Event
A Collage Class: Revealing / Creating New or Alternative Narratives
Saturday 11 December 2021
In-person workshop facilitated by Harriet Sutcliffe in partnership with In-Session (FKA GRADJOB)
Focusing attention on the women, both students and staff, associated with the Basic Course at Newcastle University (formerly Durham University) during the 1950s and 1960s, the Collage Class will be a creative and discursive opportunity to participate in a selection of original exercises from the Basic Course.
Exploring radical pedagogical methods, artist and researcher Harriet Sutcliffe will lead the class as they cut, copy, borrow, reassemble and fold ideas and images into a collaborative collage, that suggests and reveals other alternative narratives and histories for the Basic Course.
This workshop forms part of The Ignorant Art School Sit-in Curriculum #2.
Participant information
This workshop has been co-commissioned with In Session (FKA GRADJOB) a learning and ‘unprofessional’ contemporary art practice programme that focuses on the needs of early-career practitioners working/practicing in Scotland. Priority will be given to graduates and current students to attend.
This is a limited capacity in-person event on the second floor of Cooper Gallery. Collage materials will be provided for participants.
Facilitator biography
Harriet Sutcliffe is an artist, researcher and lecturer based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her practice is often grounded and is imbued with a sense of place. Sutcliffe's work usually responds to a collection, site or archive through sculpture, installation, creative writing, collage, drawing, textiles, printmaking and workshops; her work seeks to reveal hidden/obscured histories and/or narratives.
Recent exhibitions include: 'A Continuing Process', Hatton Gallery, Newcastle (2019); 'Re-frame/ Re-model', a collaboration with Melanie Stephenson, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle (2018), 'The Great Craigside Cover: House & Garden', a collaboration with Kate Stobbart, Craigside, National Trust, Northumberland (2018); 'The Everyday Political', CGP Gallery, London (2018); and 'Women Artists of the North East Library' Great Exhibition of the North, Workplace Gallery, Gateshead (2018).
In Spring 2021, she was awarded an AHRC funded collaborative PhD from Newcastle University, which investigated the pioneering Basic Course devised and developed at Newcastle University in the 1950s and 1960s. In December, she will be an artist in residence at the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, alongside her other collaborators, artist Rosie Morris and curator Gayle Meikle.
Partner Biography
In Session FKA GRADJOB is a learning and ‘unprofessional’ contemporary art practice programme that focuses on the needs of early-career practitioners working/practicing in Scotland today along with the new challenges they now face as a result of COVID-19. The 8 month paid residency programme emerged in response to the lack of support, exploitation, and precarious working conditions experienced by emerging artists working in Scotland. Our goal is to provide long term support mechanisms for early-career creative practitioners, to demystify the contemporary art world and to create a space to make, share, dream and collaborate.
Funding support
The Ignorant Art School Sit-in #2 at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland and the Goethe-Institut Glasgow.
Image credit
- Rita Donagh teaching on the Basic Course. Image courtesy of NAEA@YSP, Richard Hamilton slide collection