Virtually (Im)Possible – the material losses and virtual gains of the online ‘exhibition’.

Last summer, at the UEL conference Research is Open, we discussed the impact of moving to a virtual world on the material, or phenomenological, aspects of experiencing art. We wanted to consider the challenges faced by artists attempting to re-locate this experience of an exhibition; to explore what we could gain, and how we might mitigate what has been lost.

This session will resume the discussion. We are in lockdown again, and while some of us have struggled, some have adapted and embraced restrictions as new opportunities. We will be looking at the impact on a range of artistic practice from sculpture and installation, to printmaking, drawing, performance and audio. 

Schedule

Aspiration, failure and the exhibition as a site for research. Recorded discussion (David Watkins & Sue Withers) 

Pandemic Subversions. Slide Presentation (Ralph Overill)

Between Walls. Slide Presentation (Ali Darke)

4’.33” Performance (Paul Greenleaf)

Interiors and Exteriors Audio/video. (Ruth Jones)

Panel discussion (Ali Darke, David Watkins, Paul Greenleaf, Ralph Overill)

Ali Darke is a London based artist, curator and researcher. She originally trained as a theatre designer at Wimbledon College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art and is about to complete a Professional Doctorate in Fine Art at the University of East London. Through drawing, sculpture, installation and moving image, her practice has evolved into a scenography of the inner world, responding to personal experience, memory and myth, and the evocative language of psychoanalysis. 

David Watkins is an artist and board director at The Old Water Works. He is currently in the second year of the Professional Doctorate in Fine Art. David’s work considers the relations between infrastructural networks, technology and society. 

Ralph Overill is an artist printmaker and educator, studying in the fourth year of the Professional Doctorate in Fine Art. Ralph's practice explores the edge lands of Essex, interrogating these sites through his childhood memories, imaginations and cinematic residues, creating work that holds the promise of monsters returning, or to come.

Ruth Jones is an artist and curator, project manager for The Old Waterworks and founder of the Agency of Visible Womxn. She is currently in the third year of the Professional Doctorate in Fine Art. Ruth’s area of research is centred around three elements of collective and curatorial feminist art practices: Taking Space, Sharing Space and Taking Care. 

Sue Withers is an artist, curator and educator, in the final year of the Professional Doctorate in Fine Art. Her practice spans printmaking, photography, video and sculpture which examines the construction of female identity through consumerism and the pursuit of perfection, acceptance or visibility.