21 May 2010 - 23 May 2010
A three-day festival of Brazilian culture was held at the University of Essex’s Colchester Campus from 21-23 May 2010
Curated by the Lakeside Theatre’s current Artist in Residence Adriano Adewale, Festival Brasileiro will include exciting events showcasing the vibrancy and the variety of Brazilian culture.
A highly personal project for Brazilian-born Adewale, he has worked closely with Arts on 5, the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America and Segue productions to draw together many of the finest exponents of Brazilian arts and culture and build a festival programme that is inspiring, educational and entertaining.
The main venue for Festival Brasileiro will be the Lakeside Theatre, whose foyer will play host to an exhibition of Brazilian artworks from the UECLAA collection.
The festival will kick off on Friday with explosive play The Last Days of Gilda, followed by a dance workshop in preparation for the evening’s Forro party.
Saturday 22 May sees Festival Brasileiro spreading to the campus squares with giant mural painting, traditional food, film screenings, arts workshops, singing and percussion workshops and the afternoon’s grand finale, the traditional Bumba Meu Boi . In the evening there will be a performance from Adriano Adewale’s new band Umpatacum at the Lakeside Theatre and an Afro Brazilian club night hosted by top London DJs in Level 2.
On the Sunday, renowned Brazilian artist Elia Bracher will give a tour of the Brazilian sculptures in Wivenhoe Park, Adriano Adewale will team-up with local youth jazz ensembles to perform a new repertoire of Brazilian music and there will be a discussion of Brazilian culture between Adewale and academics from the University.
Throughout the festival, mural painting will be led by the Latin American Youth Forum at IRMO (Indo-American Refugee and Migrant Organization), who will also be using film and photography to record your views on Brazil as a vibrant document of the festival. IRMO is a refugee community organization that aims to assist Latin American refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants to build a settle life in the UK, gaining access to opportunities for education, employment and personal development, by integrating within broader society while maintaining their own cultural identity.
Image: Dr Joanne Harwood gives tour of outdoors sculptures
3 June 2010 - 6 June 2010
The University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art is pleased to announce that it will be participating in PINTA, The Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art Show at its first London edition at Earl’s Court from June 3 – 6, 2010.
PINTA London Public Programme at Pinta Auditorium
Organised by
Isobel Whitelegg (Research Officer and AHRC Fellow), University of the Arts Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), University of the Arts, London
Joanne Harwood (Director), University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA), University of Essex, Colchester
Miriam Metliss (Learning and Access Officer), University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA), University of Essex, Colchester
1. TALKS & DISCUSSIONS, FRIDAY 4 AND SATURDAY 5 JUNE, AUDITORIUM
Friday 4 June. Session One: Latin America and the UK
3.45pm General Introduction
Joanne Harwood, Isobel Whitelegg & Miriam Metliss outline the aims and content of the wider public programme
4.00-4.15pm Latin American Art & The UK in context - history and contemporary practice
Isobel Whitelegg and Taína Caragol, Curator of Education, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico
4.15-4.45pm Presentations and responses from the panel, to include:
Alessio Antoniolli, Director, Gasworks
Ana Laura Lopez de le Torre, UK-based Uruguayan artist
Ann Jones, Independent Arts Consultant
4.45-5.00pm Questions from the floor, moderated by Isobel Whitelegg and Taína Caragol
Friday 4 June. Session Two: Market Geography
5.00pm Introduction by Taína Caragol
5.15 - 5.45pm Discussion (moderated by Taína Caragol) with:
Nina Miall, Curator, Haunch of Venison, London; Niccoló Sprovieri, Director, Sprovieri Gallery, London and Rio; Henrique Faria, Director, Henrique Faria Fine Art, Caracas; David Batchelor, London-based artist and writer
Saturday 5 June. Session Three: Collections Collecting
How are Latin American art/artists placed within permanent public collections?
3.45pm Introduction by Professor Dawn Ades, Director, and Joanne Harwood, Director and Curator, University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art
4.00 - 4.40pm Collection presentations/statements by:
Gavin Delahunty, Curator, MIMA
Tanya Barson, Curator of International Art, TATE
Joanne Harwood, Assistant-Director, UECLAA
Bartomeu Marí, Director, MACBA
4.40 - 5pm Questions from the floor, moderated by Dawn Ades
Saturday 5 June. Session Four: Collected Works
Private collectors are invited to choose one work that indicates how Latin American artists relate to others in the collection, or how they represent a particular moment in the collector's engagement with Latin American Art.
5.00pm Introduction by Isobel Whitelegg
5.10 - 5.40pm Collectors presentations:
Catherine Petitgas, collector and Art Lecturer with an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London; Chair of Latin American Acquisitions Committee and the International Council Committee at the Tate and is a Trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery.
Guy Brett, art critic, curator and lecturer
John Evans, collector and co-founder and curator of the Lodeveans Collection
5.40 - 6pm Questions from the floor, moderated by Isobel Whitelegg
2. ARTIST / CURATOR TOURS
Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 June
Co-ordinated by Miriam Metliss
UK-based artists Lucia Pizzani and Alexandre da Cunha, with Independent Curators Kiki Mazzucchelli and Maria Claudia García, will each lead a group of 10-12 people around PINTA fair, selecting particular works in advance for discussion. The tours will be approximately 45 minutes long and will encourage the participation of the public.
Tours will depart from the stand.
Saturday 5 June, 2pm
Alexandre da Cunha and Kiki Mazzucchelli
Sunday 6 June, 2pm
Lucia Pizzani and Maria Claudia García
3. PINTA SOUND ARCHIVE
Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 June
Co-ordinated by David Caneva, Tatiana Garavito and Miriam Metliss
The Latin American Youth Forum (LAYF) will conduct an oral history/documentation project at PINTA, with the aim of collecting and recording impressions and opinions of audiences at PINTA (artists, gallerists, collectors, the wider public). This material will be collated and edited into an archive, in order to record audience participation and feedback at the first art fair of contemporary Latin American art in the UK.
Image: ESCALA booth at PINTA featuring our artist editions
4 December 2010 - 31 October 2010
The Meeting Margins International Conference: Transnational Art in Latin America and Europe 1950-1978 took place at the University of Essex on Saturday the 4th and Sunday the 5th of December 2010.
The two day event was open to the public and is being convened by Professor Valerie Fraser and Doctor María Iñigo Clavo of the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex, and Doctor Michael Asbury and Doctor Isobel Whitelegg of TrAIN, the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation at the University of the Arts London.
The conference is part of Meeting Margins: Transnational Art in Latin America and Europe 1950-1978, a 3-year research project based at the University of Essex and the University of the Arts London, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the British Academy, the UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Speakers included Suzana Vaz (UAL/TrAIN), German Alfonso Adaid (UAL/TrAIN), Sergio Martins (University College London), Aquiles Pantaleão (UAL/London College of Communication), Fernando Davis (Universidad Nacional de La Plata), Fernanda Nogueira (Researcher, translator and literary critic), Zanna Gilbert (Tate/University of Essex), Olga Fernandez (Royal College of Art/Universidad Autónoma de Madrid/Universidad Nebrija, Madrid) Eduardo Grüner (Universidad de Buenos Aires), Jaime Vindel (Universidad de León), Miguel López (Art Historian and Independent Curator), and Oriana Baddeley (UAL/TrAIN), as well as contributions from Pablo La Fuente (Afterall), the convenors and the project's external advisors, including Taína Caragol, Guy Brett, Dawn Ades and Joanne Harwood.
Image: Anna Maria Maiolino, Por um fio, 1976
25 June 2010 - 26 January 2011
This exhibition represents a selection of works on paper by Alex Gama created between 1983 and 2002.
Alex Gama is an accomplished printmaker or wood engraver who was born in Barra Mansa, Brazil, in 1950 and who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Gama is represented by 34 works in the Collection, a number of which were shown in 2002 at Gallery 32, the exhibition space of the Brazilian Embassy in London.
During the exhibition at Gallery 32, Gama completed a limited edition of prints for the Collection at the London Print Studio. The edition is of a work called Trama XXXIII and it is the wood engraving that opens this exhibition, alongside the cedarwood block, or matriz, that was used in its creation. The edition has nearly sold out but the Collection continues to work with Gama who, as well as donating many of his own works to the Collection, has led us to other outstanding printmakers in Brazil, including Anna Letycia and Rossini Perez.
The current exhibition features some works from the Tramas series, including preparatory sketches, as well as works from the N.Y. (New York) series and some graphite drawings. Most of the works date from between the early 1980s and late 1990s, although the Collection also includes works from the early 2000s. More recently Gama has been working also in photography.
This exhibition coincides with the Southbank Centre’s Festival Brazil (19 June – 15 September 2010) and offers an opportunity to engage with an important medium in Brazil’s visual arts and with an artist who continues and extends the legacy of Brazil’s Neo-Concrete movement. The Brazilian Neoconcretist group published its manifesto on 22nd March 1959 in the Jornal do Brasil newspaper. It was signed by Amilcar de Castro, Ferreira Gullar, Franz Weissmann, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Reynaldo Jardim and Theon Spanudis.
Image: Alex Gama, N.Y. 2 New York, 1993