Talks in Contemporary Art & Lecture Lists

Hilary Term 2025

Talks in Contemporary Art

Convenor: Jennifer Lauren Martin

In the academic year 2024-25, the Ruskin will be hosting a series of talks by leading practitioners in international contemporary art (artists, writers, curators and others), which will be open to the University community and the public.  

In Hilary term, the programme focuses on research-led and interdisciplinary practices, with themes exploring colonial sites and histories, social infrastructures, and technological fictions. Our speakers include visual artist and writer Gary Zhexi Zhang, historian and theorist of sound Professor Gascia Ouzounian, and the platform and artistic collaboration SITAAD, co-founded by Leyla Degan and Naima Hassan.

The programme is intended to encourage open discussion and steer the intellectual and artistic direction of the School. 

The talks are open to the University community and the public, held at the School's East Oxford building in Bullingdon Road, at 5pm on alternate Thursdays (even weeks) through the term.  Details of the full programme will be updated below.

Free and open to all Oxford University members and the public. Tickets become available 10 days before each event, please book at the link on Eventbrite: 
https://bit.ly/Ruskin_ContArtTalks.

Ruskin students and staff are not required to book tickets to attend the talks.

• Project Space, Ruskin School of Art, 128 Bullingdon Road, OX4 1QP.
• 5pm
• HILARY TERM 2025
• Week 2, Thursday 30th January: Gary Zhexi Zhang
• Week 4, Thursday 13th February: Gascia Ouzounian
• Week 6, Thursday 27th February: SITAAD ((Leyla Degan and Naima Hassan)

Lecture Lists

Teaching begin on the first possible day after the beginning of Full Term unless otherwise stated.

Non-members of the University may not attend university lectures (unless they are announced as open to the general public) without payment of a fee, otherwise than by personal invitation of the lecturer concerned. Persons who are neither reading for a qualification of this University nor otherwise exempt, and who wish to attend lectures in any term, should apply to the Buildings and Events Manager, Examination Schools, for details of fees. At least three working days’ notice is required before a lecture permit can be issued, to allow liaison with the department or faculty concerned. Senior visiting scholars from other universities who wish to attend lectures, seminars, or classes should normally apply to the lecturer concerned directly, and not to the Buildings and Events Manager.

History and Theory of Contemporary Visual Culture

Convenor: Professor Jason Gaiger

Lectures held in the Examination Schools are open to any member of the University of Oxford. Those lectures and seminars held at the Ruskin School of Art are open only to Ruskin students, except by arrangement in advance. Please apply.
 

Examination schools:

Final Honours School (BFA2) - Wednesdays

'Telling It Otherwise'
Dr Giulia Smith, Professor Jason Gaiger, Associate Professor Onyeka Igwe

• 11am, Examination Schools
• Week 1: 'Performative Writing'
• Week 2: 'Art as a Means to Truth'
• Week 4: 'Narrating the Self'
• Week 5: 'Parafiction'
• Week 6: Details tbc

Prelims (BFA1) - Mondays

'Contemporary Art and the Monument: (Re)constructing History.'
Dr Rachel Wells

• 11am, Examination Schools
• Week 1: 'The Artist as Historian: Memory, History and the Monument'
• Week 3: ‘Potential History: The Monument Through a Lens'

'Artistic Medium' 
Dr Lawrence Alexander and Dr Marta Zboralska

• 11am, Examination Schools
• Week 5: Lecture by Lawrence Alexander
• Week 6: Lecture by Marta Zboralska