Saturday 15 March, 2025
2 - 5pm, ICA Studio
Free event - tickets booked on ICA website.
An afternoon dedicated to thoughtful and inclusive discussions, that explore the role of artists in society today. Convened by artist and educator Elle Reynolds with contributions from Harun Morrison and Ahmet Öğüt, this event aims to envision innovative possibilities for an artist-centred and sustainable art world.
Framed as ‘The Garden Salon’ this space invites artists to collectively explore their needs and how these can be better supported beyond the usual frameworks of institutions. How should an artist-designed space operate? How do we articulate something meaningful in ways that challenge existing structures? Together, we will think through what artists want, drawing from rooted, research-based practices to develop and circulate tools and strategies that (re)frame contemporary support systems.
Schedule
2:00 Elle Reynolds: Gathering - Convene at ICA Studio
Elle will host a welcome circle (blessings) as a check in, and a guiding line of trust, a dreaming circle. Collaborative Sonic Detox: a guided meditation as sound bath.
2:30 Harun Morrison: Artists' Web of Need
Harun will offer an evolving diagram as a self-reflexive tool for artists and groups supportive of artists, to map out different elements needed to sustain their practice and how they interconnect.
4:00 Ahmet Öğüt: Practice Exchange/Dreamings
Join artist Ahmet Öğüt for an engaging and thought-provoking workshop that delves into the power of art as a catalyst for societal change. Drawing from his extensive experience working across disciplines and communities, Öğüt will guide participants through a collaborative process of critically reflecting on the role of artists in shaping their own futures. Together, the group will explore strategies for reclaiming agency within the art world, questioning existing power structures, and collectively drafting an artist manifesto. This session invites artists to reimagine a more equitable, artist-centred art world—one where creativity is not just an aesthetic pursuit but a force for transformation.
More Info on the Programme Here
Scholar/researcher/quiet disrupter, Elle Reynolds has a background in organising practice and teaching within art higher education. She continually challenges traditional institutional structures, reimagining the use of time and space in academia. Working both within and against these frameworks, Elle formulates strategies for alternative models of education systematically applying her concept of Diagonal Practices. Her making includes object installation, collaborative events, performative lectures, and interventions that unsettle the notion of archive through spatial exploration, participation, and the disruption of academic language. She holds a PhD investigating alternative art school spaces and serves as a Non-Executive Director and Board member of TOMA (The Other MA), an alternative art school in Southend-on-Sea, Essex. Elle is currently Programme Leader of the Graduate Diploma in Art at Goldsmiths.
Harun Morrison is an artist and writer based on the River Lea and Regent’s Canal. He is currently an associate artist with Greenpeace UK. His forthcoming novel, ‘The Escape Artist’ will be published by Book Works in 2025. Since 2006, Harun has collaborated with Helen Walker as part of the collective practice They Are Here. He is a former trustee of the Black Cultural Archive (est. 1981).
Ahmet Öğüt born in Diyarbakır, is a sociocultural initiator, artist, and lecturer. Working across a variety of media, including photography, video, and installation, Öğüt often uses humor and small gestures to offer his commentary on rather serious or pressing social and political issues. Öğüt is regularly collaborating with people from outside of the art world to create shifts in the perception of common. He has exhibited widely, more recently with solo presentations at Kunstverein Dresden, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Chisenhale Gallery, and Van Abbemuseum.
This event accompanies the New Contemporaries exhibition at the ICA.
Next Exhibition
Ballet for Non-Dancers