notes

ask any art stu­dent worth their salt who john latham is and they’re likely to refer to the oft quoted story of his expul­sion from st. mar­tins for the ‘diges­tion’ of clement green­berg’s art and cul­ture but latham has bequeathed (he died in 2006) a major body of work and is rightly widely acknowl­edged as a key fig­ure in late 20th cen­tury british mod­ernism and the avant-garde con­cep­tual move­ment of the 60s.

his work was always con­cerned with the con­nec­tions, ten­u­ous or not, between art and sci­ence, in par­tic­u­lar he was inter­ested in the dis­ci­plines related to fun­da­men­tal physics, and in par­tic­u­lar the notion of the ‘least event’, reach­ing its ful­fil­ment in his view with the exhibit­ing by robert rauschen­burg, in 1951, of an unti­tled and unmarked can­vas.

later latham became much more closely con­nected with event based art of the 1960s col­lab­o­rat­ing with fluxus artists, gus­tav met­zger, and yoko ono.

the con­tro­versy in latham’s life and work con­tin­ued through­out his life, cul­mi­nat­ing per­haps in his very pub­lic spat with art his­to­rian john a. walker.

since his death there has been an ongo­ing re-evaluation of his work and inter­ven­tions, part of this can be expe­ri­enced at the whitechapel gallery on the 10th june, where two of his films: unedited mate­r­ial from the star and talk mr bard will be pre­sented. both films will be con­tex­tu­alised by the pre­sen­ta­tion of sup­port­ing illus­tra­tive mate­r­ial and talks by guest speak­ers Anthony Hudek andAthana­sios Velios, devel­op­ers of the Latham Archive

exprm­ntl

thurs­day 10 june

whitechapel gallery

77 – 82 whitechapel high street

lon­don

e1 7qx

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