Post Conceptual Art Practice : New Directions - Part One

POST CONCEPTUAL PRACTICE: NEW DIRECTIONS Part One

Canary Wharf, West Winter Garden, April 2010

As part of my practice as research brief, I decided to use the platform of Canary Wharf to curate a non-gallery exhibition. My PaR field of research is to represent a narrative discourse in Post Conceptual Painting. This is to challenge current discourse and practice in the field of visual arts. It is significant because it engages a range of related discourses in relocation to met-narratives within post conceptual painting.

Canary Wharf has a long history of displaying contemporary art in a public space. Over the last 10 years it has received awards for “Art & Work” and “Christies Award for Best Corporate Art Collections and Programmes”.

Post Conceptual Practice exhibition and catalogue was an important part of the Canary Wharf visual arts programme and its significant achievement in presenting the work of artists in this new context to an audience beyond the gallery.

As part of my brief for the University of Kent, I have set this exhibition up so that staff and students from the Fine Art Programme can be involved in the programme of exhibitions from Fine Art schools.

Post Conceptual Practice itself was a great success with over 1,000 people passing every hour. The exhibition ran for 5 weeks and over 1,000 catalogues were distributed.

The paintings’ success within the context of the space was to its “relational definition” (Jonathan Harris). The ambition of the work in its relationship to the cultural background of the very expansive space gave the narrative relation a voice to a new audience. The prompts within the work are all fully research based within a high modernist tradition, but, as an act of plurality, take influence from the Venetian painters such as Tiepolo and Veronese and the Northern Renaissance of Gerard David but highly influenced by Greenberg’s theory. This with the combination of the institutional space exhibited will gave a significant platform for dialogue.