MA Curating the Art Museum

29/06/2022

ARTWORK SPOTLIGHT:
Exploded Isometric of Public Levels, Interim for Grand Buildings, Trafalgar Square, 1985
Ink on mylar

This is one of two drawings made for Grand Buildings, Trafalgar Square, a 1985 entry for a competition to renew the London site. ZHA’s design combines public and private space by integrating a communal viewing deck and office towers. A curved shopping concourse runs around the complex. The two elevations insert ZHA’s dynamic proposal into the site. These points of aesthetic similarity and difference between ZHA’s Grand Buildings and its Victorian surroundings engage with the continuous development of civic space over time. While Hadid’s entry was not successful, she continued to develop the project as a critical exploration of urban form.

Zaha Hadid Architects. Design Team: Zaha Hadid with Brian Ma Siy; Competition Team: Michael Wolfson, Brian Ma Siy, Marianne Palme, Kar Hwa Ho, Piers Smerin

Image: © Zaha Hadid Foundation

27/06/2022

THIS THURSDAY: In partnership with the Zaha Hadid Foundation, we’re thrilled to present a live in conversation with renowned British architect Nigel Coates, led by ZHF's head of Research and Learning Jane Pavitt. Tickets are free and going fast, register your attendance now at the link in bio!

23/06/2022

ARTWORK SPOTLIGHT:

Leicester Square, Blue and Green Scrapes, 1990
Acrylic on catridge paper

Commissioned by Blueprint Magazine in 1990, this painting shows a violent transformation of Leicester Square. Proclaiming ‘Shoot the square, it is dead’, ZHA imagined a ‘public room’ submerged underneath ground level. The dense network of white lines stretched at the top of the painting represents the surrounding street plan, while sharp blades of subterranean skyscrapers cut through the congested city, revealing its unexplored potential below.

Image: © Zaha Hadid Foundation

21/06/2022

PROJECT SPOTLIGHT:

Habitable Bridge Model, 1996
Perspex, plastic, wood

This project was ZHA’s winning entry for the Thames Water Habitable Bridge competition, exhibited at the Royal Academy’s Living Bridges exhibition in 1996. Architects were invited to ‘imagine a piazza on the River Thames’ at a crossing between Temple Underground station on the north bank and London Television Centre on the south. ZHA’s proposal echoed Hadid’s earlier student projects to lay a dynamic ‘horizontal skyscraper’ as river crossing. The bridge bends and curves, like the river beneath. Though never built, the project is a utopian vision of what a bridge might be. Shards of building – filled with residential and office spaces, shops, restaurants, and artist studios – shoot across the Thames, creating not merely a crossing point, but ‘a destination in its own right’. ZHA worked with structural engineers Ove Arup & Partners to address the complex engineering and transportation requirements of the design. 

Zaha Hadid with Zaha Hadid Architects.
Competition Team: Patrik Schumacher, Graham Modlen, Ljiljana Blagojevic, Paul Karakusevic, Woody Yao, Markus Dochantschi, Tilman Shall, Thilo Fuchs, Colin Harris, Shumon Basar, Katrin Kalden, Anne-Marie Foster; Models: Alan Houston, Michael Howe; Computer Design: Wassim Halabi, Simon Yu, Garin O’Aivazian; Structural Engineer: Ove Arup & Partners, Jane Wernick, Sophie La Bourva; Services Consultant: Ove Arup & Partners, Simon Hancock, Dorte Rich Jorgensen; Transportation Consultant: Ove Arup and Partners, John Shaw; Management: Ove Arup & Partners (PMS), Harry Saradjian; Cost Consultant: Davis Langdon & Everest, Rob Smith, Sam Mackenzie

Image: © Zaha Hadid Foundation

15/06/2022

16/06/2021

Post launch celebrations!! 🥂

15/07/2020

Link for this evenings screening of Charlotte Prodger’s BRIDGIT is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca36hw6Xadw

Only half an hour to go✨

Programmed by the students at the Courtauld Institute of Art. A screening of Charlotte Prodger’s Turner Prize-winning film BRIDGIT to coincide with the exhib...

15/07/2020

💥TONIGHT💥Special Film Screening of Charlotte Prodger’s BRIDGIT
❗️15th July at 6pm BST❗️

Tune in at 6pm over on the YouTube Channel for the screening of Charlotte Prodger’s Turner Prize-winning film BRIDGIT to coincide with the exhibition Unquiet Moments: Capturing the Everyday✨

BRIDGIT explores how identity is constantly shifting in response to the people we meet, spaces we occupy and memories we hold.

We can’t wait to see you there🙌🏻

Image credit: Charlotte Prodger, BRIDGIT, 2016. Arts Council Collection, ACC15/2016, London © the artist.

13/07/2020

💫 DOUBLE-BILL FILM SCREENING Tuesday 14th July, 6pm BST: Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s Estate, a Reverie and Mikhail Karikis’ Children of Unquiet, live stream from Somerset House YouTube Channel 💫

https://www.youtube.com/user/somersethouselondon

Artists and friends Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Mikhail Karikis will come to together for a special double-bill screening of their films. The screening will be followed by a conversation between the artists, who will explore how these films relate to the themes raised by the online exhibition Unquiet Moments: Capturing the Everyday. This discussion will be moderated by Sia Pineschi, one of the curators of the exhibition 🙌🏻🎉

Image credit: Mikhail Karikis, Children of Unquiet (2013-2014) Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. Credit to the artist.
Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Estate, a Reverie (2015) Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. Credit to the artist.

07/07/2020

Go have a look at the Jonathan Richardson drawings and hear Elizabeth, one of the curators talk about these in more depth!

While you’re there, check out our new blog NOW up on our website✨

https://unquietmoments.courtauld.ac.uk/Blog

30/06/2020

✨Thank you to Karl Ohiri and Mohini Chandra for a wonderful and stimulating conversation yesterday evening! ✨

If you missed the Artists in Conversation event, you can easily catch up over on the
Somerset House YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqjdrZB7W9k

Artists Mohini Chandra and Karl Ohiri come together to discuss their work in relation to the Courtauld Institute's MA Curating the Art Museum exhibition Unqu...

26/06/2020

✨ ARTISTS IN CONVERSATION: Karl Ohiri and Mohini Chandra | 29th June | 5:30 pm BST| Live streamed from Somerset House and the Courtauld Research Forum ✨

Thank you everyone for attending our artist talk on Wednesday with Sunil Gupta. We’ve got many other exciting events coming up, including on Monday! Artists Mohini Chandra and Karl Ohirib will come together to discuss their work in relation to our exhibition.

Karl Ohiri (b.1983, London) is a British-Nigerian artist based in London. His practice explores the Human Condition and the social functions of art by merging two inseparable strands of one(s) existence.

The Self:
On-going autobiographical narratives based on family, identity and heritage. Personal experiences form the starting point for the work, where the politics of the self is used as a way to challenge the boundaries between the private and the public - inviting his audience to explore the in-between personal spaces that shape his practice, thoughts, and sense of self.

The Other:
On-going dialogue based on societal observations, current affairs and collective histories. The works encompass a vast range of emotions that reflect the human experience, responding to themes related to identity, social issues and cultural heritage.
�Drawing on his studies in visual culture, semiotics, appropriation and recontextualisation are used conceptually within his art incorporating the use of photography, video, text and everyday objects. His works have been showcased internationally in venues and exhibitions that include the Venice Biennial, Reattu Museum, Southbank Centre, The Courtauld Gallery, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery London.

Stay tuned for Mohini Chandra’s bio tomorrow!

23/06/2020

⚡️ ARTIST’S TALK: Sunil Gupta, 24th June, 5:30pm BST. Live streamed from Somerset House and Courtauld Research Forum, no pre-registration required ⚡️

We are thrilled to host this artist’s talk, where photographer Sunil Gupta and art historian Fiona Anderson will discuss two fo the artist’s photographic series, Exiles and Mr Malholtra’s Party, in relation to the thermes explored in the online exhibition Unquiet Moments: Capturing the Everyday.

Sunil Gupta is a Canadian citizen, (b. New Delhi 1953) MA (Royal College of Art) PhD (University of Westminster) who has been involved with independent photography as a critical practice for many years focusing on race, migration and q***r issues. His recent show (with Charan Singh), “Dissent and Desire“ was at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India 2018 and his latest book is “Christopher Street 1976”, Stanley Barker 2018.

His work has been seen in many important group shows including "Paris, Bombay, Delhi..." at the Pompidou Centre, Paris 2011 and “Masculinities” at Barbican, London. His retrospective takes place at The Photographers’ Gallery London (2020) and Ryerson Image Ceter (Toronto) 2021.

He is a Professorial Fellow at UCA, Farnham, and Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. He was Lead Curator for the Houston Fotofest 2018. His work is in many private and public collections including; George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Royal Ontario Museum, Tate, Harvard University and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Dr Fiona Anderson is Senior Lecturer in Art History in the Fine Art department at Newcastle University. Her work explores LGBTQ social and sexual cultures and art from the 1970s to the present with a particular interest in practices of gentrification and preservation, q***r world making practices and the politics of urban space, mostly in the USA and the UK. She is the author of Cruising the Dead River: David Wojnarowicz and New York's Ruined Waterfront (University of Chicago Press, 2019)

From 2016-2019, she was the UK Principal Investigator for Cruising the Seventies: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Q***r Sexual Cultures (CRUSEV), a pan-European collaborative research project which explored LGBTQ social and sexual cultures of the 1970s and their significance for LGBTQ people and q***r artmaking across Europe now and in the future.

We look forward to seeing you there TOMORROW! 😉

Image credit: Sunil Gupta, Humayun’s Tomb from the series Exiles, 1987. Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. Credit to the artist.