The LYC Museum & Art Gallery and the Museum as Practice
This symposium proposes a consideration of the LYC Museum as an extension of Li’s pioneering participatory art practice; for example, he was one of six participants in Popa at Moma: Pioneers of Part-Art, at Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1971.
Moreover, the symposium highlights the role of the LYC Museum as a site from which to explore the questions of how friendships inform shared practices, generate work, and circulate stories. The networks and practices that the LYC Museum enabled and enriched have yet to be studied widely. For example, his friendship with the concrete poet and Benedictine monk, dom sylvester houédard, or the pioneering sound artist, Delia Derbyshire – Li’s assistant, and briefly partner, at the LYC Museum (1976–77).
Introduction
Sarah Victoria Turner (Paul Mellon Centre, Deputy Director of Research) Welcome and Introduction, Hammad Nasar (Paul Mellon Centre, Senior Research Fellow and Stuart Hall Foundation, Executive Director) Cumbrian Cosmopolitanism: Li Yuan-chia and Friends
Session One: Exhibitions
Session 1
Yu-Jie Huang (Art Researcher and Curator) Presenting and Representing Li Yuan-Chia through Exhibitions Lucy Steeds (University of the Arts London, Reader in Art Theory and Exhibition Histories) In the Slipstream of Li Yuan-chia’s Floating Disc Toy Respondent: Elena Crippa (Tate, Curator, Modern and Contemporary British Art)
Session Two: Publications
Session 2
Nicola Simpson (Norwich University of the Arts, Researcher and curator) “begin again (and again and again and again): Performance, No Thingness and Dependently-Related Transmission in the poemobjects and poemenvironments of Li Yuanchia and Dom Sylvester Houédard.” Gustavo Grandal Montero (Camberwell and Chelsea Colleges, University of the Arts London, Librarian and Special Collections Curator) LYC Press: Li Yuan-chia as a book designer and publisher Respondent: David Morris (Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, Editor)
Session Three: Place
Session 3
Diana Yeh (City University of London, Lecturer in Sociology, Culture and the Creative Industries) Translocality and Difference and Rural Conviviality Ysanne Holt (Northumbria University, Professor of Art History and Visual Culture) The LYC: Rethinking Place at the Border Respondent: Christopher Payne (University of Manchester, Lecturer in Chinese Studies)
Session Four: Friendships/Groups
Session 4
Lesley Ma (M+, Ink Art Curator) Taipei, Bologna: Li Yuan-chia's Beginnings Jovan Nicholson (Freelance Art Historian) Winifred Nicholson and Li Yuan-chia Respondent: Amy Tobin (University of Cambridge, Lecturer in History of Art)
Session Five: Museums
Session 5
In conversation: Alistair Hudson (Manchester Art Gallery, Director) and Charles Esche (Van Abbemuseum, Director) with Hammad Nasar