Cork Caucus

I was invited, during Cork’s year as European Capital of Culture, to curate and organize a three week series of exhibitions, seminars and presentations in collaboration with Annie Fletcher. Cork Caucus was a completely new concept for a major visual arts event.

Rather than commissioning a few artists to produce large-scale work for the public space, we determined to organise a long-term discursive event that brought participants in Cork together with major theorists. Artists were also invited to create work.

We aimed to generate new ambition, horizon and possibility in the Cork art scene, through direct experience with artists and thinkers from the international milieu. At the same time, the Cork participants were able to prepare over the long term for their various visits and to provide a specific Cork context for their theories.

Charles Esche

Research Interests

In line with my role as director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, I am busy looking at the terms in which art museums and other art institutions can function within a city and with particular communities. The question in general is: what is the point of a city art museum in the twenty-first century? It includes questions about global cultural exchanges, local communities, public identities, singularity and the public sphere. At the same time, through the Community and Art workshops series, I am exploring how creative communities in diverse parts of the world can connect, learn from each other and break down nationalistic or regional barriers to a global, but differentiated, cultural sphere. The outcome of this research is in the form of exhibitions, workshops, public projects and texts.

Charles Esche and Mark Lewis co-founded Afterall, a research and publishing organisation, at Central Saint Martins in 1998. Each issue of Afterall Journal brings together five international artists whose work seems particularly pertinent to the wider cultural debates of the moment. In 2002 Los-Angeles based artist and writer Thomas Lawson joined Afterall as co-editor of the journal. Subsequently a second Afterall office was opened at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.

• http://www.corkcaucus.org
• http://www.corkcaucus.org/context/contex...
• http://www.cork2005.ie/programme/default...
• http://www.nationalsculpturefactory.com/...
• http://www.vanabbemuseum.nl
• http://www.afterall.org