MK Gallery900 Midsummer BlvdMilton Keynes MK9 3QAT +44 (0)1908 676 900info@mkgallery.org

For more information about our schools, colleges & universities programme, please contact:

Emma Fry: Head of LearningT: 01908 558 305E: efry@mkgallery.orgW: www.mkgallery.org/education

This document has been prepared by MK Gallery’s Learning Department for use by teachers and educators in schools, colleges and universities.It provides an overview of MK Gallery’s exhibitions in 2012.

It serves as a resource to support your forward planning, alerting you to possible opportunities for a group visit with your pupils or students.

A more detailed Resource Pack will be issued at the start of each exhibition. This includes a short introduction to the artist and their work, key themes, related artists and movements, along with things to think about, do and discuss.

ExhibitionProgramme2012

States andSpaces:

A survey by Project Art Works

9 December - 8 January 2011

About Project Art Works

Through responsive and collaborative practice, Project Art Works conducts a wide range of visual art based projects with people who have complex and high support needs. The organisation is artist led and its programmes of work embrace and address the social, cultural and political forces that both enable and disable children, young people, adults, families and carers affected by neurological impairment.

About the Work

MK Gallery and Project Art Works are collaborating on a long-term project, developing practice-led investigations of built space and its impact on the perception of people with neurological impairment living in Milton Keynes.

Through a series of ongoing workshops with The Walnuts School, The Redway School and Milton Keynes Day Centre Services, participants, support workers and teaching staff have been exploring the gallery and the city through sound, drawing, painting and film in collaboration with a multi-disciplinary team of artists and architects.

The exhibition at MK Gallery will present a survey of projects undertaken and produced by Project Art Works over the last ten years, up to, and including the current MK Gallery collaboration.

Keywords

ImpairmentDisabilitySpacePerceptionArchitectureUrban gridSoundLightVisibilityMulti-sensoryFilmDrawingPainting

www.projectartworks.org

DariaMartinSensorium Tests

20 January - 8 April 2012

About the Artist

Daria Martin was born in San Francisco in 1973. Martin’s work is internationally acclaimed and she has had solo presentations at Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; New Museum, New York; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco and The Showroom, London. Group exhibitions have included Danser Sa Vie, Pompidou, Paris; Manifesta 7, Italy; Performa 07, New York; the 2006 Tate Triennial, London and the touring exhibition British Art Show 6. Martin received a Wellcome Trust Arts Award in 2008 and the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2009.

About the Work

Daria Martin works primarily in film, often exploring relationships between sculpture, performance, dance and music. Martin continually challenges the medium of film, exploring, in particular, its sensual, physical and material qualities.

Martin’s exhibition at MK Gallery will present a survey of past and recent work, including a new film which explores the neurological condition ‘mirror touch synaesthesia’, thought to be experienced by around one in 75 people. For those who experience it, visually observed touch on the bodies of others triggers the perception of a similar touch in their body. Through this piece, Martin considers whether it’s possible to make an audience ‘feel’ a sense of touch by looking at onscreen images.

Keywords

FilmPerformanceDanceMovementChoreographyTheatreCostumesMusicIllusionMaterialPhysicalSensesThe BodyTouchSurface

Further Research

Anna Halprin (dancer)Robert MorrisRobert WhitmanGerard ByrnePerformance ArtHappeningsAllan KaprowExpanded CinemaFluxusFantasiaWassily Kandinsky

Olivia Plender

20 April – 24 June 2012

About the Artist

Olivia Plender was born in London in 1977. Her work has been shown internationally in exhibitions and venues including the 2006 and 2009 Tate Triennial, Tate Britain; the Hessel Museum, CCS Bard, New York (2009); Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2008); The Power Plant, Toronto (2008); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2008); The Drawing Room, London (2008). Olivia Plender has had solo shows in places including Kiosk, Ghent (2009); Art in General, New York (2008); Marabou Parken, Stockholm (2007), and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2005).

About the Work

Olivia Plender’s art practice varies from pencil drawing and publications, to performance and installation. Addressing subjects ranging from the history of the global financial system to social and religious movements, she often uses the format of the comic book as an alternative mode of distribution for art. Much of Plender’s work is grounded in historical research, investigating unusual pockets of forgotten history and how they impact on present-day politics and culture.

To form the basis of her 2009 Tate Triennial installation, Plender explored her interest in uncovering the forgotten story of a British youth movement called the ‘Kindred of the Kibbo Kift’. While in an installation exhibited in 2009 at Gasworks, London, the artist delved into the history of mass public spectacle, focusing in part, on the British Empire exhibition which took place in Wembley in 1924.

Keywords

Comic BooksGraphic NovelsHistoryPast / PresentDrawingInstallationPerformanceVideoPoliticsSocietyCustomsTraditionsCommunity

Further Research

Öyvind FahlströmJapanese manga (comic books)Graphic novelsTakashi MurakamiJeremy DellerPablo BronsteinAnja KirschnerPetra BauerMelanie Gilligan

Pushwagner

6 July – 2 September 2012

About the Artist

Hariton Pushwagner (Terje Brofos) was born in Oslo in 1940 and is regarded as one of the most famous artists in Norway. He was educated at the National Academy of Fine Art and the School of Arts and Crafts in Oslo (1958-66), and at the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris.

His international breakthrough came in 2008 when the original drawings of his visual novel Soft City were exhibited at the Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art. These drawings were one of the highlights of the Biennale, and since then several international exhibitions and awards have taken place.

About the Work

Pushwagner’s work observes the world and its mechanisms, presenting, in the form of graphic novels and intricate large-scale screenprints, his personal mythology of a world under perpetual siege from pollution, totalitarianism and mass destruction.

Keywords

DrawingLiterature IllustrationGraphic NovelsScreenprintsEnvironmentUrban landscapeDestructionMythologyDystopiaRealityFantasy

Further Research

Axel JensenLars ArrheniusDaniel GuzmánGeorge GroszGerman ExpressionismNorwegian ArtDadaismMosaic ArtEdvard MunchAmedeo ModiglianiSalvador DaliAuguste Herbin