The Ignorant Art School | Sit-in#2: To Be Potential: Touring Exhibition, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, UK

Exhibition: Sit- in # 2: To Be Potential Dates: 18 March – 21 May 2022
Public event Series (Online & In-person) Dates: 18 March – 21 May 2022
Venue: The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

Curated by Hao, Sit-in #2: To Be Potential at the Hatton Gallery enabled The Ignorant Art School; Five Sit-ins towards Creative Emancipation to engage directly with the birthplace of the pioneering ‘Basic Course’, an art pedagogical experiment developed by artists Richard Hamilton and Victor Pasmore in the 1950s as a new approach to artistic training. The project also enhanced the legacy of the Basic Course by bringing to light the lesser-known pedagogical experiments of Tom Hudson and Rita Donagh. Emphasising knowledge as a collective experience and artistic practice as pedagogy, the exhibition navigates historical experiments and contemporary alternative initiatives in art education including the Bauhaus, the Basic Course in Newcastle, Anti-university London, Copenhagen Free University, Edinburgh Arts Summer School, Free University New York, GUDSKUL in Jakarta, The Hedgeschoolproject in Ireland, the Hornsey Sit-in of 1968, The Rooftop Institute in Hong Kong, The White Room in Reading, and Womanifesto in Thailand, amongst many others. Instigating a critical dialogue between history and the present, the exhibition included a display of Richard Hamilton’s important installation work Men, Machine, Motion which was created in the Hatton Gallery during his tenure at Newcastle University. Expanding the curatorial scope of the project and its audience reach, the exhibition and event series of Sit-in #2: To Be Potential at the Hatton Gallery responded to the thematic pertinence of the venue through commissioning a new live performance from artist Anne Bean. Referencing and reactivating two case studies included in the exhibition, the White Room, in which Anne Bean was a participant in 1970, was a project initiated by Rita Donagh, a former Basic Course tutor, The Wormhole Contract.14/05/2032 | 14/05/2022 | 14/05/1970 was made in collaboration with students at Newcastle University. The physical material generated during the live performance was acquired by the Hatton Gallery for their permanent collection, embedding a history of The Ignorant Art School in the same collection which holds material from the ‘Basic Course’.