The Real World is a series of talks in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery looking at the real-life careers of visual artists and other practitioners.

Next Session Announced

The Real World: Contemporary but Overlooked

Thursday 9 September 2010, 7 - 9pm

Venue: Whitechapel Art Gallery

Booking: Tickets £3. To book your place visit the Whitechapel Art Gallery website

Many artists maintain a practice despite lack of exposure. This session of the Real World looks at alternative art ecologies and discusses how artists might situate their work, and critically develop their practice outside of the conventional art system. Speakers for this event are writer, curator and publisher Mark Pilkington and artist Cathy Ward.

Mark Pilkington has written for the Guardian, Fortean Times, Sight & Sound, The Wire, Frieze, and a host of other magazines and journals. His second book, Mirage Men, about exploitation of contemporary UFO folklore in counter- espionage and psychological warfare, was published by Constable Robinson in July 2010. Mark has run Strange Attractor and its press since 2001, editing and publishing books and CDs, organising events and exhibitions and broadcasting on Resonance FM. He most recently curated the Strange Attractor Salon, featuring nearly 40 artists and musicians, at Viktor Wynd Fine Art. When not squinting with words, Mark can be found playing synthesisers and electronic gizmos with musical outfits including Disinformation, Raagnagrok and Urthona.

Cathy Ward graduated from the Ceramics and Glass department of the RCA in 1988. Ward has independently worked in many places regarded as outside the art circuit in the UK and internationally, creating work especially for venues like The Chamber of Pop Culture at The Horse Hospital, London (Transromantik); PS1 MoMA, New York (Romantic Detachment); Cafe Gallery Projects, London (Destiny Manifest - Eden's End) Her most recent major solo show with Eric Wright, Tender Vessels, was commissioned as winner of the open submission biennale Emergency3 at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth in 2009. Often appearing alongside Visionary and Outsider artists in shows in America such as Internal Guidance Systems; Chthonic! Works by Neuve Invention artists; and Aspects of Mels Hole: Artists Respond to a Paranormal Land event Occuring in Radio Space. Ward lives and works in London and has never had representation by any gallery in the UK.

This continuing collaboration between the Whitechapel Gallery and Artquest aims to provide critical and practical support to London’s visual artists and craftspeople.  Each Real World talk will take the current Whitechapel Gallery exhibition as its inspiration and draw out related conceptual themes and practical advice to attending artists.  Each talk will also be recorded and made available on this page for the benefit of artists and craftspeople anywhere in the world.

Each talk is free to attend, and tickets can be booked on the Whitechapel website.

Previous Real World seminars

The Real World: Curation and Control

Thursday 15 April 2010, 7-9pm
Venue: Whitechapel Art Gallery

Taking on a more dialogic format, this season's Real World seminar series in partnership with Artquest and Whitechapel gallery saw practitioners and arts professionals creating a forum for discussion on issues facing practitioners today, bringing different generations of practice together. The first of these sessions looked at the relationship between the curator and the artist, their respective responsibilities and expectations of one another, modes of collaboration and how this relationship is changing. Speaking at this session were curators Hannah Liley and Matt Roberts.

The Real World: International practices

Thursday 18 February 2010, 7-9pm
Venue: Whitechapel Art Gallery

This seminar explored international trends and practices within the visual arts. Using case studies of international projects, such as Artquest's Artelier and Artroute programmes, this session compared artists' experiences, offered advice on networking and highlights opportunities for artists internationally. Participants include artists Joanna Callaghan  and Samuel Dowd.
 

The Real World: Socially engaged practice

Thursday 19 November 2009, 7-9pm

Venue: Whitechapel Art Gallery

This Real World seminar focused on socially or critically engaged practices in the visual arts, examining what this term means to artists in relation to their practice, and looking at how artists work with members of the public to create works of art.  This event provided a forum for artists and their collaborators to present projects so as to stimulate debate around their own practice or to find new partners. Included presentations by artists Sarah Cole and Serena Korda. 

The Real World: Artist / Curator

Thursday 21 May 2009

Responding to the multifarious practice of Goshka Macuga, the first Real World session focused on the role of the artist-curator. Dallas Seitz, Cathy Lomax and the Centre of Attention (Gary O’Dwyer and Pierre Coinde) presented case studies, explore innovative projects, suggest practical solutions to common pitfalls, and consider best practice for working with artists, other organisations and funders.

The Real World: Collaborative Practice

Thursday 17 September 2009

 The second Real World seminar focussed on collaboration in the visual arts, looking at collective practices both within and across the arts and into other areas. Case studies and presentations were by Ana Laura López de la Torre (London based artist and writer), collaborative visual artists Cornford & Cross (Matthew Cornford and David Cross) and Hyo Myoung Kim.

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