Preview ~ 6-9pm
Thursday December 4th 2008
Afternoon tea and guided tour of Brunswick ~ 3-5pm Thursday December 11th 2008
subsequently view by appointment
Thursday December 4th 2008
Afternoon tea and guided tour of Brunswick ~ 3-5pm Thursday December 11th 2008
subsequently view by appointment
last thursday was a celebration of the splendid time and help i've had as writer in residence at apartment, the gallery - cum - art-space - cum ideas laboratory based in the heart of brunswick that has lately become my home and constant inspiration. it was attended by plenty of friends, fellow flaneurs and loitererers and a great time seemed to be had by all. thank you if you were able to make it and i hope it was a fun and festive evening for you.
'Life of a Bluestocking' consists of a detailed time-line of my 146 years, whilst a 'Reading Room' is dedicated to a series of texts from my diary. 'Scenes from a Life' accompanies the texts - a slideshow of snapshots from the journey of my life and times, a journey echoing our changing gaze from the grand to the vernacular.
visitors and groups are more than welcome to informal private views, by appointment. we'd love to see you and show you round with a cuppa and some cake...for more information go to apartment's blog, and to make an appointment to see the show please e-mail apartment or call on 07870 244 153.
'Life of a Bluestocking' consists of a detailed time-line of my 146 years, whilst a 'Reading Room' is dedicated to a series of texts from my diary. 'Scenes from a Life' accompanies the texts - a slideshow of snapshots from the journey of my life and times, a journey echoing our changing gaze from the grand to the vernacular.
visitors and groups are more than welcome to informal private views, by appointment. we'd love to see you and show you round with a cuppa and some cake...for more information go to apartment's blog, and to make an appointment to see the show please e-mail apartment or call on 07870 244 153.
below is a transcript of the text that my faithful assistant Maureen Ward wrote for the preview night. perhaps it will help bring something of the spirit of the show to you -
“The flaneur, though grounded in everyday life is an analytical form, a narrative device, an attitude towards knowledge and its social context. It is an image of movement through the social space of modernity. The flaneur is a multilayered palimpsest that allows us to move from real products of modernity to a critical appreciation of the state of modernity and its erosion into the past.”
“The flaneur, though grounded in everyday life is an analytical form, a narrative device, an attitude towards knowledge and its social context. It is an image of movement through the social space of modernity. The flaneur is a multilayered palimpsest that allows us to move from real products of modernity to a critical appreciation of the state of modernity and its erosion into the past.”
Charles Jencks.
The flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the place and in covert search of adventure and knowledge. The flaneur has stalked the literature, art movements and philosophies of the 20th century, an intellectual chameleon, adapting perfectly to his times and surroundings, an archetype that to successive generations of artists, urbanists and writers is the metaphor for the century, the poster boy for modernity. More than anything he is inevitably a male figure, an intellectual voyeur always distanced from the crowd that he is so keen to observe.
However for cultural theorists such as Jencks the flaneur is essentially an analytical device or contrivance to explore the project of modernity itself and its legacy in the emerging 21st century. Euphemia P Niblock is a response to this contrivance - a playful embodiment of the history of the flaneur and the modernist gaze - whilst her Diary of a Bluestocking is an experiment in examining this critical discourse in the context of what might be termed the current post post-modern turn. Life of a Bluestocking charts Modernisms own journey - her disappearance at the height of the period (its optimism untested and universal narrative unchallenged) and re-appearance as the 21st century tracing a route through the intervening years, our own century.
Spinster and bluestocking, Niblock is also something of an outsider, an emancipated transgressor in polite Edwardian society, recalling the unsung role of the female intellectual, adventurer and agent in the birth of the modernist period; a mischievous subversion of the Victorian upper class male. On first inspection an unlikely anachronism and almost comic figure, Niblock is in reality an ongoing research project, a call to arms for the forgotten legacy of the polymath and amateur enthusiast in our prevailing predilection for the specialist and the professional; a more 'curious' gaze than the convention of the dandified flaneur.
Life of a Bluestocking is not only a celebration of Niblock’s tenure as writer in residence at Apartment but a gentle interrogation of the recent historic or ‘museological’ turn in the contemporary art scene and the ‘Mark Dion’ effect in archaeological and natural history museums across the globe, typified by the successful Alchemy programmes at the Manchester Museum, and an interesting response to the ubiquity of the ‘cabinet of curiosity’ in the Gallery.
The history of Apartment is one that knowingly straddles the peripheries and cut and thrust of knowledge production and critical discourse, a space that reflects an ongoing conversation on the intersections of art, urban and cultural studies on social relations and everyday life. It is surely no coincidence that Apartment has embraced the opportunity to comment on the prevailing trend of sending the artist into the museum by bringing the museologist into the art space, inviting a historian and archaeologist to explore and examine the role of the artist in the documenting of an ‘archaeology of now’, our defining quotidian moment.
there is also tea and a tour taking place this thursday, from 3 - 5pm - do come along!
places are limited so please book so we can make enough tea!
However for cultural theorists such as Jencks the flaneur is essentially an analytical device or contrivance to explore the project of modernity itself and its legacy in the emerging 21st century. Euphemia P Niblock is a response to this contrivance - a playful embodiment of the history of the flaneur and the modernist gaze - whilst her Diary of a Bluestocking is an experiment in examining this critical discourse in the context of what might be termed the current post post-modern turn. Life of a Bluestocking charts Modernisms own journey - her disappearance at the height of the period (its optimism untested and universal narrative unchallenged) and re-appearance as the 21st century tracing a route through the intervening years, our own century.
Spinster and bluestocking, Niblock is also something of an outsider, an emancipated transgressor in polite Edwardian society, recalling the unsung role of the female intellectual, adventurer and agent in the birth of the modernist period; a mischievous subversion of the Victorian upper class male. On first inspection an unlikely anachronism and almost comic figure, Niblock is in reality an ongoing research project, a call to arms for the forgotten legacy of the polymath and amateur enthusiast in our prevailing predilection for the specialist and the professional; a more 'curious' gaze than the convention of the dandified flaneur.
Life of a Bluestocking is not only a celebration of Niblock’s tenure as writer in residence at Apartment but a gentle interrogation of the recent historic or ‘museological’ turn in the contemporary art scene and the ‘Mark Dion’ effect in archaeological and natural history museums across the globe, typified by the successful Alchemy programmes at the Manchester Museum, and an interesting response to the ubiquity of the ‘cabinet of curiosity’ in the Gallery.
The history of Apartment is one that knowingly straddles the peripheries and cut and thrust of knowledge production and critical discourse, a space that reflects an ongoing conversation on the intersections of art, urban and cultural studies on social relations and everyday life. It is surely no coincidence that Apartment has embraced the opportunity to comment on the prevailing trend of sending the artist into the museum by bringing the museologist into the art space, inviting a historian and archaeologist to explore and examine the role of the artist in the documenting of an ‘archaeology of now’, our defining quotidian moment.
there is also tea and a tour taking place this thursday, from 3 - 5pm - do come along!
places are limited so please book so we can make enough tea!
No comments:
Post a Comment