Keynote at the British Art Network Conference
25 November 2023
Keynote lecture at the British Art Network Conference
I was invited to deliver the keynote lecture at 2023's British Art Network conference. My keynote was in three acts and was entitled 'The poor, by the way: Working-class-ness as Method'.
The conference, 'British Art After Britain' convened by Dr Marcus Jack, considered the cultural legacies of devolution. As questions about statehood, democracy and (dis)unity rise anew in the year of a Coronation, British Art after Britain reflects on the influence of regionalisation since the historic moment of the Good Friday Agreement and founding of parliaments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Converging with these pathways of self-determination, a decentralising agenda backed by lottery funds established new galleries and arts centres across the country at the turn of the millennium. As these organisations and their buildings approach their quarter-centenary and with a renewed levelling-up plan incentivising relocation outside of London, this conference calls for a conversation about the changing provisions for art, its histories, and audiences outside of the metropolitan centre and amidst the challenges of economic and ecological permacrisis. Imagining futures beyond endurance, it asks how approaches to exhibition-making, collecting and curatorial work might negotiate, trouble and respond to the changing relations of Britain to its constituent nations and the world beyond.
The conference was in collaboration Hunterian Art Gallery and was staged at Kelvinhall in Glasgow, 24-25 November 2023.
[image by Michelle Hannah, Still Life, 1660/2023]