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Conceptual artists Simon Starling, awarded a Turner Prize, speaks about his current work on October 30, 2009.
POUGHKEEPSIE, NY-Simon Starling, a conceptual artist and winner of the Tate Gallery's 2005 Turner Prize for contemporary art, will discuss his work in a lecture on Friday, October 30. Free and open to the public, the program will begin at 5:30pm in Taylor Hall (Room 203).
Starling is most famous for his installations, often created from wood, metal, and various flora and fauna. He is known for journeying with the installations he makes and raising questions about the relationship between nature and technology, between man's mechanical creations and nature's greater efficiency.
In 2004, in what became known as the "Tabernas Desert Run," Starling made a make-shift motorbike, adding a fuel cell to a bicycle, and crossed Spain's Tabernas desert on it. With the water waste the bicycle created during the journey, Starling painted a watercolor of a cactus he saw along the journey across Europe's only desert. In his 2005 work Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No 2), Starling turned a wooden shed into a boat. He loaded the leftover debris from the shed onto the ‘Weidling' (a local type of boat) before sailing down the Rhine in it. Upon arriving at a museum in Basel, he recreated the shed that the boat was constructed from--the cuts in the walls corresponded to the contours of the former boat.
In an interview with The Guardian, Starling answered questions about the importance of a back-story to his work, including if it was the back-story that gives the work meaning? Starling contended that one doesn't need to know the back-story of conceptual art to appreciate it. "Some people will come to the work with a lot of knowledge, some not. That's true of any work of art. That's as true of a painting by Titian as it is of any conceptual work."
Simon Starling solo exhibitions have been seen around the world, from Glasgow to Barcelona to New York's Guggenheim Museum. In 2003, he represented Scotland at the 50th Venice Biennial and, in 2004, he was short-listed for the Guggenheim's Hugo Boss Prize. Starling is a Professor of Fine Arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, and currently lives in Copenhagen.
This lecture is presented by the Art Department at Vassar.
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact Campus Activities Office at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available. Directions to the Vassar campus are available online at www.vassar.edu/directions.
Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.
Posted by College Relations Friday, October 23, 2009
About the Arts
Powerhouse Theater
The Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between New York Stage and Film and Vassar College. It is dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development and production of new works for theater and film. During an intense eight-week summer residency on the Vassar campus, up to twenty different projects are publicly presented, typically engaging more than 200 professional artists and theater students. Plays, musicals, and screenplays are presented in a variety of forms: readings, workshops, and fully staged productions. Since the first Powerhouse Theater season in 1985, New York Stage and Film and Vassar have served more than 2,000 artists and over 175,000 audience members through the development and production of artistically exceptional and affordably priced performances.
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
Located just inside Vassar's Main Gate, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center houses the college's permanent collection, over 18,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and glass and ceramic wares, charting the history of art from antiquity to the present. The Permanent Collection Galleries feature 350 works, ranging from the sculpted Head of Viceroy Merymose from His Outer Sarcophagus (Egyptian, c 1375 BCE) in the Antiquities Gallery to Marsden Hartley's oil on canvas Indian Composition (1914-15) in the Twentieth Century Gallery. For information on current and upcoming special exhibitions, self-guided and curriculum-based tours, and group visits, please visit the website. The art center is open to the public, and admission is free.
James W. Palmer Gallery
Located in the College Center in Main Building, the James W. Palmer III '90 Gallery presents eight shows annually, including exhibitions by renowned artists and photographers, studio art faculty and students, and local arts organizations. Recent highlights included Andrea Baldeck’s black-and-white photo exhibit, Touching the Mekong: A Southeast Asian Sojourn, organized by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; the Vassar Haiti Project’s annual exhibition and auction of imported arts and handcrafts; and Design Inside, showcasing the work of Vassar’s College Relations design team. All exhibitions are free and open to the public. For information on upcoming exhibitions, visit the website or call (845) 437-5370.
Music Department
Located in the Belle Skinner Hall of Music, the Martel Recital Hall is wonderfully suited, both acoustically and aesthetically, to music performance. With seating for 500, the Martel is home to the Vassar College Orchestra, Choir, Women's Chorus, Madrigal Singers, and numerous chamber groups and ensembles. The Martel concert schedule routinely includes distinguished guest artists, faculty recitals, senior recitals, and special musical events, such as last year's series of organ recitals celebrating the installation and dedication of the college's superb pipe organ, designed by masterbuilder Paul Fritts. For information on upcoming concerts and events (which are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted), please visit the website.
Dance Department
The Department of Dance sponsors several public performances each year. Among those, the Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre (VRDT) has a series of Works in Progress showings in the fall, a winter Modfest performance in conjunction with the The Department of Music, winter galas at the 1869 Bardavon Opera House, and two All Parents Weekend performances in the spring. The department's Master Class program annually invites at least one ballet and one modern expert to campus in addition to two people in other areas of dance. Public performances and lectures are often associated with these renowned visitors. Guest artists in the past have included: Irina Kolpokova, Arthur Mitchell, Helene Alexopoulos, Gregory Hines, Anna Kisselgoff, Donald Byrd, Edward Villella, Ronald K. Brown, Irene Dowd, Allegra Kent, Gelsey Kirkland, Pilobolus w/Adam Battlestein, Suzanne Farrell, Mummenschantz, Eldar Aliev, Deborah Jowitt, Bill T. Jones, Pascal Rioult, Clinton Luckett of ABT, Bill Irwin, and Donald McKayle. Many of the department's dance performances are in the Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater, located in Kenyon Hall.
Simon Starling a conceptual artist and winner of the Tate Gallery’s 2005 Turner Prize for contemporary art, discusses his work on Friday, October 30, at 5:30pm in Taylor Hall (Room 203).
Image: Simon Starling, film still, "Red Rivers (In Search of the Elusive Okapi)," 2009
Press Contact
Emily Darrow
Media Relations Associate
(845) 437-7690
emdarrow@vassar.edu