Edwin Burdis, The Thickening (installation view) 2015; photograph by Ruth Clark courtesy of Jupiter Artland
1.45pm
Arrival/Sign-in at Shortwave Cinema
2pm – 2.15pm
Introduction by Lucy Tomlins, co-director of PSC and Alys Williams, founding director of VITRINE
2.15pm – 3.45pm
Artists commissioned for ‘Sculpture at Bermondsey Square’ will present their work in conversation with experts in the field:
Karen Tang in conversation with Sacha Craddock
Edwin Burdis in conversation with Ellen Mara De Wachter
Frances Richardson in conversation with Rachel Withers
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3.45 – 4.15pm
Break
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4.15pm – 5.15pm
Panel Discussion with Sacha Craddock, Ellen Mara De Wachter and Rachel Withers. Chaired by Alys Williams.
The panel dialogue will explore the project and the selection and commissioning process of public sculpture more generally. This discussion will also consider the value of such commissions in cities and for citizens, as well as for the artists’ practice and development.
5.15pm – 6pm
Wrap-up: ‘The State of Sculpture Today’. Chaired by Marsha Bradfield, co-director of PSC.
Invited interlocutors will give their thoughts on key concerns surfaced over the course of the afternoon, after which the conversation will be opened out to the wider audience.
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6pm – 7pm
Further Q&A and drinks in bar
To mark the third installment of ‘Sculpture at Bermondsey Square’, Pangaea Sculptors’ Centre and VITRINE hosted an afternoon of talks and discussion featuring the three commissioned artists with curators, open call judges and a panel of experts, exploring issues within public sculpture today. This was a rare opportunity to acquire behind the scenes insight into a curated public sculpture commissioning project.
FEATURED PANELISTS Sacha Craddock, Ellen Mara De Watcher & Rachel Withers. Chaired by Alys Williams of VITRINE
ARTISTS Edwin Burdis, Frances Richardson & Karen Tang
FREE but booking required.
For more information email info@vitrinegallery.co.uk.
Sacha Craddock is an independent art critic, writer & curator based in London. She studied painting at Central Saint Martins followed by a post-graduate painting degree at Chelsea School of Art before going on to write criticism for The Guardian and The Times. She is the active Chair of the board of New Contemporaries and Braziers International Workshop, and served as Chair of the New Contemporaries selection process for seventeen years. She co-founded ArtSchool Palestine and is a public art advisor for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Craddock has judged many art prizes, such as the Turner Prize in 1999 and the John Moores Painting Prize in 2008.
Ellen Mara De Wachter is an independent curator and writer based in London. After working at the British Museum and the Barbican Art Gallery, she was Curator at Zabludowicz Collection, London until 2013, when she left to work freelance. In 2013-15 she was Curator of Public Collection Development at the Contemporary Art Society, where she was responsible for CAS’s acquisitions scheme for museums across the UK. Her writing has been published in exhibition catalogues and magazines including Frieze, Artforum.com and Flash Art. She is a Visiting Lecturer in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London.
Rachel Withers holds degrees in Fine Art and Critical Studies, and the History of European Art and Architecture. Since the late 1990s she has been a frequent contributor to Artforum International. She has also written for the Guardian, the New Statesman, Nu: the Nordic Art Review, and the Nordic daily Aftonbladet and contributed to the first Tate Modern Handbook, Phaidon’s Vitamin P and Vitamin 3D survey volumes, and assorted catalogues of the Venice and Sydney bienniales (2002, 2005 and 2011). She has served on the juries of the Jerwood Sculpture Prize (2003), the Max Mara Art Prize for Women (2009-10) and the 2014 International Awards for Art Criticism. She is Secretary of the UK branch of AICA (the Association of International Critics of Art). She is presently Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Art and Design at Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University, UK.
Karen Tang (b. London 1978) exhibits internationally in galleries and the public realm. Karen studied at Chelsea College of Arts then the Slade School of Fine Art, leaving in 2004 with an MFA (Distinction) in Sculpture and was awarded the Duveen Travel Scholarship. Her sculptures offer viewers the experience of surprising structural and material combinations, with unexpected forms that reference science, sci-fi, architecture and city life. Karen’s sculptures have been commissioned by The Contemporary Art Society, The Economist, The National Trust, VITRINE, South London Gallery, Ealing Council funded by Heritage Lottery, and presented at venues including: Vestfossen Kuntslaboratorium, Bloomberg Space, Jerwood Space, Ambika P3, MAMA Rotterdam, Dalston Superstore, Guest Projects, Chinese Arts Centre, Agency Gallery, Pumphouse Gallery, Sainsburys Centre for Visual Arts and The Collection, Lincoln. With KARST gallery, the VITRINE commission ‘Synapsid’ is touring to Plymouth during 2015/16.
Edwin Burdis has significantly contributed to the London art scene for over a decade, collaborating with numerous artists, writers and musicians, including: Mark Leckey, Steven Claydon, Bonnie Camplin, Kieron Livingstone and Heather Phillipson. He has had solo exhibitions and performances at galleries and institutions internationally including: Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, Scotland; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK; Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK; VITRINE, London, UK; BROADWAY 1602, New York, USA; Max Wigram Gallery, London, UK; Hayward Gallery, London, UK; and Haus De Kunst, Munich, Germany. He received an Arts Council England (ACE) Bursary to produce his feature length operatic film work ‘Light Green and Dark Grey (A Personal View)’ (2014); had a public sculpture commission as part of VITRINE’s ACE Sculpture at Bermondsey Square programme (2015); a residency at Primary, Nottingham, UK (2014); and a major commission and residency at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh (2015) culminating in the solo exhibition ‘The Thickening’.
Frances Richardson was born in Leeds and studied at Jacob Kramer Leeds College of Art, Norwich School of Art and the Royal College of Art, graduating in 2006 with MA in Fine Art Sculpture and presented with the Conran Award for overall best graduate exhibition. Solo exhibition include ‘Still now is then Forever’ (duo show with Andy Broadey), Hanover Project, UCLAN, Preston (2015), ‘Loss of Object and Bondage To It’ at Lubomirov-Easton, London (2014), ‘Ideas in the Making: Drawing sSructure’ at Trinity Contemporary, London (2011) and ‘Playing Against Reason’ at The Corn Exchange Gallery, Edinburgh (2008). Her drawings have been selected for ‘Works on Paper by Sculptors’ at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Jerwood Drawing Prize, ARTfutures, and the Drawing Room Biennial Fundraiser Exhibition. Publications in which her works feature include The Art of Drawing: British Masters and Methods since 1660 by Susan Owens, V&A, 2013, Vitamin D: New Perspectives on Contemporary Drawing, Phaidon NY 2005.
