Expand Your Mind: Five Unmissable Tate Liverpool Events
What does Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable have to do with cinema? And how do you design an international art magazine? We pick five of the best upcoming talks and tours at Tate Liverpool this Winter that will expand your mind…
Philosophy in the Gallery: Transmitting Andy Warhol – Thursday 4 December 2014, 5.30-7pm — £5/3 (booking essential)
Arguably inventing contemporary art in the 1960s, Warhol was a master of mechanical reproduction techniques (like Do it Yourself (Seascape) 1962) who embraced and replicated mass media imagery like no one else. Here, PhD philosophy student Joanna Straczowski (University of Liverpool) discusses how Warhol methodically and robotically removed every trace of ‘the artist’s touch’ from his works — leaving the viewer with mere ‘surfaces’– and asks: what happens to art when the artist is ‘not present’ in their work? Expect to think about artistic concepts and production and the staggering influence that Warhol has had on 21st century art.
Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable and Expanded Cinema – Saturday 6 December 2014, 2-3pm — £8/6, includes exhibition entry (booking essential)
Let moving image theorist and historian Dr Glyn Davis (University of Edinburgh) and Gary Needham (Nottingham Trent University) be your guides to the legacy of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (EPI), and to seeing Warhol as a filmmaker and band manager. An awesome multi-media live performance experiment, featuring The Velvet Underground and other key Factory stars, the EPI also happens to be our favourite feature of Tate Liverpool’s bumper fourth floor Warhol exhibition. As Davis (see his cool blog here) ran a hugely popular free online course (MOOC) earlier this year introducing the life and works of the artist (enjoying over 26,000 enrolees in the first three weeks of the course launch and 40,000 streaming views to date), you can expect this illustrated lecture to be entertaining, informative and a great introductory insight into Warhol’s obsession with film. Davis and Needham previewed their talk last week here.
Off the Shelf: Michael Bracewell — Tuesday 13 January 2015, 7-8.30pm – FREE (booking essential)
We last saw renowned writer, curator and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell at Liverpool Biennial’s Drinks With Lynne Tillman event and it was marvellous; both critics discussed passionately their love of art and writing and how the two are inextricably linked. In an intimate talk, Bracewell will be asking us to question ‘the authenticity, accessibility and value of art through digital and physical methods of appropriation and distribution’ amongst the suitable surroundings of The Serving Library. Bracewell has written extensively for magazines, museums and galleries on artists — including Gilbert & George, Richard Hamilton, Bridget Riley, Wolfgang Tillmans, John Stezaker, Glenn Brown and Damien Hirst — so expect lively and thorough debate about how we disseminate art.
Making Things Public: LJMU BA Art History Student Symposium – Thursday 15 January, 11am-1pm & 2-4pm – FREE (drop in)
Join Dr Isobel Whitelegg (Senior Lecturer in Art History & Exhibition Studies/Research Curator at Tate Liverpool) and a bunch of Liverpool John Moores University BA Art History students for this special symposium. Expect to hear the students’ reactions to Tate Liverpool’s current exhibitions of Andy Warhol, Gretchen Bender and The Serving Library; as the event is held in the latter, special attention will be given to how the curators have used Claude Parent’s La colline de l’art 2014 (Liverpool Biennial’s commissioned installation) to house this new exhibition of cultural artefacts. All visitors are welcome to drop by, sit in and join the conversation.
Off the Shelf: John Morgan – Thursday 5 February 2015, 7-8.30pm – FREE (booking essential)
The founder of the John Morgan design studio, Morgan also contributed to Dot Dot Dot magazine, a precursor to The Serving Library publications (see here for past issues). Having designed visual languages and branding for many significant arts organisations — including the new wayfinding for Tate Britain (2014), and graphic identity for David Chipperfield Architects, Venice Architecture Biennale, Raven Row gallery, 6a architects and Four Corners Books, as well as the art direction of ArtReview magazine – Morgan will talk about design and publishing “in the present moment of the past.”
Laura Robertson
Read Maisie Ridgway’s Artefacts, Anarchy & Evolution: Exploring The Serving Library
Read C. James Fagan’s The Skewed Mirror of Gretchen Bender
Main image: Andy Warhol, 1928-1987, Do it Yourself (Seascape) 1962. Acrylic, pencil, and Letraset on linen support: 1378 x 1835 mm. bpk / Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Sammlung Marx / Jochen Littkemann © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London
