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Tate Modern
Talk & Lecture

CONTACT POINTS
A seminar organised by the Tate Research Centre: Asia
21 November 2016 at 14.00-18.00


"Tate Research Centre: Asia Visiting Fellows Eva Bentcheva and Yohko
Watanabe present their research

This seminar examines two international 'contact points' between artists
in the twentieth century: the 1970 Tokyo Biennale and David Medalla's
performance practice in London and the Philippines.

Contact Points represents the culmination of Tate Research Centre: Asia's
Visiting Fellowship Programme in 2016; both Eva Bentcheva and Yohko
Watanabe conducted their research as the Centre's Visiting Fellows.

Panel One: A Stitch in Time? Situating David Medalla's 'Participation-
Performance' between British and Philippine Performance Art History
Chair: Eva Bentcheva
Speakers: David Medalla and Adam Nankervis

Panel Two: Tokyo Biennale 1970 as Contact Point
Chair: Yohko Watanabe
Speakers: Toshiaki Minemura and Susumu Koshimizu"


Biographies

Susumu Koshimizu

Susumu Koshimizu (b.1944, Uwajima, Ehime) is a sculpture and installation
artist based in Osaka. Koshimizu was a key member of Mono-ha ('School of
Things'): the Japanese artistic movement that privileged 'non-making' by
displaying raw and often industrial materials with minimal intervention.
For the 1970 Tokyo Biennale, Koshimizu produced two works - Iron Plate I
and Iron Plate II - and was one of the youngest artists that participated.
In addition to solo exhibitions in Japan and the United States,
Koshimizu's work has featured in several notable international surveys
including Avant-Garde Art of Japan 1910-1970 (Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris 1986); Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York 1994) and most recently Mono-ha(Fonazione,
Milan 2015). From 1980-2010, Koshimizu taught in the sculpture department
at Kyoto City University of Art, and served as a president of Takarazuka.

David Medalla

David Medalla (b.1942, Manila) is a pioneer of kinetic art, participatory
art and performance art. After moving to New York aged 12 to study at
Columbia University, Medalla returned to Manila in the late 1950s where he
met the earliest patrons of his art. In 1960, French philosopher Gaston
Bachelard introduced Medalla's performance in homage to Rimbaud at the
Academy of the Arts of Raymond Duncan in Paris; two decades later, Louis
Aragon introduced another performance by Medalla at Galerie Biren, and
Marcel Duchamp honoured him with a 'medallic' object. Medalla was included
in Harald Szeemann's Weiss auf Weiss (Kunsthalle Bern, 1966) and Live in
Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969) and in the
DOCUMENTA 5 exhibition in 1972 in Kassel. In London, Medalla edited the
journal SIGNALS, (1964-1966), initiated the international multi-media
artist collective the Exploding Galaxy in 1967, and from 1974-1977 was the
chairman of Artists for Democracy. David Medalla co-founded the Mondrian
Fan Club with Adam Nankervis in 1991 and the London Biennale in 1999.

Toshiaki Minemura

Toshiaki Minemura (b.1936, Nagano) is an art critic based in Japan. A
graduate of French literature at the University of Tokyo, Minemura's
writings cover a range of subjects including notable contributions on the
Mono-ha movement, and on modern and contemporary sculpture and painting.
As a curator, Minemura contributed to the Tokyo Biennale 1970, the
Biennale de Paris in 1971, 1973 and 1975, the Biennale Internacionale de
Artes de São Paulo in 1977 and 1981 and the twenty-part exhibition series
Exhibition of 'Parallelism in Art' (1981-2005). Minemura taught at Tama
Art University in Tokyo from 1979 to 2005, and has been director of Tama
Art University Museum since 2006. He became a member of the International
Association of Art Critics (AICA) in 1970's, and has served as the
president of AICA Japan Region since 2012.

Adam Nankervis

Adam Nankervis (b.1965) is an artist and curator who has infused social,
conceptual and experimental practice in his lived-in nomadic museum,
'Museum MAN', and his ongoing project 'another vacant space'. His
immersion into the experimentation of social sculptural forms and
aesthetic collisions are a trademark of his art. His curatorial practice
is infused within his own projects: Blurprint of The Senses (Liverpool
Biennale, 2006); A Spires Embers (Arsenal Kiev 2009); iIsolation
(Izolyatsia Donetsk, Ukraine 2010); A Wake (Dumbo Arts Center, New York
2012). Nankervis' work also featured in the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale,
LIFE/LIVE (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris 1966) and the 2001 Los
Angeles Biennale. In collaboration with David Medalla, Nankervis formed
The Mondrian Fan Club in 1991, and is the International Coordinator of the
London Biennale 2000-2016 which was founded as a free-form artist
initiative. Nankervis manages Medalla's archive in Berlin.

(text © Tate 2016)




















The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture announcement, Nov. 17th 2016

"Phyllida Barlow, Steven Claydon, Helen Marten and David Medalla are
nominated for The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture, a new £30,000 biennial
award. The award recognises a British or UK-based artist of any age, at
any stage in their career, who has made a significant contribution to the
development of contemporary sculpture."

Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire, UK


article on wallpaper.com
article on theguardian.com
The Hepworth Prize of Sculpture: David Medalla (youtube)

works and imagery courtesy of another vacant space.



















metronomics

another vacant space., berlin
november 2016
















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