make online: practice and authenticity

What determines the validity of a site for making and displaying art?   

This session of make online will challenge preconceived conceptions of authenticity in artmaking, attempting to forge new ways of thinking about authenticity and validity in artistic practice and education.  

In a series of quick-fire presentations, four speakers will explore projects, approaches and practices that reframe authenticity in diverse artistic contexts. Topics will range from the redistribution of curatorial authority through collaborative exhibition-making to the benefits of peer-led mentorship between neurodiverse artists and students; and from innovative research on the making practices of young children to supporting students in finding a sense of their own artistic authenticity through process-based methods. 

Ellie Barrett

Collecting objects from our physical surroundings is often an innate drive in young children. This practice was adopted by the sculptor Henry Moore, who handled and rearranged his collection of stones, pebbles, shells, driftwood and animal bones. Using the early years programme ‘Collect, Make, Rearrange’ at the Henry Moore Foundation as a case study, this presentation explores overlaps between children’s early entanglements with the world of things and sculptural production.  

Dan Goodman

This presentation explores The NewBridge ‘Open’ Open, a process-led group exhibition in which 120 artists installed work through an open, first-come system around a shared architectural structure made by artist Jenny Alderson. It reflects on how this framework redistributed curatorial authority, fostered negotiation and collective learning, and enabled exchange across diverse communities including youth participants, professional artists and members of a dementia-friendly café. 

Victoria Gray

This presentation will explore peer-led mentorship between neurodivergent professional artists and neurodivergent art students and its unique pedagogical and wellbeing benefits. 

Kath Tindale

This presentation reflects on an artographic study exploring automatic practice as a basis for finding authenticity in process-based work. Rather than starting with a blank page, reviewing journals and previous work acts as a starting point for the new: linking artistic experience over time. By looking at our own practice, artist teachers can support students in discovering their own visual language and authentic voice.

Dr Ellie Barrett is a sculptor, researcher, writer and artist-mother. She has a specialism in socially engaged sculpture, exploring the ways in which new materialist and post-human approaches to physical making can open new pathways to widening participation via material pedagogy. She is an associate lecturer in fine art at Lancaster University, and a director at Good Things Collective. 

Dan Goodman (he/him) is an artist-curator and educator whose practice focuses on creating collaborative, community-led spaces for artists to exhibit, connect and grow. He works as Communities Producer at The NewBridge Project, and has also taught at Newcastle University and Edinburgh College of Art. His work spans exhibition-making, research and learning through inclusive and experimental curatorial formats. 

Victoria Gray is an artist and practice-led researcher. She has presented performance and video work nationally and internationally. Her practice explores onto-ethnographic themes related to her experiences of neuroqueerness, trauma and being working-class. Her practice includes working with neurodivergent artists – independently and within art schools in the UK – as a mentor and coach.

make online is a series where teachers, artist teachers, art educators and artists present and share ideas, skills, resources and practical knowledge.

Every half-term, contributors showcase to their peers an innovative idea or approach from their practice; from resources that have sparked new responses in the classroom, to practical demonstrations of exercises and techniques, to snapshots of works-in-progress. 
 
Intended as a practical exchange of skills and knowledge, make online encourages playfulness and experimentation and prioritises process over outcome.

^{Image: Courtesy of Ellie Barrett.}

This online session is free and open to all. Please book a place. 

Please note, all of our online webinars are screen-recorded. The video file is stored in Freelands’ digital archive and shared following the event in our regular newsletter. Subscribe to our newsletter here.

Catch up with previous iterations of make online here.