FTHo

Presented by This is Arcade CIC, 'Home to Roost' is an experimental public gathering that blends town-hall discussion, performance, and participatory workshop. With US artist Jeremiah Day, we’ll create space for collective reflection on urgent crises — disability benefit cuts, cost-of-living, climate, youth violence, wars, crisis of democracy, transforming them into embodied responses; in a way that moves beyond passive consumption of news and towards active meaning-making as a precondition for civic life.

"The recent cataclysm of events, tumbling over one another, whose sweeping force leaves everybody, spectators who try to reflect on it and actors who try to slow it down, equally numbed and paralyzed…"

-Hannah Arendt, Home To Roost

The project takes inspiration from Hannah Arendt’s 1975 text, 'Home to Roost', in which she argued that politics begins with the act of facing difficult facts. In the current climate of dramatic events —where events unfold at overwhelming speed, making it difficult to process their impact—Home to Roost challenges this inertia by modeling new methods of engagement.

This workshop provides a unique opportunity to combine contributions by the artists and art historians who developed in the Aerial Landscapes publication with the chance to take a hands on dig into the John Latham Archive to explore the book’s aerial premise through the relationship between materials, Artist Placement Group’s (APG’s) practice, and Flat Time House’s archive.

The encounter will be facilitated by, and include contributions from the artists and art historians involved in the Aerial Landscapes publication: Nicky Bird, Katherine Jackson, Onya McCausland and Joy Sleeman.

Display available to view by appointment, Wednesday–Friday 12pm-6pm until 15 December

Join us at FTHo for the book launch event of Aerial Landscapes with readings and talks by the authors alongside a presentation of carefully selected artwork and archival materials informing the publication. The book will also be available for special reduced launch price.

Aerial Landscapes is the culmination of four years of development instigated by a one-day event exploring contemporary artists’ engagement with the Five Sisters’ Bings. In discussion with APG founder Barbara Steveni two artists, Onya McCausland and Nicky Bird, and two art historians, Katherine Jackson and Joy Sleeman, presented their investigations into John Latham's approach to site from above as manifested in his 1975–76 APG placement with the Scottish Development Office. This publication pulls together these presentations and discussions shaped by work in the archive of Flat Time House. Together the texts convey four distinct perspectives on aerial landscapes and combine the historical and first-hand with the archive.

The book launch is accompanied by a display of art works and archive materials informing and reflecting on the publication, selected by the contributing artists and art historians from their own work and from the John Latham Archive and John Latham Collection at Flat Time House.

The display will remain available to view by appointment, Wednesday–Friday 12pm-6pm until 15 December.

Exhibition and house tour with artist, art historian and writer Michael Corris with exhibiting artists and philosophers as part of First Hand (29 September–5 November 2023).

Keen to not to see an exhibition as the final say in their journeying into art and philosophy, /origin\forward/slash\ have invited Michael Corris (Texas USA based artist and author of upcoming publication Inside Art & Philosophy: An Artist’s Point of View) to meet them at their exhibition and engage them with a public, discursive reading of the works in their show.

To mark the opening of First Hand, two contributors to the exhibition, artist Mark Titmarsh and philosopher Sacha Golob (Centre for Philosophy and Art, King’s College London) will discuss the figure of the artist-philosopher. Titmarsh will lead an overview on the history of the relationship between art and philosophy, taking in philosophers who include art in their writing or were significantly changed by their encounter with art, and artists who embed philosophical thinking within their artwork, as well as an examination of artists who write from Robert Smithson to Hito Steyerl. The talk will also introduce the practice of the /origin\forward/slash\ group, of which both speakers are members, and how it is situated within this context.  

Followed by exhibition opening and drinks reception 6–8pm

ONLINE: Thursday 20 July 2023 10.30am-12.00pm BST

/origin\forward/slash\

(Sacha Golob, Marie Hay, Johanna Malt, Hester Reeve, Mark Titmarsh)

with

Art & Language

Michael Baldwin, Mel Ramsden

joined by

Michael Corris

Join via zoom: 

A relaxed afternoon of food and conversation, performance, talks and installed art works. Inviting an exploration of themes in art and socially engaged practice, from economies and resources, to power and indigenous knowledges. The gathering will build upon a collective narrative that considers ways of critiquing, shifting and transforming hierarchies, and building upon vulnerability. 

Contributing artists and curators: Amina Lawal Agoro, Manon Awst, Jordan Rowe, Kate Mahony, Laura Eldret, Monica Tolia, Rebecca Moss and Taey Iohe. 

As part of the exhibition What Is Power?, Jeremiah Day has invited Civil Rights Activist, Museum Organizer and Storyteller JoAnne Bland to contribute a special online talk. Bland grew up and lives in Selma, Alabama and became active in the civil rights movement when she was eight years old – part of the famed ‘Children’s Crusade’, and marched across the Selma bridge with Martin Luther King, Jr.  Bland later came to realise the political meaning of memory and went on to co-found the National Voting Rights Museum to preserve the legacy and principles of ‘the struggle’. Her talks deal with the history of the Civil Rights Movement and segregation and the struggle to achieve Voting Rights.

Taking place between July 2023 and January 2024, Constellations ° Assemblies are free online events open to all artists, curators, practitioners, commissioners, and those working across or interested in public art, social practice and regeneration. Constellations 2023 is curated by UP Projects in partnership with Flat Time House and in association with Liverpool Biennial. 

As part of the Breath Variations exhibition programme, this in-conversation between artist Christopher Steenson and creative geographer Sasha Engelmann provides an exciting opportunity to hear more from Steenson regarding his practice, his residency at Flat Time House, and his new body of work. Engelmann has been invited to expand on themes present in the exhibition, such as affinitive listening and the poetics of air, through the lens of her own research. As part of the event, there will be an opportunity for the audience to join the conversation and ask questions, as well as to visit the exhibition beforehand and afterwards.

Free Event

Flat Time House (FTHo) and Wayi Wayi Art Studio and Gallery, are hosting an online ‘Incidental Mpala’ to discuss how a greater platform for Zambian art can support both social change and a greater awareness of sustainable ways of working.

Online event with introductions by Gareth Bell-Jones, Agness Buya and Yande Yombwe. Presentation by Dr. Andrew Mulenga and conversation with artists Benjamin Mibenge, Mulenga Mulenga Jestina and Edith Sampa Chiliboy.

The board game Art & My Career created by Belgian-Spanish artist Olivia Hernaïz approaches the under-representation of women and gender minorities in the contemporary art world. This is a special opportunity for players of any gender to play the game and discuss the ideas within it in a mediation session with Hernaïz and specially invited arts professionals, artists and academics.

Olivia Hernaïz: ‘Since the beginning of my career, I faced many challenges related to my status as a female artist. I therefore conceived a game that depicts different careers in the art world in the West. The structure of the game is inspired by the game “Career”, made in the fifties by the American sociologist James Cooke Brown. The content of the game was made on the basis of hundreds of confidential testimonies of female and male players in the art world.’

From artist to curator, including professor, gallerist, art educator, art historian and museum director, the participants are invited to put themselves in their shoes in order to better understand their work conditions and their struggle. The playful form of the game makes it possible to subtly approach this sensitive subject. The game sessions aim to open the dialogue and allow participants to express their opinions, share their gaming experience and, if appropriate, reflect on their personal stories.

Online and In Person at Flat Time House (doors open at 6pm)

Panel discussion with Dr. Althea Greenan, Curator of the Women’s Art Library (Goldsmiths), Chloe Turner and Lauren Craig, reflecting on their experience of engaging with the WAL and the screening of a newly commissioned film by Holly Antrum on the WAL.

The spirit of the Women's Art Library, as a space of Being, Making and Becoming, manifests in the traces left behind by the people who have passed through the space since its formation. It is a place that connects people and ideas across generations, movements and geographies. It began as the Women Artists Slide Library, an artists' initiative that developed into an arts organization publishing catalogues and books as well as a magazine from early 1983 to 2002. WAL actively collects slides, ephemera and documentation of women’s art practice, and functions as a creative space for artists, curators and researchers to convene, explore and make new work. The event will celebrate the work of Dr. Althea Greenan, Curator of the Women’s Art Library, and will highlight how the archive has been used and experienced, its value as an intergenerational resource for political and artistic activism, and the possibilities and tensions of the WAL as a sanctuary and explorative space within a larger institution.

The event also coincides with the release of a film commissioned by Art360 by Holly Antrum on location at the Women’s Art Library with contributions from some of the many artists, curators and researchers who have engaged with and made new work at the WAL.