Gray’s annual research conference to focus on Creativity in the Periphery

The topic of this year’s conference, which takes place on Friday, October 4 in the Sir Ian Wood Building (N114), is ‘The Periphery’, and will look at what creative activity and creative careers look like in areas less commonly associated with these activities.

Amongst the speakers at the conference will be radical academic and activist Stephen Pritchard, whose work focuses on street art and gentrification, the curatorial duo Mother Tongue, alongside a wide range of staff from Gray’s School of Art.

Research lead at Gray’s Jon Blackwood, commented: “We know that creative activities are often located in urban centres and national capitals, however, this conference will look at all the activity which takes place outside of these areas. It asks how creative practices can be built and maintained in peripheral regions, and critically examines the consequences of this activity.”

Alongside the main conference, Gray’s School of Art will open a parallel exhibition called ‘Notes from a Periphery’. The exhibition will feature four contemporary artists working in photography and video, who address directly notions of the periphery, hauntology, edgelands and suburbia in their work.

The exhibitors include Anne Campbell from Gray’s School of Art, who will contribute new landscape work from the Flow Country in the far North East of Scotland; Lottie Davies, a past winner of the Photographic Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London; Sapphire Goss, a film and video maker whose work is set to be showcased in Liverpool next year; and the photographer Eugene Schlumberger, who is based in Middlesbrough and interested in the interaction of popular culture and the ruins of modernity.

All interested members of the public are invited to attend both the conference and the exhibition at RGU’s Garthdee campus.

For further details, and the full programme of the day, please contact Dr Jon Blackwood - j.blackwood@rgu.ac.uk

The catalogue for the exhibition can be accessed at:  https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/608796