What do we know (anyway)?: JJ Chan
10 July - 21 July
Free & Open to All
(Documentation images: Sarah Howe)
JJ Chan was our artist-in-residence for our inaugural longitudinal residency Blueprints for the Otherwise . The 12-month residency focused on ‘critical care’, exploring more mutual art commissioning and organisational processes.
What do we know (anyway)? was a series of public gatherings that took place over a week’s period, pulling together aspects of JJ's practice and situating them within the context of Bloc Projects / Bloc studios. Foregrounded in the exhibition are figures who have differently made their mark on the artist’s practice. It presented works by students and teachers that JJ encountered through formal educational relationships: those who have taught them, those they have taught, all of whom they have learnt from. The exhibition was an enquiry into what it means to know, and what do artists know. It visualised some of the collisions that make up systems of knowledge and offered a chance for us to walk through what knots knot knots, as Donna Haraway puts it. Over 70 — teachers, peers, colleagues, friends, and students — contributed something that they either own or have personally made.
In mapping just some of JJ’s artistic kinships, a mutually implicating ecology emerges: a set of relations reliant on friendship and care that entwines troublesome frameworks, leaning on practices that produce inequalities. Diffracting the spotlight of a ‘solo exhibition’, What do we know (anyway)? coalesced some of the key themes in the Blueprints conversations, including generosity, soft activism and redistribution of resources as methods of confronting and challenging an artist’s work. On show was a broad collection of reading materials, recorded conversations, banners and artworks from a diversely intergenerational network of creative practitioners.
The exhibition coincided with online events that were led by JJ’s colleagues and students. Amongst them is an online conversation between the artist and Bloc studio artist Yuen Fong Ling, in which they will reflect on their respective practices and struggles against systemic racism.
Press
Online Now: A Particular Reality: Art, Learning, and Anti-racism
Bloc Projects’ website will publicly platform two talks hosted by A Particular Reality, a collective of students and teachers at Kingston and Goldsmiths who have come together to support those marginalised by institutions.
Available to watch online from our website, Sat 10 – Sat 17 July.
Wed 14 July - (In)Significant Conversations
Material:Pedagogy:Future is a research network of artists who teach. In their first public event, they will invite Gilane Tawadros to reflect on the ‘art school’ and its futures.
Online 3-4:30pm
Thu 15 July - A panel discussion on ‘what do we know (now)?’
Led by Amrit Sanghera, Leon Flint, Flo McCarthy and Omolola Mau, graduating students of JJ Chan’s whose work is in the exhibition. They will think through this question on the first day of their online degree show at Kingston School of Art. Joined by recent graduate Jack Whiting, who has helped JJ to project manage the exhibition.
Online 7-8:30pm
Fri 16 July - In conversation: JJ Chan and Yuen Fong Ling (an artist based in Bloc Studios)
Hosted by Bloc Projects, they will speak about the intersection of their artistic practices and anti-racist activism in the UK.
Online 7-8:30pm
Wed 21 July - Reflecting on ‘What do we know (anyway)?’
JJ Chan’s students Imogen Andrews, Alaw Glesni-Griffiths, and Rosie de Selincourt will critically reflect on the group exhibition ‘What do we know (anyway)?’ and broader questions around art schooling and institutional care in relation to their own work.
Online 7-8:30pm
Image courtesy of JJ Chan
JJ Chan is an artist working across and amid sculpture, moving image, and writing. At the foundations of their work is an investigation of portraiture and self-portraiture which seeks new cartographies of gender, identity, and collecting. Through storytelling and world-building, their work (re)searches for an alternative space beyond aggressively progressive capitalist time, seeking new worlds from the ashes of the present.
Exhibition includes works by: Abi Braley, Affrica Berezicki-Stevens, Ahlam Ahmadi, Alaw Glesni-Griffiths, Alex Beeston, Amrit Sanghera, Andrei Damian, Annie Gooderham, Annouchka Bayley, Caitlin Jackson, Catherine McCaw-Aldworth, Charlie Gere, copsocker, Chantoya Leslie, David Johnson, David Moore, David Snooo Wilson, Davide Vanacore, Denise de Cordova, Ellen Ball, Eleanor McLean, Elizabeth Rennison, Eleni Sofokleous, Federico Clavarino, Flo McCarthy, Frances Drayson, Gerry Davies, Hannah Boaden ( + Daniel Redford), Harry Coday, Imogen Andrews, Jenna Fox, Jakob Buraczewski, Jordan Baseman, Jayne Simpson, Jaz Bartlett, Jen Southern, Jennie Murton, Judith Gao, Kara Marba, Kate Davis, Katherine Smith, Kirsty Dawson, Leigh Day, Leon Flint, Leon Watts, Omalola Mau, Marisa Ferreira, Martin Doyle, Martin Salmon, Michalina Marciniec, Mike Atherton, Mina Fairchild Ünal, Maggie Coffee, NanoHour, Noelle Genevier, Phoebe Mae Thompson, Pip Dickens, Partisan Social Club, Pragya Bhargava, Ratiba Ayadi, Rebecca Birch, Rhiannon Dunn, Rosie de Selincourt, Rups Cregeen, Sai Ashrafian, Sally Sole, Sally Stenton, Sarah Casey, Sarah Staton, Saul Wright, Todome the Fox, Tianya Liu, Tom Railton, WARD.