Llewellyn Thomas

Llewellyn taught for 30 years mainly at Maidstone Art College and was head of the BA in Illustration there. He also taught Art History at the University of East London. His final five years of teaching were at Farnham Art School where he headed the Further Education courses.
He was part of the team that created the model Foundation Diploma for UAL. He was a visiting moderator across the UK for that qualification and for the BTEC in Interactive Multi Media.
He is a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild.

Llewellyn will be posing the question  “Now that UAL* is advertising for a ‘Generative AI Artist’. To become part of its teaching team is there a real plan for Art Education in the post Coldstream** environment?”

*University of the Arts London
** William Menzies Coldstream, (28 February 1908 – 18 February 1987) was an English realist painter and a long-standing art teacher.
Between 1958 and 1971 he was Chairman of the National Advisory Council on Art Education, which published its first report in 1960—called the "Coldstream Report"—outlining the requirements for a new Diploma in Art and Design (Dip.A.D.). Coldstream's proposals eventually led to more art school courses being given degree status.

Isabella Kocum

Isabella is a frame conservator at the National Gallery, responsible for the care and conservation of frames in the collection.
She is a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild.


My doubt;  The acquisition of antique frames followed by their alteration presents a professional concern from a conservation standpoint. While the curatorial aim of presenting antique paintings in historically resonant frames is understandable, the modification of original frames raises issues regarding conservation ethics.

Vicki Ambery-Smith

Vicki Ambery-Smith has a  well established international reputation for her architectural silverware and jewellery inspired by architecture.  She has worked on this theme, (much to her own surprise!) for over 40 years and yet still gets anxious before handing over a commissioned item to a client.  She calls this ‘stage fright’.  Why does it happen?
She is a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild.

In Vicki’s own words

“As the work we do is so personal and specific to each of us we are laying our soul bare for judgement at that moment of revelation.   Lack of confidence from knock-backs at earlier years at school?  Feelings of being ‘found out’.?

Discuss!   I would like this to be open to hear others thoughts on the subject.”

Claire Collison

     

Claire Collison is a writer and visual artist. She teaches Creative NonFiction and Poetry at City Lit, and designs engagement for various folk, including the Government Art Collection. Her most recent poetry pamphlet, 'Placebo' is published by Blueprint. She is not a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild.


Recently I've been transcribing birdsong. I'm interested in doubt as a creative force for good - Keats's negative capability, or what Barthes described as "the misfortune (but also perhaps the voluptuous pleasure) of language not to be able to authenticate itself."

Gareth Mason

Gareth Mason is a ceramicist. He is a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild.


"'Ceramic Doubt — An Unreliable Witness'

I make pots that are not easily resolved to the apparent settled order of ceramic art, especially that of porcelain, burdened with its time-honoured purity. This talk is an attempt to speak from within, rather than about. I will take the turbulent emergence of one recent piece of work — its near-destruction through several firings, to its final dissonant incarnation — to illustrate the madness my practice routinely puts me through.
What is said will not resolve. Because uncertainty is always there, in my work and words."

Michael
Hrebeniak

Michael Hrebeniak is the Founder and Convenor of the New School of the Anthropocene, an
experimental micro-university based at the AWG, which is dedicated to confronting biopolitical emergency through the arts, and Associate Professor of Film Poetics at UCL. He is not a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild


He’ll be speaking about the positive value of uncertainty as a gestalt across the postwar American arts and how this spirit actively informs the ethos of the New School of the Anthropocene.