To help mark its 10-year anniversary, BAN’s annual conference programme for 2022 explored a decade in British art curating, offering multiple perspectives on curatorial practices and knowledge production, reflecting on the material and social forces at work since 2012, and exploring the innovations and missed opportunities we’ve seen over these years. Referring to the archive of cultural activity in 2012 itself as a point of reference and engaging with an expanded view of the curatorial field in the decade since, the programme will offer timely reflections, questions and challenges for British art curating now.
The British Art Network was launched on 21 December 2012, originally organised by Tate and supported by Arts Council England, it was aimed at fostering connections and developing skills and knowledge among curators of British art. The conference will reflect on changing ideas about British art and identity, curatorial practice, inclusion and representation, and the place of collections and institutions. With the Jubilee, Paralympics, and Olympics as reference points, the conference programme will explore ten years of change, continuity and regression in the curatorial field.
The programme involved four sessions reflecting on 2012 and a decade of British art curating, including in-person and online events guest-convened by Sonia Boué, Bryan Biggs, and Victoria Walsh as well as a new online resource documenting 2012 as a year in British art, and a commissioned film exploring the conference themes by Niyaz Saghari.
Conference sessions
Additional Programming
Tour of Hackney Windrush sculpture commissions with Create London, led by Marie Bak Mortenson, Director of Create London (In-person, meeting point off Amhurst Road, London, Hackney, E8 1LL)
The recent commissions of Black artists to create public artworks which celebrate and highlight the Windrush Generation and wider aspect of British/Caribbean history signal a key moment for representation in the public realm. Led by Marie Bak Mortenson, Director of Create London, this tour will feature visits to recent sculptural commissions by Veronica Ryan and Thomas J. Price located in Hackney.
Gallery tour and discussion of British paintings at the V&A, led by Jenny Gaschke, Painting and Drawings at the V&A (In person, Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL)
The V&A describes itself as the world’s leading museum of art and design. But who thinks of it as an art gallery? With a view to rethink, refresh and reinterpret the V&A’s paintings (and drawings) display in the picture galleries and across the museum, this workshop will focus on the British paintings take the form of a conversation in the picture galleries.
Vlad Basalici’s Last Archive: ‘every work I will make will be dated 2012’, convened by Roxana Gibescu (In-person, Paul Mellon Centre, 16 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3JA)
The Last Archive was founded in December 2012 by Vlad Basalici, an artist who lives and works between London and Bucharest. This archive contains newspapers from all over the world that were published on 21st December 2012, the day that had been predicted to be the last day before the Apocalypse. In relation to this archive, every year since 2012, Vlad has invited an artist to create an installation at tranzit.ro/Bucharest. Furthermore, in an attempt to investigate how we perceive temporality, Vlad has dated all his subsequent works to 2012.
Vlad’s works, as a solo artist or in collaboration, have been presented at Bozar, Bruxelles; Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest; MNAC, Bucharest; Plan B Gallery, Berlin; Alert Studio, Bucharest; The Paintbrush Factory, Cluj-Napoca; The Center for Visual Introspection, Bucharest; CNDB, Bucharest; tranzit.ro, Bucharest and tranzit.sk,Bratislava, Sandwich Gallery, Bucharest, Dansehallerne, Copenhagen, and brut, Wien.
