History or Not: Addressing Omissions in the Retelling of Art's Stories

History or Not: Addressing Omissions in the Retelling of Art's Stories Saturday 18 March With Felicity Allen, Sonia Boyce, Amy Budd, Susan Hiller, Antony Hudek, Hilary Robinson and Alex Sainsbury, chaired by Alexandra Kokoli. A discussion about how curatorial and art historical work can address and redress the marginalisation of artists of colour and women artists in the recent past; and how curatorial and scholarly reconstructions of the past can make up for its omissions without sacrificing accuracy. --- Presented as part of the exhibition 'This Way Out of England: Gallery House in Retrospect' at Raven Row Gallery House was one of London’s most influential and extraordinary art spaces in the 1970s, directed by Sigi Krauss with assistant director Rosetta Brooks. For only sixteen months in 1972-73, in a vacant mansion provided by the German government next to the German Institute in South Kensington, Gallery House hosted exhibitions, residencies, performances and events as well as pioneering ‘expanded cinema’ and much new film and video work. For many of the featured artists Gallery House would prove a formative experience. Gallery House favoured heterogeneity, colliding the multiplicity of forms and styles co-existing at the time, from performance and experimental cinema to cybernetic, social and conceptual practices. Ultimately, the radical nature of Gallery House’s programme led to its abrupt and contested closure by the German Institute. This Way Out of England seeks to emulate the spirit of Gallery House by inviting a number of artists to rethink their original interventions in the space. The episodic nature of this project acknowledges the impossibility of framing what was an ephemeral experiment. The project is curated by Antony Hudek and Alex Sainsbury. --- Image: Susan Hiller, 'Transformer', Gallery House, April 1973