Laughter and play permeate the history of art. In this session, explore the carnivalesque, through vibrant costumes and masks, and fascination with the grotesque, spectacle, and procession throughout art history. Consider how artists from the Renaissance to today have understood the subversive potential of laughter and challenged definitions of low and high art, invented pasts and imagined other worlds.

Guest artist Q&A: Natalya Hughes

In art, as in life, it’s often the details that grab our attention: a fragment that unsettles, a singular emotional object that we cannot forget. For some artists this leads to a reoccurring focus or sustained observation of a particular subject over time; anything from shapes to insects, horses to skulls. This session will examine artists whose practice invokes fascination with, and repetition of, non-human forms.

Guest artist Q&A: Jenny Watson