Did you miss the talk by Daniel Sturgis, Professor in Painting (University of the Arts London, Camberwell College of Arts) and Mick Finch, Professor of Visual Art Practice (University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins) as part of the exhibition Supports/Surfaces. Notre collection à l'affiche? The discussion was recorded and is now available online.
This presentation showed how the cultural and material specificity of abstract painting was used by the artists associated with Supports/Surfaces to escape from more dominant Northern European and American traditions. This artistic approach, which questioned abstraction through a politicised practice based on subverting convention and materiality, could be seen to connect with work by other artists working simultaneously and to similar ends in Italy and North Africa. We brought up questions that arose in these related contexts, in terms of feminism and post-colonisation, which enriched our understanding of Supports/Surfaces and the histories of abstract painting in Europe during this period more generally.