Look, a Look Club!
Look, a Look Club!
Friends talking about art
Look, a Look Club!
Look, a Look Club!
Friends talking about art
We all know about book clubs: a few people in a room, talking about a book, sharing ideas and opinions, taking turns to pick out something that they find interesting, being surprised at other people’s choices and sometimes at their own response to them, learning something new.
So, what about a Look Club? Why couldn’t all those experiences be replicated by sitting down together and talking about a work of art? No reason at all, and it was out of that conviction the The Friends of the Whitworth Look Club came about.
At our inaugural meeting in June, 16 of us gathered in the Cafe at the Whitworth Gallery to talk about John Akomfrah’s video installation, Vertigo Sea. It probably wouldn’t have been everyone’s choice. Video art is not universally liked even though has been around for a while, so much so that by 2013 Jonathan Jones, the Guardian’s art critic, was asking whether video art was obsolete. His conclusion? It wasn’t, but the most effective practitioners, he argued, constantly reinvented it. Our conversation about Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea seemed to be heading to much the same conclusion. A three video installation wasn’t just more of the same three times over, but a modern day triptych that evoked its origins and combined them with questions and concerns-the plight of migrants and the disappeared, fragile identities, ecological disasters- that were central to our own century. Of course, no conclusion was ever reached. The Look Club ended, but the conversation continued.
The next meeting of the Look Club is on 27th July. In keeping with the spirit of the Club we will be looking at very different work, this time by the 18th century water colourists, Alexander Cozens and his son, John Robert. The discussion will be introduced by Juliet Jones, a member of the Friends of the Whitworth, who is herself a water colourist. We have a waiting list at the moment for membership, but please let us know if you are interested and we will get back to you when we have places.
We all know about book clubs: a few people in a room, talking about a book, sharing ideas and opinions, taking turns to pick out something that they find interesting, being surprised at other people’s choices and sometimes at their own response to them, learning something new.
So, what about a Look Club? Why couldn’t all those experiences be replicated by sitting down together and talking about a work of art? No reason at all, and it was out of that conviction the The Friends of the Whitworth Look Club came about.
At our inaugural meeting in June, 16 of us gathered in the Cafe at the Whitworth Gallery to talk about John Akomfrah’s video installation, Vertigo Sea. It probably wouldn’t have been everyone’s choice. Video art is not universally liked even though has been around for a while, so much so that by 2013 Jonathan Jones, the Guardian’s art critic, was asking whether video art was obsolete. His conclusion? It wasn’t, but the most effective practitioners, he argued, constantly reinvented it. Our conversation about Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea seemed to be heading to much the same conclusion. A three video installation wasn’t just more of the same three times over, but a modern day triptych that evoked its origins and combined them with questions and concerns-the plight of migrants and the disappeared, fragile identities, ecological disasters- that were central to our own century. Of course, no conclusion was ever reached. The Look Club ended, but the conversation continued.
The next meeting of the Look Club is on 27th July. In keeping with the spirit of the Club we will be looking at very different work, this time by the 18th century water colourists, Alexander Cozens and his son, John Robert. The discussion will be introduced by Juliet Jones, a member of the Friends of the Whitworth, who is herself a water colourist. We have a waiting list at the moment for membership, but please let us know if you are interested and we will get back to you when we have places.
Comments & Discussion
No comments to display