Places are free but limited. To book please call: 0141 428 3022 or email: info@thecommonguild.org.uk

To listen to an audio recording of this talk on Vimeo, please click here.

Sunday 29 April
2-4pm
A Select History of Socialist Sunday Schools
Socialist, writer, activist and historian Roger Huddle and historian, activist and former Socialist Sunday School student Dr Fred Reid will give a historical and personal account of the Socialist Sunday School movement.

To listen to an audio recording of this event on Vimeo, please click here.

Sunday 6 May
2-4pm
A Partial History of the Proletarian Sunday Schools
A one-off performance by actor Tam Dean Burn inspired by the life of Tom Anderson, founder of Glasgow’s Proletarian Sunday School, followed by a presentation on the history of Anderson and the School by Jane Rosen, a social historian and specialist in working class children’s literature.
Free. All ages welcome but recommended for over 16s.

To listen to an audio recording of this event on Vimeo, please click here.

David Rosetzky (born 1970, Melbourne, Australia) creates skillfully crafted video portraits in which identity is intimately observed. With an extensive exhibition history both in Australia and overseas, Rosetzky was founding member of the influential artist-run space 1st Floor and one of the first local artists to embrace the aesthetic potential of video in the contemporary art context.

Rosetzky’s 2009 video portrait of Cate Blanchett was selected to be exhibited in The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video at the International Centre for Photography in New York and Open Air: Portrait in Landscape, at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. He has exhibited in museum exhibitions in Canada, Lithuania, Japan, Berlin and Wellington and awarded the Anne Landa Art Award from the AGNSW in 2005. He has been Artist in Residence at Glasgow School of Art, Scotland and at Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand.

Recent solo projects include ‘How to Feel’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2011), ‘Nothing like this’, Kings ARI, Melbourne (2007), ‘Self Defence’, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide (2005), ‘Commune’, Studio 12, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne (2003) and ‘Custom Made’, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2000)

David Rosetzky is represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, www.suttongallery.com.au

Laresa Kosloff and Andy Thomson will present a Glaswegian version of The Green Text at the Partickhill Bowling Club on Friday 27th April 2012. The artists have produced a scripted commentary between two imaginary bowling “experts”, Dr. Lindsey Fisher-Price (played by Kari Corbett) and Alistair McLeod (played by David Mullen). The characters commentate a fictional game of lawn bowls whilst comically digressing through a range of topics, from ‘Post Colonialism’ to the subject of ‘boredom’. Audience members will be invited to listen to this commentary on headphones whilst watching a live tournament of lawn bowls.

Laresa Kosloff (born 1974, Melbourne, Australia) makes performative videos, Super 8 films, hand drawn animations, sculpture, installations and live performance works. Her practice examines various representational strategies, each one linked by an interest in the body and its agency within the everyday. She completed a PhD at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, in 2010.

Recent solo projects include ‘Office skate’, commissioned by ACCA, public projection at the Melbourne City Square (2011), ‘Sensible world’, curated by Reuben Keehan, Artspace, Sydney (2009), ‘Relative straightness’, Neon Parc gallery, Melbourne, ‘Jogathon’, Conical Inc. Melbourne, ‘Solidarity for a metaphysic’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art at Mirka Tolarno, Melbourne (all 2008) and ‘New Diagonal’, Ocular Lab, Melbourne (2007).

http://www.laresakosloff.com

Andy Thomson (born 1952,Wiltshire UK) makes collaborative works and is interested in how art can be made and presented in social contexts. Andy studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, and currently lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand.

Recent collaborative projects include ‘Spin Theory’ with Daniel von Sturmer at Govett Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth, curated by Tyler Cann, Len Lye curator at large (2012), ‘The Weak Force’ at Anna Leonowens Gallery, at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, with collaborating team of Paul Cullen, Bruce Barber, Kim Morgan, Laresa Kosloff and Andrew Burton, and ‘The Green Text’ with Laresa Kosloff, Natimuk Lawn Bowling Club, commissioned by Australian Centre of Contemporary Art and curated by Hannah Mathews (both 2011).

uft-gravity.com

Marco Fusinato (born 1964, Melbourne, Australia) has a long history with both visual arts and experimental music, harnessing a chaotic range of forces and collapsing them into singular pulses of contained energy. Through wide ranging forms of work in gallery contexts and performances, Fusinato foregrounds moments of disruption and impact in which lie the possibility of a shift in perception or change in the course of events.

Fusinato’s work has been included in such exhibitions as ‘Sonic Youth etc. – Sensational Fix’, CA2M, Madrid, 2010, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and The Museum of Malmo, Sweden, 2009; ‘Still Vast Reserves’, Magazzino d’arte Moderna, Rome, 2009; ‘NEW 09′, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2009; Lo Sguardo di Giano’, American Academy in Rome, 2009; ‘Underplayed: A Mix-Tape of Music-based Videos’, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2006; ‘The Unquiet World’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2006; ‘Sensational: Sight and Sound Installations’, Auckland Art Gallery, 2005; ‘ART>MUSIC: Rock, Pop, Techno’, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2001; and Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1998.

Forthcoming projects include ‘Parallel Collisions’, The Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art; ‘The Imminence of Poetics’, 30th Sao Paulo Biennale; ISCP Residency in NYC and a new solo LP, L’Origine/Tema (Penultimate Press, London) (all 2012).

Marco Fusinato is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery www.annaschwartzgallery.com / www.marcofusinato.com

To see when and where these are occurring and to track the project as it unfolds visit: http://uponthesurfaceoftheearth.blogspot.com.au/
The project will culminate in a performance on the top floor of Cambridge Street car park on Sunday 29th April, between 5-6pm.

Working across disciplines Hester fuses elements of performative practice and site-responsive engagement, with a strong sense of materiality, spatial and acoustic awareness. In a broad ranging scope including interventions, installations, events and publications, Hester brings people, structures and objects into an encounter with each other, giving sculpture a renewed social focus as one of its possibilities.

Bianca Hester (born 1975 Melbourne, Australia) is motivated by an exploration of the connection between space, materiality and embodiment. Her projects are informed by sculptural and architectural processes and oriented by an engagement with the unpredictable forces of matter and time. She works in response to specific material, social and spatial conditions and builds provisional constructions and open-ended situations, often involving collaborations, events, imagery and video. Alongside this practice she teaches, writes and generates publications.

Recent solo projects include ‘a world fully accessible by no living being’, Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture, Federation Square (winning entry), ‘big log jam,’ with Open Spatial Workshop, AEAF, Adelaide, (2011), ‘please leave these windows open overnight to enable the fans to draw in cool air during the early hours of the morning’, Helen Macpherson Smith Commission, commissioned by Juliana Engberg, curated by Charlote Day, ACCA, Melbourne (2010), ‘only from the perspective of a viewer situated upon the surface of the earth does day and night occur’, The Narrows (2009), The West Brunswick Sculpture Triennial (with the OSW collective 2009), ‘fashioning discontinuities’, the Centre for Contemporary Photography (2009) and ‘projectprojects’, The Showroom in London (2008). The book titled ‘accommodating spaces, materials, projects, people, videos, actions, objects, thoughts: relatively’ was commissioned by The Narrows in 2009.

Bianca Hester recently completed a PhD by project in sculpture at RMIT. She was a founding member of CLUBSpropject inc (2002-2007), a member of OSW (2003 – ongoing) and co-ordinates the second year program in the department of Sculpture and Spatial Practice at VCA.

Bianca Hester is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne www.sarahscoutpresents.com / www.biancahester.net

Joshua Petherick (born 1979, Adelaide, Australia) melds modern technologies and a variety of media to create playful riddles, fictions and questions – each designed to engender a critical appraisal in the way we encounter and value things, pictures and words.

Recent solo projects include ‘Saratogian Bedding’, Croy Nielsen, Berlin, and ‘Simultaneous Solitudes’, Y3K Gallery, Melbourne (both 2011), ‘Joshua Petherick’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art at Mirka Tolarno, Melbourne and ‘Nom Abbamon’, Y3K Gallery, Melbourne (w. Christopher L.G. Hill) (both 2010), ‘Bootleg at The Manor’, Y3K Gallery, Melbourne, and ‘Austin & Petherick’, Neon Parc, Melbourne (w. Nick Austin) (both 2009). Upcoming projects include Hopkinson Cundy, Auckland, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, CCP (Centre for Contemporary Photography), Melbourne (all 2012)

Joshua Petherick is represented by Croy Nielsen, Berlin, www.croynielsen.de / www.joshuapetherick.com

To listen to an audio recording of this talk on Vimeo, please click here.

Ranging from intimate portraits, dense with emotional intensity, to vast monochromes, baring the traces of the physical process involved, Tillmans is known for both the range of subject and the varying scale of his photographs. Sometimes highly choreographed and other times completely spontaneous, Tillmans demonstrates a simultaneous understanding of the emotional relationship between the photographer and his subject and the objectivity of the photographic process.

“I love the piece of paper itself, this lush, crisp thing. A piece of photographic paper has its own elegance, how it bows when you have it hanging in one hand or in two and manipulate it, expose it to light – I guess it is quite a gestural thing.”

Tillmans is also known, perhaps unusually for a photographer, for the diversity in the presentation of his work – from his signature bulldog clips, map pins and sticky tape mounts to Plexiglass hoods and bespoke vitrines. Through this range of scale and format, object, whilst reminding the viewer of the temporality, and fragility, of the image that they see.

Frequently referencing other genres, such as painting and sculpture, in both the content and the presentation of his work, Tillmans also explores the context of the photographic image, reminding the viewer of both its ubiquity and is uniqueness.

From 8 May – 23 June: Tuesday – Saturday 12 noon – 5 pm, until 7pm on Thursdays and Fridays, and by appointment.

We will be closed on Tuesday 5 June for the Jubilee bank holiday.