Open lecture in the Fine Art department: Kevin Atherton
Friday, May 5 at 13 Lectureroom Laugarnesvegi 91
Born on the Isle of Man in 1950, Kevin Atherton is an artist who works with performance and new media in sculptural contexts. His is a time-based practice with an ongoing interest in the relationship between the real and the fictional. Since the 1980s Atherton has created many large-scale public sculptural commissions.
Well known as an art educator, he taught at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin from 2000 to 2014 where he was Head of Postgraduate Pathways in the Faculty of Fine Art and as such has influenced a whole generation of young artists. Previously he taught at Chelsea College of Art in London as the Head of Combined Media. He has exhibited and performed throughout the world including at the Museum of Modern Art San Francisco (SFMOMA), The Museum of Modern Art Vienna (MUMOK) and at Tate Britain. His two-screen video installation In Two Minds (1978-2014) is in the Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin collection.
As Jackie Hatfield said in 2005 in, Rewind-Artists Videos in the 70s and 80s: “The audience has been central to the becoming of his artworks, from the Brixton Station platform sculptures, to his direct address of the invisible demarcation of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture in Coronation Street. Atherton has used the art gallery as ‘theatre’ to question art and the artist ‘performer’ relative to the wider cultural influences of mass entertainment, including the performer in vaudeville or stand-up comedy.”
