The artists in residence at the British School at Rome, present the results of their developing research three times a year, in the December Mostra, March Mostra and June Mostra. All of them take place at the BSR. On these occasions the award-holders are able to show their work to the Roman audience, creating a fruitful moment of dialogue and exchange.

The American writer Rebecca Walker defined the rebirth of the feminist movement in the early 1990s as ‘third-wave’, following the first and second waves. This third wave was geared towards a radical rethinking of gender identity. Queer theory became the basis for the subsequent theory of gender, a subject which the selected artists will address from different perspectives in this series of talks. For more information, see here.

To talk about justice would be to open up a vast philosophical discussion, to which this se-ries can only gesture. The practices of the artists selected for this coming year’s Fine Arts Talks (2019–20) bring up questions connected to social or political justice in the world today. If you google justice, the first page of results is about lifestyle and taste: ‘justice’ is both an expensive trendy clothing brand and an electronic music duo. In terms of an internet search, which is how most things are judged today, the idea of justice appears to have been coopted by riot chic, perhaps because it is increasingly a rarefied ideal, a concept that is hard to grasp in a world where social, political and environmental injustice reigns.

Talks from Lockdown is a series of ongoing talks that begun in Spring 2020 with a focus on viruses of the body and of the mind and notions of transmission and cultural contamination. When the Black Lives Matter movement came to the fore in June 2020, the series changed its shape, taking a direction that is different only at first glance. It takes as it main theme issues of colonialism and decolonisation within institutions and museums.

What is materiality in contemporary art? In historical art, materiality played two important roles: to imitate the world and to overcome death. Certain materials also had specific meanings, indicating wealth and exclusivity.

Contemporary art prompts a different discourse around materiality. From the materiality of colour revealed in its plasticity in abstract expressionism to a reconnection with everyday objects in Pop Art, which began in the 1930s with the Surrealist object trouvé. Materiality can be a body in Performance Art or disappear in Digital Art. Many artists use materiality in a symbolic way, to investigate personal histories and collective memories.

The intention behind the series of talks entitled Talk Materialities, is to explore the wide panorama of contemporary approaches to art and materiality through the work of artists, curators and art historians.