Art16 Talks Programme: Let's Talk About Art

Dynamic voices from the international art, design, architecture and fashion worlds will come together at Art16 to discuss art in all its forms and the impact it has on our lives.

The Art16 talks programme is curated by Sophie Hastings, contributing editor at GQ and freelance journalist specialising in the international contemporary art scene.   

Book your seat by emailing [email protected] with the name of the talk(s) you'd like to attend and your contact details.

Please note a booking to an Art16 talk does not include access to Art16, you must also purchase a ticket to gain entry to the Fair. Access to the talks will be available on a first come, first served basis.

FRIDAY MAY 20 2016

STATE OF THE ART WORLD

Friday May 20 2016, 12:30

Dylan Jones OBE in conversation with Kenny Schachter.

Kenny Schachter tells it how it is, with breathtaking honesty: The art market is a fistfull of people relentlessly chasing the same art, like dogs after their own tails. Flipping is a fossilized footnote. Trickledown art-o-nomics has created a new (art) world order where even Krispy Kreme is making donuts in limited editions. The ever-tightening net of sought-after contemporary art is now so small that Stingel is the new Stingel. With Dylan Jones’ expert encouragement, who knows what Schachter will reveal as he strips the international art carousel to its bare bones?

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DYLAN JONES. Journalist, author and editor of British GQ since 1999, Jones studied graphic design, film and photography at Chelsea School of Art and Central St Martins before beginning his career in journalism at i-D, Arena and The Face. His OBE was awarded in 2013 for services to the publishing and British fashion industries and he is an art lover and collector.

KENNY SCHACHTER. Dealer in Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art, Schachter is also a writer and academic who lectures in art history, currently for the graduate programme at Zurich University. He is a prolific writer and has contributed to books on Zaha Hadid, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, but he is particularly celebrated by the art world for his searing analysis of the global art scene on the art market website, Artnet, illustrated with art works made by Schachter himself.

WEARABLE ART: ARTIST-MADE JEWELLERY TRANSFORMS THE WEARER INTO A WALKING WORK OF ART

Friday May 20 2016, 3:00

Panel: Elisabetta Cipriani, Stephen Webster MBE, Andrew Logan, Didier Haspeslagh, moderated by Harriet Quick

Collectable, covetable and (relatively) affordable, artist-made jewellery is the millenial art-lover’s must-have, but what is behind its sudden surge in popularity? From Alexander Calder and Yves Tanguy, who both made earrings for the ground-breaking collector Peggy Guggenheim, in 1942, to Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Man Ray, artists have long-regarded jewellery as small-form sculpture. They tended to produce pieces as one-offs for their most loyal patrons but, recently, galleries devoted to wearable art have sprung up and are commissioning the world’s top contemporary artists to create these dimuitive works. Always tactile, sometimes kinetic or emitting tiny sounds, the pieces are all about an intimate relationship between the artist, the work and the wearer - the artist’s imaginary woman come to life.

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ELISABETTA CIPRIANI. The London-based gallerist commissions top-flight contemporary artists to make their first pieces of jewellery, including Enrico Castellani, Erwin Wurm, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Jannis Kounellis, Rebecca Horn, Tatsuo Miyajima and Ai Weiwei. Her collaborative projects can be found in museums and private collections from the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, to the Museum of Art & Design, New York, to The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

STEPHEN WEBSTER MBE. When Webster opened his first eponymous store in London in 1994, his edgy designs were a sure sign that jewellery was the new rock n roll. His muse was Christina Aguilera and clients include Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez and Elton John, but a recent collaboration with his old friend Tracey Emin is Webster’s most exciting departure yet. The collection, I Promise to Love You, is inspired by the artist’s neon messages, drawings of woodland animals and a flying penis. ‘Stephen isn’t just a jeweller, he’s a superstar,’ says Emin.

ANDREW LOGAN. Sculptor, jewellery-maker, performance artist, founder of the Alternative Miss World and owner of his eponymous sculpture museum in Wales, Logan is a true English eccentric. He has long been a key figure on London’s cultural scene, inspiring filmmaker Derek Jarman to document him and his coterie. Logan has collaborated with Zandra Rhodes and Emmanual Ungaro, and his work has been exhibited around the world, as well as at the V&A and the Hayward Gallery. He was given a major retrospective at Oxford Museum of Modern Art in 1991.

Moderated by HARRIET QUICK

SATURDAY MAY 21 2016

BREAKING BOUNDARIES: DOES CROSS-FERTILIZATION MAKE ARTISTS MORE CREATIVE?

Saturday May 21 2016, 12:30

Panel: Julie Verhoeven, Sean Griffiths, Tanya Ling, Tayah Leigh Barrs, moderated by Caroline Roux

There’s something about London that encourages people to break the rules. London’s sense of artistic freedom comes from its deep self-confidence as a cultural and creative melting pot, but also has its roots in conceptual art - Duchamps’ urinal, Andre’s bricks, Craig-Martin’s Oak Tree (currently at Tate Britain). By the 60s, art was no longer defined by its materials and artists were free to use whatever they chose, not just bronze or paint. By the 80s, when the nascent YBAs coalecsed at Goldsmith’s, their contraversial tutors (including Craig-Martin) blurred the lines between once distinct disciplines and there was no going back. These days, we don’t bat an eyelid as fine artists make feature films, architecture collectives win the Turner Prize, fashion illustrators show as contemporary artists. Are we losing the rigour of old school art practice or becoming ever more creative?

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JULIE VERHOEVEN. An illustrator and designer who trained with John Galliano and Martine Sitbon, Verhoeven has collaborated with brands such as Louis Vuitton, Versace and Peter Jensen. She teaches design and women’s wear at Central St Martins and the RCA, but is increasingly regarded in terms of her output as a contemporary artist. Her 2014 solo show at the ICA, Whiskers Between My Legs, was hailed as ‘a visual and auditory feast.’

SEAN GRIFFITHS. Griffiths co-founded the award-winning architecture collective, FAT (fashion architecture taste), in 1991, which made its name with experimental projects like the Anti-Oedipal House, 1993, which separated parents from children, and vending machines that distributed art at the 1995 Venice Biennale. FAT split in 2013, having completed A House for Essex, in collaboration with Grayson Perry. Griffiths is Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster and a Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale, and is pursuing his career as an artist.

TANYA LING. Born in Calcutta, Ling grew up in America, Africa and England. She studied at St Martins School of Art and worked in Paris as a designer for Christian Lacroix before returning to London to become a fashion illustrator, commissoned by Vogue, Louis Vuitton, Selfridges and Frieze Art Fair, among many. In 2002, she produced a ready-to-wear collection, presented by Gavin Turk at the Mayor Gallery, London, and showed her A/W 2003 collection at the ICA. Ling currently works as an illustrator, artist and sculptor.

TAYAH LEIGH BARRS. Tayah Leigh Barrs worked as art director for Mario Testino before launching her east London space, Studio Leigh, last year. A commercial gallery and commissioning platform, Studio Leigh explores the tension between use-value and art for art’s sake, uniting art, design and function. Commissions include an art book by abstract artist Mary Ramsden featuring short stories by Adam Thirwell, a ‘massage wall’ by performance artist Florence Peake and glass tables and lights by painter & sculptor Gabriel Hartley.

Moderated by CAROLINE ROUX 

ART & WOMEN: DO WOMEN [STILL] HAVE TO BE NAKED TO GET INTO THE MET. MUSEUM?

Saturday May 21 2016, 3:00

Panel: Valeria Napoleone, Louise McKinney, Eloise Hawser, Caro Howell, Anita Zabludowicz OBE, moderated by Louisa Buck

It is three decades since the Guerrilla Girls posed this hugely resonant, rhetorical question, but has anything really changed? Their iconic poster went on to point out that '5% of the artists in the modern art section are women but 85% of the nudes are female.’ In 2012, a second investigation found that only 4% of artists at the Met.were women. The Guerilla Girls’ feminist collective was formed in response to MoMA’s 1984 International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, which featured 169 artists, of whom only 13 were women. So is the art world now and forever a boys’ club? Our panel of high-profile women in the arts - a collector, a museum director, an artist and a leading cultural professional - discuss their careers and experiences, and think about how to be the change we want to see.

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VALERIA NAPOLEONE. Art patron and collector of female artists only, Valeria recently launched Valeria Napoleone XX, an initiative to get more women into museums and public galleries.

LOUISE MCKINNEY. Specialising in strategic businesses development in the arts sector, Louise has worked at the Lisson gallery, the Serpentine gallery and the Whitechapel. In 2014, she co-founded the international cultural consultancy A-I-R (arts ideas realised).

ELOISE HAWSER. Born in 1985 and trained at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, Eloise provides a millenial perspective. Her practice incorporates film, photography, sculpture and installation and her work has been shown at the ICA, Tate Britain, New Museum New York, Astrup Fearnly Museum Oslo and the Zabludowicz Collection, among many other international galleries and museums.

CARO HOWELL. Caro has been Director of the Foundling Museum, London, since 2011. She worked previously as head of education and public events at the Whitechapel Gallery and is part of Tate Modern’s set-up team (since 1997) in which role she won a BAFTA for i-map (2002), the UK’s first online art resourse for blind and partially-sighted people.

ANITA ZABLUDOWICZ OBE. Philanthropist, co-founder Zabludowicz Collection.

Moderated by LOUISA BUCK: Buck is a British art critic and contemporary art correspondent for The Art Newspaper. She was a jurist for the 2005 Turner Prize. She is also an author and co-author of books on the contemporary art market.