6 – 7 December, 2010
London College of Fashion
20 John Prince’s Street,
London, W1G 0BJ
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/aware
Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, GSK Contemporary – Aware: Art Fashion Identity.The symposium will open with the performance Balena Project by Italian artist Claudia Losi and is followed by a one-day event at London College of Fashion.
Monday 6 December 2010 18:00 – 20:00
Balena Project
Venue: Saint Mary’s Church, London, W1H 1PQ
Claudia Losi is a contemporary artist, born in 1971 in Piacenza, Italy. Her Balena Project is both an installation featured in the exhibition AWARE: Art Fashion Identity, and a performance commissioned by LCF for the symposium.
The performance is followed by a round table discussion chaired by Christopher Breward, Head of the Research Department at the V&A Museum. Confirmed speakers include leading figures from contemporary art and fashion arenas; Antonio Marras, an Italian Fashion designer and Creative Director of Kenzo, Jonathan Watkins, Director the Ikon Gallery Birmingham, Carol Alayne, one of the finest women’s tailors in Mayfair today and Sir Tom Baker, Bespoke Tailor who trained at Hardy Amies on Savile Row.
Tuesday 7 December 2010
SYMPOSIUM | Aware: Art Fashion Identity
Time: 10:00 – 18:00
London College of Fashion, 20 John Prince’s Street, London, W1G 0BJ
Following an opening address by Professor Frances Corner, Head of London College of Fashion, and introductions by GSK Contemporary AWARE: Art Fashion Identity curators Lucy Orta, Kathleen Soriano and Edith Devaney, discussion expands on themes explored with the exhibition.
Morning Session
Anthony Downey, art theorist and Programme Director of the MA Course in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s, will lead a discussion addressing the variously mediated nature of knowledge in the 21st century and its use to portray real and tragic experiences. The use of media mechanisms to create and affirm, or alternatively subvert, superficial stereotypes will be explored. Globalization, politicization, social mobilization, mimetics and camoflage will be central themes throughout the discussion. The tension between real and mediated environments will be explored.
Keynote Speaker, Vito Acconci, conceptual artist and founder of Acconci Studio, will be joined by Nasan Tur, a prolific young artist who works extensively with ideas of displacement and identity, and eX de Medici, an artist whose practice incorporates performance and installation art, tattooing, photography, painting and drawing.
Afternoon Session
Gabi Scardi, a curator of the GSK Contemporary AWARE: Art Fashion Identity, chairs a discussion that focuses on dress as a sight of personal and collective memory. Dress becomes the sight upon which lived experience is recorded and can be read. It becomes a means of engaging with past experience enriching our understanding of larger historical moments and events with its variable and mutable multitude of surfaces and interiors.
Speakers include Kaat Debo, current Director of the MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, an artist who works across film, sculpture and performance in an approach that is aesthetic and scientific, and Alicia Framis, a Barcelona born artist whose work includes Remix Buildings (2000), which and Lost Astronaut (2009), a performance piece commenting on the role of women in the contemporary world.
Symposium tickets
FULL PRICE 120 GBP
CONCESSIONS 50 GBP (Students and University of the Arts London Staff)
• access to day one and day two of the symposium including refreshments and lunch
• a free ticket to the GSK Contemporary Aware: Art Fashion Identity exhibition
• a discount on the book when purchased from the RA bookshop ONLINE BOOKING FORM
• GSK Contemporary Exhibition
• http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/aware
