29/10/2024
Root to Crown : A Joseph Beuys Symposium
Ulster Museum 18th November 2024 10am - 8pm
In 1974 the island of Ireland was captivated by the arrival of a German conceptual artist making waves across Europe for his radical approach to art, learning and community, Joseph Beuys.
Fifty years on from a series of lectures that were held across the island of Ireland we look at how they were embedded in the psyche of those who witnessed them and how this inspired generations of artists on the island of Ireland to organise, create and disrupt the established norms.
Coinciding with the 175 years of The Belfast School of Art, Root to Crown will explore the initial impacts of Beuys visit at Crawford Art College, Co. Cork, The Ulster Museum Belfast and The Belfast School of Art. As well as this we will hear about how these lectures and approaches to practice influenced the creation of new organisations such as Art and Research Exchange a decade later.
Root to Crown also welcomes artists from across the island whose work touches on themes present in Beuys practice on landscape, ecology, pedagogy and time. Featuring artists; Maud Cotter, Tom Ó Caollaí, Belinda Loftus, Alastair MacLennan, Rainer Pagel, Brian Connolly, Marina Iodice, Siobhán Mullen and Hollie Miller.
Root to Crown is a programmed event by Belfast International Festival of Performance Art committee member Thomas Wells as part of BEUYS 50 years later: Action, Society, Performance and Change at the Ulster Museum.
The symposium will be followed by the launch of a new publication ‘OVERVIEW’, a document of the Belfast International Festival of Performance Art in 2023 featuring newly commissioned essays compiled by BIFPA committee members and designed by Keith Connolly.
