Friday 13th October  3pm - 5pm BST, online via Zoom

Speakers

Tamsin Hong

Tamsin Hong grew up in the land now known as Australia during the toxic anti-Asian climate of the 1990s. This provided the scaffolding on which her curatorial practice hangs. On one hand, her existence was part of the ongoing colonial project in Australia. On the other, her Chinese ancestors too had been dislocated from their lands by British colonial activities. What has become increasingly apparent since she moved to London is how Asian artists, curators and other creatives share specific dynamics including alienation from each other because of the divide and conquer system which continues today. So her meditation focuses on whether it might be possible for us to un-divide ourselves and what strategies can we evoke as part of this practice.

Bio
Tamsin Hong is a contemporary international art curator based in London. Hong’s research interests include women’s knowledge systems and embodied practices. Born on unceded Ngunnawal Country, Hong is Exhibitions Curator at Serpentine working on the upcoming exhibition Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011-2015. She was formerly Assistant Curator of International Art at Tate, specialising in performance and working on African and Australian acquisitions. While at Tate Modern, Hong co-curated the land-rights exhibition, A Year in Art: Australia 1992 and performances including Lee Mingwei’s Our Labyrinth, Ei Arakawa’s Mega Please Draw Freely and the 2020 Live Exhibition, Our Bodies, Our Archives.

Clare Chun-Yu Liu

Clare Chun-Yu Liu will talk about the confluence between gender, migration and participation in the contemporary British art world. Drawing from her own background of initially coming to the UK for art education as an international student from Taiwan, she will share her observation and experience of identity politics: how woman artists of East Asian heritage negotiate not only social values from home culture but also self-representation in the host country. Diaspora sets the mind free and finding a new place and identity can be a meaningful exploration through artistic practice.

Bio
Clare Chun-yu Liu is an artist with a practice-based fine art PhD from Manchester School of Art. Clare is interested in reviewing history in relation to diasporic experience and postcolonial thinking. She explores oral history and lived experience through fiction and nonfiction to challenge the grand narratives. Her films have been screened/exhibited internationally, including at the ICA London, Raven Row London, Oxford University, New Art Exchange Nottingham, EXiS, Image Forum Festival, Kasseler Dokfest, Taipei International Video Art Exhibition, Goethe Institut Lisbon and Ming sheng Art Museum Beijing. Her work is in VIDEOTAGE Media Art Collection in Hong Kong.

Mario Popham

Mario Popham was born in Japan to Japanese and British parents but having spent a majority of his life in England, photographer Mario Popham has an unresolved relationship to his dual identity. In his talk, Mario will introduce the themes that preoccupy his practice, and his experience working in the UK’s arts and photography world. 
He will ask whether such a notion as cultural ‘essence’ can be detected or defined in the work of artists who have been long disconnected from their roots, touching on his desire to reconnect with Japan before exploring the work of photographic artists from Asia, many who also occupy this duality.

Bio
Mario Popham is a photographic artist drawn to exploring our paradoxical relationship to the natural environment and how this finds expression in post-industrial areas of Britain and abroad. He is currently developing long-term projects in both the UK and Italy that explore place in the context of industrial legacy, nature and community and is currently artist-in-residence with Open Eye Gallery. 

As a freelance curator, Mario has delivered a number of contemporary photography exhibitions in the UK, working with organisations such as Open Eye Gallery, HOME MCR and Castlefield Gallery.

Chaired by Jasmir Creed and Dr Natasha Eaton 

The event is chaired by artist and PhD researcher Jasmir Creed with contributions by Dr Natasha Eaton, Reader in History of Art at UCL. There will be an opportunity to participate in a Q&A session after the presentations. 

Hosted by Chai Shai: Asian British Art Research Group

Chai Shai: Asian British Art Research Group (with a focus on South Asian British and East Asian Contemporary Women Artists Practice) aims to address underrepresentation of Asian British women artists in exhibitions and challenge their under-representation and invisibility in the British Art world. Our focus is to shed light on the systematic barriers, including racism and misogyny, that prevent these artists from gaining equal exposure and recognitions within visual arts. By bringing together artists, writers, curators, academics, and researchers, we aim to generate new channels of thinking and networking that will contribute towards the development of British Art curating e.g. generating material and networks leading to a new exhibition of contemporary artists work.

This is the third research group event in a series of reading groups, film screenings, performance, workshops and symposia we aim to create thinking spaces that will unpack notions of invisibility and disenchantment, and identity strategies for redressing this imbalance.

Jasmir Creed

Jasmir Creed is a practice led PhD researcher at the Slade School of Fine Art. She explores alienation and the transcultural in paintings of people in urban non-places or iconic historical sites, informed by her identity as a British South Asian artist. Solo exhibitions of paintings by Jasmir Creed include Urban Forest at Delta House Studios, London 2017; Dystopolis at Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool 2018 and Utopolis at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery 2023. Group exhibitions include Asia Triennial Manchester 2018, Home and Unhome at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, China, 2020 and Art Contact, Istanbul Art Fair, Turkey 2021.  

Bindu Mehra

Bindu Mehra is currently pursuing her practice-led PhD at the Slade School of Fine Arts and her film has recently been nominated for an award at the Cannes Short Film festival. Bindu was short listed for Documenta 14 (independent project) and at Tate Britain, London UK 2009. She is the founding director of an online curatorial platform called The Digital Silk Route with the aim to fuel discourse, critical enquiry and explore possibilities of working transnationally in the arts. The collective has been fostering collaborations, exchanges and engagement between international art communities. It supports video art practices with thematic resonance to transnational identity, citizenship and migration. They have been exhibiting and screening moving image works at The University of Toronto, Art Gallery of Mississauga, MS University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, Maison de la Culture de Côte-des-Neiges, Montreal, Ambedkar University, Delhi. Bindu has also held workshops at the Blackburn Museum and has taught at the Virginia CommonWealth University, USA.

Kristen Kreider

Kristen Kreider is a writer and artist. Her research stems from an interest in the poetics of thought, its materialization as form, and a concern with how artworks relate to the world. In collaboration with the architect James O’Leary, Kreider’s artistic practice engages with sites of architectural and cultural interest and they are currently working on a large-scale project, Ungovernable Spaces, engaging with five sites of community and resistance globally. Acting primarily as a facilitator for this project, Kristen brings to this her experience working with postgraduate art research at UCL, Oxford and Goldsmiths. Kristen is currently Professor of Fine Art and Head of the Doctoral Programme and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.

Dr Natasha Eaton

Dr Natasha Eaton is Reader in the History of Art, UCL. She is author of three monographs -Mimesis across Empire (Duke, 2013); Colour, Art and Empire (I.B.Taurus, 2013); Travel, Art and Collecting (Routledge, (2021). She is co-editor of three online platforms at Third Text -Artist and Empire; Decolonising Colour; Decolonial Imaginaire. She is co-editor with Alice Correia of the special issue of Third Text - Partitions. Natasha has received grants from funding bodies including The British Academy, Yale University, The University of Michigan, The Paul Mellon Centre, The Arts Council and The Leverhulme Trust. 

Funded by British Art Network

This seminar is supported by British Art Network. BAN is a Subject Specialist Network supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with additional public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. The Network promotes curatorial research, practice and theory in the field of British Art. Its members include curators, academics, artist-researchers, conservators, producers and programmers at all stages of their professional lives.