion).

London Film Premiere at the ICA, Friday 6 November 2015