The Changing Technologies of Art: Opportunities, Risk and Tradition

Paint Club at University of the Arts London, in conjunction with Griffin Gallery, presented an evening of discussion on art, research and science, as related to the expanded fields of practice within contemporary painting, drawing and hybrid forms of image and mark-making. Avant-garde painting through the twentieth century was fuelled both by artists’ embrace of technology, and their urge to innovate and improvise; in some cases rapidly setting aside centuries of accrued knowledge, tradition and craft skills. Pollock’s use of oil-based enamel paints on unprimed cotton and Rothko’s experiments with complex mixtures of emulsions, acrylic and oil leave a difficult forensic trail for conservators and scholars. The life span of many more recent artists’ innovations with synthetic surfaces and materials, sometimes invented for very different purposes, may be difficult to predict; but their very claim to originality, to be genuine ‘research’, may be inextricable from that risk. Is this a Faustian pact?

Issues and challenges of conservation, permanence and material instability in painting were discussed by a panel including Harriet Pearson and Rachel Barker from the Tate’s Conservation team and contemporary artists Alexis Harding and Alaena Turner. The event was chaired by Jeffrey Dennis, painter and Course Leader of the BA Fine Art course, Chelsea College of Arts.

Paint Club is supported by CCW Graduate School and the UAL Communities of Practice.