Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Published by Sheffield Hallam University
Reviewed by: Andrew Bannister
The starting point for this book is a series of talks by emerging and established artists and creative practitioners, that took place at the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield during 2002. The talks programme was co-organised by the Fine Art department at Sheffield Hallam University and the city's Site Gallery, and had the additional aim of encouraging a dialogue (or, in the words of the book's editors, "a transmission"), to take place between each invited speaker, a panel of respondents, and the audience. The discussions which took place after each artist's talk were transcribed and are presented in this book alongside images of the practitioners' works (or, in the case of the Canadian poet Erin Mouré, excerpts from a longer poem), commissioned essays by Darian Leader, Sarah Wigglesworth and Michael Archer, and a short story by Clémentine Deliss which is included here as a kind of trompe l'oeil book-within-a-book.
Leader and Archer's contributions elaborate respectively on two themes that the editors identify in their introductions as 'The Surface of the Image (The Resistance to Illusion)' and 'The Impulse of Narrative'. These topics, which correspond to issues within the artists' practices, are used as the starting point for the transcribed discussions which are contained here, with those in the first half of the book tending towards questions of surface and related aesthetic issues, while those in the second half address the role which narrative or storytelling plays in the artists' works.
As well as offering a fascinating insight into the creative process, the dialogues are a highly valuable record of a series of encounters between artists, respondents and audience. The two common themes which recur throughout these dialogues and the other texts in the book are addressed in a manner which 'opens up' their inner complexity, confirming their continuing relevance within contemporary practice and critical thinking.
For a chance to win a copy of Transmission: Speaking and Listening Volumn 2, see subscriber prizes
Writer detail:
Andrew Bannister is an artist and a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University and City of Guilds of London Art School.
Venue detail:
Sheffield Hallam University
School of Cultural Studies, Psalter Lane Campus, Sheffield S11 8UZ
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