Sculpture & Performance - Conference

Henry Moore Institute in collaboration with Tate Liverpool

24-26 March 2010

This 3 day conference will explore the complex relationship between sculpture 
and performance over the last century and into the present.  Much research 
has been carried out on performance and live art more generally in recent 
decades, but this conference intends to look at the subject through our 
understandings of sculpture today.  It will explore why sculptors turn to 
performance and performers to sculpture - why one needs the other - and will 
look at how this relationship is often either a constructive or destructive one. 
We are familiar with the idea - much circulated in the 1960s - that live 
performance offered a critical rejection of sculpture, contesting the values of 
figurative representation and commemoration, but there is a much richer 
terrain of dialogue and exchange to be considered both before and after this 
influential decade. Indeed the expansion of what sculpture has come to mean 
today is partially indebted to the impact of ‘performance art’. This conference 
aims to reflect this, looking at the longer histories of their inter-connections. 

Wednesday 24 March, Henry Moore Institute

John Welchman, University of California, San Diego
Space and Time, Between: Fronts of Sculpture and Performance in the work of 
Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley

Malgorzata Lisiewicz, University of Gdansk
Fathers’ and Daughters’ Acting Bodies: Tony Smith and Kiki Smith

Aura Satz, London Consortium
Sculptural Fits

Pil and Galia Kollectiv, University of Kent
Can Objects Perform?: Agency and Thingliness in Contemporary Sculpture and 
Installation

Bertrand Clavez, University of Lyon
Ben Patterson’s ‘Drip Music’:  Notes on an assemblage sculpture

Thursday 25 March, Henry Moore Institute

Irene Gerogianni, University of Thessaloniki
Putting the ‘form’ in Performance: the case of Theodoros the Sculptor

Maxa Zoller, Lecturer in Moving Image Art, London
KwieKulik’s Open Form Film ‘Activities on Moses’: Polish Expanded Cinema?

Erin Aldana, University of California, San Diego
The Urban Interventions of 3Nos3: artistic action against monumental public 
sculpture in São Paolo

Dan Watt, Loughborough University
Let the Artists Die like Dogs!: Performing Objects against the World’s Museum

Katalin T. Nagy, Eszterházy Károly College
Public Sculpture and Performance in contemporary Hungary

Monty Paret, University of Utah
Oskar Schlemmer’s Grotesque Body: Sculpture and Performance at the Bauhaus

Gary Stevens, Slade School of Art
Playing a Part

Stephanie Rosenthal, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
Choreography and Installation: The Judson Dance Theatre and Contemporary 
Practices 

Jenn Joy, New York University
Promiscuous Objects: Choreography as Sculptural Practice

Friday 26 March, Tate Liverpool

Heike Roms, Aberystwyth University
Enquiring into the properties of sculpture: Tom Hudson’s performance 
pedagogy in the 1960s

Pierre Saurisse, Sotheby’s Institute of Art
Carving Space: Gilbert & George’s ‘The Singing Sculpture’

Hayley Newman, Chelsea School of Art
The Performance Years (Sculpture)

Mel Brimfield, Artist, London
This is Performance Art: Performed Sculpture and Dance

The conference will include live artistic performances and a tour of Tate 
Liverpool’s current Performing Sculpture exhibition. The cost for the full 3 day 
event will be £45, or £15 to attend a single day (concessions half-price).  To 
book a place for this conference, please contact Kirstie Gregory, 
[log in to unmask], seating is limited.  For more information please 
visit the Research section of the Henry Moore Institute website.

Kirstie Gregory
Research Programme Assistant

Henry Moore Institute
74 The Headrow
Leeds
LS1 3AH

0113 246 7467
www.henry-moore.org