Emily Pethick (UK): THE SHOWROOM

Time: Thursday 16 April 2015, 6 – 7 PM
Venue: Konstnärsnämnden, Iaspis projektateljé
Maria Skolgata 83 Stockholm. T-bana: Mariatorget/Zinkensdamm

The Showroom, Penfold Street, London. Photo: Daniel Brooke

The fourth Organising Discourse Open Lecture 2015 looks the organization of a small-scale art space and how it operates. Emily Pethick, director of The Showroom in London, will talk about how it has developed over the recent years through various collaborations.

The Showroom

The Showroom is a space for contemporary art that is focused on a collaborative and process-driven approach to production, be that artwork, exhibitions, discussions, publications, knowledge and relationships. Its focus is on commissioning work that is generated through open and discursive means between artists, specialists, public and local stakeholders, connecting otherwise disparate fields and communities.

The talk will focus on how the organization developed over the last six years through the projects it has ben producing, many of which have involved different kinds of collaborations, particularly with local residents and groups, as well as how The Showroom works with both local and international networks.

THE SHOWROOM is a non-profit contemporary art space for emerging artistic practices and ideas, where collaboration and learning are integral to the production of new art.
Recent programme includes: Ciara Phillips’ exhibition Workshop (2010 –ongoing), 2013, was nominated for Turner Prize in 2014; Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s audio essay The Freedom of Speech Itself, 2012; Beatrice Gibson’s film The Tiger’s Mind, 2012; and The Otolith Group’s exhibition A Long Time Between Suns (2009) was nominated for The Turner Prize in 2010.

A central aspect of The Showroom’s work is a commitment to our neighbourhood, Church Street – one of the most deprived wards in the UK – where an on-going programme of projects, Communal Knowledge, was initiated in 2010 and is now led by Louise Shelley. CK enables close collaborations between artists, young people and community groups in the shaping of new projects that collectively explore issues at stake in the locality.

Emily Pethick has been the director of The Showroom, London, since 2008. From 2005-2008 she was the director of Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, in Utrecht, The Netherlands. From 2003-2004 she was curator at Cubitt, London. She has contributed to numerous catalogues and magazines, including Artforum, Frieze, Afterall, The Exhibitionist, and dot dot dot, and edited books, such as Casco Issues X: The Great Method (2007, with Peio Aguirre), Casco Issues XI: An Ambiguous Case (2008, with Marina Vishmidt and Tanja Widmann), Circular Facts (2011, with Mai Abu EIDahab and Binna Choi), pub. Sternberg Press), Cluster: Dialectionary (2014, with Binna Choi, Maria Lind and Natasa Petresin-Bachelez).
www.theshowroom.org

This lecture is presented in collaboration with Iaspis, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists

Download as PDF: Organising Discourse lecture 4

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