Creative Resistance: An evening of Art History Festival talks

Join us for a dynamic evening of Art History Festival 2025 free talks and experiences at 70 Cowcross Street, London exploring the power of art to shape memory, provoke dialogue, and inspire ecological awareness. Through virtual reality, artist talks, and critical conversation, this event invites audiences to reflect on how creative practice can respond to our changing world.

Address: The Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M 6EJ

Summary programme

4.45pm–8pm - (Hi)story of a Painting: Virtual Reality Experience

Step into the story behind Artemisia Gentileschi's Portrait of Saint Catherine of Alexandria with this immersive VR experience. Book a 20-minute slot. (Meet at Reception.)

5.15pm–6.15pm - Remember Nature: Art, Ecology, and Collective Action

Curator Jo Joelson introduces Remember Nature, a project inspired by Gustav Metzger’s call for ecological awareness through art. Artists Paul Harfleet, Uta Kogelsberger, and Yu-Chen Wang share short talks on their practices, exploring how art can engage with environmental and social urgencies. (Arrivals from 5pm at The Gallery).

6.30pm–7.30pm - In Conversation: Amalia Pica and Richard Taws

A lively dialogue between artist Amalia Pica and art historian Richard Taws, delving into themes of communication, memory, and the politics of visibility in contemporary art (Arrivals from 6.20pm at the The Gallery)

7.30pm-8.30pm: Drinks reception

Wind down the evening with a chance to mingle, reflect, and connect over drinks.

Detailed Programme

(Hi)story of a Painting: Virtual Reality experience

Immerse yourself in Artemisia Gentileschi's Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria with our VR headsets.

Book a 15 minute slot here:

Immerse yourself in Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria and discover the extraordinary resilience and brilliance of one of the Baroque era’s most celebrated female artists, in a male-dominated world.

Narrated by Cerys Matthews, The Light in the Shadow is an award-winning 14-minute VR experience created by Gaëlle Mourre and Quentin Darras blending art history with compelling storytelling, revealing the human journeys behind the canvas. Headsets provided.

Remember Nature: Art, Ecology, and Collective Action

5.15pm-6.15pm

Join us for an inspiring evening of reflection and dialogue as part of Remember Nature, the visionary art initiative originally conceived by Gustav Metzger and now reimagined for 2025. Curator Jo Joelson opens the event with an introduction to the project’s legacy and its urgent relevance today.

The panel features short talks by three acclaimed artists whose practices engage deeply with environmental and social themes:

• Paul Harfleet, founder of The Pansy Project, explores the intersection of urban space, queer identity, and botanical intervention.
• Uta Kogelsberger, whose multimedia work confronts ecological fragility and political urgency, shares insights from her recent projects.
• Yu-Chen Wang, lead artist for Castlefield Gallery’s Remember Nature commission, discusses her collaborative approach to storytelling and environmental memory.

Together, these voices offer a powerful meditation on how art can galvanize public consciousness and inspire action in the face of ecological crisis.

In Conversation: Amalia Pica and Richard Taws

6.30pm–7.30pm

Join artist Amalia Pica and art historian Richard Taws for a thought-provoking conversation exploring Pica’s multidisciplinary practice, which spans sculpture, installation, performance, and collaborative research. Known for her poetic investigations into language, communication and visual codes, Pica will reflect on key themes in her work, language, communication and community participation, invariably at the service of social protest. Among other works, we will discuss her recent projects developed through partnerships with primatologists and fieldwork in Nigeria and North America on tool use and gesture among great apes to probe the aesthetics, possibilities, technologies, and ethics of interspecies communication. This is an opportunity to hear Pica reflect on the poetic and political dimensions of communication—and the role of art in expanding how we listen to and understand the world around us.

An audience Q&A will be followed by drinks.

Speaker Biographies

In Conversation: Amalia Pica and Richard Taws

Amalia Pica is a London-based artist whose work spans sculpture, installation, performance, and drawing, exploring communication, civic participation, and metaphor. Pica’s solo exhibitions include those at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen; Switzerland (2012); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2013); Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2013); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2014); Kunstverein Freiburg (2016); and Centro de Arte Andaluz Contemporáneo (2019). She represented Argentina in the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) with Venn Diagrams (Under the Spotlight), a poetic reflection on banned educational tools under dictatorship. In 2016, she participated in One, No One and One Hundred Thousand at Kunsthalle Wien, a participatory exhibition challenging curatorial authority. Her work is held in major collections including Tate (London), MoMA and Guggenheim (NY), MACBA (Barcelona), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Neuquén (Argentina).

Richard Taws is Professor and Head of the Department of History of Art at University College London, where he specialises in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century visual culture. Much of his work has been on printed images in times of revolution, and on the intersection of art history with histories and theories of science, media, and technology. He is author of Time Machines: Telegraphic Images in Nineteenth-Century France (MIT Press, 2025) and The Politics of the Provisional: Art and Ephemera in Revolutionary France (Penn State University Press, 2013). As a member of the ‘Multigraph Collective’, he co-authored Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation (University of Chicago Press, 2018). The recipient of fellowships from the Getty, Bard Graduate Center, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, and Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2012. Richard’s writing has appeared in Grey Room, The Art Bulletin, Art History, Oxford Art Journal, Sculpture Journal, Perspective, Cabinet, Nonsite, Journal of Visual Culture, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, and the London Review of Books, among other places, and he is an editor of Oxford Art Journal.

This event is part of the Art History Festival, organised by the Association for Art History.