FTHo

Flat Time House is pleased to host “ ” for the launch of their new publication featuring Becky Beasley in conversation with Claire Scanlon. “ ” #3: Becky Beasley / Claire Scanlon is available as a free download via the Flat Time House website throughout the winter months of 2020/21 and will be accompanied by responses from writers including Sharon Kivland, Susan Morris, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Jessica Potter, and Nina Wakeford over the course of several weeks, constituting a cumulative slow launch as a deliberate tactic of decompression.

“ ” (quotation mark quotation mark) is a series of books, which, via dialogues with artists, looks at the forms and roles of publishing, dissemination, and feedback in the context of artistic practices and the formation of communities.

Issue #3 of the series, Becky Beasley / Claire Scanlon (2019) follows on from Beasley’s one-way correspondence with her former tutor Scanlon. Meeting, now as friends, they talk about mental health, gendered labour, the domestic, the time and space of work, and how these factors converge on creative practices in both positive and less-positive ways. The artists discuss strategies for maintaining presence through periods of happiness or adversity, and make note of methods and ‘superpowers’ that have allowed them to pursue their practices in the face of familial needs, material limitations, or personal struggles (Beasley describes her battle with depression). Brief lessons of survival, clarity, ambiguity, care, and resistance, recorded with the intention of providing a useful resource to readers.

Pavel Büchler, Eva Kot’átková, John Latham & Sarah Lucas with musical composition by John Cage

Curated by David Thorp

‘The status of art has become uncertain. At least, it is ambiguous. No one can say with assurance what a work of art is—or, more important, what is not a work of art. Where an art object is still present it is what I have called an anxious object: It does not know whether it is a masterpiece or junk.’ [1]

–Harold Rosenberg

ANTS AND GRASSHOPPERS: reflections on the anxious object examines whether or not art can have the capacity to subvert, and indeed, create anxiety. Does the art object have that potential? Or is any anxiety that abounds rather an indication of its maker’s existential state? This exhibition queries whether the "psychophysical sculpture" that is Flat Time House could be an example of an anxious object. Alongside the newly restored book sculpture that transects the façade of the building, is presented the work of three contemporary artists, and a musical composition by John Cage, for each of whom in different ways this condition is evident.

More information to come

[1] Harold Rosenberg. On the De-Defininition of Art, University of Chicago Press,1983. p12

Following an open call, Flat Time House is delighted to announce that the recipients of The Delta (Δ) Research Placement will be Madyha J. Leghari, Padraig Robinson and Diagram Research Group (DRG). The artists are currently undertaking remote research with the John Latham Archive to develop digital projects which will launch this autumn on a new experimental online platform for FTHo. The season will begin with a series of online events hosted by Diagram Research Group (DRG).