a project with Roddy Hunter
January – March 2003

Constructing Models of Contextual Practice investigated roles and strategies of the artist and artwork that recognise and respond to the production of space, place and audience as crucially informing dimensions. Individually, participants addressed the specific conditions of a contextual setting in Rotterdam, deliberately working amidst uncertainty and change. The challenge of contextual practice is to consider not only the relationships of the work to its setting but also of the setting itself to its broader social, political, cultural, physical and architectural context. This approach makes for work that produces in turn multiple dialogues operating in different directions simultaneously.

Investigating process as much as outcome, the project participants produced proposals, drawings, photographs, public interventions, performances and installations over the course of the project. From a theoretical perspective, the project considered the implications and development of contextual practice in terms of current and potential aesthetic paradigms. Guest presentations were held by curator Sergio Edelsztein (initiator and curator of the Blur performance festivals/CCA Tel Aviv), artist John Newling (UK) and performance artist/semiotician Vassya Vassileva (Bulgaria).

Roddy Hunter (Scotland) is a performance artist artist based in Devon, England. He is associate director in visual performance at Dartington College of Arts.