John Slyce - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by John Slyce

Contemporary Art in the United Kingdom is a diverse, in-depth exploration of those at the cutting... more Contemporary Art in the United Kingdom is a diverse, in-depth exploration of those at the cutting edge of British Art, providing a unique complexion of the contemporary art scene in the British Isles. Including work by artists including Gillian Wearing, Steve McQueen, Fiona Banner, Bob and Roberta Smith, Chris Ofili, Douglas Gordon, Sarah Lucas, Liam Gillick, Tacita Dean, Paul Noble, Carey Young.

The publication comprises the best of Art Monthly's interviews with some 65 artists, ranging ... more The publication comprises the best of Art Monthly's interviews with some 65 artists, ranging from Marina Abramović to Artur Żmijewski, which together provide an entertaining and alternative history of art. Since it was founded in 1976 the magazine has consistently published interviews with leading contemporary artists. The collection brought together here offers unique insights into the thought processes and working practices of artists, as well as evolution of the form of the interview. This collection includes interviews Slyce conducted with Seth Siegelaub, Lawrence Weiner and Liam Gillick, which traduce the origins of conceptual art and practices to the contemporary trajectories of post-conceptual practices and media in an expanded field

Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca eBooks, 2000

‘The travelling scholar’ is an essay published in Rodney Graham’s artist’s book British Weatherva... more ‘The travelling scholar’ is an essay published in Rodney Graham’s artist’s book British Weathervanes (2009, reprinted 2011), produced in conjunction with the inauguration of Graham's weathervane on the cupola of the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Slyce’s essay explores the legacy of Erasmus and Humanism through the prism of Passmore Edwards and his efforts to establish a public library in Whitechapel. This text continued Slyce’s experiments with alternative modes of writing and art criticism. Early plans for the Whitechapel Library included provision for an unrealised weathervane. Graham based the weathervane on an anecdote which claimed that Erasmus wrote his most well-known work, The Praise of Folly, on horseback during a journey from Italy to England, around1510. The form and content of Slyce’s text mirrors Graham’s own chameleon-like art practices, through the adoption of an anachronistic style and tone more closely associated with humanist literature of the 19th century. Although Graham is only mentioned by name once, each written line can be read as a statement about his work and practice. Slyce took a similar approach in his essay ‘Becky Beasley: Vermischte Bemerkungen: correspondences’, in the limited-edition artist’s book Thomas Bernard Malamud (2009). In this context, Slyce weaved a set of 32 quotations (being the number of Bach’s Goldberg Variations as performed by Glenn Gould in 1955; 1981) from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writings gathered together posthumously in Culture and Value (1977; 1985). The quotations were ordered and adjusted to produce a complementary set of propositions about Beasley’s own practice and the writings she draws upon. Slyce presented his research into prevalent modes of critical theory at the ‘Contemporary Painting in Context’ symposium December 2013 at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in conjunction with Tate Britain.

The essay ‘Adventures close to home’ was published in the catalogue to accompany the internationa... more The essay ‘Adventures close to home’ was published in the catalogue to accompany the internationally touring exhibition ‘Elixir: The Video Organism of Pipilotti Rist’ at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, both in 2009. Consciously deviating from the tone and domain of the standard catalogue essay, Slyce’s text offered a complementary and parallel perspective to the show, providing a framework of ideas with which to structure one’s experience of the exhibition. Slyce tested the conventions of the catalogue essay. The writing was based on 36 hours of interviews with Pipilotti Rist conducted in New York, London and Zurich. This extended conversation shaped the perspective and position of the text, linking closely to the conception and making of Rist’s work. Slyce’s interviewing method is centred on exploring the specific characteristics of an artist’s practice, i.e. how an artist might think, speak, read, write and conceive of their wider activities as resources for the making of their ‘art’. Slyce juxtaposes this approach to practice with one that would focus more narrowly on the set of art objects produced by an artist. His interviews with artists are typically conducted as dialogues that draw on critical analysis, intuitive apprehension and appreciations of what constitutes their practice. These are continually tested throughout the extended conversation. The catalogue was launched at the opening of the exhibition at the Museum Boijmans (2009). Slyce has given lectures about his methodology at the Christie’s Education MA in Modern and Contemporary Art and Art World Practices programme since 2009.

Survey essay in catalogue to accompany the exhibition Elixir: The Video Organism of Pipilotti Ris... more Survey essay in catalogue to accompany the exhibition Elixir: The Video Organism of Pipilotti Rist. This catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition Elixir: the video organism of Pipilotti Rist at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, both in 2009.

Essay in a monograph associated with the exhibition Julian Opie: Sculptures, Paintings, Films at ... more Essay in a monograph associated with the exhibition Julian Opie: Sculptures, Paintings, Films at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Poland, 18 October 2014 to 25 January 2015. Slyce attempts to re-examine the lineaments of Opie's practice for a new and broader audience. During which, he calls attention in the writing to the processes of its commissioning and early request to do so for a 'Polish audience'. He attempts to bring to light some of these often invisible moves in the commissioning of catalogue essays, while also re-examining Julian Opie's practice in light of its established reception in Britain.

The essay ‘Something out of the ordinary’ was originally written for the Camden Arts Centre to ac... more The essay ‘Something out of the ordinary’ was originally written for the Camden Arts Centre to accompany Allen Ruppersberg’s solo show in 2008. Slyce’s essay examined the everyday as a resource for Ruppersberg’s art, drawing on research in and around Ruppersberg’s practice as a central figure in establishing conceptualism on the West Coast of the USA. Slyce contextualised Ruppersberg amongst the leading figures exploring post-studio practices and creating an ‘art of the everyday’ that adopts the archive as not only a resource but also as the material from which art might be made. The essay was republished in the catalogue Allen Ruppersberg: You and Me or the Art of Give and Take (2010), which accompanied Ruppersberg’s exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, California (12 September–19 December 2010). For this publication, the essay was integrated into a catalogue that Ruppersberg designed as an artwork in itself, modelled on a 1956 edition of a California and Las Vegas travel ...

The telephone has always struck me as an ideal medium in which to converse with Dan Graham—his ti... more The telephone has always struck me as an ideal medium in which to converse with Dan Graham—his timing and use of the rhythms of speech on the phone rarely fail to surprise and impress. When one interviews Dan, you really just need to keep out of his way—you wind him up, and off he goes. On the phone, even during an informal conversation, he has the uncanny knack of anticipating its end and is able to cut-out the prolonged farewell by interjecting, when somehow you least expect it: 'O.K. Bye!' For more than 50 years Graham has shaped a practice that encompasses curation, writing, pavilion architecture, video, photography and performance in a trans-media mode. Graham was born in Urbana, Illinois in 1942, but only because his father went to university there (Dan grew up in New Jersey). He loves rock and roll and idolises Ray Davies, even naming his pavilion atop the Hayward Gallery, which overlooks the Thames in London, Waterloo Sunset (2002–03). Ray approved. From 1964 to 1965...

Slyce contributes an essay to this volume–deriving from the 2018 Verbier Art Summit with the them... more Slyce contributes an essay to this volume–deriving from the 2018 Verbier Art Summit with the theme More Than Real: Art in the Digital Age–that analyses our moment and its infatuation with the technological sublime. He examines drives towards Virtual Reality in light of both an earlier moment of technological innovation through Walter Benjamin’s writing on 19th century photography and then signal examples of 1960s practices coming out of post-Minimalism and Conceptualism that explored new technologies while not succumbing to their forces or distanced modes of production. Starting with two signal cultural products of the 1980s in a song by the avant-rock band Pere Ubu and then David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Slyce considers the conditions of making and the experience of virtual reality as art now, some five years before it is imagined–at least by the corporate powers standing behind VR–when ‘we’ will all own at least two such devices. The book, published by Koenig Books, was launched a...

Catalogue essay exploring the work of the artist Allen Ruppersberg published first in conjunction... more Catalogue essay exploring the work of the artist Allen Ruppersberg published first in conjunction with The Camden Arts Centre, London and here reprinted in the artist's book and catalogue to Ruppersberg's retrospective at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, California.

Slyce has contributed entries for the artists Oscar Murillo and Yelena Popova to this third publi... more Slyce has contributed entries for the artists Oscar Murillo and Yelena Popova to this third publication in the series. As well as a contributing writer to the series, Slyce was invited to join a group of "distinguisded critics, curators, museum directors and other contemporary art experts to nominate artists who have made significant and innovative contributions to painting."

Michael Landy (b. 1963) is one of the most exciting and challenging artists to have emerged at th... more Michael Landy (b. 1963) is one of the most exciting and challenging artists to have emerged at the beginning of the 1990s. Landy is best known for his work "Break Down (2001), during which he created a meticulous inventory of his possessions before systematically destroying them in the window of an empty London department store. The book records Landy's first major installation since "Break Down, to be on view at Tate Britain, London. Chronicling the work through descriptive text and installation photography, this is the first publication devoted to the artist and offers new insight into his career.

This project is a reprint of the artist-run journal The Fox, issues No.1, 2 and 3, originally pub... more This project is a reprint of the artist-run journal The Fox, issues No.1, 2 and 3, originally published in New York in 1975–6. Slyce proof-read and edited all three re-typeset issues of the journal and wrote the essay, ‘The Fox: An intervention for our moment’, which contextualises The Fox and its legacy for current practice and activism. The Fox critically addressed the social dimensions of art practice during a crucial political and cultural conjuncture of the 1970s, in the wake of Conceptualism and its absorption by the museum and market. Editors included members of Art & Language in the UK and New York; there were contributions from Adrian Piper and Martha Rosler, who were among key practitioners mapping the limits of contemporary practices. The reprint project put this largely untapped resource back into circulation for current practitioners, who share much with the original moment of the journal’s production. Both periods can be characterised as social and economic times of bo...

Contemporary Art in the United Kingdom is a diverse, in-depth exploration of those at the cutting... more Contemporary Art in the United Kingdom is a diverse, in-depth exploration of those at the cutting edge of British Art, providing a unique complexion of the contemporary art scene in the British Isles. Including work by artists including Gillian Wearing, Steve McQueen, Fiona Banner, Bob and Roberta Smith, Chris Ofili, Douglas Gordon, Sarah Lucas, Liam Gillick, Tacita Dean, Paul Noble, Carey Young.

The publication comprises the best of Art Monthly's interviews with some 65 artists, ranging ... more The publication comprises the best of Art Monthly's interviews with some 65 artists, ranging from Marina Abramović to Artur Żmijewski, which together provide an entertaining and alternative history of art. Since it was founded in 1976 the magazine has consistently published interviews with leading contemporary artists. The collection brought together here offers unique insights into the thought processes and working practices of artists, as well as evolution of the form of the interview. This collection includes interviews Slyce conducted with Seth Siegelaub, Lawrence Weiner and Liam Gillick, which traduce the origins of conceptual art and practices to the contemporary trajectories of post-conceptual practices and media in an expanded field

Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca eBooks, 2000

‘The travelling scholar’ is an essay published in Rodney Graham’s artist’s book British Weatherva... more ‘The travelling scholar’ is an essay published in Rodney Graham’s artist’s book British Weathervanes (2009, reprinted 2011), produced in conjunction with the inauguration of Graham's weathervane on the cupola of the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Slyce’s essay explores the legacy of Erasmus and Humanism through the prism of Passmore Edwards and his efforts to establish a public library in Whitechapel. This text continued Slyce’s experiments with alternative modes of writing and art criticism. Early plans for the Whitechapel Library included provision for an unrealised weathervane. Graham based the weathervane on an anecdote which claimed that Erasmus wrote his most well-known work, The Praise of Folly, on horseback during a journey from Italy to England, around1510. The form and content of Slyce’s text mirrors Graham’s own chameleon-like art practices, through the adoption of an anachronistic style and tone more closely associated with humanist literature of the 19th century. Although Graham is only mentioned by name once, each written line can be read as a statement about his work and practice. Slyce took a similar approach in his essay ‘Becky Beasley: Vermischte Bemerkungen: correspondences’, in the limited-edition artist’s book Thomas Bernard Malamud (2009). In this context, Slyce weaved a set of 32 quotations (being the number of Bach’s Goldberg Variations as performed by Glenn Gould in 1955; 1981) from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writings gathered together posthumously in Culture and Value (1977; 1985). The quotations were ordered and adjusted to produce a complementary set of propositions about Beasley’s own practice and the writings she draws upon. Slyce presented his research into prevalent modes of critical theory at the ‘Contemporary Painting in Context’ symposium December 2013 at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in conjunction with Tate Britain.

The essay ‘Adventures close to home’ was published in the catalogue to accompany the internationa... more The essay ‘Adventures close to home’ was published in the catalogue to accompany the internationally touring exhibition ‘Elixir: The Video Organism of Pipilotti Rist’ at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, both in 2009. Consciously deviating from the tone and domain of the standard catalogue essay, Slyce’s text offered a complementary and parallel perspective to the show, providing a framework of ideas with which to structure one’s experience of the exhibition. Slyce tested the conventions of the catalogue essay. The writing was based on 36 hours of interviews with Pipilotti Rist conducted in New York, London and Zurich. This extended conversation shaped the perspective and position of the text, linking closely to the conception and making of Rist’s work. Slyce’s interviewing method is centred on exploring the specific characteristics of an artist’s practice, i.e. how an artist might think, speak, read, write and conceive of their wider activities as resources for the making of their ‘art’. Slyce juxtaposes this approach to practice with one that would focus more narrowly on the set of art objects produced by an artist. His interviews with artists are typically conducted as dialogues that draw on critical analysis, intuitive apprehension and appreciations of what constitutes their practice. These are continually tested throughout the extended conversation. The catalogue was launched at the opening of the exhibition at the Museum Boijmans (2009). Slyce has given lectures about his methodology at the Christie’s Education MA in Modern and Contemporary Art and Art World Practices programme since 2009.

Survey essay in catalogue to accompany the exhibition Elixir: The Video Organism of Pipilotti Ris... more Survey essay in catalogue to accompany the exhibition Elixir: The Video Organism of Pipilotti Rist. This catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition Elixir: the video organism of Pipilotti Rist at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, both in 2009.

Essay in a monograph associated with the exhibition Julian Opie: Sculptures, Paintings, Films at ... more Essay in a monograph associated with the exhibition Julian Opie: Sculptures, Paintings, Films at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Poland, 18 October 2014 to 25 January 2015. Slyce attempts to re-examine the lineaments of Opie's practice for a new and broader audience. During which, he calls attention in the writing to the processes of its commissioning and early request to do so for a 'Polish audience'. He attempts to bring to light some of these often invisible moves in the commissioning of catalogue essays, while also re-examining Julian Opie's practice in light of its established reception in Britain.

The essay ‘Something out of the ordinary’ was originally written for the Camden Arts Centre to ac... more The essay ‘Something out of the ordinary’ was originally written for the Camden Arts Centre to accompany Allen Ruppersberg’s solo show in 2008. Slyce’s essay examined the everyday as a resource for Ruppersberg’s art, drawing on research in and around Ruppersberg’s practice as a central figure in establishing conceptualism on the West Coast of the USA. Slyce contextualised Ruppersberg amongst the leading figures exploring post-studio practices and creating an ‘art of the everyday’ that adopts the archive as not only a resource but also as the material from which art might be made. The essay was republished in the catalogue Allen Ruppersberg: You and Me or the Art of Give and Take (2010), which accompanied Ruppersberg’s exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, California (12 September–19 December 2010). For this publication, the essay was integrated into a catalogue that Ruppersberg designed as an artwork in itself, modelled on a 1956 edition of a California and Las Vegas travel ...

The telephone has always struck me as an ideal medium in which to converse with Dan Graham—his ti... more The telephone has always struck me as an ideal medium in which to converse with Dan Graham—his timing and use of the rhythms of speech on the phone rarely fail to surprise and impress. When one interviews Dan, you really just need to keep out of his way—you wind him up, and off he goes. On the phone, even during an informal conversation, he has the uncanny knack of anticipating its end and is able to cut-out the prolonged farewell by interjecting, when somehow you least expect it: 'O.K. Bye!' For more than 50 years Graham has shaped a practice that encompasses curation, writing, pavilion architecture, video, photography and performance in a trans-media mode. Graham was born in Urbana, Illinois in 1942, but only because his father went to university there (Dan grew up in New Jersey). He loves rock and roll and idolises Ray Davies, even naming his pavilion atop the Hayward Gallery, which overlooks the Thames in London, Waterloo Sunset (2002–03). Ray approved. From 1964 to 1965...

Slyce contributes an essay to this volume–deriving from the 2018 Verbier Art Summit with the them... more Slyce contributes an essay to this volume–deriving from the 2018 Verbier Art Summit with the theme More Than Real: Art in the Digital Age–that analyses our moment and its infatuation with the technological sublime. He examines drives towards Virtual Reality in light of both an earlier moment of technological innovation through Walter Benjamin’s writing on 19th century photography and then signal examples of 1960s practices coming out of post-Minimalism and Conceptualism that explored new technologies while not succumbing to their forces or distanced modes of production. Starting with two signal cultural products of the 1980s in a song by the avant-rock band Pere Ubu and then David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Slyce considers the conditions of making and the experience of virtual reality as art now, some five years before it is imagined–at least by the corporate powers standing behind VR–when ‘we’ will all own at least two such devices. The book, published by Koenig Books, was launched a...

Catalogue essay exploring the work of the artist Allen Ruppersberg published first in conjunction... more Catalogue essay exploring the work of the artist Allen Ruppersberg published first in conjunction with The Camden Arts Centre, London and here reprinted in the artist's book and catalogue to Ruppersberg's retrospective at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, California.

Slyce has contributed entries for the artists Oscar Murillo and Yelena Popova to this third publi... more Slyce has contributed entries for the artists Oscar Murillo and Yelena Popova to this third publication in the series. As well as a contributing writer to the series, Slyce was invited to join a group of "distinguisded critics, curators, museum directors and other contemporary art experts to nominate artists who have made significant and innovative contributions to painting."

Michael Landy (b. 1963) is one of the most exciting and challenging artists to have emerged at th... more Michael Landy (b. 1963) is one of the most exciting and challenging artists to have emerged at the beginning of the 1990s. Landy is best known for his work "Break Down (2001), during which he created a meticulous inventory of his possessions before systematically destroying them in the window of an empty London department store. The book records Landy's first major installation since "Break Down, to be on view at Tate Britain, London. Chronicling the work through descriptive text and installation photography, this is the first publication devoted to the artist and offers new insight into his career.

This project is a reprint of the artist-run journal The Fox, issues No.1, 2 and 3, originally pub... more This project is a reprint of the artist-run journal The Fox, issues No.1, 2 and 3, originally published in New York in 1975–6. Slyce proof-read and edited all three re-typeset issues of the journal and wrote the essay, ‘The Fox: An intervention for our moment’, which contextualises The Fox and its legacy for current practice and activism. The Fox critically addressed the social dimensions of art practice during a crucial political and cultural conjuncture of the 1970s, in the wake of Conceptualism and its absorption by the museum and market. Editors included members of Art & Language in the UK and New York; there were contributions from Adrian Piper and Martha Rosler, who were among key practitioners mapping the limits of contemporary practices. The reprint project put this largely untapped resource back into circulation for current practitioners, who share much with the original moment of the journal’s production. Both periods can be characterised as social and economic times of bo...