Bauhaus: Utopia in Crisis

About

Curated by Professor Daniel Sturgis

Artists: Juan Bolivar, David Diao, Liam Gillick, Maria Laet, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Ad Minoliti, Sadie Murdoch, Judith Raum, Helen Robertson, Eva Sajovic, SAVVY Contemporary, Schroeter und Berger, Alexis Teplin, Ian Whittlesea

Camberwell Space is pleased to present the exhibition Bauhaus: Utopia in Crisis exploring how contemporary practitioners have been drawn to the social, utopian and transgressive aspects of Bauhaus history. The exhibition will be part of the OurHaus festival, which coincides with Bauhaus 100, the international celebration of the famous Bauhaus design school’s centenary.

The diverse collection of artworks presented in this exhibition will investigate the ways in which artists today are reframing the Bauhaus’s modernist legacy as one which includes political and subjective resistance. As such, Bauhaus: Utopia in Crisis addresses how artistic legacies intersect with contemporary concerns through understanding that the Bauhaus was a complicated interweaving of different positions and personalities and never a truly unified project.

This exhibition is part of OurHaus, which brings together a series of international speakers for talks, workshops, exhibitions and performances at Camberwell College of Arts and Central Saint Martins (CSM), University of the Arts London (UAL) from 22 – 25 October 2019.

Bauhaus: Utopia in Crisis runs from 16 September – 9 November 2019 at Camberwell Space, Camberwell College of Arts, 45 - 65 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UF. The exhibition will tour to the Bauhaus University in Weimer, Germany in 2020.

As part of Bauhaus: Utopia in Crisis exhibition:
Tuesday 1 October at 6pm: Artist Eva Sajovic will stage a performative discussion.
Tuesday 22 October at 7.30pm: Artist Alexis Teplin will stage a performance during the opening of the OurHaus festival

OurHaus festival runs from 22 – 25 October 2019, Camberwell College of Arts and Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. The festival will encompass talks, symposia, performances and workshops across the two college sites over three days.

Highlights will include a keynote lecture by Dr Elizabeth Otto (22 October), Bauhaus Educators Symposium, organised in collaboration with Outreach at Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon (23 October), the Bauhaus: Utopia in Crisis Symposium (24 October) featuring speakers Judith Raum, Sadie Murdoch, Grant Watson, Sebastian Helm and many others, as well as the Unser Haus build, and workshop programme (25 October), led by students and Tim Meara and Lucy Alexander (Foundation at Central Saint Martins).

Bauhaus Dessau Foundation Open Stage takes place from 11 – 15 September 2019.
Over the past year, Camberwell’s BA Fine Art Painting staff have collaborated with students across Fine Art courses to develop a series of performances in response to Xanti Schawinsky’s seminal performance-installation ‘Play, Life, Illusion’ (1936). The performances will be staged in September as part of Open Stage, a key strand of the official centenary performance programme entitled Festival Stage TOTAL which will launch the new Bauhaus Museum, Dessau, Germany. Following the festival, their performances will be re-staged at Camberwell College of Arts on the 24 October 2019 as part of OurHaus festival.