Practice🔧Theory⚡Critique

Welcome back! I hope you feel recharged after a fantastic summer 🦜

Feverish preparations are underway for the upcoming Art+Critique course, which begins in a couple of weeks. The cohort is once again shaping up to be a fantastic group of artists and I’m bursting with anticipation.

While the course has been developed over the last 15 years with artists in mind, it is in fact for anyone with a creative or research-based practice, and beyond. This is testament to the universality of artists’ methodologies, and their potential for innovation. In the past, the course has also welcomed curators, writers, researchers, historians, philosophers, designers, architects, musicians, producers, entrepreneurs, and other crafts or professions.

I put the course together when I was completing my PhD at Goldsmiths. The initial omnivorous delight and apprehension of doing a self-taught crash course in the history of the world had given way to the daily grind of research, full-time work, and London-living. I was overwhelmed and I knew there had to be a better way to do artists’ research. I imagined a space where artists could extend their knowledge and develop and contextualise their practice and research in a community of peers. From the start, the course aspired to help artists orient themselves and navigate the theoretical terrain without becoming overwhelmed. I had experienced the dampening consequences of prioritising theoretical and critical perspectives over my practice. In the process, I learned two important lessons:

🔧 Theories are tools; useful, but provisional tools. They can help you consider your practice and research from different perspectives. It is very rare to find a single theory that can stand the test of practice for any length of time. Rather, it is a question of using a theory, or combination of theories, for a specific purpose. Better still, you can develop your own theories by reflecting on your practice.🛠️

⚡ A critical mindset is not necessarily a creative mindset. Critique is subversive. It can subvert you and your practice if you don’t separate critique from the creative process. You cannot create if you are constantly questioning yourself. You cannot suspend your disbelief and immerse yourself in the affirmative work of the imagination, if you are constantly undermining and negating your impulses. Trying to maintain a creative and critical mindset at the same time is like crossing positive and negative electrical currents, it creates a short-circuit.🔌

But where and how to begin? That’s where the course comes in. It familiarises artists with intersecting theoretical fields, and provides entry points by mapping the terrain. Artists are already familiar with these ideas. It’s really just a question of finding different ways of articulating and interpreting them. The course begins with the knowledge and experience that participants bring along, and builds on that foundation.

🍒Art + Critique, Autumn 2024🚀
Critical & Contextual Studies in Art Practice Online
15 Oct 2024 – 4 Mar 2025, Tuesdays 18:30-20:30 BST/GMT+1
Pay What You Can £578 / £468 / £358
Develop your practice and extend your knowledge of critical practices, theories and discourses of contemporary art. This online/hybrid course integrates practice and theory and fosters experimentation and collaborative study in a community of peers

📌Artquest One to One📢
Free one-to-one remote advice sessions for London-based artists
24 Oct + 31 Oct 2024, 10:00-13:00 BST/GMT+1
Book a free Artquest one-to-one advice session to get feedback about your work, build a strategy for an upcoming project, get practical career advice, discuss the logistics of operating as an artist and find out about other arts organisations and how they can support you.