Royal West of England Academy, Queen’s Road, Bristol, Monday June 26th 2017
Coinciding with a major exhibition – Air: Visualising the Invisible in British Art, 1768-2017 (June
17th – September 3rd) – the Royal West of England Academy is hosting an
interdisciplinary one-day symposium in partnership with Oxford Brookes
University.
Convenors:
Christiana Payne, Professor of History of Art, Oxford Brookes University
Sam Smiles, Professor Emeritus of History of Art, University of Plymouth
Stephen Jacobson, Vice-President, Royal West of England Academy
Air
is everywhere. The air we breathe is essential to human, plant and
animal life; its quality is a fundamental ingredient of our health and
that of the planet as a whole. The air above us is a region of wonders
and dangers: hot air balloons and aeroplanes, flying creatures and
bombing raids, luminous colours and evocative clouds. It is not
surprising that artists have often been fascinated by this kind of
subject matter. From experiments with air-pumps in the eighteenth
century, through the sky paintings of Turner and Constable and the
polluted cityscapes of Grimshaw and Lowry, to the wartime perils and the
exhilaration of flight in the paintings of Ravilious and Lanyon,
British artists have found many varied sources of inspiration in the
air. Contemporary artists tackle similar themes, with an emphasis less
on flight, which is no longer a novelty, than on the nature of breath
and the connections between air and health.
This one-day
symposium complements the exhibition, which includes works by Joseph
Wright of Derby, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Samuel Palmer, John
Everett Millais, Christopher Nevinson, Eric Ravilious and Peter Lanyon
along with work by contemporary artists.
The symposium seeks to
create dialogue between practising artists, curators, writers, academics
and students from disciplines including history of art, cultural
studies, geography, history, literature, environmental humanities and
philosophy.
250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers should be sent to Christiana Payne at cjepayne@brookes.ac.uk, to arrive no later than Tuesday January 31st 2017.
Please contact the RWA for further information:
Joel Edwards, Learning and Participation Manager joel.edwards@rwa.org.uk
Royal West of England Academy, Queen’s Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1PX
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