THE LIQUID ARCHIVE
RELIEF PRESS
Soft opening 15th September - 18th October 2015
Recordings of the talks during The Liquid Archive available HERE
The Liquid Archive explores the impact of digital photography on art within the exhibition space.
Asking in what ways new image capturing technologies inflect and infect the exhibition space, amid the centuries old phenomena of the collectively produced story of art. Does the ease of production and widely circulated distribution of the image of the exhibition, slipping from laptop to smart phone with increasing speed and fluidity, circumnavigate the need for the exhibition at all?
The Liquid Archive is an ever-expanding archive of amateur photographs of exhibitions and artworks collated online. The work will be projected in the project space and acts as a site for further discussion, with artist Nicholas Smith extending an open invitation to all to contribute new images during the exhibition period. Reflecting the dissemination of ideas and knowledge through this process spectators are asked to submit their images of exhibitions to:
liquidarchive@relief-press.com
and on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr with #liquidarchive
A newly commissioned audio work by Cristina Garrido responds to The Liquid Archive, observing the differing factors that cause the perceptive transformation of the real into the virtual world – in relation to her work #JWIITMTESDSA? (Just what is it that makes today's exhibitions so different, so appealing?) - a digital archive of more than 2500 images of international contemporary art exhibitions collected over 4 years from online media such as Contemporary Art Daily, This is Tomorrow, MOUSSE Digital, gallery websites, and social media.
The Liquid Archive is the first iteration of a four part series of discursive events titled Image of an Exhibition, also at: Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art - Sunderland, Spike Island - Bristol and TAP –Southend.
A publication will accompany Image of an Exhibition in 2016.
Talks during The Liquid Archive:
The Liquid Archive - Exhibition Collapsed
Saturday 19th September 2015 14:00 – 16:00
Recordings available HERE
Damian Griffiths, Margarida Gouveia, and Emily Magnuson will address the role of the digital image in relation to documentation and the treatment of the photograph as exhibition.
Damian Griffiths - performative lecture on the technicalities and the bureaucracy of being a professional gallery photographer. Drawing on the unique position he holds, being paid to flatten exhibitions into the world of the digital, Damian will provide an insight into requirements and strategies of that artists and galleries deploy in order to make an exhibition for a photograph.
Margarida Gouveia - video essay utilising photographs of exhibitions from antiquarian books from her work as a digital archivist and photographer, questioning the history of the photographed exhibition and how the documentary photograph has shifted from a representational object to an abstract one.
Emily Magnuson - Andre Malraux's seminal Musee Imaginare text provides a starting point for a new text touching on how the imaginary museum has become a real museum in the modern context of the digital.
The Liquid Archive – Exhibition/Distribution
Recordings available HERE
Saturday 3rd Oct 2015 14:00 – 16:00
Paul Teasdale, Louisa Riley Smith, Cristina Garrido and Ami Clarke discuss a distributed sense of the exhibition, in both its making, and its preserving, touching on social media, processual works within online frameworks, and archival projects.
Ami Clarke – will address artists’ publishing as art form and process, Banner Repeaters publishing in tandem with exhibitions and the Un-Publish imprint, and BookBlast, the newly launched beta version of the digital archive of Artists’ Publishing.
Paul Teasdale will be talking about issues raised in his article ‘Total Recall: On collective memory and personal experience’ in the digital realm. (Frieze Issue 170 April 2015).
Louisa Riley Smith is founder of the 20th Century Art Archives since 1985, and will consider the pre-digital landscape in artists publishing, through her considerable collection of 20thC Artists’ books.
Cristina Garrido will be talking on her work #JWIITMTESDSA? (Just what is it that makes today ?s exhibitions so different, so appealing?) - a digital archive of more than 2500 images of international contemporary art exhibitions collected over 4 years from online media.
Speaker Biographies
Damian Griffiths is an artist and professional gallery photographer, teacher and editor at-large of Relief. He has had exhibitions at Fondazione MACC, Italy (2013), Studio 1.1 Gallery, UK (2010 & 2008) and the Burlington Club, UK (2007).
Margarida Gouveia is an artist working with photography, video and installtion. She has had solo exhibitions at Museum of Natural History, Portugal (2007) and The Mews Project Space, UK (2011). She was a resident in ACME Studios International Program awarded by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation from October 2008 to October 2009 (London). In 2015 she was commissioned to make a visual essay around the theme Shifting Boundaries in Europe as part of the European Photography Award 03. The work will be exhibited at the Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian, France, Foundazione Banca del Monte di Lucca, Italy and House of Photography at Deichtorhallen, Germany.
Emily Magnuson is currently the Head of Programmes, Development in the Development team at Tate, responsible for securing funds and grants in support of Tate's exhibition, conservation, education and digital programmes. She's previously worked in development and partnerships across a range of commercial and non-for-profit arts institutions in, including Frieze Art Fair, the Ashmolean, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Ami Clarke is an artist and founder of Banner Repeater: a reading room with a public Archive of Artists’ Publishing, and project space on a working train station platform at Hackney Downs station, London. She has recently exhibited/curated works at ICA, Museo Del Chopo, Mexico City, Hayward Gallery, London, Ithuba Gallery with Cuss Group SA (British Council connect ZA). She teaches across the UK with a focus on Publishing, Distribution and Dissemination: post-digital art production and publishing.
Paul Teasdale is an editor at Frieze and has written extensively on many topics concerning contemporary art, but particularly about the effect of social media, the internet and photography on our experiences of art today.
Cristina Garrido is an artist who is concerned with the ‘commodification of the world’ in Capitalist society. Her work spans across the globe, with solo and group exhibitions of hers taking place in Cuba, Spain & Germany.
Louisa Riley Smith is a specialist dealer and archivist of documents and reference works on 20th century art and artists. She founded the 20th Century Art Archives in 1985, which provides consultancy services for archives and collections management. She has worked with artist's books, ephemera, periodicals and archival material, often directly with the artists themselves.