Public Engagement Programme
A York Art Gallery and Mediale Collaboration
York Art Gallery Collaboration
Over the Summer, York Art Gallery and Mediale began an exciting collaboration to bring a series of bold cultural events and activities to York and beyond. The team at YMT were keen to bring in Mediale to respond to some of the themes and contexts of their major gallery shows, and engage our artistic community and young, diverse audience base.
We have curated and delivered a programme of family workshops, podcasts and written commissions, the Teenage Art School, and a successful ‘After Hours’ event, to complement and activate two exhibitions at York Art Gallery: Body Vessel Clay (24 Jun 2022 -18 Sept 2022) and Sin (7 Oct 2022 – 22 Jan 2023). Previously, York Museums Trust and Mediale jointly curated ‘Human Nature’ which formed the festival centrepiece of York Mediale 2020 and Strata-Rock-Dust-Stars in 2018.
Kate Farrell
Executive Producer
We’re thrilled to be partnering with York Museums Trust to deliver a dynamic public programme supporting two of York Art Gallery’s exhibitions in 2022: Body Vessel Clay and Sin. This public programme will not only drive deeper engagement and accessibility with the work but generates further creative opportunity: offering exciting digital interventions, events and workshops for young people and families whilst activating rigorous critical thinking around some of the urgent themes explored within each exhibition.
Body Vessel Clay
‘Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art’ began at Two Temple Place, London, in January 2022 and toured to the Centre of Ceramic Art at York Art Gallery in June 2022.
Throughout the summer, Mediale ran family workshops in response to the works and themes included in the exhibition. Families joined artist Enorê for an exclusive weekend of hands-on workshops inspired by the Body Vessel Clay exhibition. Developed in collaboration with artist Bisila Noha, the workshop focused on 3D scanning as a means for reinterpreting the relationship between object and environment, combining playful hand-modelling- utilising plasticine- with digital technology to create new possibilities for viewing and interacting with the sculptures created. These workshops were subsequently repeated across two further weekends.
Mediale commissioned The White Pube (the collaborative identity of Gabriella de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad) to produce a podcast in response to the exhibition, drawing out the themes and encouraging audiences to engage more critically with the artworks and their contexts.
Listen to The White Pube‘s audio guide / review of Body Vessel Clay HERE.
Body Vessel Clay was curated by independent curator, researcher and writer Dr Jareh Das.
Zarina Muhammad
The White Pube
“The colonial government in Nigeria were seeking to make traditional ‘indigenous’ crafts on an industrial scale so it could be produced in bulk for export. It was about trade, and we know that trade has never been neutral. It is a loaded thing, colonialism runs hand in hand with capitalist expansion.”
Sin
Sin is an exhibition organised by the National Gallery, London with York Museums Trust, exploring historical, religious, and contemporary representations of ‘sin’ in art.
In August, the ever-popular Teenage Art School welcomed young people to develop their critical thinking and creativity, designed in collaboration with Rachel Briscoe, an artist-producer and director of Fast Familiar Studio. The teenagers worked with Rachel to explore the themes of the Sin exhibition and respond in ways that were meaningful to them. This process was filmed by Sodium to create a multi-channel film installation for the Sin exhibition, where the teenagers’ physical artworks are also displayed.
In October, York Art Gallery opened its doors for their first ever ‘After Hours’ event, inviting visitors to experience the space differently, using music and workshops to inspire and entertain. All Hands on Deck, a feminist DJ collective of women, trans and non-binary DJs, delivered the soundtrack for the evening, and also hosted beginners DJ workshops. Performance artist Lydia Borkvvlt ran alternative exhibition tours, exploring the contemporary placing of the concept of sin in our digitally-connected world, and rediscovering ‘sinful’ everyday behaviours.
Our upcoming family workshops have been designed by artist Rosie Gibbens, to celebrate the figure of the snake and based on the principle that anything long can become a snake if you put googly eyes on it! Families will create hybrid human-snake figures using sculpture and collage, and build monuments to snakes with techniques used by Sarah Lucas and John Stezaker. Participants will think about what snakes would say to humans if we could communicate, and make snake music ssssssssssssssss.
Using a green screen, families will place their snake-selves and sculptures back into the garden of Eden, where they will dance a snake dance and celebrate everything good about snake-ness.
The first workshop, facilitated by Rosie, took place on Sunday 20th November. The following workshop will take place later in December, and is a free, drop-in session – so watch this space!
This programme forms part of the Mediale: Summer 2022 Events in York programme, supported by an Events & Festivals Grant from Make it York.
Supported by XR Stories, using public funding as part of the Creative Industries Clusters Programme, an £80m initiative led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. XR Stories is based at the University of York.
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