'An Allegory of Painting': Sarah Pickstone in conversation with Rommi Smith
Saturday 3 March 2018 11am - 12pm
The Reynolds Room, Burlington House, Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly. Enter via the Keeper's House.
£10, £7 concessions.
Join artist Sarah Pickstone and poet and playwright Rommi Smith as they discuss Pickstone’s latest painting installation and her research into the life and work of Angelica Kauffman RA.
To celebrate the RA's 250th anniversary, artist and RA Schools alumna Sarah Pickstone will present two new paintings in An Allegory of Painting. The works are inspired by extensive research into the life and work of Angelica Kauffman RA, one of only two female Founder Members of the Royal Academy.
Pickstone’s project was borne out of her admiration for Kauffmann, a painter who brought an understanding of European art to Britain in the 18th century. Pickstone’s response comes from several intimate encounters with Kauffman’s work. As she made observational drawings of the paintings, which were originally intended to be seen from afar, she gained a rare understanding of the level of detail contained within them. In her new project, An Allegory of Painting, Pickstone has abstracted and reconsidered the imagery in Kauffman’s work from a contemporary perspective.
Join Sarah Pickstone and Rommi Smith as they explore Pickstone’s response to one of the Founder Members of the RA, while addressing wider questions of histories and archives.
Sarah Pickstone
Sarah Pickstone is an award-winning artist and an alumna of the Royal Academy Schools. She lives and works in London. She won the John Moores Painting Prize and the Rome Scholarship and exhibits internationally. Recent solo shows include: Other Stories, CGP London, The Writers Series, New Art Centre, Salisbury and The Rehearsal, Mercer Gallery, Yorkshire. Pickstone is the author of Park Notes (Daunt Books, 2014).
Pickstone makes very large scale paintings in watercolour with oil and draws extensively. She has a particular interest in the contribution made by women artists and writers to visual and literary history and their creative processes. An Allegory of Painting is a newly commissioned site-specific painting for the entrance hall of Burlington House. It will be on display from early September as part of RA250, the celebrations of the RA's 250th anniversary.
Rommi Smith
Rommi Smith is an international writer who has held prestigious residencies for institutions ranging from the British Council to the BBC. Smith is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer in Residence and inaugural Poet in Residence for Keats’ House.
John Barnard Scholar at the University of Leeds, she is also a Visiting Scholar at City University New York (CUNY). Smith has presented original work at the Segal Theatre, New York and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Her academic writing is due for publication by Columbia University Press in 2019.
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International Women's Day 2018 events
To mark International Women’s Day 2018, we're presenting a week-long series of events that explore ideas of feminist futures through art and architecture. Join us as we investigate the power of art practice as a catalyst for social change. Focusing on women artists engaged in a variety of media, we'll dissect ideas of automation in architecture, moving image as language, archiving and alternative artistic platforms. Celebrate the RA’s 250th anniversary with us and see what we can draw from the past as a way into the future. Enjoy panels, lectures and roundtables as our speakers contemplate multiple feminist possibilities.