Event overview
In this event in the CAL Known and Unknown Series, Dr Kimberley Foster and Dr Mhairi Vari will present practice research, and discuss aspects of the ‘Known and Unknown’ that arise.
A Space for Touching Knowledges
Dr. Kimberley Foster will reflect on her practice research and recent fellowship at Cambridge to discuss her ongoing interest in alternative ways of knowing within the art museum.
She will share examples of the Pedagogical Art Objects she creates and explore how their enactment aims to establish new material entry points for dialogue with collections and exhibits. These embodied and performative object encounters are intended to challenge habitual perceptions and confront established knowledge hierarchies.
Kimberley will discuss how finding these materialised and embodied responses to art museum collections encourages a productive state of uncertainty.
‘Southern Outfall’ in Crossness
Dr Mhairi Vari will be presenting her work, ‘Southern Outfall’ (2025). This was a substantial site-specific installation evolved through development of an artistic ecology within the Victorian pumping station at Crossness. Activity formed means for unfolding event rather than planned journey towards a known point of arrival through positioning as artist-volunteer within a voluntary organisation: the Crossness Engines Trust.
Embedded there for three years Vari was involved with many aspects of the organisation, participating in processes of change while working informally within the community of volunteers that keep the place going, arriving at celebratory culmination in the form of an event-installation that existed across the site.
This residency was established through an ‘open brief’, an approach to artistic placement established in the activity of the APG (Artists Placement Group) through the 1970-80s. Mhairi is an active member of the IU (Incidental Unit), the current iteration of the APG. Her time spent at Crossness engaged a complex layering of thought cohered through process philosophy, in a site that carries rich relation to changing technologies and the inevitable release from human dependencies that comes through scientific advance.
Bio – Kimberley Foster
Dr Kimberley Foster is an artist and academic whose research focuses on embodied approaches to learning and interpretation in art museums. She explores how a distinct material approach, connected to specifically designed Pedagogical Art Objects, can engage diverse forms of knowledge and enhance the museum materialised experience.
Bio - Mhairi Vari
Dr Mhairi Vari is a multi-modal artist based in London. She started out in theatre and informal education, gravitated to the expanded field of Fine Art sculpture and has just completed a Phd in Music and Sound Arts within the Sound/Image Research Centre at the University of Greenwich as part of her continued processes of learning, education and practice.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 16 Jul 2025 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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