Open crits at trs
Approaching the launch of the Independents Biennial and the Liverpool Biennial, we have reviewed our studio programme, designed to support the artistic practice of our studio members, and considered how we can extend that enrichment to the wider art community. In the studios, we gather to share new work, works in progress, or sometimes even just the beginning of an idea, on the last Thursday of every month.
Amidst the buzz of the concurrent Biennials and the artists in their droves installing exhibitions, offering workshops, delivering performances, hosting markets, and facilitating creative actions, TRS wants to open our studio doors to invite practicing artists in all mediums to engage in our space, community, and crits.
If you haven't been to a crit before, it is simply a gathering of artists who would like feedback on their work, though in art school, it was compulsory. Outside of that setting, we can decide how we choose to engage. We welcome art made with any medium, as the diversity of work can create the most interesting dialogue. Crits are brilliant for progressing a project that feels stagnant, creating new avenues of research, receiving validation that what you're trying to communicate is coming through, and facilitating collaboration.
As an artist-led organisation, we have the opportunity to create tools for artistic development, by artists for artists. Therefore, the Open Crits at TRS and their structure are what we make of them. We invite each artist to assign their own rules to how they want their work to be engaged with. Whether that's asking your peers for their brutal honesty or prefacing your work with a guideline for your peers to follow when offering feedback, all artists and their work will be dealt with constructively and respectfully.
In most cases, crits are based on initial and immediate responses to the work we see before us. The artist holds off on providing any context until after the audience has provided feedback. As our crits are open to a wider community of artists, we will encounter people who have never engaged with our work before, so we invite artists to introduce their work and provide context if they wish. If you are happy to prop your work in front of the group and let them respond based on nothing but what they see, feel, or hear, we welcome that too.
Our crit facilitators are our very own TRS Directors, who each have experience in exhibiting work, mentoring, facilitating workshops, successful funding applications, earning commissions, and most recently, running The Royal Standard’s studios and gallery. Between them, they have worked with arts organisations such as FACT and the ICA as well as NPOs and charities. Their practices cover mediums such as 3D, film, AR/VR, writing, drawing, performance, and installation.
Dates and booking links:
Thursday 26th June: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1394549046739?aff=oddtdtcreator
Thursday 31st July: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1394667099839?aff=oddtdtcreator
Thursday 28th August: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1394668363619?aff=oddtdtcreator
