Artists’ Critical Interventions into Architecture and Design, 1950 - 2016

University of Warwick, 15-16 July 2016

To register, please email: artconferencewarwick2016gmail.com

What happens when fine artists engage with architecture and urban space? What forms can such engagements take? What political issues arise at the junctures between these disciplines?

During the modern period, when artists and critics have often complained that fine art is overly remote from everyday life, one common way of overcoming this gap has been to draw on the greater social efficacy that architecture can seem to provide. However, in other instances artists have used their relatively autonomous position to criticise or interrupt the relationship between architecture, urbanisation and power. This conference will explore these issues as they arise in practices spanning the period from the 1960s to the present, exploring intersections between art, architecture and urbanism both within and outside Europe and North America.

Day One: Friday 15 July 2016

10.15 Registration

10.40 Start

Bill Roberts and David Hodge: Opening Remarks

10.55 Keynote Speech

Alexandra Kokoli (Middlesex University)

‘Uncanny Domesticities in Art informed by Feminist Anti-Nuclear Activism’

(chaired by Imogen Racz, Coventry University)

12.00 Break

12.25 Panel 1: Race, Architecture, Art

Gemma Rodrigues (Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute)

‘Simone Leigh’s Architectural Excavations and Inventions: A Storehouse of Signs’

Monique Kerman (Western Washington University)

‘Structural Racism? Architectural Space in the Work of Mary Evans’

13.35 Lunch

14.35 Panel 2: Rethinking Modernism

Natasha Adamou (Kingston University)

‘Shade Between Rings of Air: Architecture as Sculpture: Carlo Scarpa / Gabriel Orozco, 1952 / 2003’

Hamed Yousefi (Independent)

‘The Avant-garde in the City: Koorosh Shishegaran on the Eve of the Iranian Revolution’

Catrin Huber (Newcastle University)

‘Art, Architecture and Life: A Critical Discussion Between Three Historical Artists’

16.05 Break

16.30 Panel 3: History, Memory, the Nation

David Burns (Royal College of Art)

‘The Spaces of Conflict in the Work of Mike Parr’

Mark Stuart-Smith (Independent)

‘Something is Growing in the Wall: Architectural Subversions in the Work of Juan Muñoz’

Kirstie Gregory (Leeds Beckett University)

‘Building inside Buildings: Michael Landy’s Semi-detached in the Duveen Galleries’

18.00 End

Day Two: Saturday 16 July 2016

10.15 Registration

10.30 Start

Bill Roberts and David Hodge: Opening Remarks

10.35 Keynote Speech

Nicolas Whybrow (University of Warwick)

‘Complex Cities: The Architecture of Art in Urban Situations’

11.40 Break

12.05 Panel 1: Architecture, Urbanism and their ‘Publics’

Kenneth Allan (Seattle University)

‘Billy Al Bengston, Frank Gehry and the Stakes of Spectatorship in Los Angeles, 1968’

Danielle Child (Manchester Metropolitan University)

‘Art and the Public Square: From Decoration to Declaration!’

David Hodge (The Art Academy)

‘Siah Armajani, Architectural Space and the Production of the Public’

13.15 Lunch

14.15 Panel 2: Art, Urbanism and the City

Juliana Kei (Royal College of Art)

‘Art and Architecture Society, 1982-2007’

Tomasso Gorla (Paris, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales)

‘Living Without Architecture: Italy’s Alternative Models for Life on Earth’

Joel Robinson (Open University)

‘The Architecture Biennial as a Platform for Artists: The Case of the Urbanism and Architecture Bi-City Biennale (Shenzhen / Hong Kong)’

Anne Kersten (Heinrich-Böll-Foundation)

'Knowledge and Mediation in Form – Design in the Works of Artists Group Futurefarmers and myvillages'

16.05 Finish