What happens when anything can be art? What is the role of the artist today? What are we looking at? And what is contemporary art anyway? Contemporary art can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be hard work.
Over five weeks, we’ll unpack some of its more challenging forms by looking at works in the Tate Collection. We’ll cover painting, performance, installation and multimedia works to give you a foundation to draw on the next time a work of art leaves you completely clueless.
This course is structured around conversations, and full participation is encouraged. It is for those curious to understand. No prior knowledge necessary.
Week 1: Overview
What’s so scary about contemporary art? How do we define it? We’ll look back at key abstract paintings, and the impact they have had on how we think of art today.
Week 2: Multimedia
What happens when anything can be art? In exploring art that seeks to represent our times, we’ll take a look at works that incorporate technology and digital media, through a visit to the Nam June Paik exhibition.
Week 3: Concepts
When is a concept art? What makes it more than just an idea? We’ll look at work by Jenny Holzer and explore Ed Ruscha’s ARTIST ROOM to see the importance of text in conceptual works.
Week 4: Body Politic
We experience art not just with our minds but with our bodies. What is the place of the body in art? When can a person be an artwork? What happens when a performance is over, does the work still exist? We’ll explore these questions and more by looking at works by Guerrilla Girls and Regina Jose Galindo, along with Kara Walker’s Turbine Hall Commission.
Week 5: Installation
Let’s step into the artwork! For our last week, we’ll look at installation art through works in the Olafur Eliasson exhibition. How can we make sense of a work that spans an entire room? Where to start? Drawing on themes we have covered throughout the course, we’ll try to use all our senses to piece together what is going on. We’ll end the course in Rebecca Horn’s installation in the Tanks, with tips on getting more out of a gallery visit.
Biography
Jessica Cerasi
Jessica Cerasi is Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the UK Government Art Collection, and Assistant Curator of the 2019 Venice Biennale. In 2017, she co-authored ‘Who’s Afraid of Contemporary Art?’, an entertaining and discerning introduction to today’s art and art world (Thames & Hudson, 2017), and returns to teach her sell-out course ‘Demystifying Contemporary Art’ for a third year running. She was previously Assistant Curator of the 20th Biennale of Sydney in 2016, and Curatorial Assistant at the Hayward Gallery.