Image: Dorothy Price and Chantal Joffe at Arnolfini September 2020 by Lisa Whiting
The first UWE/Arnolfini Art in the City lecture of the autumn, an in-conversation between Chantal Joffe and Professor Dorothy Price, took place on Wednesday 28 October.
Due to huge demand, we are pleased to be able to present this online to audiences who may have missed the opportunity first time ’round.
Arnolfini is a registered charity (number 311504) and we would really appreciate your support, no matter how small your contribution. Please donate online at www.justgiving.com/arnolfini Thank you.
Born in 1969, St. Albans, Vermont, USA, Chantal Joffe lives and works in London. Her exhibition, Chantal Joffe: For Esme – with Love and Squalor, which was on show at Arnolfini, explored the intimate act of painting and portraiture. Taking its name from J.D. Salinger’s short story For Esmé – with Love and Squalor (1950) in which time hangs as heavy as the protagonist’s ‘enormous-faced chronographic-looking wristwatch’, the exhibition captures the changing faces across the years of Chantal and her daughter Esme, moving between mother and daughter, love and squalor, and the act of care and being cared for. Including a number of new works (many produced whilst in the first UK ‘lockdown’), highlights include a series of portraits of Joffe’s daughter, from older works such as Esme (First Painting) captured as a new-born swaddled in blankets, to the later, defiantly awkward, Esme in White, painted within days of her sixteenth birthday this year.
She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize in 2006. Joffe will create a major new public work for the Elizabeth line station at Whitechapel. Titled A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel, the work will be on view when the Crossrail station opens in 2021. Her recent solo exhibition titled Personal Feeling is the Main Thing at The Lowry, Salford in 2018 presented works from across Joffe’s career and alongside works by the German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker. Joffe is represented by Victoria Miro, London, a full artist CV can be accessed via the gallery website at www.victoria-miro.com/usr/library/documents/main/artists/19/cv-joffe.pdf
Dr. Dorothy Price is Professor of History of Art at the University of Bristol, editor of Art History the journal of the Association for Art History, UK. She is widely published in the areas of British art and German modernism with a particular focus on women artists. Books include Representing Berlin: Sexuality and the City in Imperial and Weimar Germany 2003, Women the Arts and Globalization: Eccentric Experience (co-edited) 2013, and After Dada: Marta Hegemann and the Cologne Avant-Garde. She contributes internationally to exhibitions of German modernism including the Neue Galerie, New York, the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Tate, London and many others. She is a consultant for New Walk Gallery Leicester, a Trustee of Spike Island, Bristol and on the Academic Advisory Board and Exhibitions Committee of the RWA, Bristol. Price co-curated Chantal Joffe: For Esme – with Love and Squalor, having collaborated with Joffe over a number of years.
Art in the City is a series of international artist’s talks co-presented by Fine Art UWE Bristol and Arnolfini.
Previous speakers include Phyllida Barlow, Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed, Rose Wylie, Martin Parr, Bob and Roberta Smith, Laure Prouvost.
