ONTOLOGUE: Workshop

Comments on the Workshop

Seminar and Tutorial: Discourse by Benedict Youngman

As part of a series of workshops presented October 23rd-24th, 2010 at the School of Architecture and Allied Arts in Portland | Department of Art | Digital Arts Program and the White Box Visual Laboratory | University of Oregon in concurrence with the O N T O L O G U E exhibit

In confluence with O N T O L O G U E, the Fall 2010 White Box exhibit curated by Joshua Kim and coordinated by UO Professor Kartz Ucci and WB’s Elizabeth Lamb, the participating artists, Benedict Youngman, Sepideh Saii, and Melis Van Den Berg presented three workshops for students enrolled in the A&AA in Portland | Department of Art | Digital Arts Program. The series of workshops were designed and produced by Joshua Kim with the help of University of Oregon staff and Mack McFarland, Associate Curator at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. McFarland comments that faculty in the PNCA MFA and Intermedia department gave recommendations for student participation from PNCA. In addition to UO Portland Digital Arts students, the workshops were also offered to junior and senior students at PNCA who work with the college’s gallery. In what Kim describes as “a joint share in the workshops”, UO and PNCA collaborated to produce a successful institutional relationship. This attitude was echoed by McFarland who was “thrilled that Joshua Kim and the [UO] and the White Box made these workshops open to our students.”

The London based artist, Benedict Youngman led a group discussion of the participants’ practice. For the one-day workshop, Youngman aimed to create an open atmosphere to engage with the students in an effort to reinforce, question, and test their practice. An internationally accomplished artist, Youngman holds a Master of Arts (sculpture) from the Slade. He has exhibited at the Intervention Gallery at the Anglican Chapel Kensal Green Cemetary London, UK.

During the University of Oregon’s White Box O N T O L O G U E exhibit, Youngman was the artist-in-residence at the Wilson River project as a component of the exhibition. During his two month, as he describes it, “solitary stint” at the Wilson River Ranch deep within the Tillamook forest landscape, the artist recalls this isolation being arduous and compelling self-reflection. It was a seclusion that gave him an opportunity to attempt to “fuse…different elements into one piece…to imbue a notion of place or displacement.” Consequently, Youngman would have a firsthand experience with the Digital Arts students and their individual expressions of place during the workshop discussions—and gain observations into the method and practice of the students’ emerging theory and expression. Kim cited Youngman’s workshop as having a “great effect on the students.”

In his workshop discussion, Youngman welcomed an open discourse of all mediums and encouraged students to focus on methods and practice. Kim commented that the students were absorbed in the work and took their tasks both seriously and creatively. As students experimented with street/urban/propaganda art with a somewhat “guerilla attitude,” Kim noted that in an effort to broaden this scope “the exhibiting and discourse of….Benedict’s work had an impact because [Benedict] is not [a] street artist and [his] work is successful and made from accessible materials.” Kim observed that this approach lead to students “[diving] deep into their practice and sorting out their issues”—guided and inspired by Youngman who was able to draw on his own experience.

The following are comments directly from the artist, Benedict Youngman regarding the O N T O L O G U E Workshop and are reprinted with the permission of the artist. [Note: all the O N T O L O G U E participating artists were contacted and invited to offer comments on their workshop experiences. The author will include those comments and update this post should the remaining two artists find time to contribute at a later date.]

O N T O L O G U E was a real pleasure to take part in. The White Box gallery is wonderful and unique in it’s feeling; a fusion of a highly polished gallery space….and a progressive space for the development of and, most importantly, dialogue around contemporary art. The connection to the University of Oregon and the sense that what we were doing fed into the workings of an educational establishment felt very strong when you took the time to look around the building. For me, the most satisfying aspect of the show was engaging with the UO students, bringing them down to the gallery and talking about the work there, then working with them for a weekend on the workshop and tutorial programme devised for us.

I will treasure the memories from tutorials with Gage Hamilton, Braeden Cox, and Brian Aebi, as well as Stefan Ransom and Marilyn Skalberg over from PNCA, who showed such striking sensitivity in their approach to work and the world. Sentiments were supported by work which is rich in it’s diversity, coherent and investigative technique, and emotional power. My hope is that they benefited from our input and that there has been a bar set (if there wasn’t one already!) for dialogue with more visiting artists involved with White Box or otherwise.

I was really impressed by how much the students engaged and really grappled with things in the short time they had….One aspect or issue which came across so strongly in Brian [Aebi], Gage [Hamilton] and Braeden [Cox] et al’s work was an intense feeling of connection to place and a great sense of the questioning of origins, identity, and location—from the localised and playfully voyeuristic aspect of Gage’s street works, to the way that architecture writ large then inwards to the very nature of the studios in the White Stag block seemed to deeply affect Brian’s work in a way he seemed to want to battle with and embrace at the same time. I was really moved by what they revealed.

Being in Portland–amongst it’s people in town as well as my time alone in the hills of the Tillamook forest–was an immensely positive experience. I hope to repeat any of it as soon as I can. I certainly won’t forget it.

–Benedict Youngman, December 2010, London, UK.

Story Sabina Samiee