Skip to Main Content
University of Essex Logo

Exhibitions & Events

Using ESCALA in your teaching at the University of Essex, 21 February 2014

                            Joanne Harwood, Assistant Director, showing students some artworksThis short introductory workshop, run jointly by ESCALA (Essex Collection of Latin American Art) and Learning and Development, works on the premise that you don’t have to know a lot about art to use it effectively in your teaching, whatever your discipline.

Art-based learning has been used in Higher Education in a range of subjects to promote students’ critical thinking, communication and professional reasoning skills. With a particular focus on the University’s world-renowned Latin American Art collection, this interactive workshop will give you the chance to:

• try out some simple techniques for using visual art to prompt discussion and inquiry

• find out how your colleagues have used works from the collection to enhance their students learning

• discover the resources and support available to you through Learning and Development and ESCALA.

For those who are inspired, we will offer a follow-up session later in the term where you can work with advisors from ESCALA and Learning and Development to develop in more detail ideas for introducing art-based learning into your own modules.

Date: Friday, 21st February
Time: 13:00 –14:00
Room: 4SA.6.19
Audience: Academic/teaching-related staff
Facilitators: Gisselle Giron, ESCALA and Kate Dunton, Learning and Development

Mexican Ambassador the UK, Mr Diego Gómez Pickering speaks at Essex, 10 March 2014

Mr Diego Gómez Pickering will speak at the Colchester Campus, University of Essex on 'Mexico, Rising Country'. The talk is organised by the International Office here at the University of Essex.

Time: 4pm
Location: 1N1.4.1 (second floor, CSEE Building, square 1)
The talk is free and all are welcome.

Talk at Birkbeck: Connecting through Collecting: 20 Years of Art from Latin America at the University of Essex, 30 May 2014

Andrés Montenegro, ESCALA Curatorial Assistant, will discuss the main ideas behind the forthcoming ESCALA's exhibition 'Connecting through Collecting: 20 years of Art from Latin America at the University of Essex'.

This talk will allow critics and scholars of Latin American Contemporary Art to exchange ideas and map new areas of importance, especially where these involve recent political and artistic practices developments in the region. Andrés Montenegro’ s research focuses on contemporary art, with a special emphasis on Latin America. His work explores issues on temporality, memory, identity and political agency. Andrés holds a PhD at the School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex with the thesis entitled ‘Politics and Aesthetics of the Uncanny: Francis Alÿs, Santiago Sierra & Tania Bruguera’.

Friday, 30 May 2014, 12.00pm -1.30pm, Room 122
Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD
Organizers: Dolores Galindo, Bea Caballero and Tomás Peters (Birkbeck PhD students)
Please note this talk will be in Spanish.
All very welcome! No booking required.

ESCALA Director to speak at Pinta London, 15 June 2014

On Saturday 14 June, Dr Joanne Harwood will speak at Pinta London's public programme, as part of the panel 'Militant or Non-Militant Specialised Institutions' chaired by Professor Dawn Ades, CBE, one of the founding Directors of ESCALA. 

The panel is part of the larger programme 'Militant or Non-Militant?' which explores 'is there still a need for a concerted effort to promote areas of the art world that tend to be under represented, in terms of gender and/or provenance - in this case Latin America mainly?'  The programme runs from the 13 to 14 June at Pinta in the auditorium. For more information, please see the Pinta London website.

PROGRAMME 

Friday 13 June 

3.30 pm 
Militant or Non-Militant Global Institutions 

Moderator: Catherine Petitgas. Collector, patron and curator Pinta Projects 

  • Iwona Blazwick. Director of Whitechapel Gallery and the Max Mara Prize 
  • Joao Fernandes. Vice- Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid 
  • Sheikha Lulu M Al-Sabah. Founder and Director of JAMM, an independent art advisory in Dubai and Kuwait 

5 pm 
Dedicated or Non-dedicated collectors 

Moderator: Julia Peyton-Jones. Co- Director Serpentine Gallery 

  • Valeria Napoleone. Collector of women artists 
  • Tiqui Atencio. Latin American art collector and Head of Latin American Acquisitions at Tate Gallery 
  • Muriel Salem. Collector 
  • Nadia Samdani. Founder and Director of Dhaka Art Summit 

6.30 pm 
Pinta Media Art 

Eduardo Kac: Early media Works. Presented by Rolando J Carmona 

Saturday 14 June 

11.30 am 
Pinta Photo 

Photo Tertulia: With a continent of such a size and a diaspora so rich and diverse, does the title "Latin American Photography" still carry meaning?" 

Moderator: Sue Steward. Writer, broadster and curator of Pinta Photo 

  • Dafna Talmor. Artist, lecturer, curator of exhibitions 
  • Shoair Mavililan. Co-Curator of Latin American Art & Photography, Tate Modern 
  • Lorena Muñoz Alonso. Writer and critic, including Frieze magazine 
  • Rodrigo Orrantia. Art historian and photography curator 

2.00 pm 
Kiki Mazzucchelli and Catherine Petitgas discuss this year's Pinta Projects with the artists 

Ana Luiza Dias Batista, Cibelle, Lucia Pizzani, Jazmín López, Sandra Gamarra and Tatiana Echeverri 

3.30 pm 
Activism: Women Promoting Art beyond their Borders 

Moderator: Princess Alia Idris Al-Senussi, VIP Relations Middle East for Art Basel 

  • Ziba Ardalan. Director Parasol Unit, London
  • Touria El Glaoui. Director 1 - 54, the African Art Fair in London 
  • Celia Birbragher. Founder and editor pioneer Latin American art magazine, ArtNexus 

5 pm 
Militant or Non-Militant Specialised institutions 
Moderator: Dawn Ades. Founding Director of ESCALA, the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America 

  • Omar Lopez-Chahoud. Chief curator Biennale of Nicaragua, director Untitled Fair 
  • Joanne Harwood. Director, Essex Collection of Art from Latin America, University of Essex 
  • Beth Colocci. Chair of UK Friends of NMWA 
  • Gill Harris. New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, largest collection in Europe dedicated to Women's art 

6.30 pm 
Rafael Doctor: Women in Spanish Contemporary Art 

Rafael Doctor. Spanish academic 

Connecting through Collecting: 20 Years of Art from Latin America at the University of Essex, 6 September - 6 December 2014

                            Aubrey Williams, Chatto III, 1984For 20 years ESCALA has played a vital role in connecting people with artwork from across Latin America while also challenging ideas about contemporary art. A new exhibition in Southend opening on Saturday 6 September at the Beecroft Art Gallery will celebrate ESCALA's internationally important contribution by showing how members of the University of Essex community connect with the artworks from its Collection. 

Connecting through Collecting: 20 years of Art from Latin America at the University of Essex is part of the University's 50th anniversary celebrations and will bring together artwork selected by students, researchers, and academics at the University plus other material from the Collection's Archive. Those taking part in the project were encouraged to choose pieces from the Collection which made a connection to their own research interests and were asked to reflect on and write about these choices following private viewings arranged by the ESCALA team. 
 
Exhibition curator and ESCALA Curatorial Assistant Dr Andrés David Montenegro Rosero said: “This exhibition is one of the most diverse displays staged by ESCALA and builds on the collaborative impulse at the heart of our work and the study of Latin America at the University of Essex. The students, researchers, and academics who have taken part were asked to select artworks which reflected some element of their own research interests. This provided wide-ranging perspectives from many fields of study including Art History, Human Rights, Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, Psychoanalysis, and Government.” 
 
Artists, students, researchers, and academics: 

Marcelo Brodsky // Professor Todd Landman, Faculty of Social Sciences 
Carlos Cruz-Diez // Dr Sarah Demelo, Essex Collection of Art from Latin America 
Maria Elvira Escallón // Professor Jules Pretty, Deputy Vice-Chancellor 
León Ferrari // Dr Sanja Bahun, Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies 
Demián Flores // Dr Joanne Harwood, Essex Collection of Art from Latin America 
Regina José Galindo // Jessica Hughes, School of Philosophy and Art History 
Jaime Gili // Dr Marian de Vooght, Department of Government 
david pérez karmadavis // Marina Barsy, School of Philosophy and Art History 
Jorge Macchi // Dr Taisuke Edamura, School of Philosophy and Art History 
Jorge Macchi // Dr Jörg Schaub, School of Philosophy and Art History 
Anna Maria Maiolino // Ian Dudley, School of Philosophy and Art History 
Nadín Ospina // Gisselle Giron, School of Philosophy and Art History 
Ofelia Rodríguez // Stefanie Kogler, School of Philosophy and Art History 
Susana Rodríguez // Professor Roderick Main, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies 
Tiíta // Dr Matthias Röhrig Assunção, Department of History 
Fernando Traverso // Dr Clara Sandoval, School of Law 
Aubrey Williams // Dr Jak Peake, Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies 

Connecting through Collecting: 20 years of Art from Latin America at the University of Essex will be accompanied by a catalogue publication including the aforementioned contributions, as well as three unpublished texts exploring the story of the Collection itself and the pivotal role it has played for the study of art and visual culture from Latin America in the European context. Through this collaborative process, the exhibition and publication establish connections between ESCALA and other disciplines, as well as introducing the Collection, and the cultural diversity of Latin America, to the East of England. 

Image: Aubrey Williams, Chatto III, 1984 ESCALA 1-2010

Connecting through Collecting

Celebrating Brazilian culture at FlipSide Festival, 3 - 5 October 2014

This, our first collaboration with FlipSide, brings festival goers a selection of artworks either made from or with wood, including sculpture and wood engravings. A number of the works, including those by Alex Gama and Chico Tabibuia and Antonio Henrique Amaral, draw on Brazil's indigenous and popular graphic traditions, featured at FlipSide in 2013 through the literatura de cordel, or 'string literature'. 

ABOUT FLIPSIDE FESTIVAL 

The second FlipSide Festival takes place at Snape Maltings, which is also the home of Aldeburgh Music in Suffolk from the 3rd to the 5th October. The festival celebrates Brazilian culture including food, literature, art, football, and music with events for the whole family.  
 
For more information about FlipSide including the full programme, ticket prices, and travel details, please see their website: www.flipsidefestival.co.uk