The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the British Council would like to invite you to the next meeting of the “Exercises in Timeliness” series where we pose a question of how to define contemporary art as compared to modern art. Where does the first, and where does the latter begin? What attitudes do both of them combine? Can works created nowadays be non-contemporary? How to write a history of contemporary art?
In their conversation, Goshka Macuga and Dieter Roelstraete will talk about Macuga’s practice that interweaves two strands that have helped define contemporary art in the last decade: artists’ increasing tendency toward historical and archival research and their growing interest in strategies of display and the dialogue between artistic and curatorial practice. What would that “practically” mean? How does the “archeology of culture” work as a method or the strategy in the artistic practice?
Goshka Macuga (born 1967, Warsaw) has lived and worked in London for many years, and was nominated in 2008 for a Turner Prize—the most prestigious award in British art. She uses a method described as cultural archaeology: each of her projects is preceded by in-depth archival and historical research, which allows her to reveal the broader context of the phenomena in question. She creates installations which include works by other artists, archive materials, and ready-mades, as well as her own objects, and thus she combines the roles of artist and curator.
Dieter Roelstraete is the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where in 2011 he curated “Goshka Macuga: Exhibit, A”.
The meeting will be held in English.
Admission free.
Art work by Goshka Macuga “Letter” is a part of the arts collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.