Lisa Slominski was joined in-conversation by Nicola Wright (Curator, Exhibitions, Studio Voltaire) to celebrate the launch of Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists (Yale University Press: 2022).

This new publication traces a global history of self-taught artists, advocating for a nuanced understanding of modern and contemporary art which is often challenged by the establishment.

When the art world has paid attention to makers from outside the cultural establishment, including so-called ‘outsider’ and ‘self-taught artists’, it has generally been within limiting categories. Yet these artists, including many women, people with disabilities, and people of colour, have had a transformative influence on the history of modern art.

Nonconformers includes work by well-known figures such as Henry Darger, Hilma af Klint, and Bill Traylor, and examines how self-taught artists factored into key movements of twentieth-century art. An international group of contributors addresses topics such as the development of l’Art Brut in France and the impact of the Black Folk Art exhibition in America, as well as the creative process of artists working outside of traditional studios. The publication highlights the work of contemporary practitioners which include artists recently commissioned by Studio Voltaire, such as William Scott and Nnena Kalu.

Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists

To celebrate the launch of Bad Gays: A Homosexual History (Verso: 2022), Studio Voltaire hosted an in-conversation with the book’s authors Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller, mediated by Marc Thompson.

Part revisionist history, part historical biography and based on the hugely popular podcast series, Bad Gays subverts the notion of gay icons and queer heroes and asks what we can learn about LGBTQ history, sexuality and identity through its villains and baddies. From the Emperor Hadrian to notorious gangster Ronnie Kray, the authors excavate the buried history of queer lives. This includes fascist thugs, famous artists, austere puritans and debauched bon viveurs, imperialists, G-men and architects.

Together these amazing life stories expand and challenge the mainstream assumptions of sexual identity. They show that homosexuality itself was an idea that emerged in the nineteenth century and that its interpretation has been central to major historical moments of conflict from the ruptures of Weimar Republic to red-baiting in Cold War America. Bad Gays puts centre stage the queer villains and evil twinks in history.

For this event, the authors read selected excerpts from Bad Gays, followed by a discussion about the book’s contemporary political relevance, and writing queer history for the public.

Bad Gays: A Homosexual History

Bad Gays – A Homosexual History, Huw Lemmey And Ben Miller

The US Embassy, Nine Elms and Dolphin Square, Pimlico

Park Mansions, South Lambeth Road

SIS Building, Vauxhall Cross

Thames House, Millbank

Parliament Square, Westminster

St Ermin’s Hotel, Caxton Street

54 Broadway, St James's

Tin And Stone Bridge, St James's Park

Sam Cottington, People Person (2022) London: JOAN Publishing

Sam Cottington reads ’People Person’ (2022)

Hannah Regel, Oliver Reed (2020) London: Montez Press

Hannah Regel reads ‘Oliver Reed’ (2020)

Linda Levitt, Culture, Celebrity, and the Cemetery: Hollywood Forever (2018) New York: Routledge

Alex Margo Arden reads  ‘Culture, Celebrity, And The Cemetery: Hollywood Forever’ (2018)

Adam and Mark introduce the Socialist Party, their headquarters in Clapham and the history of Speakers' Corner on Clapham Common and across London.

Adam and Mark, The Socialist Party of Great Britain

Luke Turner looks at the art of Tom of Finland and Beryl Cook through the bisexual gaze. Our society has, historically, forced the bisexual to peer out of a closet of loneliness, frustrated desire, and taboo, creating lurid stereotypes that we're oversexed, rapacious. Therefore, the outré bawdiness in the work in this exhibition has a curious, specific appeal to the bisexual eye that roves and wanders one step removed from hetero conventionality and queer liberation. 

This event was formed as part of our Saturday Talks series, in which artists, curators and writers lead personal responses to Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland.

Saturday talks series: Lauren J. Joseph

Writer Nathalie Olah leads a talk in response to the art of Beryl Cook.

Situating Cook in the British mid-century, Olah explores the artist’s work in relation to the academic interests of that time — namely pop-culture as a relatively new phenomenon, and the spread of American soft power through its entertainment machine. With reference to writers and theorists including Raymond Williams, Richard Haggard and Stuart Hall, Olah offers a re-reading of Cook’s practice.

This event forms part of our Saturday Talks series, in which artists, curators and writers lead personal responses to Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland. These talks, readings and performances are an opportunity to explore specific aspects of the exhibition, from 'bad taste' to class tourism, masculinity and sexuality in the military, and London's lost queer spaces.

Nathalie Olah is an author with an interest in class and propaganda. Her books include Bad Taste (Dialogue Books, 2023) an exploration of the intersection between consumerism, class, desire and power; Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas (Tate Publishing, 2023) and Steal As Much As You Can (Repeater Books, 2019). Her writing has been published widely in periodicals including ArtReview, The Guardian, Tribune, Jacobin and The Times Literary Supplement.

Saturday Talks Series - Nathalie Olah

Saturday Talks Series: Luke Turner

Artist Lap-See Lam discusses her major commission 'Floating Sea Palace' at Studio Voltaire with arts writer and editor Rebecca Liu.

Lam explores the experiences of Hong Kong Chinese communities in diaspora, often via the decor of Chinese restaurants in Western Europe. Describing how ‘the Chinese restaurant only occurs outside of China’, for Lam these sites are bound by ideas surrounding resilience, cultural hegemony and identity.

'Floating Sea Palace' continues a cycle of work inspired by the ‘dragon ship’ Sea Palace, a three-storey floating Chinese restaurant in the shape of a dragon. Commissioned by entrepreneur Johan Wang in the 1990s, the ship sailed from Shanghai, but after attempts to use the vessel as a floating Chinese restaurant failed, the Sea Palace later served as a haunted house at the Gröna Lund amusement park, where it was described as “A ship from the Orient with a thousand year curse”.

For Lam, the Sea Palace is a knotty and often contradictory subject matter, reflecting an exoticised image of China while expressing its own cultural affiliation. As a cultural in-between, the restaurant/ship/horror house becomes a space within which to explore ideas of separation and displacement; language and mistranslation; and generational loss.

'Floating Sea Palace' is Lam’s first institutional exhibition in the UK, and builds on the major work 'The Altersea Opera' (2024), presented at the 60th International Venice Biennale.


Lap-See Lam in Conversation with Rebecca Liu

Onsite artist and current LOEWE FOUNDATION / Studio Voltaire Awardee Babajide Brian spoke with Dot Zhihan Jia (Curator of Studios & Residencies) to discuss his ongoing practice as well as current and upcoming projects.

Babajide Brian Artist Talk

Prajakta Potnis Artist Talk

Onsite artist and current LOEWE FOUDATION / Studio Voltaire Awardee Shamica Ruddock spoke with Dot Zhihan Jia (Curator) to discuss their ongoing practice as well as current and upcoming projects.

Shamica Ruddock Artist Talk

Onsite artist and current LOEWE FOUDATION / Studio Voltaire Awardee Nick Smith spoke with Dot Zhihan Jia (Curator) to discuss his ongoing practice as well as current and upcoming projects.

Nick Smith Artist Talk

Artist Prem Sahib discusses their exhibition 'Documents of a recent past' at Studio Voltaire with art historian Francesco Ventrella.

Prem Sahib  in conversation with Francesco Ventrella

2012

Courtesy of the Jo Spence Memorial Archive, Terry Dennett and Studio Voltaire, London

X Marks the Spot, Jo Spence Radio Broadcast

18 July 2015

British artist Aaron Angell in conversation with Sam Thorne, Artistic Director, Tate St Ives, discussing Grotwork, his current large-scale exhibition at Studio Voltaire, his forthcoming exhibition at Tate St Ives and his wider practice.

Aaron Angell (b. 1987, Kent) lives and works in London and is the founder and director of Troy Town Art Pottery hosted by Open School East, a radical and psychedelic ceramic workshop for artists founded in response to dwindling ceramics access in London, and to frustration with the established models of ceramic production. Forthcoming exhibitions include: British Art Show 8, Leeds Art Gallery, October 2015; and Tate St Ives, summer 2016. Angell is represented by Rob Tufnell, London.

Sam Thorne is Artistic Director of Tate St Ives, since 2014, where he leads on the exhibitions and displays programme and on research, as well as the wider public programme of learning and interpretation. He is a contributing editor at Frieze magazine, a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art in London, has written numerous catalogue essays and has contributed to several magazines and journals. In 2013 he co-founded Open School East, a free-to-attend art school in north east London.

Aaron Angell in conversation with Sam Thorne

28 July 2016

The Neo Naturists in conversation with Catherine Wood, Senior Curator International Art (Performance) Tate Modern, discussing their current large–scale exhibition at Studio Voltaire, as well as their wider practice.

The Neo Naturists are an important live art collective initiated in 1981 by Jennifer Binnie, Christine Binnie and Wilma Johnson. The group emerged as a part of London’s subculture that arose from the squatting community in the aftermath of Punk and the emergence of the New Romantic club scene and the advent of Thatcherism. During this time a creative energy developed in the UK that sat outside established institutional practices of the time, creating its own network of activities, events, economies and personalities.

The Neo Naturists were a part of a cultural network of collaborators and peers that included figures such as BodyMap (Stevie Stewart & David Holah), Leigh Bowery, James Birch, Jill Bruce, Michael Clark, David Dawson, Peter Doig, Boy George, Maia Norman, John Maybury, Sophie Muller, Simon Foxton, Bruce Lacey, Andrew Logan, Grayson Perry, Genesis P.Orridge, Psychic TV, Derek Jarman, Princess Julia, Marilyn, Philip Sallon, Test Department, Jill Westwood, Dencil Williams and Cerith Wyn Evans.

Catherine Wood is Senior Curator of International Art (Performance) at Tate Modern since 2002. She is currently working on programmes and displays for the new Tate Modern in 2016. Recent exhibitions include Yvonne Rainer: Dance Works at Raven Row, London (2014), A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance at Tate Modern (2012) and Pop Life: Art in a Material World (2010). She initiated the online series ‘Performance Room’ in 2011 (Tate/YouTube) and co-directed the opening programme for the Tanks at Tate Modern in 2012, which included the work of Sung Hwan Kim, Ei Arakawa, Tania Bruguera, Boris Charmatz and others.

Wood is author of Yvonne Rainer: the Mind is a Muscle (Afterall One Work series, 2007) and was one of the contributors to Creamier (Phaidon, 2010). Wood is currently working with Tate Research and Exeter University on a new project titled ‘Performance at Tate’ and writing a book titled Performance in Contemporary Art for Tate Publishing (due 2016).

Catherine Wood in conversation with The Neo Naturists

12 September 2017

In her August 1989 Details column, Scarpati’s wife Cookie Mueller described his work as “a visual narrative that told of deep despair, sadness, and pain, but also hope, happiness, and joy […] a tale of hospital horror, a black comedy”.

This is a unique opportunity to hear Myrone discuss Scarpati’s works in relation to his own research, which has centred on British art of the ‘long’ eighteenth century (c.1650–1850). He has a special interest in the work of Henry Fuseli, William Blake and history painting c.1750–1830, with a particular focus on questions of gender and identity and on the emerging exhibition cultures and art worlds of the period.

At Tate Britain, Myrone’s curated projects include Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination (2006), William Blake’s 1809 Exhibition (2009) John Martin: Apocalypse (2011–12) and British Folk Art (2014). In 2010, he curated Tate’s exhibition Rude Britannia: British Comic Art.

This event forms part of the public programme accompanying Putti’s Pudding, an exhibition of works by Cookie Mueller and Vittorio Scarpati (9 September–12 November 2017).

Putti’s Pudding is a book and ‘final project’ by American writer and actor Mueller, and her husband, Italian artist Scarpati. Published in 1989, the same year both died from complications related to AIDS, it pairs drawings by Scarpati with writing by Mueller.

Reimagined as an exhibition at Studio Voltaire, Putti’s Pudding features forty–five original felt–tip pen on notepad drawings made by Scarpati when he lost the ability to speak, accompanying texts by Mueller, and a public programme of talks, readings, screenings and performance.

Martin Myrone explores the work of Vittorio Scarpati

John Waters and the Blessed Profession - 1969, Ask Dr Mueller, 1997, read by Isabel Waidner
The Italian Remedy - 1982, Ask Dr Mueller, 1997, read by Allison Katz, Oliver Basciano and Edward Thomasson, introduction from Out of the Bottle and Into a Danish Remedy, Ask Dr Mueller, 1997
Dogs I Have Known, Ask Dr Mueller, 1997, read by Bonnie Camplin
Another Boring Day, Ask Dr Mueller, 1997, read by Bonnie Camplin
The Mystery of Tap Water, Ask Dr Mueller, 1997, read by Juliet Jacques
Brenda Losing, Ask Dr Mueller, 1997, read by Juliet Jacques
A Last Letter, Ask Dr Mueller, 1997, read by Alice Butler
The Birth of Max Mueller – September 25, 1971, Walking Through Clear Water In A Pool Painted Black, 1990, read by Lucy Mercer
Pink Flamingos, Walking Through Clear Water In A Pool Painted Black, 1990, read by Paul Flynn
British Columbia - 1972, Walking Through Clear Water In A Pool Painted Black, 1990, read by Adam Christensen
Go-Going - New York & New Jersey, 1978-79, Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, 1990, read by Martin Hargreaves
The Berlin Film Festival – 1981, Walking Through Clear Water In A Pool Painted Black, 1990, read by Juliette Blightman
My Bio–Notes on An American Childhood, Walking Through Clear Water In A Pool Painted Black, 1990, read by Ian Law
Secrets of the Skinny, Unpublished version, 1984, read by Charlie Fox

John Waters And The Blessed Profession - 1969, read by Isabel Waidner

2 November 2017

Writer Alice Butler discusses the work of Cookie Mueller, engaging with themes of adolescence, personal performance and disease in Mueller’s short stories. Butler’s talk extends from her extensive research into Mueller’s life and work, and includes archival materials; a screening of Ira Sach’s 'Last Address'; and a public reading of Mueller’s writing.

Alice Butler is a writer based in London, and a PhD researcher in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester. Her work has been published widely in the art press, including Cabinet, Art Monthly, gorse and Frieze. In 2012, she was the winner of the Frieze Writer’s Prize. Butler has written catalogue essays for artists such as Joanna Rajkowska, Lucy Clout, Marianna Simnett, and Kate Lyddon. In 2015, Butler was Jerwood Visual Arts Writer in Residence, and in 2016 she produced a series of miniature chapbooks for the 2016 Whitstable Biennale.

This event forms part of the public programme accompanying 'Putti’s Pudding', an exhibition of works by Cookie Mueller and Vittorio Scarpati (9 September–12 November 2017).

‘Putti’s Pudding’ is a book and ‘final project’ by American writer and actor Mueller, and her husband, Italian artist Scarpati. Published in 1989, the same year both died from complications related to AIDS, it pairs drawings by Scarpati with writing by Mueller.

Reimagined as an exhibition at Studio Voltaire, Putti’s Pudding features forty–five original felt–tip pen on notepad drawings made by Scarpati when he lost the ability to speak, accompanying texts by Mueller, and a public programme of talks, readings, screenings and performance.

Alice Butler on Cookie Mueller

11 April 2019

This special discussion is led by Dr Sos Eltis (Brasenose College, University of Oxford). Eltis offers a radical re-examination of Oscar Wilde’s plays, challenging long-established views of the writer as a dilettante and dandy. Eltis argues that Wilde be considered a serious philosopher and social critic who used his drama to subvert traditional Victorian values: she positions him as an anarchist, a socialist and a feminist.


About the contributor:

Dr Sos Eltis is Fellow and Tutor in English at Brasenose College, Oxford. Publications include Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the Plays of Oscar Wilde (OUP Oxford, 1996) and Acts of Desire: Women and Sex on Stage, 1800-1930 (OUP Oxford, 2013).

TASCAM DR-05

Dr Sos Eltis, Oscar Wilde: anarchist, socialist, feminist

A new sound work by Ain Bailey and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, commissioned as part of Desperate Living C-19.

‘Remember to Exhale’ is a meditation resource and tool. An exploration of what it means as an artist in this moment to produce and create from a place of rest and restoration. The notion of rest has been part of an ongoing transatlantic conversation the artists have been participating in. To exhale stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the reminder to exhale, is meant to encourage and support the act of relaxation, healing and to aid in the recovery of trauma. 

The meditation utilises soundscapes created by Sayge Caroll and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski in 2017 at Sayge’s home studio in South Minneapolis. The audio was originally created as part of a performance curated by Nicole M. Smith for Patrick’s Cabaret, ‘Controlled Burn’ series, held at Intermedia Arts, (Minneapolis) titled Stardate:02.20.2017, which included poetry by Keegan Xavi. Bailey and Ahaiwe Sowinski ‘remix’ the material into a 10 minute meditation. 

Alongside this sound work, Bailey and Ahaiwe Sowinski have produced a new limited edition screenprint. The print has been produced with the generous support of contemporary serigraph artist Aida Wilde. Half of all sales will be donated to East London Out Project (ELOP). ELOP is a holistic lesbian and gay centre that offers a much needed range of social, emotional and support services to LGBT communities. 

Launching on the 12th October, available from House of Voltaire https://houseofvoltaire.org/products/remember-to-exhale-2020

East London Out Project (ELOP) http://elop.org/donate.htm 

Read more: studiovoltaire.org/programmes/ain-bailey-and-ego-ahaiwe-sowinski-remember-to-exhale/

Remember To Exhale: Ain Bailey And Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski

Oscar Wilde and Queer Nature
Philip Hoare

Writer, broadcaster, curator and filmmaker Philip Hoare discusses Oscar Wilde’s role in “queer nature” and in particular, his relationship to the sea. Hoare riffs on Wilde’s documented love of swimming to take in other watery, poetic dandies from literary history–from Lord Byron and Mary Shelley to Edward Carpenter, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wilfred Owen, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath.

This event took place as part of the public programme for The Oscar Wilde Temple.

Philip Hoare’s publications include biographies of Stephen Tennant (1990) and Noël Coward (1995), as well as Wilde’s Last Stand (1997), Spike Island (2001), England’s Lost Eden (2005) and The Sea Inside (2013). His book Leviathan or, The Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. His latest book, RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR was published in 2017.

An experienced broadcaster, curator and filmmaker, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read, a free, online rendition of Melville’s novel, with readings by Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry, David Attenborough, Fiona Shaw, Simon Callow and John Waters, amongst others.

Philip Hoare: Oscar Wilde And Queer Nature

Studio Voltaire is a leading not-for-profit arts organisation in London, dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists. Through our diverse programme of exhibitions, commissions, and public events, we provide a platform for risk-taking, interdisciplinary practices. Our onsite studios house a dynamic community of over 45 artists, fostering collaboration, creativity, and innovation. We are committed to making contemporary art accessible to all, engaging audiences locally and globally. Join us in celebrating artistic innovation and inclusivity at Studio Voltaire.

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