Phoenix Brighton meet the curator + talk by Anna Dumitriu

At Blue Monkey Network we really want to help build links between artists’ groups and arts communities in East Sussex and beyond, and promote projects and collaborations which will provide more opportunities for artists to show and make work in and beyond their immediate area. With this in mind we're visiting Phoenix Brighton, where Blue Monkey Network organiser Judith Alder has been working with the Phoenix team to curate an exhibition, The New Immortals, for the Phoenix gallery spaces. The exhibition, a culmination of a two year long period of research, explores ideas about immortality in an age of scientific miracles and includes work by Judith and nine other artists including Blue Monkey Network members Cat Ingrams and Angela Smith and Phoenix studio holder Rachel Cohen. The research period has included the beginnings of new collaborative relationships for Judith with scientists from the University of Brighton Centre for Regenerative Medicine and with ethicists and clinicians from Brighton and Sussex Medical School.

Phoenix are holding a special late night gallery opening for us until 8pm on Thursday 25th February and Judith will be in the gallery between 5 and 6pm to answer questions about the exhibition along with some of the exhibiting artists.

At 6.30pm artist Anna Dumitriu will be talking about her experience of cross-disciplinary collaborative working. She will discuss her own experiences of creating art embedded in bioscience settings and will describe some personal projects, for example working with the Modernising Medical Microbiology group at The University of Oxford, and exploring the field of synthetic biology at the University of California Irvine. She will also talk about her work mentoring and curating embedded residencies for other artists through European Union funded projects. She will talk about her 'Unnecessary Research' methodology, strategies for best practice in the field and her research into the ethical implications of artists working in laboratory settings.

Image: Anna Dumitriu

Anna's talk will be followed by a chance for artists to get together over a glass of wine in an informal setting, to discuss the pros and cons of cross-disciplinary collaboration and the value of networking in opening up opportunities for artists. This event will be of particular interest to artists who want to explore the potential of cross-disciplinary working and how it might enhance their practice as artists. It is also an opportunity for artists to begin to make new links with other artists groups and organisations. The evening builds upon the Blue Monkey Network ethos of artists coming together to share knowledge, experience and information in an atmosphere of creative collaboration.

Anna Dumitriu (1969) is a British artist whose work fuses craft, technology and bioscience to explore our relationship to the microbial world. She is artist in residence on the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project at the University of Oxford, a visiting research fellow: artist in residence in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Hertfordshire, and an honorary research fellow in the Wellcome Trust Brighton and Sussex Centre for Global Health at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She has an international exhibition profile, having exhibited at venues such as Waag Society, Amsterdam, Art Laboratory Berlin, V & A Museum, London, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, and The Picasso Museum, Barcelona. Her book "Trust Me, I'm an Artist: Towards an Ethics of Art and Science Collaboration", in collaboration with Bobbie Farsides, was published in 2014.

http://www.normalflora.co.uk

Going Out: Blue Monkey Network visits Phoenix Brighton
Thursday 25th February 2016
Late gallery opening until 8pm. Meet the curator: 5.00pm - 6.00pm followed by
Unnecessary Research: Art as a Metadiscipline: a talk by Anna Dumitriu, 6.30pm, all at Phoenix Brighton, 10–14 Waterloo Place, Brighton BN2 9NB
Artists - all welcome
FREE to Blue Monkey Network members and Phoenix Studio holders
Others: £5

Refreshments will be available (contributions welcome).

For more information visit http://www.phoenixbrighton.org/events/going-out-blue-monkey-network-visits-phoenix-brighton/