Uncovered

RHUL Centre for Visual Cultures

Welcome to the podcast from the Centre for Visual Cultures, Royal Holloway! We're back with a new series - Uncovered - where we shine a light on hidden aspects of the world of visual culture. Through conversations with artists, academics, and curators, we'll be going behind the scenes of exhibitions, delving deep into the art archives, and finding new perspectives on a multitude of visual media.

Episodes

  1. Breaking down Iconoclasm with Stacy Boldrick

    17/06/2024

    Breaking down Iconoclasm with Stacy Boldrick

    Martina Borghi talks to Dr Stacy Boldrick from the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester about iconoclasm - the destruction of art! She tells us how museums approach this subject and discusses how to present the history of objects that have undergone various forms of damage. Stacy's bio: https://le.ac.uk/people/stacy-boldrick Artworks and artists’ projects mentioned: Diego Velázquez, The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus), oil on canvas, 1647-51 - https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/diego-velazquez-the-toilet-of-venus-the-rokeby-venus  John Cassidy and others, Edward Colston statue,1895/2020. Bronze, mixed media M shed (Bristol Museums) display, 2021 - https://exhibitions.bristolmuseums.org.uk/the-colston-statue/  Kate Davis, Reversibility (Militant Methods), 2011. Framed pencil drawing and silkscreen print on paper, 135 x 80cm - https://katedavisartist.co.uk/peace-at-last-2/   Sonia Boyce, Black artists and Modernism (2015-2018) - https://www.arts.ac.uk/ual-decolonising-arts-institute/ual-related-activities/black-artists-and-modernism   Hew Locke, Patriots series (2018) - http://www.hewlocke.net/patriots.html   Titus Kaphar, Impressions of Liberty, Wood (American sycamore and plywood), etched glass, sculpting foam, graphite and LED lights, 2017 - https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/132361?lat=40.349209&lon=-74.660278   Francisco Goya, Disasters of War (Los Desastres de la Guerra), series of prints, 1810, Etching, drypoint, burin, burnisher - https://www.parkwestgallery.com/francisco-goya-disasters-of-war/   Steve McQueen, Bass, 2024 (Dia Beacon) - https://www.diaart.org/exhibition/exhibitions-projects/steve-mcqueen-exhibition   Raqs Media Collective, Coronation Park (2015) - https://works.raqsmediacollective.net/index.php/2015/12/05/coronation-park/  Exhibitions mentioned:  Iconoclash (2002), ZKM Medienmuseum (Karlsruhe Germany).  - https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2002/05/iconoclash  Books and articles mentioned in the Podcast: -        David Freedberg, The Power of Images (Yale University Press, 1989) -        David Freedberg, Iconoclasm (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021) -        Dario Gamboni, The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution, 2nd edn (London: Reaktion, 2018) -        Stacy Boldrick and Richard Clay (eds.), Iconoclasm: Contested Objects, Contested Terms (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) -        Stacy Boldrick, Iconoclasm and the museum (Oxon: Routledge, 2020) -        Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds), Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2002) -        Margaret Aston, Broken Idols of the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) -        James Simpson, Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) -        Ramon Sarró, The Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast Iconoclasm Done and Undone (London: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute, 2009) -        James Noyes, The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013) -        Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at war (London: Reaktion, 2007) -        Henry Chapman, Iconoclasm and Later Prehistory (London: Routledge, 2018) -        Fabio Rambelli, Eric Reinders, Buddhism and Iconoclasm in East Asia (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012) -        Christoph Brumann and David Berliner (eds), World Heritage on the Ground. Etnographic prospective (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016) -        José Antonio Gonzalez Zarandona, ‘Heritage destruction in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: legal and illegal iconoclasm’ in International Journal of Heritage Studies, 5 (2020), pp. 519-538

    48 min
  2. Curating Contemporary Art with Sandy Saad-Smith

    06/03/2024

    Curating Contemporary Art with Sandy Saad-Smith

    This episode's guest is Sandy Saad-Smith, curator of the Doris McCarthy Gallery, a professional public art gallery within the University of Toronto Scarborough. In conversation with CVC's Anissa Talahite-Moodley, Sandy talks us through the process of curating it’s because of the shimmer, the verge, and the yet, a solo exhibition of works by the artist Erika DeFreitas, whose practice reflects on loss, post-memory, legacy, and objecthood. DeFreitas' artwork addresses historical and archival absences, offering a rich, poetic reimagining of an alternate text that attests to the complex lives of women, including Maud Sulter, Jeanne Duval, Gertrude Stein, and Agnes Martin. Sandy also tells us about a new exhibition in the gallery by the Waard Ward collective in collaboration with Anne Campbell, Nicolas Fleming, Reza Nik, Darren Rigo & Alize Zorlutuna. Featuring photography, ceramics, florals, and a site-specific garden installation, A rose gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it evokes the memory of the Nanaa family’s garden, courtyard, and home, lost in the Syrian war. The exhibition explores the colonial history of flowers, the legacy of war on land, the imagined landscape, the displacement of people, and the longing for home. Find out more about the gallery and the exhibitions Sandy has worked on: Doris McCarthy Gallery A rose gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it  it’s because of the shimmer, the verge, and the yet The Yet See Sandy's website here CVC website Email: centreforvisualcultures@rhul.ac.uk X / Twitter: @RHUL_CVC Instagram: @rhul_cvc

    43 min
  3. (un)touched with Martina Borghi and Kate Devine

    01/07/2022

    (un)touched with Martina Borghi and Kate Devine

    (un)touched delves into the themes of touch, tangibility and intangibility in the world of art and visual culture. In this episode, Anna Price speaks to Martina Borghi and Kate Devine, two PhD students at Royal Holloway, about their recent 'Sensing Art' workshop about what engaging non-visually with art means from a research perspective and how utilising our senses can enhance our understanding of visual culture. Thank you for listening to this episode! More information on us, the Centre for Visual Cultures, can be found here, you can email us at: centreforvisualcultures@rhul.ac.uk and tweet us at: @RHUL_CVC. Please find a list below of the key artworks mentioned: Edmonia Lewis - The Death of Cleopatra - 1876 - Marble - Smithsonian American Art Museum - https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/death-cleopatra-33878 El Anatsui - Fresh and Fading Memories - 2007 - Aluminium and copper wire Gabriele Devecchi - Superficie in vibrazione, 1959 - Wood (or in alternative aluminum or aluminum and methacrylate), natural rubber, steel pins, v220 motor – 2 rpm (or in alternative battery motors) - https://www.reprogrammed-art.cc/library/25/Superficie-in-vibrazione  Gianni Colombo - Elastic Space - 1967 - Fluorescent elastic cords, electrical motors, Wood’s lamp - https://www.reprogrammed-art.cc/library/104/Spazio-elastico Mario Merz - Cone - 1967 - Willow - Tate Modern London- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/merz-cone-t03674‘Cone’, Mario Merz, c.1967 | Tate And the key articles mentioned: Christopher Perricone - The place of touch in the arts - https://www.jstor.org/stable/4140242 Lenka Clayton -  http://www.lenkaclayton.com/ and https://www.artnews.com/art-news/reviews/blind-copies-lenka-clayton-captures-the-rhythms-of-everyday-life-and-questions-the-nature-of-originality-8547/ For the transcript of this podcast, please see this PDF.

    38 min

About

Welcome to the podcast from the Centre for Visual Cultures, Royal Holloway! We're back with a new series - Uncovered - where we shine a light on hidden aspects of the world of visual culture. Through conversations with artists, academics, and curators, we'll be going behind the scenes of exhibitions, delving deep into the art archives, and finding new perspectives on a multitude of visual media.