The Hunterian

Saturday 11 March 2017
11.30am – 6.00pm
Kelvin Hall

In/Human: The Body as Resource is a one-day event at Kelvin Hall featuring work by Kathryn Ashill, Sarah Browne, Christian Fogarolli, Michael Grey, and Anja Kirschner and David Panos. The event will close with a special screening of a work by Marcel Broodthaers.

In/Human: The Body as Resource is a hybrid of performance, screening and symposium, which explores our understanding of the body and how its evolution is accelerating towards an unknown, post human horizon. The works assembled consider how science, technology and media co-opt individual bodies to monetise expertise, produce ideology and generate content.

The day event will centre on themes present in the objects collected by William Hunter (1718-1783) upon which The Hunterian was founded. In/Human: The Body as Resource is underpinned by polymath Hunter’s equal interest in anatomy, art and other objects including coins, bringing together cold hard currency and intimate bodily knowledge.

The location - Kelvin Hall - was built in 1927 and for sixty years housed exhibitions, concerts, circuses and athletics meetings, and between 1987 and 2010 it was home to Glasgow’s Transport Museum. The building, which covers six-acres, is in the process of being resuscitated, with one part now housing art, cultural and health and fitness activities. This unlikely juxtaposition endeavours to increase the human capital of its users, throwing historical artifacts and sweating bodies into close proximity, with modes of historical preservation and self-improvement sitting side by side.

The event will include Sarah Browne’s screening Report to an Academy in one of Kelvin Hall’s Dance Studios, questioning performative practice and its relation to athleticism and labour.

Glasgow based Kathryn Ashill will present the newly commissioned piece Soothing Suck, the second act of her 2008 performance Lovebite, that will probe behaviours of leeches such as cannibalism and draining other bodies resources.

During the day films by artists Christian Fogarolli, Michael Joaquin Grey, and Anja Kirschner and David Panos will be presented throughout Kelvin Hall, alongside a number of archive films from the National Library of Scotland Moving Image collection.

The day will close with a special screening of Marcel Broodthaers’ quasi-documentary Figures of Wax (Jeremy Bentham), 1974. In the film the artist interviews the wax effigy of the philosopher and architect Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832) who arranged his own body’s dissection and preservation.

In/Human: The Body as Resource is curated by Giulia Colletti, Athena Gerakis, Natallia Nenarokomova and David Upton, current students on MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art), in collaboration with curator and writer Mihnea Mircan. They have worked with The Hunterian’s collections and staff to realise the project.

Please contact Natallia Nenarokamava for more details.

Kelvin Hall
1445 Argyle Street
Glasgow G3 8AW
0141 276 1450

Free but ticketed, please book via Eventbrite.

For further information or questions about In/Human: The Body as Resource contact: Natallia Nenarokamava 

For images contact: Harriet Gaston, Communications Manager, The Hunterian 

‌

---

Notes to Editors
The event runs 12.00pm - 6.00pm (coffee from 11.30am) 

The Hunterian
The Hunterian is one of the world's leading University museums and one of Scotland’s greatest cultural assets. Built on Dr William Hunter’s founding bequest, The Hunterian collections include scientific instruments used by James Watt, Joseph Lister and Lord Kelvin; outstanding Roman artefacts from the Antonine Wall; major natural and life sciences holdings; Hunter’s own extensive anatomical teaching collection; one of the world’s greatest numismatic collections and impressive ethnographic objects from Captain Cook’s Pacific voyages.

The Hunterian is also home to one of the most distinguished public art collections in Scotland and features the world’s largest permanent display of the work of James McNeill Whistler, the largest single holding of the work of Scottish artist, architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) and The Mackintosh House, the reassembled interiors from his Glasgow home.

Kelvin Hall
Kelvin Hall, the newly refurbished Glasgow landmark building, has been transformed by a partnership between the University of Glasgow, Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Life and the National Library of Scotland. The historic venue is now an exciting centre of cultural excellence providing collections storage for The Hunterian and Glasgow Museums, teaching and research facilities at The Hunterian Collections Study Centre, the National Library of Scotland's Moving Image Archive and a state-of-the-art Glasgow Club health and fitness centre.

MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art)
MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art), established in 2014, is a one-year-long programme, jointly run by The Glasgow School of Art and The University of Glasgow. Embedded within the city of Glasgow, drawing on the community of artists, gallery professionals, institutions and international connections. Previous collaborations between MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) and The Hunterian include the exhibitions William Hunter to Damien Hirst: The Dead Teach the Living at The Hunterian Art Gallery until 5 March 2017, and The only way to do it is to do it (27 March – 4 October 2015).

Artists' Biographies
Kathryn Ashill (b. 1984 Wales, UK) is Glasgow based artist. Amateur dramatics, theater flats, stage lighting, public monuments, and performance are central to her practice. Ashill aims to pursue the theatricality in the every day whilst sharing her observations on autobiography, people, history and site. Harvesting and sharing performance documentation creates the opportunity for Ashill to emphasize her physical and emotional experiences of the performances. Recent solo shows include Golden Shower (2016) commissioned by Rob Kennedy in Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; Brush me, Floss me or lose me (2015) in CCA, Glasgow; For Future Reference… (2013) in MEANTIME Project space, Cheltenham; Cock[le] Pit (2012) in ABANDON SHIP!, Bristol.

Marcel Broodthaers (b.1924 – d.1976, Brussels, BE) was a Belgian artist, poet and filmmaker, who used his practice as a tool for critique of politics and existing art institutions. Broodthaers created surrealistic objects using all kinds of materials and experimenting with language. Being an author of more than a hundred moving images, he created a new genre that amalgamated film, photography, sculpture and language. His works are in the major collections around the world such as the New York MoMA, the Tate Modern in London, the Center Pompidou in Paris and MACBA, Barcelona.

Sarah Browne (b. 1981, Ireland) is an artist based in Ireland. Her work is concerned with addressing non-verbal, bodily experiences of knowledge and justice. This primarily sculptural practice also includes writing, publishing, performance and public projects, encountered both within and outside gallery environments. Recent solo exhibitions include Report to an Academy, Marabouparken, Stockholm (2017), Hand to Mouth at CCA Derry~Londonderry and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and The Invisible Limb, basis, Frankfurt (both 2014). In 2009 Browne co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale with Gareth Kennedy and Kennedy Browne, their shared collaborative practice. She lectures in the Department of Sculpture and Expanded Practice at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and is currently artist-in-residence at the UCD School of Law and Social Science, Dublin.

Christian Fogarolli (b.1983 Trento, IT) is an Italian artist working at the intersection between contemporary art and scientific investigation. He adopts a meticulous archival research to disclose humanity behind all those identities who have been marginalized due to pseudoscience, such as phrenology and physiognomy. He showed his research into events as dOCUMENTA(13) (2012); The Magnificent Obsession at the Museum of the Modern and Contemporary Art of Rovereto, MART (2013); 54° Biennal of Venice (2011); Artissima at Lingotto of Torino (2013/2015); Civic Gallery, Trento (2014); La Maison Rouge of Paris (2014); Artbrussels (2015/16); Foundation Museum Miniscalchi Erizzo (2015); de Appel arts centre of Amsterdam (2015); 5th Moscow International Biennale (2016).

Michael Joaquin Grey (b. 1961, Los Angeles, CA) is an artist who lives and works between San Francisco and New York. His work has dissolved the boundaries between art, science, and media for the last twenty-five years. His practice explores the origins of life and language, and the self-organising principles of living and nonliving things. Recent solo shows include Chronus Art Centre (CAC), Shanghai (2015); Carroll / Fletcher, London (2013); Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (2011); and MoMA PS1, New York (2009). Group exhibitions include Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2017); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2016); MoMA, New York (2012); Sundance Film Festival (2010) and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (2001). Grey has work in collections including MoMA, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis; Centro Cultural d'Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico and the New Art Trust.

Anja Kirschner (b.1977, Munich, DE) and David Panos (b.1971, Athens, GR) are artists based in London who collaborated on music and moving image projects between 2006 and 2013. Their works frequently collide historical research with material from popular culture and question the role of the narrative in the construction of subjectivity and political agency, and the relation between art and class power. Kirschner and Panos were winners of the 2011 Jarman Award and their films and installations have been widelyexhibited and screened internationally, including at Secession, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Tate Modern, CCA, Transmission Gallery and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

Mihnea Mircan (b. 1976) is an independent curator and writer based in Leuven, Belgium. He was artistic director of Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp between 2011-15 where he curated A slowdown at the museum, The Corner Show, 1:1. Hans van Houwelingen & Jonas Staal. His recent work includes the long-term research project Allegory of the Cave Painting, which debuted with an exhibition in 2014 and a reader published in 2015. Mircan has also curated exhibitions at institutions including the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; and the Venice Biennale, as curator of the Romanian Pavilion in 2007. He was the editor of the books Hans van Houwelingen: Undone (2012) and Cross-examinations (2015), and has contributed essays to monographs on Pavel Büchler, Nina Beier, Patrick Nilsson, Jean-Luc Moulène and Laure Prouvost.

First published: 1 March 2017