Current Events
Artist Talk: Siân Davey
The Photographers’ Gallery
06:30pm – 07:45pm
Fri 19 Apr 2024
Join British photographer Siân Davey as she talks through her transformation of The Photographers’ Gallery’s Soho Photography Quarter
British photographer Siân Davey gives new insight into The Garden, an ongoing project she first started in 2020 with her son, Luke, in her own, then-abandoned garden. Now transformed, the outdoor space is alive with wildflowers, sound and people — and the current focus of The Photographers’ Gallery’s outdoor exhibition in Soho Photography Quarter.
Davey will give insight into her approach to the garden, both in the different methods taken to grow life, as well as a space to express and reflect experiences of trauma and joy, love and heartbreak, isolation and connection.
Siân Davey (b. 1964, Brighton) worked as a psychotherapist for 15 years before launching her career in photography in 2014. She draws on her experience in psychotherapy and as a mother to inform her practice. Her work is in a range of national and international collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, and The French National Collection, Paris. She lives and works in Dartington, Devon. The Garden will be her third book published by Trolley Books following Looking For Alice(2015) and Martha (2018).
TATE BRITAINTALK
The Fictional Account Keith Piper And Michelle Williams-Gamaker In Conversation
TATE Britain
06:30pm – 08:30pm
Thur 25 April 2024
Explore the role of fiction in challenging historical figures and accounts of history
Join artists Keith Piper and Michelle Williams-Gamaker as they discuss the synergies between their films and practices and the role of archival research in forming new and alternative narratives. Learn more about Keith Piper’s Viva Voce, as he discusses his approach to the mural and the commission and how the work fits into his wider artistic practice.
Keith Piper
Keith Piper (born 1960) is a British artist, curator, critic and academic. He was a founder member of the ground-breaking BLK Art Group, an association of black British art students, mostly based in the West Midlands region of the UK.
Michelle Williams Gamaker
Michelle Williams Gamaker is a Sri-Lankan British award-winning moving image artist, which include joint winner of Film London’s Jarman Award, Aesthetica Short Film Festival winner of Best Experimental Film. Williams Gamaker’s work explores Fictional Activism as a critical alternative to imperialist storytelling.
Lauren Gee
This series of events has been curated by Lauren Gee and developed with Tate Learning. Lauren is a public programme curator and artist moving image producer from London. Lauren has produced films for artists Alberta Whittle, Onyeka Igwe and Beverley Bennett as well as curating public programmes and supporting audience engagement for London Short Film Festival, South London Gallery, Tate, Create and Film London. This year Lauren is part of BlackStar film festival’s Programme Committee, reviewing Short Narrative works.
We Are Eagles: Outi Pieski And Maree Clarke
TATE Modern
11.30am – 01.0pm
Sun 28 April 2024
Connect with Indigenous contemporary art and regenerative practice.
Join us for a panel on Indigenous contemporary practice with artists Outi Pieski (Sámi peoples, Sápmi Lands, Finland) and Maree Clarke (Boon Wurrung, Mutti Mutti, Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta First Nations peoples, Australia). The discussion will focus on regenerative knowledge and the restoration of land and culture.
Hear from the artists as they discuss their dynamic practices which centre cultural revival, environmental awareness, customary abstraction, and colonial resistance through matrilineal restorative arts practices. Outi Pieski and Maree Clarke will share their work and be in conversation with Kimberley Moulton (First Nations Australia, Yorta Yorta peoples), Adjunct Curator First Nations and Indigenous Art, Tate Modern. This conversation is part of a transnational First Nations movement of artists reclaiming cultural practice and reviving traditions and knowledge in new ways. In doing so, they are unifying the past and present with cultural meaning through contemporary art.
We Are Eagles is an iterative project of knowledge sharing, art and talks with Indigenous artists. The title is inspired by the First Nations Australian political movement of 1938 known as ‘The Day Of Mourning’. In calling for equal rights and an end to colonial oppression, Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls KCVO OBE stated: “We do not want chickenfeed…We are not chickens; we are eagles.” This sentiment anchors the programme which engages with artists whose practice embodies acts of Indigenous self-determination, and of freedom beyond colonial histories and lived realities. The statement also ties to the land and the eagle which is a symbol of creation, cultural and political freedom, totemic and cosmological relationships.
The second part to the program will be held in Australia this year and announced at a later date. The programme is convened by Kimberley Moulton, Adjunct Curator First Nations and Indigenous Art, Tate Modern.
Maree Clarke (Boon Wurrung, Mutti Mutti, Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta First Nations people of southeast Australia) lives in Melbourne (Australia). Clarke is an acclaimed contemporary artist and a pivotal figure in the reclamation of south-east Australian Indigenous art practices. Her continuing desire to affirm and reconnect with her cultural heritage has seen her regenerate cultural knowledge though both referencing customary practice, research in museum collections and forging a new and contemporary approach to unifying the past and the present. Multidisciplinary in her practice, Clarkes work references ceremonies, rituals and language of her Ancestors and reveal her long held ambitions to facilitate cross-cultural and transnational dialogues about the ongoing effects of colonisation. Maree Clarke has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, and in 2021 she was the subject of a major survey exhibition Maree Clarke – Ancestral Memories at the National Gallery of Victoria. Other recent exhibitions include Future River: When the past flows, Counihan Gallery Melbourne, Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2021), The National, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney (2021), Reversible Destiny, Tokyo Photographic Museum, Tokyo Japan (2021).
Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta Yorta woman who lives and works on Wurundjeri/ Boonwurrung lands, Melbourne, and London, England. She is Adjunct Curator, First Nations and Indigenous Art at Tate Modern and Senior Curator at RISING, Melbourne’s international arts festival. Moulton was previously Senior Curator, First Peoples Collection at Museums Victoria (2016-2023). She works with knowledge, histories and futures at the intersection of historical collections and contemporary art. Her practice works to rethink global art histories and extend what exhibitions and research in and out of institutions can be for First Peoples communities and artists more broadly. She is currently a PhD candidate in curatorial practice with the Wominjeka Djeembana Indigeneous Research Lab Monash University. Her board roles include Deputy Chair of the Board Shepparton Art Museum and member of the Board for the Adam Briggs Foundation. In 2025 Kimberley is curating the Tarrawarra Biennale
Outi Pieski is a Sámi visual artist based in Ohcejohka (Utsjoki), Finnish side of Sápmi. Her paintings and installations delve with the Arctic region and the interdependence of nature and culture practicing radical softness. Her work combines craft traditions as somatic and familial vocabularies called duodji to reopen conversations about the Sámi people within transnational discourses in the region of Sápmi, which now includes the northern part of Scandinavia and Kola peninsula in Russia. Pieski opens intergenerational dialogues around knowledge of the handmade as a feminist articulation—toward a transfer of consciousness of Land as a legal person, and an act against forgetting the protocols of dialogue with land. Pieski raises questions around revitalisation, rematriation and actualisation of the larger biocultural reality of the Sámi people. Since graduating from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki (2000), Pieski has exhibited internationally for over two decades, most recently at Tate St Ives (2024); Gothenburg Biennial (2023); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2022); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2022); the Biennale of Sydney (2022); Gwangju Biennale (2021) and the Venice Biennale (2019) and Outi Pieski is represented in many collections, among others National Museum Collection in Norway, Moderna Museet, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and the Sámi Dáiddamagasiidna – Sámi Art Collections in Norway. Pieski has received several awards, including the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts Award (2017), and the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Grand Prize (2020).
Artist Talk: Yan Wang Preston
The Photographers’ Gallery
06:30pm – 07:45pm
Wed 01 May 2024
Artist Yan Wang Preston presents her work in this new talk as part of our series entitled Contingencies: Citizens and Photography
Throughout 2024, the University of Westminster and The Photographers’ Gallery have invited various artists and photographers to explore the impact of their work within broader discourses, with each speaker discussing how photography is used as a means to challenge visual representation within socially oriented practices.
Moderated by artist and educator David Moore.
Biography
Dr Yan Wang Preston is a British-Chinese photographer and researcher interested in landscape representation, identity, migration and the environment. She is the recipient of the inaugural RPS Award for Environmental Responsibility (2023) and winner of the First Prize in Professional Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards (2019). Her critically acclaimed projects include Mother River, Forest, With Love. From an Invader. and Autumn Winter Spring Summer.
Talk: In Between Ghana and London
The Photographers’ Gallery
06:30pm – 07:45pm
Thu 02 May 2024
Hear Campbell Addy, Mahaneela and BAFIC in conversation
Each with strong ties to Ghana and the UK, this talk focuses on the shared histories and unique experiences that connect these three photographers. Working in diaspora, across time and place, how does a common heritage link their respective approaches to photography? In what ways does place influence a photographic practice?
In a conversation moderated by Bianca Manu, we consider the personal bonds and networks that have emerged out of the cultural exchange between these two places.
In collaboration with Manju Journal, a Ghana-based Pan-African digital platform celebrating contemporary Africa and its diaspora at the intersection of Art, Fashion, Photography and Culture. Their first art book, Voices: Ghana’s Artists In Their Own Words, was published last year and features all four speakers to this talk as well as over 80 other contemporaries in Ghana’s vibrant visual arts scene. The book will be available for purchase on the night.
John Kobal Foundation Fellowship Lecture Retracing Memory: Going Deeper
TATE Modern
06.30pm – 08.00pm
Wed 8 May 2024
Join curator Renée Mussai and the 2023-2024 John Kobal Foundation Fellow, Lindokuhle Sobekwa in conversation.
Following on from Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s inaugural lecture in 2023, this talk will explore how his photography connects lived experiences and ancestral narratives to the wider socio-political fabric of contemporary South Africa and beyond.
This talk will also be livestreamed. If you would like to join the livestream please book your place here. A link to join the livestream will be sent to you by email on the morning of the event.
Lindokuhle Sobekwa
Born in Katlehong, Johannesburg in 1995, Sobekwa began photography in 2012 through his participation in the Of Soul and Joy photography education programme received a scholarship to study at the Market Photo Workshop in 2015, undertook a residency with No Man’s Art Gallery in Iran in 2016, and in 2021 completed a residency at A4 Foundation in Cape Town. In 2017 he was selected by the Magnum Foundation for Photography and Social Justice (NYC) to develop the project ‘I carry Her photo with Me‘, which will be published by Mack Books in 2024. Sobekwa became a Magnum Nominee in 2018 and a Member in 2022.
Renée Mussai
Renée Mussai is an independent curator, writer and scholar. Formerly senior curator at Autograph for more than two decades, she is research associate at VIAD, University of Johannesburg, and associate lecturer at University of the Arts London. Her forthcoming books include ‘Eyes That Commit—A Visual Gathering’ and ‘Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain’ (2024/25).
Artist Talk: Gauri Gill
The Photographers’ Gallery
03:00pm – 04:30pm
Wed 15 May 2024
Photographer Gauri Gill discusses her nominated work Fields of Sight, giving insight into her collaboration with artist Rajesh Vangad and their complex depictions of India
Hear photographer Gauri Gill in this new event as she talks through Fields of Sight, which she produced with Rajesh Vangad, her collaborator and co-nominee for this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. The project is an exploration of decolonisation, memory and environmental change through photography and drawing. Starting in Ganjad, Dahanu, Gauri’s photographs of the coastal town were later given to Rajesh to inscribe and embellish, reconfiguring them with people, streets, architecture, showing us the generational changes the land has undergone.
Joined by curator and art historian Devika Singh, Gauri will offer insights into her distinctive collaboration with the renowned Warli artist and how, together, they approached viewing and depicting the landscape through many layers of truth and history.
Biographies
Gauri Gill is a Delhi based photographer. Her projects explore documentary photography through community-engaging methods using the medium as a memory practice. Gill’s work addresses the Indian identity markers of caste, class and community. She has exhibited within India and internationally; at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2023), BAMPFA, Berkeley (2020), the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2019), Chobimela, Dhaka (2019), Chennai Photo Biennale (2021 and 2019), Museum Tinguely, Basel (2018), MoMA PS1, New York (2018), Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017), 7th Moscow Biennale (2017), Prospect 4, New Orleans (2017), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2016), San Jose Museum of Art (2015), The Wiener Library, London (2014) and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010), among other places. She has also consistently exhibited at locations outside of the art world, including public libraries, rural schools and non-profit institutions. Her work is in the collections of prominent institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Museum, London; Smithsonian Institution, Washington and Fotomuseum, Winterthur.
Devika Singh is Senior Lecturer in Curating at the Courtauld. She was previously Curator, International Art at Tate Modern. Singh has also been Smuts Research Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow at the Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art in Paris. She has curated exhibitions and collection displays at the CSMVS (Mumbai), Dhaka Art Summit, Dubai Design District, Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge) and Tate Modern. She is on the editorial group of the Oxford Art Journal and her writing has appeared widely in exhibition catalogues, art magazines and journals. Her book International Departures: Art in India after Independence came out with Reaktion Books in 2023.
