Transmission: Speaking and Listening is an annual series of lectures supported by the School of Cultural Studies at Sheffield Hallam University, in collaboration with the Site Gallery and the Showroom Cinema. Leading and emerging artists from the UK and abroad discuss their work in relation to a particular theme with an audience of students and the public. The discussion, along are published each year making a significant contribution to current debate about artistic practice.
Talks take place at the Showroom Cinema at 4pm on Wednesdays and cost £2/£1.50 concession (there is no charge for Students registered at Sheffield Hallam University). Tickets for the talks can be reserved in advance at the box office, Showroom Cinema, tel: 0114 275 7727. The Showroom Cinema is in Sheffield’s Cultural Industries Quarter, next to the main train and bus stations.
19th October Becky Shaw
Based in London and Liverpool, Becky Shaw has worked extensively in leisure, health and work contexts. In 2004 Shaw received an Artsadmin mid-career artist’s bursary allowing her establish the Journal of Occasional Trade as a vehicle to disseminate live work. Recent projects include ‘Transfer’ which explored the conflicting agendas of art and healthcare by moving the vast art collection of the Manchester Royal Infirmary to the much smaller Castlefield Gallery.
26th October Ryan Gander
Ryan Gander’s projects range from advertisements in newspapers, published book works and lectures to managing the neo-punk rock art band from Manchester ‘Die Kunst’. Living and working in London and Amsterdam, Gander’s publications include In A Language You Don’t Understand, Appendix, and a children’s storybook, The Boy Who Always Looked Up. In 2003 he won the Prix de Rome for sculpture and in 2005 was short-listed for the Beck’s Futures Prize. Gander is represented by STORE, London, and Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam.
2nd November Neal Rock
Painting with pigmented silicon, Neal Rock’s work explores the boundaries between painting, sculpture and construction. Living and working in London, Rock has shown internationally with solo shows at fa projects London, Henry Urbach Architecture, New York, and Kontainer, Los Angeles. His work has also been included in international group shows, including ‘Expander’ Royal Academy of Arts, London. ‘Landscape Confection’ Wexner Centre, Columbus, Ohio and ‘Extreme Abstraction’, Albright Knox Buffalo. He has forthcoming solo shows with Torch, Amsterdam and GrandArts, Kansas City.
9th November Imogen Stidworthy
Working with the sculptural material of speech, space and the body. Imogen Stidworthy is interested in language and other social thresholds. Stidworthy’s exhibitions include a solo show at FRAC Bourgogne in 2005, Dijon; ‘Be What you Want but Stay Where you Are’ at Witte de With, Rotterdam; murmur at TENT, Rotterdam, ‘How do we Want to be Governed at Art Central’, Miami, ‘Shrinking Cities’ at Kunst-Werke, Berlin, ‘With Hidden Noise’ at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, ‘Versions’ at Kunsthal Bergen, and The Whisper Heard, a solo show at Matts Gallery. Stidworthy is represented by Matts Gallery, London.
16th November Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska
London-based artists involved in a collaborative practice since 1995, their projects have often worked with the institutions that choreograph the exchange of values between art and its public. Capital inaugurated a ‘Contemporary Interventions’ series at Tate Modern in 2001; Free Trade was commissioned for the re-opening of Manchester Art Gallery in 2003. Their latest exhibiton Enthusiasm shown at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Kunst-Werke, Berlin, Tapies Foundation, Barcelona, explores through amateur films made by Polish factory workers under socialism, the potential and relevance of counter-cultural models for art practice now.
23rd November Nayan Kulkarni
Based in London, Nayan Kulkarni’s practice encompasses photography, installation, video and architectural collaboration. Recent architectural interventions include Chambers, Dymchurch, Kent, and at a glance, West Midlands. Currently he is leading the conceptual design of an free-form glazed structure, covering streets and public spaces in Bristol (SWPA and the Bristol Alliance), collaborating with Jaspar Joseph-Lester on the realization of a design for Panopticons (MPA) and Lead Artist for the Attwood Green Regeneration (Optima Community Association), and developing the architectural lighting concepts for a new multi-use building in collaboration with Chapman Taylor Architects.
30th November Mike Marshall
Mike Marshall’s work encompasses sound, text photography and video. It explores how art can exact shifts in attitude or mental state that may intensify our experience of everyday situations. Marshall exhibits regularly in the UK and internationally. Recent shows include Tate Gallery Triennial, Sydney, and Gwanju Korea Biennales, Union and VTO Galleries in London, and Tate Gallery, St Ives. He was a recent Rome scholar in Fine arts, is completing a PhD at Goldsmiths and will have a forthcoming solo show at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in November 2005.
22nd February Doug Fishbone
Fishbone’s video pieces comprise downloaded internet images accompanied by humorous narrations. The deadpan commentary attempts to rationalise what we see, evoking a public information lecture. However, this notion disappears when comments veer towards the politically incorrect and appear to breach copyright.
1st March Richard Wentworth
Since the late 1970s, Richard Wentworth has quietly emerged as one of the key figures in radically transforming the way we think about sculpture and the work of art. Shunning the monumental gesture, Wentworth finds his materials in the everyday world, a world of things and thoughts already ready made.
8th March Hewitt and Jordan
Hewitt and Jordan’s practice is concerned with the discourse around arts social potential and its relationship to public space and the public realm. Recent works discuss the ‘functions’ of public art and the notion of public good in relationship to social and economic regeneration policy.
Symposium: 15th March 2–5pm
Amanda Beech, Malcolm Miles and Chris Oakley
Amanda Beech’s artwork and research explores the relationship between notions of freedom that are central to democracy and an aesthetics of violence.
Malcolm Miles is Reader in Cultural Theory at the University of Plymouth. He is author of Urban Avant-Gardes (2004) and Art Space & the City(1997), co-author of Consuming Cities (2004, with Steven Miles).
Chris Oakley is a member of The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and practices, teaches and writes about psychoanalysis