Art and/as Social Practice

PhD Seminar Series, 6 December 2023

In this penultimate seminar of 2023, Julia Vogl will be talking to us about her work in Public Art and the Printmaking/Studio space. As part of this she’ll be talking in particular about the challenges between commissioning and working large versus the intimacy of experimentation in the studio—a balance that can also be difficult to strike if you are working as a researcher, designer, curator, or project manager. What changes when you design in one space or another? What changes in the way you make? And how do you set expectations of what you deliver?

© Julia Vogl

Julia Vogl works internationally. She makes social sculpture and installations that are engaging with site and colourfully form community. Vogl adopted the term Social Sculpture, defined by artist Joseph Beuys coined 60 years ago, to define her relational art. Vogl’s approach invites the public to take action, not necessarily a creative one, and the individual actions gradually build a collective work or data set that contributes to a visual product and catalyst for socializing. Public commissions include work themed on Death (at Bristol Cemetery)  Freedom and Immigration (Boston Common, USA) and recently Epigenetics (with the London Medical Research Council). Her work primarily focused on lifestyle and what things do we, as humans, share and what makes us distinct.