Dr Clive Cazeaux: keynote speaker at this year’s Metaphor Festival, Stockholm University, Sweden Clive Cazeaux will be a keynote speaker at this year’s Metaphor Festival held by the Department of English at Stockholm University, Sweden, 16-17 September. The festival is an annual international symposium on figurative language, exploring the nature and importance of figures of speech for human experience, cognition, social structures, culture, production of artefacts and artistic pursuits, including both literature and other art forms. Clive’s principal research interest is metaphor in aesthetics and the theory of knowledge. His recent book, Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida (Routledge 2007), argues that metaphor is a movement between domains, where this movement-between is vital for understanding human being, aesthetic experience, and scientific knowledge. He will be sharing keynote billing at the festival with Ray Gibbs, one of the world’s leading authorities on metaphor and embodiment within cognitive science. Further information on the Metaphor Festival can be found here: http://www.english.su.se/pub/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=13729
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Professor David Ferry: Belligerent Rock Intrusions The exhibition, curated by WOODFINCH / Simon Finch Rare Books in association with The National Print Gallery, consisted of a series of books of collages and a suite of prints based on the book Belligerent Rock Intrusions by Professor David Ferry (CFAR). Each book is an adjusted copy of a pictorial guide of the British Isles from the innocent post war years of the 1950's and 1960's, which he deftly subverted using donor material from the same period to deconstruct the notion of British national identity and heritage.
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Professor Robert Pepperell: Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference Professor Robert Pepperell attended the Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference, hosted by the University of Arizona, in Tucson in April. This is the largest international gathering of scientists, philosophers and consciousness researchers, and where leading research into the mind is presented. Robert gave a paper on art, indeterminacy and quantum physics and chaired a session on Art and Technology. For more info: |
Dr Chris Short: The Art Theory of Wassily Kandinsky, 1909-1928: The Quest for Synthesis, available from January 2010. Chris Short's latest book, The Art Theory of Wassily Kandinsky, 1909-1928 The Quest for Synthesis (published by Peter Lang, ISBN 978-3-03911-399-6) draws on the diverse literature that has been written on Kandinsky's art and theory to demonstrate that while many different perspectives on his work have been identified, none hold the ‘key' to that work. Short shows Kandinsky's method in his writings to be highly eclectic, resulting in an exciting and challenging variety of content. Kandinsky, however, transcended this diversity and consistently sought evidence of the unity of all things: something that would be realised through his understanding of the term 'synthesis'. The book follows Kandinsky's fascinating attempts to establish synthesis (not only in art but also in other disciplines including science, mathematics, law and politics) in his key theoretical publications: On the Spiritual in Art (1911) and Point and Line to Plane (1926). The result is a new and innovative understanding of both Kandinsky's art theory and his art.
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IN RESPONSE / Limited Edition This exhibition had its roots in a collaboration between V-6 Printmaking Group and the Newport Museum and Art Gallery's unusual and extensive print collection. Each of the V-6 Group - Richard Cox, David Ferry, Chris Lloyd, Annie Giles Hobbs, Sue Hunt and Tom Piper - selected a work from the collection and made a new print in response to this. These were exhibited alongside a selection of works from the permanent collection. There is an illustrated catalogue available and the gallery hosted a one day seminar. |
The Cardiff Group - forthcoming exhibition, March 2010. In March 2010, The Cardiff Group - Including CFAR's Mark Halliday, Dallas Collins and Luke Mintowt-Czyz will be exhibiting large-scale work in the ‘Blue Bell’ aircraft hangar in St. Athan. As well as an exhibition of work by individual members of the group and invited artists, the group will be constructing, exhibiting (and flying) a forty by twelve by twelve foot flying sculpture based on Alexander Graham Bell’s ‘Frost King’ and ‘Cygnet’ tetrahedral kite constructions. The project will be documented by a film made by BAFTA award-winning artist John Minton, as well as a small book of short associated and interpretive essays and images. The event has been funded by an award of £3500 from Safle. |
David Ferry - Paris Photo 2009 |
October 2009 |
David Ferry - ApART Exhibition, France 2009.
David Ferry - Chelsea Space, London |
Richard Cox: Subterranean Architecture. Stepwells in Western India Over the last three years I have been working in North Western India documenting a little known aspect of Indian traditional architecture, Stepwells. This digital photographic record has formed an exhibition currently touring the UK and India. Richard Cox 2009
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Prof André Stitt directs Trace Collective of Artists as part of a studio and gallery residency project In Sydney, Australia Residency and site works: Installation Exihibition: For Trace:Displaced in Sydney the Trace Collective built a suspended floor structure in Artspace galleries 1 and 2. This was be a scaled replication of the floor area in the ‘domestic’ TRACE artspace situated in an inhabited terrace house in Cardiff. During each day of the public ‘live’ work the artists engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the installation, navigating it’s physicality and making interventions upon it’s structure. Collective activity included the dismantling of a number of classic Australian built Torana cars combined with accumulative documentary videos of ‘live’ work created in and around Sydney during their residency. References to locations and conditions in and around Old South Wales were displaced and relocated to NSW, creating multi-layered investigations referencing departure and arrival though a post-colonial -cluster-fuck. Clusterfuck is a term used to describe a kind of catch 22, in which a series of problematic events occur simultaneously with the effect of mutually disrupting each other's outcomes.
André Stitt & Tony Schwensen For a full working day Stitt and Australian artist Tony Schwensen will take on the roles of Cy & Dusty; house painters and local bullshitters who aspire to being artists with a social conscience. www.campbelltown.nsw.gov.au
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Paul Granjon: Collaboration with Kanta HorioPaul started a collaboration with Japanese electronic artist Kanta Horio in October 2008. Chapter Arts Centre commissioned a 2 weeks residency at the end of which they presented a performance/installation in Chapter theatre. Paul received funding from Wales Arts International and Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation to develop the second stage of the collaboration which will take place in gallery AD&D, Osaka, Japan in August 2009. |
7-24th April 2009 |
Conversations with Painters at Bay Art (29th October 2008)Artist, CSAD Fine Art lecturer Phil Nicol has recently completed transcriptions of interviews with painters, conducted at the Bay Art gallery. As illuminating explorations on the painter's intention, the veiwing and problems/thrills of apprenhending a mute art object in a gallery space, these interviews aim to provide insight into each painter's working practice. Included are: Merlin James and Michael Williams talking to Michael Crowther, George Blacklock talking to Jonathan Clarkson, Emrys Williams and Andreas Ruthi talking to Maggie James and Cherry Pickles and Carol Robertson talking to Philip Nicol. The interviews will be published in an edited volume. |
Art and the Fractured Unity of Consciousness (October 23rd 2008)Robert Pepperell reports: "In July 2008 I presented a paper at the Consciousness Reframed conference, hosted by the University of Applied Arts, Vienna and the Planetary Collegium, directed by Roy Ascott. Consciousness Reframed is a forum for transdisciplinary inquiry into art, science, technology and consciousness, drawing upon the expertise and insights of artists, architects, performers, musicians, writers, scientists, and scholars, usually from at least 20 countries. My paper was called Art and the Fractured Unity of Consciousness, and questioned the widely endorsed view that consciousness is essentially unified and rational. I used examples from the history of art and the Jain philosophical tradition to support my case."http://cr9.dieangewandte.at/ |
Truthing Gap explores under-sea imaging (October 23rd 2008)Truthing Gap is a collaboration between Cardiff School of Art & Design's Dr Rona Lee and Dr Tim Le Bas, a sonar geophysicist from The National Oceanographic Centre Southampton. It results from a successful application to the Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence Award Scheme. The term 'truthing gap' refers to the necessity to verify sonar data with other findings. In this context, we are using it to refer to the play of myth, imagination and objectivity, involved in envisaging environments that cannot be experienced directly.The work we propose to do involves reflection on methods of seabed mapping, the translation of sonar (sound-based) data into visual imagery and the operation of the scientific gaze. An associated website is at http://www.ronalee.org/truthing.gap/29 |
Watery Places presented at the Royal Geographical Society's Annual; Conference (October 23rd 2008)Dr Rona Lee's Watery Places, Dry Optics and Deep Water is a paper and presentation describing a series of artworks, in different media, involving material investigation of and philosophical reflection upon, the liminal character of coastal locations. It is an enquiry informed by the proposition that the 'watery' might be said to resist both classification and representational circumscription. It was presented to the Royal Geographical Society's Annual International Conference, (27-29 August 2008).
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The Memorial Walks published (21st October 2008)Simon Pope, artist and Reader in Fine Art at Cardiff School of Art & Design, was awarded financial support for The Memorial Walks, a publication which records and contextualizes a series of performances for the exhibition Waterlog (2007). Edited by Steven Bode and designed by Herman Lelie, it includes contributions by writers Iain Sinclair, George Szirties, Sally O'Rielly, Amanda Hopkinson, Geoff Dyer, Matthew Hollis, Hari Kunzru and Tom McCarthy. 500 copies will be printed for international distribution by the publisher, Film & Video Umbrella, (London) after its launch in December 2008.
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CFAR Acadamic Associate conducts research in New York (16th October 2008)John Hammersley reports: My research is into dialogue as practice and understanding in contemporary art. At the end of August/beginning of September 2008, just as the Democratic and Republican conventions were heating up the political landscape in the US, I went to New York to interview seven artists for the first stage of my data collection. Being able to interview artists who ranged from major figures in conceptualism to younger emerging artists about their understanding was invaluable in contributing to my awareness of different perspectives on dialogue. Without the support of the CFAR grant this formative and important trip would not have been possible." John will be presenting at our research seminar series during 2008/9.
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News from CFAR, including reports on funded-projects and the research activity of our staff and associates.
