Join us for a roundtable discussion to celebrate the publication of London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent, and Ephemeral Networks 1960-1980 (Penn State University Press, 2018). Edited by Jo Applin, Catherine Spencer and Amy Tobin, London Art Worlds explores the extraordinarily rich networks of international artists and art practices that emerged in and around London during the 1960s and ’70s, a period that saw an explosion of new media and fresh attitudes and approaches to making and thinking about art.
Contributors include Jo Applin, Elena Crippa, Antony Hudek, Dominic Johnson, Carmen Juliá, Courtney J. Martin, Lucy Reynolds, Joy Sleeman, Catherine Spencer, Amy Tobin, Isobel Whitelegg, and Andrew Wilson.
‘The sixties—less so the seventies—is a crowded field, but this original and provocative collection challenges received wisdom on the period. It casts new light on work by women artists and filmmakers; on conceptual, performance, feminist, and other kinds of politicized and often collaborative activity; on the increasingly international traffic in artists and ideas; and on a counterculture unfolding across two decades from the Britain of Harold Wilson to the emergence of Margaret Thatcher.’ —Lisa Tickner
‘The fascinating episodes recounted in London Art Worlds expand, deepen, and complicate what we mean by the art history of the 1960s and 1970s—whether in the capital, across Britain, or on an international stage. ‘—Thomas E. Crow
‘London Art Worlds is a fresh and original rethinking of experimental art practices of the 1960s and 1970s produced in Britain that provides an important supplement to critical postcolonial studies of the period. The London that emerges is not the complacently assumed center of the former empire, but a contingent site for a new set of global networks and a sometimes temporary home for a diverse range of artists who may or may not claim Britishness.’ —Siona Wilson
The event will be followed by a drinks reception in the Front Hall.