Transmission: Julie Westerman and Lulu Quinn – Tuesday 19 March 2019

Transmission logo and image for Julie Westerman and Lulu Quinn

Julie Westerman and Lulu Quinn have been friends and collaborators for twenty-five years. Inspired by each other’s practice they have combined their expertise in many an epic, entertaining, exasperating, exhilarating, and ambitious public art project, triumphing over the torrents of life-threatening flood-swollen rivers and the threat of legionella.

Julie Westerman is an artist, researcher, and lecturer in Fine Art, Sheffield Hallam University. She works across sculpture, drawing, film, animation, and as curator. Often involved in cross-disciplinary research, this has led to art and science collaborations, producing Fly Birdie Fly for the Olympic year, and an IAS Fellowship, Durham University 2014 on the theme of Light. Curatorial projects include the publication, Brutalist Speculations and Flights of Fancy, on the rethinking of utopian modernist architecture in the contemporary urban cityscape, and film screenings of Tegel: Flights of Fancy. Current research includes interdisciplinary collaborations such as Hard Engineering and Triggerpoint, in Lisbon and Berlin, using the host/guest relation to interrogate the city

Lulu Quinn is an artist, whose work started in film and video. Now she works in the public realm, developing site-specific concepts, influenced by architecture, environment, community, and context. The scale of her work varies from large stainless steel landmark structures, architectural glass, etched granite, interactive media and sound installations, large-scale lighting projects, and recycled plastic bottles. The range of public art commissions in the UK range from permanent to temporal interventions from inner city regeneration programmes to locations of special scientific significance and outstanding natural beauty, and to political memorials and direct action, often including collaborative practice with local communities and professional artists.

Transmission: Julie Westerman and Lulu Quinn
Tuesday 19 March, 4.30PM – 6.00PM
Pennine Lecture Theatre, Owen Building
Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus S1 2LW
Please register on Eventbrite.

Transmission is an annual series of lectures and symposia, now in its seventeenth year, and is a collaboration between Fine Art, the Art & Design Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, and Site Gallery. Convened by Sharon Kivland in 2001, Transmission was developed collaboratively with Lesley Sanderson from 2001 to 2004, and with Jasper Joseph-Lester from 2004 to 2012. The series is now convened by Sharon Kivland, TC McCormack, Hester Reeve, and Julie Westerman, in association with Site Gallery, Sheffield. The lecture series has an annual theme, and involves students from Fine Art, from undergraduates to PhDs.

Transmission is the passing of information via a channel, and this is the intention of the Transmission project. We enquire about the aesthetic and discursive forms required by practices in the field of contemporary art and theory that address sociality and subjectivity. It has encompassed a lecture programme, seminar discussions, an annual symposium, a print portfolio, four series of books: Transmission Annual, The Rules of Engagement, Transmission chapbooks, and five volumes of discussions/interviews, entitled Transmission: Speaking and Listening. These are published by Artwords Press, London.

Site Gallery is Sheffield’s international contemporary art space, specialising in moving image, new media, and performance. Pioneering emerging art practices and ideas, Site works in partnership with local, regional, and international collaborators to nurture artistic talent and support the development of contemporary art. At the heart of what Site does is the connection of people to artists and to art, inspiring new thinking and debate through its public programmes and participatory activity. Through diverse programming, Site reveals the process of making art to invite its audience to engage, explore, and connect. In 2018 Site Gallery re-opened after a building programme which trebled the scale of its public area.