Conference: Dirty Practice: the Role of the Artist's Studio Wolverhampton School of Art, 23 Sep 2016

Conference
Dirty Practice: the Role of the Artist's Studio
Date: 23 September 2016.
Place: Wolverhampton School of Art, UK.

Conference Theme:
The conference sets out to explore critically the current artistic framework where manual skills and studio based practices are increasingly denigrated in favour of conceptual or socially engaged art practices. This is partly mirrored in the educational structures (and spaces) found in the new HEI environment where Fine Art departments are increasingly relocated into non-purpose-built, inadequate office type spaces without workshop support. It is also reflected in the way the artist studio has often been, in a simplifying fashion, linked to a specific art movement and specific type of art work, where the studio ultimately has become a target of the institutional critique or a 'pathology of the modern.'

These institutional and economical structures effectively mitigate against 'dirty' studio based practices and disciplines such as painting or sculpture. The studio rather than being the cherished site of individualism and individual expression is potentially a liminal space where the demands of the individual and formal face the social and political scrutiny of the community and public realm.

The symposium aims to bring together divers views from artistic practitioners, theorists, curators and educators to ask to what extent Fine Art departments, and the artist's studio in general, face unprecedented economic and conceptual challenges. We wish to query from a pedagogic and art theoretical perspective ways to maintain and instil the traditional values of studio practice, circumvent the restrictions of economic and spatial organisation and provide a sustainable model of practice.

Program

Friday 23 Sept 2016
Symposium

10.00 Welcome Coffee/ Tea

10.30 Keynote Presentation
Prof Rebecca Fortnum,
Professor of Fine Art, Middlesex University London.
On not knowing what you are doing; the importance of the studio to fine art practice.

11.30 Stephanie Dieckvoss
Central Saint Martins
Artist studios and material skills in art education around the world: a case study approach.

12.00 Danica Maier, Christine Stevens
Nottingham Trent University
The Summer Lodge: a Place for experimental Making within the Art School's abandoned Studio

12.30 Andrew Bracey, Elizabeth Wright
University of Lincoln
The doing of thinking is not a hands free conversation.

Break

14.00 Holly Crawford
Artist, New York
Ants on a Shrimp, Thoughts.

14.30 Sarah Gilbert
Pitzer College, Claremont, CA.
In the Reverie of the Studio: Materiality and Play as the Foundation of Interdisciplinary Practice.

15.00 Christian Mieves, Maggie Ayliffe
Wolverhampton School of Art
Dirty Practice: 'subversive' practices in today's art schools.
Presentations followed by Q&A (exact schedule to be confirmed).

16.00 Plenary Session: The role of the Artist's Studio
17.30 Finish

Registration:
Symposium: £40 (Students £20)
Includes buffet lunch and tea and coffee breaks.
The registration fee can be paid on the day of the conference.
Please register using following link:

To Register:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dirty-practice-the-role-of-the-artists-studio-tickets-27466637452

For further information please visit the Dirty Practice website: http://fineartwolverhampton.co.uk/dirtypractice/

Contact:
Christian.Mieveswlv.ac.uk