Darcy Lange: Videography As Social Practice

Join us for the Te Whanganui-a-Tara launch of Mercedes Vicente’s new publication 'Darcy Lange, Videography as Social Practice'. London-based curator Vicente will give a talk on the night introduced by Adjunct Professor and Researcher-at-large, Christina Barton. This critical monograph of a pivotal figure in early analogue video follows Lange's trajectory from his early observational studies to the crisis of representation and socially engaged video and activism, as it is shaped by, and resists, the artistic, cultural and political preoccupations of the 1970s and 1980s. Trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art, Lange developed a socially engaged video practice with remarkable studies of people at work in industrial, farming, and teaching contexts that drew from conceptual art, social documentary and structuralist filmmaking.

We are delighted to be hosting this event marking a longstanding relationship the gallery has with Vicente and Lange dating back to 2007 with Darcy Lange Study of an artist at work a retrospective exhibition curated by Vicente and toured by Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, for which Adam Art Gallery was the only other venue in Aotearoa.

Mercedes Vicente is a curator, writer, and researcher. Vicente has been a Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies, Curation, and Film Studies at universities, including the Royal College of Art, London Metropolitan University, Central Saint Martins, and London College of Communication. She has held museum positions as Interim Director of Education and Public Programmes at Whitechapel Gallery London, Curator of Contemporary Art and Darcy Lange Curator-at-large at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, and, Research Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.