CHARLOTTE WARNE THOMAS

Charlotte Warne Thomas joined APT at the end of 2019, and swiftly joined the newly formed Events Sub Committee. She is an artist, researcher and educator and is doing a practice-based PhD (title: Golden Age; the myth-making potency of gold) at Kingston University's Contemporary Art Research Centre, funded by Techne (AHRC). She is a member of Kingston’s Centre for Useless Splendour, the research collective We Are Publication, and curator and co-founder of Peer Sessions, a nomadic crit group for postgraduate artists. She exhibits widely as an artist and curator, and is committed to the South East London art community.

Charlotte Warne Thomas is concerned with the daily exploitations and contradictions embedded within our lives under neoliberal ideology, particularly the obfuscated ways in which financialisation affects us on a personal level, which she seeks to unearth, examine and exploit through her work. This work is frequently responsive, reacting to specific locations, histories or objects, and always based on exhaustive research of these parameters. By extension, her PhD examines the unique historical and fictional narratives surrounding gold, which draw on gold’s duplicitous nature, operating more in the realm of myth and legend than its apparent solidity belies. Through performance, installation, collage, AV, and writing, she explores the idea that gold is incorruptible and a reliable store of value, articulating and challenging the complex fictions of financialisation which govern the neoliberal economic climate.

Her most recent solo exhibition Point. Of. View took as its starting point the panoramic vista from the top window of the gallery, Atlas House. It interwove a series of narratives concerning her on going research into the unique materiality of gold together with her recent investigations into different aspects of Atlas House's history and surroundings. As such, it delved into a series of potential links between the Winerack, a now infamous tower block of luxury flats on Ipswich’s skyline which became emblematic of the 2008 financial crash, and Atlas House’s history as a former shoe factory. Through a number of related works, (an audible gilded window visible from across the neighbourhood; a semi-transparent curtain featuring a letterpress print; a short film of Rayne gold evening shoes from the V&A collection; and a text work) the exhibition used the rich metaphors and analogies conjured by gold to tease out unlikely relationships between the different elements in the exhibition. (see full documentation of the exhibition here: atlashouse.org/charlotte-warne-thomas)

Charlotte Warne Thomas graduated with an MFA in Art Practice from Goldsmiths in 2009, and has gone on to exhibit nationally and internationally including Atlas House (Ipswich, UK - solo); David Roberts Art Foundation (London, UK); Fundación Santander (Madrid, Spain); Studio X (Mumbai, India); Artplay (Moscow, Russia); Frans Masareel Centrum (Kasterlee, Belgium); Chelsea Space (London, UK); ASC Gallery (London UK) and of course APT Gallery. She has undertaken a number of residencies, including The Object of Research (RCA/University of Cumbria, Carlisle 2018); Window Space Gallery (London Metropolitan University, London 2015); Paradise Lodge, (Lonavala, India 2013); Treignac Projects, (Treignac, France, 2012). Her work has been published in Misery Connoisseur magazine and her readings and sound works played at Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, and Dekalb Gallery, Pratt Institute, New York (with We Are Publication). She has shown her performances and readings at Focal Point (Southend-on-Sea), Phoenix (Brighton) and most recently at the Stanley Picker Gallery (London), where she participated in the collaborative exhibition t h e H O L D, with We Are Publication, and produced a hand-printed numbered publication/catalogue.

In 2020 she received funding to run a symposium on Collective Pedagogical Strategies (postponed until 2021 due to C19) at the Stanley Picker Gallery, which will examine the role and value of collaborative pedagogical models for (postgraduate) research, particularly in practice-based PhDs. She co-runs Peer Sessions, an Arts Council England funded crit group and support network for postgraduate artists, founded over ten years ago with artist Kate Pickering, and has talked publicly on her work and Peer Sessions in universities, galleries and schools. She has worked as an art teacher in Sixth form, Foundation and adult and community settings and has a PGCE(LLS). She has been a visiting lecturer at Kingston, UAL, Southampton Solent, and Goldsmiths and runs art education workshops in galleries, schools and universities.

LINKS

charlottewarnethomas.com

charlottewarnethomas > Instagram

Peer Sessions

Peer Sessions is a nomadic crit group providing a discussion forum for postgraduate artists. Through silent crits, Peer Sessions offers constructive feedback to practicing artists and engages with current concerns in art and culture. In addition to crit groups, Peer Sessions have organised projects focussed on facilitating and supporting artistic collaboration. Peer Sessions are supported by APT where sessions are often held. For more information see Peer Sessions

The Centre for Useless Splendour

The Centre for Useless Splendour is housed within Kingston University’s Contemporary Art Research Centre (CARC) which aims to build and provide an intellectual and creative milieu for innovation in contemporary fine art. Andre Breton argued for the transformative power of the imagination, that it might operate to change social circumstances, and yet that it remains in important ways excessive to instrumental application – absurd and radically profane. The Centre for Useless Splendour aims to house a rich range of imaginative material and symbolic invention; for discussion and action towards this end a virtual institution operates. For more information see The Centre For Useless Splendour

We Are Publication

We Are Publication seeks to test out innovative forms of contemporary art publishing. A shape-shifting laboratory, its multi-layered publishing experiments relay the group’s interactions and exchanges. In flux and iterative, the group’s configuration as well as its outputs, signal divergent approaches to jointly conducted research. For more information see We Are Publication