Tuesday, September 20, 2016, 6:30–8pm
Moore College of Art & Design
20th Street & The Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19103
T 215 965 4000
Register for this free event.
In this “Conversation,” British sculptor Garth Evans will talk with artist/publisher Julia Klein who runs Soberscove Press. In 1972, Evans created a public sculpture in Cardiff, Wales, as part of the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation’s City Sculpture Project. He was concerned with the increasing demand his work served only to reinforce the political, social, and economic status quos, so Evans’ focus was to make a sculpture that would connect with an audience outside the art world. The morning after the sculpture was installed, Evans recorded the responses of passersby. The transcript of those interviews is presented in The Cardiff Tapes, published by Soberscove Press in 2015. The book explores ideas about the social responsibilities of art and artists, and makes a cogent argument for the value of “difficulty” in sculpture.
“Our program is concerned with putting artists into dialogue with society and part of the history of how that has happened in the past is through publicly-funded art programs. The book Cardiff Tapes, based on the work by Evans and published by Klein, draws attention to some of the challenges that any public artist must face when trying to translate their concerns to a broader audience. The book shares candid perspectives from passersby that could be read as antagonistic as well as supportive and enthusiastic and offers lessons to anyone concerned with making or facilitating art experiences that move from the studio to the street.” –Daniel Tucker, Graduate Program Director, Social & Studio Practices department.
Garth Evans is central to the narrative of British sculpture. He has exhibited widely across the United Kingdom and United States since the 1960s. From 1965–1979, he taught at St. Martin’s School of Art; he moved to the United States at the midpoint of his career. Evans’s work is represented in major public and private collections, including Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MoMA, and the British Museum. He is currently head of sculpture at the New York Studio School. In 2015, Sobserscove Press released The Cardiff Tapes (1972) a book that presents a transcript of recordings made by Garth Evans that document public response to a sculpture he installed in Cardiff as part of the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation’s UK-wide City Sculpture Project. The book also includes writings by Evans that introduce and reflect on the commission, as well as on the nature of sculpture and its reception. A text by art historian and curator Jon Wood contextualizes Evans’s sculpture and the City Sculpture Project within the broader context of British sculpture and public space in the 1970s.
Julia Klein‘s work has been exhibited in a variety of venues including solo and two-person exhibitions at Sidecar Gallery (Hammond, IN), the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago). Group show venues include Songs for Presidents (Brooklyn), Elaine L Jacob Gallery at Wayne State University (Detroit), Passenger (Detroit), Gridspace (Brooklyn), and the Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago). Klein has participated in residencies at Sitterwerk St. Gallen (Switzerland), the Terra Foundation Summer Residency in Giverny, and at the Vermont Studio Center. She received a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Sculpture from the Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. Since 2009, Klein has run Soberscove Press, which produces art-related materials that fill a gap in the literature or are difficult to access, as well as artists’ books.
About Moore College of Art & Design
Moore College of Art & Design educates students for careers in art and design. Founded in 1848, Moore is the nation’s first and only women’s visual arts college for undergraduates. The College’s career-focused environment and professionally active faculty form a dynamic community in the heart of Philadelphia’s cultural district, surrounded by world-class museums. The College offers ten Bachelor of fine arts degrees for women and four coeducational graduate programs. In addition, Moore provides many valuable opportunities in the arts through The Galleries at Moore, Continuing Education Certificate programs for professional adults, the acclaimed Young Artists Workshop, The Art Shop and Sculpture Park. For more information about Moore, visit www.moore.edu.
