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On Space

20160630 on Space Salon Transcript Final

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On Space

A conversation examining the role of space in artistic practice with Graham Ellard, Pallas Citroen, Harold Offeh, and Anna Colin.

A conversation from Freelands Foundation's archive, 'On Space' was the first in the Salon series where a panel of four visual arts practitioners convened to address the subject of artist studio spaces and the role space plays in artistic practice.

Responding to the then recent shifts in political, social, and cultural fields regarding the organisation and availability of space – not least, Brexit – in this audio recording, Graham Ellard (Professor at Central St Martins College of Art), Pallas Citroen (artist), Harold Offeh (artist), and Anna Colin (Co-founder of Open School East) discuss their personal experiences of artist spaces amidst the terrain of studio provision being radically transformed.

But to suppose that the means by which, or the way in which, certain kinds of art can be madebecomes the basis to define the ways in which all art must be made is a very dangerous situation to find ourselves moving closer to.

Graham Ellard

This is my space for dreaming and reverie, full of things I gather for one reason or another, subconscious and yet conscious part of the process, the gathering, the making, the discussion with other artists in adjoining studios. Without the space, my space, I couldn't make my work.

Pallas Citroen

... it's possible to think of the actual space as being slightly irrelevant. If the production and the processes is at the heart, then actually what becomes really important is the artist, the artist's body, the artist's existence. And within that the notion that then the production can exist within whichever and whatever space.

Harold Offeh

So space, in our case, equates perhaps more to exchange then production, and the forming of relations, social professional and otherwise, with people from very different backgrounds.

Anna Colin

About the talk

This talk took place on 30 June 2016 at Freelands Foundation in London. Part of the Foundation’s 'Salon' series of events – a public programme modeled on the 18th-century literary salons that formed cultural incubators for the time – to act as an informal forum for discussion and the generation of ideas. From the end of 2015 it offered a series of periodic evening discussions for visual arts and education audiences, with regular attendees ranging from A-level students and academic professors and lecturers, to gallery and museum staff and art technicians.

'On Space' informs Freelands Foundation's ongoing research into the studio as a site for artist development and learning.

Reading List

Author / Editor

Title

Gaston Bachelard

The Poetics of Space

Elizabeth Grosz

Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space

Mary Jane Jacob

The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists

Teresa Gleadowe

Richard Long: Time and Space

Mel Dodd

Artists in the City: SPACE in '68 and beyond

Gabriele Detterer

Artist-Run Spaces: Non Profit Collective Oraganizations in the 1960s & 1970s (Documents (JRP/Ringier))

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