Dr. Klara Kemp-Welch

Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art History (2012-13)

BA (University College London), MA (School of Slavonic and East European Studies), PhD (University College London)

Contact details

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Somerset House

Strand

London WC2R 0RN

klara.kemp-welch@courtauld.ac.uk

Klara Kemp-Welch has a BA in French and History of Art from University College London (2000), an MA in Russian and East European Literature and Culture from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London (2002), and a PhD in the History of Art from University College London (2008). Her doctoral thesis Figures of Reticence: Action and Event in East-Central European Conceptualism 1965-1989 was supervised by Professor Briony Fer. After completing her doctorate, she lectured part-time at University College London, the University of the Arts London (Camberwell), and the University of York, before joining the Courtauld Institute of Art as Leverhulme Early Career Fellow 2009-2012. She is employed as Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art 2012-13 and will be taking up an AHRC Early Career Fellowship in 2013-14.

Research interests

Klara's current book project is entitled Networking the Bloc: East European Experimental Art and International Relations, and explores exchanges among East European experimental artists and their global counterparts in the late socialist period. Please see the project webpage.

Klara Kemp-Welch's research interests include:

 

• Experimental art and archives
• International relations and the Cold War
• East European art and politics
  
• Latin American art and politics
• Post-socialism and globalization

  
  

Klara is coordinating a series of public events on East European art and architecture this year within the framework of the Courtauld Institute of Art / Calvert 22 Partnership, and, together with Elizaveta Butakova, a major conference on contemporary Russian art, Utopia III, under the aegis of The Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre CCRAC, in February 2013.

Courses taught in 2012-13

• MA Option
  Countercultures: Alternative Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1953-1991
  This new MA Option explores the experimental art scenes that developed, in parallel, in Communist Eastern Europe and under Latin American military dictatorships from the time of the death of Stalin and the beginning of the Cuban Revolution in 1953, to the dismantling of the Soviet 'bloc' in 1989-91.
  
  Find out more

 

 

PUBLICATIONS

In Progress

Antipolitics in Central European Art 1965-1989 (monograph forthcoming London: I.B. Tauris, 2013)

Networking the Bloc: International Relations in Late Socialist Art (monograph scheduled for completion in 2014)

Recent

10 x 10: See You There, Wrocław (exhibition review), Enclave Review, Issue 6, Cork, 2012. 

Cristina Freire and Klara Kemp-Welch (eds), ARTMargins #2, Special Section on Artists' Networks in Eastern Europe and Latin America, June - October 2012.

'KwieKulik's Monument Without a Passport', in Kritik und Krise. Kunst in Europa seit 1945 / Critique and Crisis. Art in Europe Since 1945, exh. cat., Berlin: Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum, 2012.

'Art Documentation and Bureaucratic Life: The 'Case' of the Studio of Documentation, Activities and Propagation' in Lukasz Ronduda and Georg Schollhammer (eds), Kwiekulik, Vienna: JPR Ringier, 2012.

'Impossible Interviews with Ceausescu: Ion Grigorescu and the Dialogic Imagination', in Alina Serban (ed.), Ion Grigorescu. The Man with a Single Camera, Bucharest: Asociatia Pepluspatru, 2012.

'Resurrections (Kabakov's Slippers): Moscow Conceptualism for Delayed Audiences', Oxford Art Journal, Volume 35 Issue 2, June 2012.

‘11th Havana Biennial: "Artistic Practices and Social Imaginaries" (PDF), various venues, 11 May - 11 June’, Art Monthly #357, June 2012.

‘Who’s Afraid of Neo-Socialist Realism?’, in Audrey Yeo (ed.), Stefan Constantinescu. An Infinite Blue, exh. cat., London: Galerie8, 2011, pp. 45-54.

‘54th Venice Biennale, various venues, Venice’, Art Monthly #348, July-August 2011.

‘Transitland. Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe. Book Review’, Artmargins, May 2011. Available online.

‘S.O.S. Socialist Occupation of the Subject. A Visual Essay’, in Lukasz Ronduda, Alex Farquharson, and Barbara Piwowarska (eds), Star City. The Future under Communism, Warsaw: MAMMAL Foundation; Nottingham Contemporary; transit.at, 2011, pp. 70-80.

‘Olga Chernysheva. Calvert 22, London’, Enclave, no, 2, Nov. 2010 (University College Cork). Available online.

‘Emancipation and Daydreams: Kantor’s Happenings’ in Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius (ed.) An Impossible Journey: The Art and Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor, London: Black Dog Publishers, 2010.

‘Hito Steyerl. In Free Fall. Chisenhale Gallery, London’, Art Monthly #342, Dec. 2010- Jan. 2011.

‘Touched. Liverpool Biennial. International Festival of Contemporary Art, Liverpool’, Art Monthly #341, Nov. 2010.

‘Jiří Kovanda’s Collisions’, in Margaret Iversen, ed., Chance. Documents of Contemporary Art Series, London: Whitechapel Gallery; Cambridge Mass. and London: MIT Press, 2010, 147-149 .

‘Articulating the Between: Henryk Stażewski’s Critical Spaces’, in Gabriela Switek (ed.), Avant-garde in the Bloc, Warsaw: Fundacja Galerii Foksal; Vienna, JPR Ringier, 2010, pp. 294-317.

‘Performance and Sculpture’ Conference Report, Henry Moore Institute Newsletter, June/July 2010, Issue no. 90.

‘History of Art, The’. Curators’ Series #3. Mihnea Mircan, David Roberts Art Foundation Fitzrovia, Art Monthly #337, June 2010.

‘Angela de la Cruz: After / Anna Maria Maiolino: Continuous’, Camden Arts Centre, London, Art Monthly #336, May 2010. 

‘Journeys with No Return’. A Foundation, London, Art Monthly #335, April 2010.

‘KwieKulik. Form is a Fact of Society. Galeria Awangarda, BWA Wroclaw’, Art Monthly #334, March 2010.

‘Polish Conceptualism: Expanded, Politicised, Contested’, Artmargins, February 2010 (peer-reviewed book review)

‘Taking Women’s Rights Seriously? Sanja Ivekovic. Urgent Matters’, Basis voor Aktuele Kunst (BAK), Utrecht, and the VanAbbe Museum, Eindhoven, Third Text, Vol. 23, Issue 6,  November 2009 (peer-reviewed).

‘Paradoxical Dissidence’ in Ludlow 38 broadsheet, New York: Goethe Institute, Nov. 2009.

‘Attacking Objectification: Jerzy Bereś in Dialogue with Marcel Duchamp’ in Mel Jordon and Malcolm Miles (eds), Art Theory and Post-Socialism, Bristol UK and Portland USA: Intellect Books, 2008, pp. 21-31 (chapter in book).

‘Aernout Mik. Shifting, Shifting’, Camden Arts Centre, Object: Graduate Research and Reviews in the History of Art and Visual Culture, no. 10, London: University College London, 2008 (peer-reviewed).

‘Affirmation and Irony in Endre Tót’s Actions of the 1970s’, in Liniara Dovydaityte (ed.), Art History & Criticism 3, Art and Politics: Case-Studies from Eastern Europe, Kaunas, Lithuania: Vytautas Magnus University, 2007 (peer-review journal), 136-144.

‘Understanding Jerzy Bereś’s Manifestations’, in Jerzy Bereś: Sztuka zgina życie / Art Bends Life, exh. cat., Kraków: Bunkier Sztuki, 2007, pp. 23-31.

‘Jerzy Bereś’s Radical Expansion of the Readymade Event’, in Jerzy Bereś: Sztuka zgina życie / Art Bends Life, exh. cat., Kraków: Bunkier Sztuki, 2007, 35-53.

‘Excursions in Communist Reality: Tadeusz Kantor’s Impossible Happenings’, Object: Graduate Research and Reviews in the History of Art and Visual Culture, no. 8, London: University College London, 2005/2006, pp. 45-65 (peer-review journal).

KEYWORDS

east-european art; contemporary art; globalisation; civil resistance; communism; post-socialism; conceptualism; performance art; art and politics; political theory