For One Night Only in the UK

'An Odd Couple' speak at the Art Workers Guild, London

Gareth Mason and Richard Jacobs present their uniquely challenging and entertaining collaboration:

'An evening of dissonant discourse and polite subversion.'

A one-off fund-raiser event

contributing towards the Art Workers Guild's renovations to its historic Queen Square premises.

Richard Jacobs and Gareth Mason at the opening of Mason's exhibition, 'More is More' at Jason Jacques Gallery, New York, January 2014. Photo: Kevin Mertens.

Can the far-reaching dilemmas of being an artist and pursuing a thoughtful life really be embedded in so humble an act as collecting

or making ceramics? Do these ostensibly innocuous pursuits in truth veil a philosophical arena of absurd and profound proportions?

'An Odd Couple' at the Art Workers Guild

Thursday May 29th 2014, 6.30pm for 7 start

Art Workers Guild

6 Queen Square

Bloomsbury

London

WC1N 3AT

MAP

Contact for RSVP: monica@artworkersguild.org

Spaces are very limited. RSVP please to Monica Grose-Hodge, Guild Secretary by 23rd May 2014.

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Background:

Californian collector of ceramics, emeritus professor, writer and self-confessed 'outlaw', RichardJacobs, and Gareth Mason, British potter and self-proclaimed sensualist, have struck up an unorthodox friendship. Jacobs read a lecture that Mason presented at SOFA 2011 (the Chicago art fair) and was moved to write him a long letter, subjecting the lecture's themes of fire and imagination to his own uniquely interrogative eye. Mason confounded his interlocutor (much to Jacobs' surprise) with an equally in-depth and provocative letter back. This remarkable epistolary exchange of 80,000 words addresses fundamental aesthetic and existential issues of pressing significance to anyone wishing to be an active and engaged being in today's information-saturated world.

Jacobs and Mason distilled their correspondence into a 'two-hander' lecture form, entitled 'An Odd Couple', and subsequently ‘performed’ together at several venues in the United States, and now, for one night only, they present their entertaining and provocative performance at the Art Workers Guild in London, in support of the Guild's important forthcoming renovations. Their texts are published in a book, “More is More”, on the occasion of Mason's recent exhibition of the same name in New York.

In an art world dominated by vacuity and pecuniary excess, are artist and benefactor reduced to the role of mere apparatchiks? Need we suffer the materially transactional as the sole touchstone of their interaction nowadays? Or, can sincere thought still trump market forces? Can the maker and collector's historically rich relationship be as dynamic, challenging and inspiring now as at any time in its long history? Mason and Jacobs (both Art Workers Guild members) will provide evidence and testify to that possibility in light of their unique collaboration.

Attend this extraordinary call-and-response confrontation, where neither party gives any quarter, and join the speculation – can their friendship possibly survive it?

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"One of the most engaging 'conversations' on ceramics I have ever heard (and I have heard a few)...”

- Moyra Elliott, New Zealand writer, commentator and curator, International Academy of Ceramics member.

"Gareth Mason's 'Odd Couple' dialogue with Richard Jacobs is a rare and potent cocktail of wit,

self-reflection, and perhapsmost importantly, fire."

- Garth Johnson, critic, writer, 'Extreme Craft' blogger, curator of Arizona State University Centre for Crafts

"The letters are not for the faint of heart or spirit. Enter at your own risk."

-Jason Jacques, New York pot dealer and gallerist, specialist in fin-de-siecle European Art Ceramics

'More is More' exhibition profiles: by Garth Clark HERE and by Scott Indrisek HERE

'More is More', the book, 262 pages, hard cover, with 145 pages of illustrations, ISBN 978-0-9788371-6-7,

is published by Jason Jacques Press, HERE

This event is available as a video on line HERE and as a

Brian R Jones 'podcast', HERE (number 14).  Caution for instances of strong language

The Art Workers Guild Renovations, full information HERE

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