TECHNE AHRC PhD studentship in collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery and Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London
Kingston School of Art and Chisenhale Gallery welcome applications for an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership studentship: Making, Unmaking and Remaking History: Exhibition Programming at Chisenhale Gallery in the late 1980s. This is offered under the TECHNE Doctoral Training Partnership Scheme, to begin in October 2021.
Deadline for Expressions of Interest: Monday 25 January 2021, 5.00pm (GMT)
Interviews: w/c 1 February 2021
Project supervisors:
Dr Dan Kidner and Mr Volker Eichelmann, Kingston School of Art and Architecture in collaboration with Dr Zoé Whitley and Ellen Greig of Chisenhale Gallery.
Project Vision
This CDA will focus on the excavation and re-activation of a small but highly significant number of exhibitions held at the Chisenhale Gallery in the late 1980s including “Essential Black Art”, 1988, curated by Rasheed Araeen and Black Umbrella; “Yellow Peril: New World Asians”, 1989; and solo presentations of the work of Lubaina Himid and Donald Rodney, also in 1989. These exhibitions, staged during the early years of the artist-founded non-profit exhibition space, proposed challenging and radical takes on identity and politics that continue to be relevant over 30 years later. Their discursive positions variously addressed power structures in the form of curatorial agency, structural racism, and police brutality. Although historically significant, the gallery’s exhibition archives have only been accessed by a small number of curators, artists and researchers – and never made public.
Central to this enquiry is the question: how can a series of ground-breaking exhibitions held at Chisenhale Gallery in the 1980s be re-activated and reconsidered in order to productively engage with Britain’s evolving cultural contexts in relation to institutional exclusion, when the present moment again arouses provocative debate around notions of Britishness and representation? This project will be predicated on artistic research as a central tool for recording, transforming and disseminating past artistic endeavours. Here particular emphasis will be given to the development of suitable digital and online platforms for the presentation of the gallery’s archives, including photographs, planning documents, correspondence, publicity material and press. The gallery’s close contact with the artists and the artist estate of Donald Rodney will ensure the successful candidate has access to extensive original archive material beyond Chisenhale’s considerable holdings.
Tackling digital multi-modal forms of contemporary artistic presentations will be central to the development of the PhD. The project will develop an innovative online presence to encourage wide participation and re-activate discourses and events from the late 1980s. From the beginning of the project, interactive electronic content will be produced which will explore ways in which new technologies and media can be used to critically reflect on artworks and discourses from the 1980s centred on race, class and gender. As such the CDA is dedicated to the exploration of new and divergent forms of knowledge whose presentation will seek alternate modes of articulation and will test out a recounting of a particular aspect of Chisenhale’s history as polyvocal, fragmented and diverse. Over the course of the PhD, the successful candidate will use a range of digital tools and platforms to record their encounter with the archival material held at Chisenhale. This form of archival research will be complemented by interviews with relevant protagonists, including artists, curators and gallery staff. Research findings will be made public and shared with stakeholders periodically during the research process, thus generating a live and growing archive. as part of the doctoral submission, making the research generated available to a wide and diverse audience.
Studentship
The studentship will be based in the Contemporary Art Research Centre at Kingston University. During the research process, the student will divide their time between Chisenhale Gallery and Kingston University, where a full academic training and development programme is provided.
Subject to AHRC eligibility criteria, the studentship covers tuition fees (home rate only) and a grant (stipend) towards living expenses for three and a half years or part time study for up to seven years (50% FTE and above).
For further details, including eligibility and how to apply, please visit: https://www.kingston.ac.uk/faculties/kingston-school-of-art/research-and-innovation/research-funding-opportunities/