Ashok Mistry // Being The Polemic

For Castlefield Gallery Associates only

Workshop at Castlefield Gallery

Artist Ashokkumar Mistry invites Castlefield Gallery Associates to join him in a workshop that explores new ways of creating meaning beyond our assumptions and the conventions of creating exhibitions.

Responding to the gallery exhibition Archives At Play, the workshop will break down the taxonomy of conventional groupings of archival objects and artworks, rearranging them to uncover unseen narrative associations. Together participants will interrogate how the role of the curator has been viewed as either a gatekeeper, interpreter or ultimate authority before looking at ways of allowing the object to reassert its own authority through the process of interrogative seeing.

Through conversation, hands on exercises, play and a dissection of the curatorial process, the workshop will consider the importance of playing with polemical approaches to unpack conventional narratives and present new meanings.

Ashokkumar Mistry is a mix of artist, writer, activist and curator, whose work has taken him around the UK and the world to initiate and engage conversations with artists and audiences for 25 years. Interdisciplinary in nature, Mistry’s practice manifests in many media, including performance as a convergence of his many processes, and writing as a critical tool. His neurology and creative approach generate myriad creative outputs across a range of media. Running parallel to Mistry’s creative practice is his arts and disability activism from which recent writing commissions include, “Reimagining Arts Commissioning” for Unlimited (2020), and “Writing Disability into Art” for British Art Network (2021) on the theme of appreciating disability as a catalyst for creativity.

Archives at Play 2 is the second in a series of exhibitions, taking the Castlefield Gallery archive as a starting point to think about how re-imagining the past opens new perspectives on the future. The past we live in matters.  Through statues and paintings, music and images, the cultures surrounding us shape our values and visions of the future, impacting how we understand one another.  The artists in this exhibition look at history from different perspectives, finding new narratives from the past to the future.

Image: Castlefield Gallery archive, photo by George Gibson & Grace Collins