Protest: art and power
13 February 2024 6.30 - 7.45pm20 February 2024 6.30 - 7.45pm27 February 2024 6.30 - 7.45pm5 March 2024 6.30 - 7.45pm12 March 2024 6.30 - 7.45pm19 March 2024 6.30 - 7.45pm
Wolfson British Academy Room | Burlington Gardens
£340. Includes light refreshments and wine receptions throughout the course.
Friends of the RA book first
Entangled Pasts, 1768–now
Join us for this 6-week lecture series as we explore the role of art in some of the world’s major protest movements.
In 2020, as the Black Lives Matter movement took hold, a statue was removed from its plinth and toppled into the waters of Bristol Harbour. This act gave birth to a creative movement, generating new ways of thinking about memorialisation and Britain’s colonial past and playing into a long tradition of art taking a central role in grassroots activism.
In this course, we will examine the myriad ways art can harness the power for social change. From the French Revolution and the role of art in revolutionary society to the Guerrilla Girls’ campaign for gender equality, to the work of contemporary artists such as Ana Mendieta on the climate crisis, we will discuss the beginnings of activist movements that have shaped our society, and consider the place of art within these.
Exploring prescient issues such as the fight for racial equity, feminism and climate change, this lecture series examines art as both a constructive and destructive medium. Talks are given by academics, curators and art-world professionals, with the opportunity for questions and discussion.
Minimum age 18. If you have any accessibility needs, please contact public.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk.
£340. Includes light refreshments and wine receptions throughout the course.
Friends of the RA book first
Entangled Pasts, 1768–now
About the course
Week 1: Art and revolution with Melissa Chemam
An introduction to the history of the long relationship between art and conflict, from revolutions such as the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution, to the present day.
Melissa Chemam is a journalist, broadcaster and writer on art, music, social change, multiculturalism, African affairs, North/South relations, and activism. She is the author of the book Massive Attack - Out of the Comfort Zone (2019), and has been published by BBC Culture, Al Jazeera, RFI English, Art UK, CIRCA Art Magazine, the Public Art Review, the New Arab, The Independent, Reader’s Digest, UP Mag and Skin Deep. She also worked as a journalism lecturer and as the writer in residence at the Arnolfini art centre, in Bristol, from 2019 to 2022.
Week 2: Art and abolition with Madelyn Walsh
This week will look at the abolitionist movement with a critical lens, focusing on its popularisation through iconography.
Madelyn Walsh is an Assistant Curator for the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and a fourth-year PhD researcher at the University of Liverpool. Her research explores how contemporary creative responses to the Zong Massacre exaqua the histories of the murdered enslaved people from their oceanic grave. Madelyn was awarded a Turing Fellowship in 2022, and her work will be published in a forthcoming issue of Studies in American Fiction. Her research interests include contemporary creative interventions in the cultural memory of transatlantic slavery and Black British studies.
Week 3: Art and feminism with Linsey Young
A session that will explore the history of the women’s movement and feminism through artistic practice and activism.
Linsey Young is currently Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain where she works across the contemporary programme. Recent projects include Women in Revolt! Art and Activism 1970 – 1990, Turner Prize 2018 and Anthea Hamilton: The Squash, 2018. In 2019 Young Curated Charlotte Prodger’s Scotland and Venice presentation with Cove Park.
Week 4: Art and resistance: The Arab Spring with Professor Siobhán Shilton
This talk will explore the role of art in the uprisings that took place in many Arab countries from December 2010 onwards.
Siobhán Shilton is Professor of French Studies and the Visual Arts. Her research and teaching interests lie in cultural encounters (particularly in France, the Maghreb and West Africa) in late twentieth- and twenty-first-century photography, video, graffiti, graphic novels, installation, performance art and literature. She has also published on art and the 'Arab Uprisings'. Her most recent book is Art and the Arab Spring: Aesthetics of Revolution and Resistance in Tunisia and beyond (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Week 5: Art and the institution: Monuments and museums with Dr. Lizzie Robles
We will consider the Black Lives Matter movement and the toppling of the Colston statue to discuss where power sits in the context of memorials, monuments and public sculptures.
Dr. Lizzie Robles is Lecturer in Contemporary Art and the Director of the Centre for Black Humanities at the University of Bristol. She is also the co-lead of the British Art Network’s Black British Artists Research Group. Previously she held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship for a project entitled ‘Making Waves: Black Artists & ‘Black Art’ in Britain from 1962–1982’. She is a specialist in the histories of Black and brown artists in Britain since the 1960s and is particularly interested in the formation of ideas around ‘b/Black a/Art’ across the twentieth century.
Week 6: Art and climate
This talk will look at the relationship between art and the environment, through the global struggle for climate and gender justice, looking at artists like Ana Mendieta and Judy Chicago who engage with these issues today.
Alona Pardo is Head of Programmes at the Arts Council Collection, UK, and was until recently a curator at Barbican Art Gallery in London for 15 years. With a focus on photography and film, she has curated numerous exhibitions including most recently RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology (2023); Noemie Goudal: Phoenix (2022) as part of Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles; Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (2020); Trevor Paglen: From Apple to Anomaly (2019); Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing (2018); Vanessa Winship: And Time Folds (2018); Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins (2018); Richard Mosse: Incoming (2017) and Strange and Familiar: Britain as seen by International Photographers (with Martin Parr; 2016). She has a particular interest in work that operates at the intersection of gender, social and environmental justice.
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