Contemporary Art Society’s Annual Conference: On Collecting Performance Art

INTRODUCTION Now in its sixth year, the Contemporary Art Society’s Annual Conference brings together a range of high profile speakers including artists, curators, gallerists and legal professionals, to address the subject of collecting performance art. The conference will focus on questions in relation to display and conservation, as well as ethical and legal matters, and all of this against the backdrop of the scarcity of performance art in public collections in this country. Traditionally performance art has not enjoyed the same commercial success as other mediums, such as painting, sculpture or works on paper. As a result fewer works of this medium exist in public and private collections. However, this is now gradually beginning to change as we start to see significant performance artworks from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as works by contemporary artists, being acquired more frequently. What once prohibited many performance works from entering the market was the works lack of autonomy or ability to exist independently from the artist. In many cases this has now been reframed in such a way that works entering collections have often been created to no longer be dependent on the artist as performer. However, what is particular to this medium is the artists’ ongoing relationship with their works, which as a result, demands new and pioneering methods of research and collaboration to ensure public collections can continue to acquire works in perpetuity. How can we develop a culture of confident problem solving in relation to the conservation of unfamiliar and sometimes unstable media? How can we ensure conservation knowledge is evenly spread and accessible across the sector? How do curatorial, exhibition and conservation team’s work together to find the solutions that will enable us to acquire works by artists of our time and to ensure that they can be experienced in the future? Keynote Speaker: Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Galleries, Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate Modern,Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Artist, Henry Lydiate, Creative Arts Business Consultancy and Chris Hammond, Director, MOT International. SCHEDULE 14.10 – 14.40 Chris Hammond, Director, MOT International Chris Hammond will discuss approaches to collecting contemporary performance, in addition to the current markets for performance documentation, particularly in relation to practices from the 1970′s. Hammond will discuss key examples that emphasise his gallery’s particular strength in performance-based practice, including artists Cally Spooner, Katrina Palmer, Dennis Oppenheim, Ulay, and Laure Provost. SPEAKERS BIOGRAPHIES’ Chris Hammond Chris Hammond founded commercial gallery MOT International in 2006, opening a second space in Brussels in 2011. In 2015 the gallery will open a third space, also in Brussels, on the Avenue Louise, expanding the scale and ambition of the exhibition programme. At MOT International, Hammond established the early careers of artists such as 2012 Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price, and 2013 Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost. The gallery has concentrated on developing a programme that foregrounds a high proportion of conceptual, video and performance based practice, particularly with historically-significant artists who have been under-represented in European and US markets. In the last three years, Hammond has expanded the roster to work with artists such as Ulay, Dennis Oppenheim, Braco Dimitrijevic, Seung-Taek Lee and Nil Yalter. As an independent curator, Hammond has worked with artists such as Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Paul McCarthy, Derek Jarman, Stephen Willats and Omer Fast