‘GRAVITY: MATERIAL’ – Rose Butler and Ruth Levene hosted by Michelle Atherton

Gravity: Material, featuring Rose Butler and Ruth Levene, chaired by Michelle Atherton
Thursday 09 November 2017, 4:15PM – 6:00PM
Charles Street Lecture Theatre, City Campus
Open to the public, all welcome

Rose Butler‘s artwork can take the form of installation, single and multi-screen videos, or large-scale photographs. Her work teeters between different states of being and knowing, and plays with time slippage, repetition and intervention. She weaves political commentary, personal account and fictional histories with observation made through documentation, to examine the narratives that surround and shape us.

Rose has exhibited widely and her films are part of international arts screening programmes. Her most recent interactive video installation Come and Go, was exhibited as part of Everything Flows at the Millennium Gallery and her dual screen video The Fairs was exhibited with Site Gallery as part of AND Festival 2017. In November she will screen work on the British Council Mobile Cinema in Hull and exhibit work at Kabinet Muz in the Czech Republic. She is an artist-researcher and Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, a board member of Bloc Projects and a member of the Making Ways artist panel. www.rosebutler.com

Ruth Levene‘s work explores systems that are often hidden but that shape our everyday lives. She questions our relationship with those systems and how they in turn impact and disconnect us from nature and the natural resources we rely upon. The work manifests as video, walking, performance, mapping and socially-engaged practice.

Ruth has shown work in Dundee Contemporary Arts, Arnolfini, KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (Sunderland). She has been in residence at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and commissioned by The National Trust, Cornerhouse (Manchester), BBC Radio 3 Sound and Music Cut & Splice Festival (London) and a Cultural Olympiad commission at The National Media Museum (Bradford). She is currently working on commissions with London based Arts Catalyst on a three year co-inquiry around the Calder and Hebble Navigation and Preston based In Certain Places with Ian Nesbitt looking at The Precarious Landscape. www.ruthlevene.co.uk

Chaired by: Michelle Atherton

Michelle Atherton is an artist based in London. Her work objectifies cultural phenomena as a means to investigate structures, systems and indeterminate preoccupations. She is interested in the resistance of space through the image and the construction of an insubordinate aesthetic.

Most recent exhibitions include: RAF Cosford, UK; Zeppelin Museum, Germany; Tatton Park Biennale; Kino Babylon, Berlin; Linergallari Tallinn, Estonia; and Dagmar de Pooter Gallery, Antwerp. Her work has been supported through the Arts and Humanities Research Council. www.dreamsofflying.org

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Gravity is a forum for discussion of the significance and diversity of material practices in contemporary art to stimulate dialogue on issues of art and culture. The project encompasses a wide range of artistic traditions and takes a broad interdisciplinary approach to making and thinking about art. Alongside our research initiatives, we run a lecture series based in the Fine Art subject area at Sheffield Institute of Art at Sheffield Hallam University. Dynamic discussions connect art practice to science, architecture, literature, film and technology. Attracting students from across undergraduate, postgraduate and research areas as well as a public audience, Gravity has presented a series of presentations each year based on themes such as Beauty, Colour, Atmosphere and Pleasure to illuminate under-explored aspects of art practice and contribute to new interpretations and understanding of creative research.