Royal Academy of Arts

Wolfgang Tillmans RA (b.1968) is regarded as one of the most influential figures working within photography today. In 2000, he was the first non-British artist to receive the Turner Prize. Since the

early 1990s Tillmans has been challenging the potentiality of making pictures. His work has epitomized a new kind of subjectivity in photography, pairing intimacy and playfulness with social

critique and the persistent questioning of existing values and hierarchies. Through his seamless integration of genres, subjects, techniques, and exhibition strategies, he has expanded conventional

ways of approaching the medium, and his practice continues to address the fundamental question of what it means to create pictures in an increasingly image-saturated world.

Marie de Brugerolle is an art historian, curator and author. She has worked in many institutions at Mnam-Pompidou center, the MoMA in New York, the CNAC-Magasin in Grenoble, France, Carré d’art

Nîmes. Her work focuses on the history of performance art, from the 1960s to its current state of dematerialization and absorption by the society of the spectacle. This complements her theoretical project, Post Performance Future. She is the leading authority on the French-born Californian artist Guy de Cointet and has been instrumental in introducing Californian art to Europe (first retrospectives

of Allen Ruppersberg (1996), Guy de Cointet (2004) John Baldessari (2005), and Larry Bell (2010).

Eventually Dust: On the Particulars of the Present as Seen Through Its Devices': visual culture and the idea of the end of history, the emergence of the device, the antipathy of the device to dust.

Esther Leslie (b.1964) is a lecturer in English and Humanities at Birkbeck and Co-Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. Her research interests are Marxist theories of aesthetics and culture and critical theory, with a particular focus on the work of Walter Benjamin and TheodorAdorno.

Eventually Dust: On the Particulars of the Present as Seen Through Its Devices': visual culture and

the idea of the end of history, the emergence of the device, the antipathy of the device to dust.

Esther Leslie (b.1964) is a lecturer in English and Humanities at Birkbeck and Co-Director of the

Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. Her research interests are Marxist theories of aesthetics and

culture and critical theory, with a particular focus on the work of Walter Benjamin and Theodor

Adorno.

Charlie Fox (b. 1991) is a London based writer and curator.

Curator of My Head is a Haunted House, Sadie Coles HQ 5 June - 31 August 2019

‘When I was a weird little kid in suburbia obsessed with horror of all kinds, my grandfather (who isn't

alive anymore) built me a haunted house. I could pretend I was a ghost or a bat or a werewolf crying

blood over a cardboard tombstone. It was a make-believe world where my imagination could get

deranged and it was magic. My Head is a Haunted House grew out of that hallucinogenic memory

and its psychic hold on me.’

As the last final year exhibition that will take place in the RA Schools before it enters a significant renovation project, this year’s show celebrates the programme that inhabited the current architecture.

Created by Rebecca K. Halliwell-Sutton, this 44 minute audio work is comprised of fragmented audio from the RA Schools lecture programme. The Class of 2022 selected various talks, lectures and seminars that have stayed with them since they started on the programme in 2018, to be included in the archive, as a way to open up the private space of the lecture room and academic programme.

00.00: Helen Mirra

01.15: Marie de Brugerolle

02.48: Phyllida Barlow

04.12: Wolfgang Tillmans

09.09: Frank B Wilderson III

16.24: Esther Leslie

20.41: Phyllida Barlow

22.07: Frank B Wilderson III

26.56: Nina Trivedi / Atlanta Season 2

28.33: Charlie Fox

29.31: Wolfgang Tillmans

31:56: Federico Campagna

38:07: Amelia Groom

43:39: The End

Recorded during our exhibition Lucien Freud: The Self-portraits, Tracey Emin CBE RA and David Dawson(Lucien Freud's assistant and model) discuss their memories of the artist, as well as Emin and Freud’s shared ability to innovate, provoke and soul-search.

Anthropologist and director of the documentary 'Inside Australia', Hugh Brody discusses how geology, anthropology and humankind’s connection with the land are represented in Gormley’s work.

Theoretical astrophysicist, Priya Natarajan, joins Semiconductor, the artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, to discuss how artists contribute to our understanding of the world around and the relationship between physics, cosmology and art.

Part of 'Where language ends: Antony Gormley’s discourse series'.

Antony Gormley discusses his career spanning over 40 years and explores how his series of installations within the RA’s Main Galleries encouraged visitors to slow down and become aware of their own bodies and environment.

Part of 'Where language ends: Antony Gormley’s discourse series'.