The Falmouth Convention Brings New Creative Life to Cornwall 20th to 23rd May
The distinguished American writer and curator, Lucy R. Lippard, will arrive in Cornwall from her home in Galisteo, New Mexico on Thursday 20 May to deliver the keynote lecture that launches The Falmouth Convention, a three-day international conference about contemporary art and exhibition making.
The Convention will focus in particular on remote non-urban areas such as Cornwall, and on activities that can bring new creative life to such regions - such as residency schemes, artistic commissions, and innovative forms of exhibition making.
In addition to Lucy Lippard, speakers will include curators from Canada, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Spain and artists based in Berlin, Paris, Vancouver and the UK. Among the visitors to the event will be the internationally renowned artist, Tacita Dean, a graduate of Falmouth School of Art (now University College Falmouth), whose work in film and other media has been shown in museums and galleries around the world.
To introduce speakers and delegates to the local context, the Convention begins on Friday 21 May with field trips specially devised by artists, curators and local experts and looking at particular places and histories in Cornwall.
The Falmouth-based organisation, Urbanomic, will lead a field trip to the Gwennap mining district: 'a journey into an historical process that assembled the powers of geology, mechanics, hydraulics, mineralogy and metallurgy, salvation and combustion, steam and capital into a mighty, infernal machine that traumatised the Cornish landscape and kick-started the industrial revolution'.
Tacita Dean and Lucy Gunning (also a graduate of Falmouth College of Arts, now University College Falmouth) have devised an expedition by boat and land across Falmouth Bay, and the Marazion-based poet, Jane Tozer, in conversation with the artist, Jeremy Millar, has prepared a tour of the landscape inhabited by the legendary lovers, Tristan and Iseult. There will also be field trips to artists' studios in St Ives and ancient stones and field patterns in Zennor, to St Just to explore its mining heritage, and to the telecommunications sites of the Lizard - from the iconic satellite dishes of Goonhilly to the invisible terabit flows of the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable.
The conference itself will convene at the Woodlane Campus on Saturday 22 May and during the morning of Sunday 23 May.
Aimed at artists, curators of contemporary art, writers, arts policy makers, commissioning agencies, producers, researchers and art students, the fee for the conference is £100 (although a limited number of concessionary places for artists and students are available at £40.) Places can be reserved by visiting www.thefalmouthconvention.com/booking
A programme of special events will also be presented at the Poly, which re-opens to host a special late-evening conversation between the celebrated curator, Hans Ulrich Obrist and the French Algerian artist, Kader Attia on Friday 21 May. During the evening of Saturday 22 May, the Poly cinema will screen a programme of artists' films and experimental films selected by the East Midlands-based organisation, Annexinema.
Both of these events are open to non-delegates, with free tickets available in advance on a first-come-first-served basis from info@thefalmouthconvention.com, as is the Lucy Lippard lecture.
The Falmouth Convention has been developed as a collaboration between University College Falmouth, ProjectBase and Tate St Ives, in response to a series of forums and conversations held last year with artists, curators and writers based in Cornwall to consider a bid to host the international exhibition Manifesta in Cornwall in 2014. It is convened by the independent curator, Teresa Gleadowe and supported by Arts Council England, South West.