Off The Shelf – Grad Talks
On the back of a successful start in 2010, the Grad Talks continue this year, organised by Donna Kiernan. This is the offer for this year:
The Representation of Labour in Corporate Photography
18th July @1pm
The corporation often draws on elements of the real to create their own realities. These realities are then pushed forward to the viewer to be considered as real. The corporation’s prerogative has always been to create a positive public image, sourcing imagery from the very place where social norms originate. The type of imagery used is therefore a merereflection on the corporation’s priorities. The worker is visual evidence of capital, displaying a happy and therefore productive workforce. Through the examination of modern corporate photography I intend to show how the medium is being used to promote certain ideologies.
Info
This is a free event so no need to book but if you’d like to tell us you’re coming that’d be nice too, use our Facebook event page.
La Catedral Studios, 7/11 Saint Augustine Street, Dublin 8
David M. Flood is a photographer/writer residing in Helsinki, Finland. He mainly writes on the subject that influences his photographic work most, the corporation. The subject of his writing ranges from photography produced directly by the corporation to how the corporations’ influences extend beyond it and into one’s everyday life. His photographic work deals with the corporate entity and how it creates and controls facets of the modern experience. He also maintains a blog which is updated 8 to 10 times a year.
http://www.davidmflood.com
Where We Stood Changed the View
19th July @1pm
“Teod Richter was a West German photographer who came to Belfast in 1970 to make his first full length film. This film was never completed and Richter left within a year leaving behind most of his work. Much of this work has been subsequently lost, but what remains has been the source for ongoing research and the creation of an archive by Anthony Champa. Richter’s apparent disappearance in 1985 allows the archive and work Champa has produced to question the nature of archival truth, historical accuracy, through found and created imagery in a city with a history both so strong and so contentious.”
Anthony Champa is an American artist currently living and working in Belfast. He has worked and shown internationally and is the recipient of several awards for his photography including an Aaron Siskind Fellowship (RI. 2006). His work explores the notions of proof, evidence and truth through documentary media. He has been working and studying in Belfast for the past two years as part of the MA Art in Public course at the University of Ulster, which he completed in May 2011.
Photography and the Search for Lost Time
20th July @1pm
Definitions of time and duration in contemporary photography
This presentation sets to explore an understanding of the relationship of photography and time through selected works by three contemporary artists. Tokihiro Sato, from Japan, Oscar Muñoz from Colombia and Idris Khan, from Britain. My interest in these artists has to do with a notion of time in photography that challenges the medium’s canons and conventions. Through the analysis of these artists’ works, my presentation sets to put forth an alternative understanding of photography and its representation of time, highlighting experimental practices and the endeavour to further the boundaries of what one can call ‘the photographic’, especially with regards to perception and representation. These three artists belong to different generations and nationalities, but their work has evident visual and discursive connections.
Rodrigo Orrantia is a graduate from the MA Photography: Contemporary and Historical Programme at Sotheby’s Institute, London. He holds a previous masters degree in History of Art and Architecture, where he focused his research on historical photography. He is interested in collaborative, cross-disciplinary projects, working closely with artists and photography experts. During 2010 he was selected as one of six photography curators for Photo España / Trasatlantica online project: www.phedigital.com/trasatlantica/. He currently works as Curatorial Assistant at Mummery + Schnelle gallery in London. www.rodrigoorrantia.com
Notes on the Audience Participation
20th July @2pm
This talk will investigate and focus on the development of a methodologies and interrogative strategies for the creation and analysis of relational art practice or those practices named as art by the practitioner. Starting from a conceptual origin and analysis of time, space and the event or performance during an exhibition. These practices often include the use of the artist himself/herself; not as a self-portrait but as a ‘social representative’ involved in an aesthetic arrangements that parallels and eventually intersects real, lived life. Relational Art practices also situate a change in consideration of the art audience. This is a change from considering the audience as a beholder of images and instead posits the audience as being and integral, formal element used in the making of the work. The Audience is being combined with the artist in making material or actualizing of the conceptual framework for the artwork.
Jan Urant – is a media artist-using image, sculpture, and text to explore the production of contemporary culture. He is fascinated by our phenomenological perception of space and our behavior in the spaces we occupy. Urant received his BA (Hons) in photography from the London College of Communication (2011).
Criminalising the Photograph
21st July @1pm
Photography is becoming the focus of increased legislation in the areas of privacy and anti-terrorism. Street photography and photojournalism especially are being impacted on, with reports from the UK in particular on a changing legislative landscape affecting how photographers go about their work or hobby. This shift in photographic practices may alter the visual record of our culture, transforming how future generations perceive us. This talk investigates the legal frameworks in the UK and the broader European context, a shift in public perception of the photographer, and the implications of these changes on the actual images being made and published.
Sinead Mc Donald has recently completed an honours degree in Creative Digital Media in I.T. Tallaght, where she specialised in photography and multimedia. Her work is documentary based, with a keen interest in the political and societal forces that shape our visual culture.
Relating to the gaze
22nd July @1pm
This talk examines how the roles within the idealized nuclear family have been challenged by a number of different ‘documentary’ photographic practices. Many photographers have explored representations of their own family, prompting autobiographical reflection as well as fictional and staged reflections on the intimacy of family life. This discussion will include works by Gregor Crewdson, Nan Goldin, Hellen van Meene and Gillian Wearing. The work combined traditional documentary practice with more subjective, staged and pre-constructed image making. This way of working highlights the fictional nature of post-modern photographic practice to examine of the transactional relationship between three differing gazes – photographer, subject and spectator. These, as Marianne Hirsch articulates, create ‘multiple looks which circulate’ (Hirsch,1999, p.14 ) in a triangular relationship where relationships can be examined in fine detail.
Ruby Wallis is a practice based PhD researcher with National College of Art & Design (NCAD), Dublin, Fine Art Media andGradCAM. She completed her M.A. in Documentary Photography in 2007 at The University of Wales, Newport and a Degree in Fine Art Painting at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in 2004. Wallis has been exhibiting internationally since 2002 and has been working as a lecturer at Galway-Mayo Institure of Technology and Griffith College Dublin in Photography Theory. She has been a Community Artist-Facilitator with CREATE, Practice.ie and the Galway Arts Centre since 2002.
