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Lee Mingwei, Our Labyrinth (2015). Performance. Exhibition view: 11th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Power Station of Art (12 November–2 March 2017). Courtesy Power Station of Art.
Research Forum

Keeping it Live: Conserving Performance at Tate

Keeping it Live: Conserving Performance at Tate
  • When
  • Where
    UNSW GALLERIES
  • Address
    Cnr Oxford St & Greens Rd, Paddington NSW 2021
  • Hours
    5–6pm
  • Phone
    (02) 8936 0888
  • RSVP
    Register

UNSW Art & Design Research Forum and UNSW Galleries present a lecture by UK-based conservator Louise Lawson. This lecture focuses on the documentation and conservation of performance artworks at Tate, exploring the notion of “liveness” within an artwork in an institutional context. Lawson examines the challenges that performance and choreographic artworks can present within conservation as they enter, live and evolve within a collection. 

As approaches to time based media conservation shifts, it is important to embrace unknown outcomes and to accept artworks that exist outside of established categorisation and processes. Lawson highlights the current work within the time-based media conservation team at Tate, and how their conservation process has become living and evolving in response to the artform and the challenges it presents.

This keynote is part of the UNSW Art & Design Research Forum, 'Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum'. This program brings artists, researchers and institutions into dialogue about best-practice to support both the choreographer and the museum and to sustain momentum in theory and practice around dance and the visual arts.

 

Biography

Louise Lawson is Conservation Manager for Time Based Media Conservation at Tate, a role she has held for over nine years. She is responsible for the strategic direction, development and delivery of all aspects relating to time-based media conservation at Tate. This requires working across a wide range of projects and programmes: exhibitions, displays, acquisition, loan-outs and collection care initiatives.

Her current work and research is focused on the documentation and conservation of performance-based artworks within Tate Collection. This has involved developing documentation tools and a conservation strategy to support how works enter, live and evolve in the collection. Louise has spoken at a range of conferences, with a recent paper, 'Developing a strategy for the conservation of performance-based artworks at Tate', published in the UK Journal of the Institute of Conservation.

Further information on the conservation work in performance at Tate can be found here. 

 

If you have questions regarding access to exhibitions or programs, please call on 02 8936 0888 or email unswgalleries@unsw.edu.au