the Roberts Institute of Art

Arike Oke is currently the Managing Director of the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, which is known as the leading institutional voice on the Windrush Generation and the home of Black British history.

Independent curator, writer and researcher Pelumi Odubanjo joins Arike Oke for a discussion about how their work with archival materials creates spaces to heal, discover new stories and find other ways of living and possibilities for making art.

The pair talk to Lucy Cowling from the Roberts Institute of Art about the importance of knowledge transmission between generations and community building within Black British cultures.

NOTES

At 7 min 51 sec Arike Oke refers to the Jamaican/Scottish nurse Mary Seacole as looking after troops in the Boer War, this should be the Crimean War.

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This episode is part of our ‘On Togetherness’ podcast mini-series, where we invite conversations between artists and practitioners in the cultural field, exploring collaboration and how to be together in all its forms. Find previous conversations between acclaimed photographer Hrair Sarkissian and curator Michaela Crimmin, plus academics Matthew Spellberg and Richard Sommer.

Arike Oke is Managing Director for the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton. Arike has worked in cultural heritage for over 15 years, from the seminal Connecting Histories project in Birmingham, to building Wellcome Collection's archive, and co-convening Hull's first Black History Month. She is also a writer of short stories, which you can find on arikewrites.com.

Pelumi Odubanjo works as an independent curator, writer and researcher interested in diasporic black vernacular culture and image making, informed by decolonialism and black feminism. Pelumi works with artists, archives, and cultural artefacts to explore historical and contemporary links between the intersectionality of women, migration, and identity. as means to disentangle our understandings of archival practice. She was Curator in Residence at the Black Cultural Archives in 2020.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

Grace Schwindt is a German artist working with film, live performance, sculpture, and drawing. As part of Evening of Performances 2018, Grace presented The Boxer. The Boxer proposed the intimate moment of sharing physical and mental wounds as a possibility to create open social relations.

Belgian curator and academic Katleen Van Langendonck joins Grace Schwindt in conversation about Grace's practice and the crossovers between Katleen's current research into performance and the translation of the medium between visual arts and theatre.

The pair discuss the transmission of trauma and the translation of performance within different contexts with reference to Schwindt’s work. They unpick the mechanisms and methodologies used by museums and theatres to understand how each can achieve better working models when it comes to cross-disciplinary performance work.

This special edition of our 'On Togetherness' series is part of Recall: Evening of Performances (2008–2019), a year-long programme of interviews, podcasts and contributions from some of the artists who participated in the twelve editions of the celebrated Evening of Performances. Highlighting the evenings’ extraordinary legacies, we will be exploring what the next wave of contemporary performance can become with the artists who have shaped it so far.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

Michaela Crimmin is an independent curator and co-director of the not-for profit agency, Culture+Conflict. For over 15 years she taught on the Royal College of Art’s curating contemporary art MA.

Hrair Sarkissian is a photographer who was brought up in Damascus and who now lives and works in London. His practice explores his own personal memories and histories and the relationship between visibility and invisibility.

In this podcast, our guests discuss Sarkissian's formative years working in his father’s studio in Damascus, the notion of home and identity and the aesthetic and political capacities of photography, especially in relation to trauma and personal and social histories.

This is the second in a new series of talks for the Roberts Institute of Art podcasts, where artists, cultural practitioners and other thinkers are invited to discuss a theme connected to our programmes and contemporary culture.

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We recommend you take a look at Sarkissian’s website where you can look closely at the photographic series discussed: ‘Home Sick’, ‘Unexposed', ‘Sarkissian’s Photo Centre & my father & I', and ‘Last Scene’, for example.

Michaela Crimmin works as an independent curator and is co-director of Culture+Conflict, a not-for-profit agency profiling and supporting artists whose work relates to international conflict. For over 15 years she taught on the Royal College of Art’s curating contemporary art MA, and most recently led a major EU-funded research programme that included a residency with Delfina Foundation by Noor Abuarafeh, an artist from Palestine; a forthcoming film commission that opens at Gasworks in October this year by Adam Khalil & Bayley Sweitzer; and a symposium with The Showroom and Tate co-programmed with Elvira Dyangani Ose asking to what extent can art affect change when addressing issues of migration, displacement, and access.

Previously she was Head of Arts at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), a role that included initiating and directing the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre; and coordinating the first works of art on the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square.

Hrair Sarkissian is a photographer. Born and raised in Damascus, he earned his foundational training at his father’s photographic studio, where he spent all his childhood vacations and where he worked full-time for twelve years after high school. In 2010 he completed a BFA in Photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. He lives and works in London since 2011. He will be showing in the British Art Show 9 (2021) and his first mid-career survey, Hrair Sarkissian: The Other Side of Silence, curated by Dr Omar Kholief, will be shown at the Sharjah Art Foundation, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm and the Bonnefanten, Maastricht (2021-2022).

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

We invited Phyllida Barlow, whose work is featured in the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, to choose a piece from the collection as the starting point for a conversation about influences and objects of interest. She chose Bethan Huws’ Untitled, 2002.

Untitled is from Huws' Word Vitrine series and is a text-based work of sculptural form, using standard office word vitrines made from aluminium, glass, rubber and plastic letters. First created in 1999, her Word Vitrines reference Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades, though they alter this concept with the addition of an evocative text.

Barlow discusses that what drew her to Huws' work is the sentience she imbues in her sculptures. She joins Ned McConnell from her London home for a conversation about memory, the ‘performativity’ of sculpture and the difference between someone and something.

British artist Phyllida Barlow takes inspiration from her surroundings to create imposing installations that can be at once menacing and playful. Creating anti-monumental sculptures, she uses inexpensive, low-grade materials such as cardboard, fabric, plywood, polystyrene, scrim and cement. Her constructions are often testing the limits of a space whether through height, mass or volume and balance engage the audience by blocking straddling or precariously balancing in the space.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what the Roberts Institute of Art does? Reach us via therobertsinstituteofart.com, @therobertsinstituteofart and subscribe to our newsletter!

Both having keen interests in the animal world, art history and mythology, Caroline Achaintre quickly gravitated to Berlinde De Brucykere when asked to choose a work from the David Roberts Collection other than her own to discuss.

De Bruyckere's Lost II (2007) is a large sculpture made from epoxy, horse skin metal and wood, where what looks like a spineless horse carcass is draped over a domestic table. Achaintre describes being drawn in by the combination of repulsion and attraction to what remains a beautifully crafted object and evocative animal.

It is the starting point for a conversation about processes and influences, which for Achaintre range from 'uncanny valley' robotics, to Japanese figurines from B films, and German Expressionist painters.

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what DRAF does? Reach us via davidrobertsartfoundation.com, @draf_art and subscribe to our newsletter!

Image of Caroline Achaintre by Jenna Barberot.