Past events

• RA Schools Public Programme: ‘Screen Memory’

  Jim Shaw, Jamian Juliano-Villani and Stephen Sutcliffe discuss their artworks from the exhibition ‘Screen Memory’ at Simon Lee Gallery, curated by the chair of this event, Eoin Donnelly.

  Taking its title from the Freudian concept of ‘screen memory’, in which subjective reconstruction conceals a memorial event, the exhibition explores the way in which collective and personal memories are confronted within art.

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• Thinking Out Loud

  The thoughts of Laura Owens, Albert Oehlen and Andreas Reiter Raabe interpreted by dancer Louis McMiller: an unconventional encounter with three artists and a dancer. This event provided an opportunity to meet great artists and watch them while they are thinking. The Protagonist, artist Andreas Reiter Raabe, aimed to create a situation that was relaxing for the artists and the observer, an atmosphere of free thoughts.

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• An Aside to On Stage: RA Schools Public Programme Symposium

  RA Schools Spring Symposium 2016 Supported by the David Lean Foundation

  Convened by artist Sarah Jones, this one-day symposium brought together lookers and listeners from art and theatre to consider the noise and voices of objects. With speakers including Michael Meschke, Paula Claire, Anna Makrzanowska and Marie de Brugerolle.

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• RA Schools Public Programme: Julia Wachtel in conversation with Oliver Osborne

  RA Schools Spring Symposium 2016 Supported by the David Lean Foundation

  Following Julia Wachtel’s show at Vilma Gold, the artist returned to London for a rare in-conversation event with RA Schools graduate Oliver Osborne.

  Always compelling, Wachtel’s paintings take on the aesthetics of contemporary mass image consumption through a process of observation and montage. Through an in-depth study of her work, she discussed the developing character of her painting from the 1980s to now.

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• Olafur Eliasson in Conversation with Tim Marlow: The Royal Academy Schools Annual Lecture

  Renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson was joined by the RA’s Artistic Director Tim Marlow to discuss his extraordinary architectural projects and works in public spaces over the past 20 years.

  Artist Olafur Eliasson’s diverse works – in sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installations – have been exhibited widely throughout the world. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects and interventions in civic space. This event coincided with the publication of Studio Olafur Eliasson: Unspoken Spaces, the first major book and monograph on his architectural projects and works in public spaces around the world.

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• RA Schools Public Programme: Lynn Hershman Leeson in conversation with Ciara Moloney

  RA Schools Autumn Symposium 2015 Supported by the David Lean Foundation

  Acclaimed artist and filmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson discussed women in art now, identity and consumerism, examining the first 45 minutes of her 80-minute film !Women Art Revolution (2010). This prizewinning film chronicles the evolution of the feminist art movement in the United States in the context of the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movement. Rare video footage and interviews include Marcia Tucker, Yvonne Rainer, Mike Kelly, Judy Chicago, Martha Rosler and the Guerilla Girls.

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• Frank Stella Hon RA in conversation with Dr David Anfam

  RA Schools Annual Lecture 2015 Supported by the David Lean Foundation

  In 2015 we welcomed the legendary artist Frank Stella in conversation with Dr David Anfam. Frank Stella began his career with his renowned Black Paintings exhibited at MoMA in 1959 and was elected an Honorary RA in 1993. In 2000 he was the first American to have a dedicated gallery space within the Summer Exhibition. David Anfam is a leading scholar and curator of mid-century American art. His many books and catalogues include studies of Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting and the landmark Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas – A Catalogue Raisonné.

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• 'Until Recently I Only Had a Voice'

  RA Schools Spring Symposium 2015
  Supported by the David Lean Foundation

  Organised by artists Adham Faramawy and Cécile B. Evans, this day critically examined embodiment, outsourcing, and emotional labour in relation to new technologies: the interfaces we live with and through today.

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• Art (After) Death

  RA Schools Spring Lecture
  Supported by the David Lean Foundation

  A one-day outdoor Symposium at Highgate’s East Cemetery with further talks, screenings and performances at Lauderdale House. Featuring: Dr John Troyer, Martin Westwood, Patrick Coyle, Blue Firth, David Lillington, Tom Trevatt, Matt Drage, Holly Slingsby, Jordan Baseman.

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• Vanessa Jackson: Curvature and Common Sense

  Vanessa Jackson appears to take the most formal approach to painting, but her use of geometry and its three dimensional function deny the supposed flatness of modernist space. The title of this talk, ‘Curvature and Common Sense’ is an attempt to explore the contradiction of a fully realised space at once pertaining to logic and completeness and uncertainty and unease. The curvature is the deviant from the straight modernist line, whilst making sense in the studio is key to the understanding of representation.

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• Nicolas Bourriaud

  Nicolas Bourriaud: What is the exform?

  RA Schools Autumn Lecture
  Supported by the David Lean Foundation

  Nicolas Bourriaud reminds us that since the 19th century, modern art has been an agonistic field. He tells us that what he calls “the exform” is a sign or form seized by exclusionary stakes, cultural, social or political: “From Gustave Courbet’s ‘realism’ to Liam Gillick, the exformal appears as a moving territory suffused by centrifugal forces, the unwanted and the official, mechanisms of rejection and rehabilitation. This duality might still be the core of what we call ‘contemporary art’.”

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• Reading in the Life Drawing Room

  Reading in the Life Drawing Room

  RA Schools Symposium
  Supported by the David Lean Foundation

  With Lucy Skaer, Angie Keefer, Nina Power, Cally Spooner and Natasha Soobramanien.

  This was a one-day symposium dealing with the management of reading. Far from attempting to isolate writing as an autonomous (art) practice, the speakers addressed the linguistic “poiesis” (making) as a model, or common denominator for constructions which may bind artistic practises to other things, places and professions.

  Language is a material that “every one who ever has or is or will be living” produces for the same means and ends: we all read, write, speak and listen to maintain the inter-dependency of our various occupations.

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• Chris Kraus

  © Christy Frields

  Chris Kraus: A Very Literary Confession

  RA Schools Annual Lecture
  Supported by the David Lean Foundation

  Theory, fiction, criticism, confession? Chris Kraus’ novels and art essays freely mix genres, moving between high and low culture. At this event, she read from her novels and cultural criticism, and discussed strategies for art writers working today.

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