Dr Jo Melvin
Title
Reader
College
Chelsea College of Arts
Email address
Tags
Researcher Research
Biography
Melvin’s interest in artists’ and institutional archives’ and oral histories has been an ongoing preoccupation, subsequent to her MA in History and Theory of Modern Art at Chelsea in 1993. She began interviewing artists when on Fine Art BA at Middlesex Polytechnic during the 1980s and has been immersed in collaborative dialogues ever since. She is particularly interested in the relationships between the archive, documentation and performativity.In 2015 Melvin was senior Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute Leeds, where she worked on devising an exhibition of the American Conceptual Artist, Christine Kozlov and received an International Curatorial Award to enable research at MoMA, New York, The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian, Washington, and the Getty LA. These visits included interviews with artists and colleagues of Kozlov conducted by Melvin and Pavel Pys curator of Henry Moore Institute.
The exhibition will present new research and enable the significance of Kozlov’s work to receive proper attention. Kozlov was a central participant in the formation of early conceptual art practices in 1960s New York, and was involved in a network of collaboration and friendships. Her work was based on a systematic participation and withdrawal within these networks until the early 1970s when she decided to stop actively making art. Her work is a barometer of her times, yet she continues to be underexposed.
Melvin is working on the Seth Siegelaub catalogue accompanying the forthcoming exhibition at the Stedlijk, Amsterdam, 2015-16 and preparing the Barry Flanagan catalogue raisonné to be published by Modern Art Press, Yale, 2017.
The chaotic network of ideas connecting new art practices arising during the 1960s-70s were facilitated by developing communication systems. Publications became a site for exhibition, the space of the page was a situation for making work. Investigating the specificities of these stories through archives and oral histories suggest multiple readings to question interpretation and give each encounter the potential of a new beginning.
This backdrop informs Melvin’s current research interests to investigate the ways in which these so-called new art practices continue to impact today; in particular, through her exhibition curation, Five Issues of Studio International, Raven Row, London 2015 and Palindromes: Exchanges between Barry Flanagan and John Latham Flat Time House, London 2015. These exhibitions are devised through a combination of archival interlocution, oral histories and artwork. JJ Charlesworth in Art Monthly No. 386 observed:
What is interesting about Melvin’s historical show is how by deferring to the published record of Townsend’s Studio, the uncertain future of certain artistic discourses and trajectories is presented as yet-to-happen.
Research Outputs
Art/Design item
- Dobai S, Melvin J. The Copyists (2016)
Article
- Melvin J, Strebowski L. Introduction to Hélio Oiticica's "The Senses Pointing Towards A New Transformation" (1969) (2018)
- Melvin J. The British Avant Garde: A joint venture between the New York Cultural Center and Studio International Magazine (2016)
- Melvin J. Jo Melvin and Clive Phillpot in conversation at the exhibition Jeff Gibbons: IN Signific Landscapes at Take 5, Norwich (2016)
- Melvin J. Christine Kozlov: Conundrums of An Art Practice (2016)
- Melvin J. Holes in the Archive - to fill or to leave, that is the question... (2015)
- Melvin J. Barry Flanagan, black holes and the digital dot: barryflanagan.com (2015)
- Melvin J. Dennis Oppenheim: Danger and the Domain of Procedural Risk (2014)
- Melvin J. John Latham and Peter Townsend (2013)
- Melvin J. Tracing the way to work: Tracks, a journal of artists' writings, New York 1974-1977 (2008)
- Melvin J, Gunning L, Worsley V. Tangentially: The Archive and the Bathroom (2008)
- Melvin J. Spinofferie: Barbara Reise, art critic, writer, editor, landlady, art historian, and collector, American in London (2008)
Book
- Melvin J. Barry Flanagan The Hare is Metaphor (2018)
- Melvin J. Barry Flanagan: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral Works 1964 - 1983 (2016)
- Melvin J. The Xerox Project: Installation, Reading, Duration and Multiple Temporalities (2015)
- Melvin J. Two Pataphysicians: Flanagan Miró (2014)
- Melvin J, Dag Holmboe R. Hand in Foot (2013)
- Gunning L, Gough T, Melvin J, Schwabsky B. The Archive, the Event and Its Architecture (2007)
Book Section
- Melvin J. The New Climate 1969-72 (2016)
- Melvin J. Seth Siegelaub and Studio International: Conceptual Art and Production (2016)
- Melvin J. It might be contentious. It might not be contentious. (2015)
- Melvin J. Some opening words (2015)
- Melvin J. Peter Halley painting: Visual pleasure and aesthetic alienation (2014)
- Melvin J. Sir Peter Blake: Four Decades: Collection and Homage (2013)
- Melvin J, Jump M. Barry Flanagan's archive: interconnectivities (2013)
- Melvin J. Peter Halley: Extra extreme (2013)
- Melvin J. Seth Siegelaub in conversation with Jo Melvin (2012)
- Melvin J, Wilson A, Wallis C, Powell J. Barry Flanagan chronology 1941-1982 (2011)
- Melvin J. The living archive, the death of rubbish and the aesthetics of the dustbin (2011)
- Melvin J. No thing to say (2011)
- Melvin J. Conversation two: October 2007 (2011)
- Melvin J. Conversation one: March 2007 (2011)
- Melvin J. Charles Harrison: democratize access to dialogue (2011)
- Melvin J. Kantor in London: from David Gothard's archives (2011)
- Melvin J. Kantor in Edinburgh in the photographs of Ian Knox (2011)
- Melvin J. Bob Law: Something which is nothing (2009)
- Melvin J, Lefeuvre L. Ping Pong Slippage (2008)
- Melvin J. Tangential and awry archive stories (2007)
Conference, Symposium or Workshop item
- Melvin J. Exhibiting from the Archive: Recent Projects (2017)
- Melvin J. From soft to hard and back again...Barry Flanagan and his contemporaries (2017)
- Melvin J. The Alchemical Landscape II: Screen Media, Occulture and the Geographic Turn (2016)
- Melvin J. When actions speak louder than words: productive exchanges between Peter Townsend and Seth Siegelaub in Studio International (2014)
- Melvin J. Peter Townsend, Studio International and Phillip Leider, Art Forum: Tactics to Define New Critical Paradigms in Editorial Strategies (2014)
Other
Show/Exhibition
- Melvin J. Barry Flanagan (2019)
- Melvin J. 15 People Select their favourite book (2018)
- Melvin J. Barry Flanagan The Hare is Metaphor (2018)
- Melvin J, Weir G. Grace Weir Unfolded (2017)
- Melvin J. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (2016)
- Melvin J. Palindromes: Exchanges between Barry Flanagan and John Latham (2015)
- Melvin J. Five issues of Studio International (2015)
- Melvin J. Hand in Foot (2013)
- Melvin J. An Impossible Journey: the art and theatre of Tadeusz Kantor (2009)
- Melvin J. Ping Pong Dialogues: Bill Beckley (2008)
- Melvin J. Tales from Studio International (2008)
- Melvin J. Studio International 1965-1975 Archive
Teaching
Current research students
- Emma Drye, The Participatory Introvert: Negotiating entrance into the workplace as an artistic practice; an alternative to corporate creativity for people at work, building on the legacy of the Artists Placement Group. (Lead supervisor)
- Emma Gradin, Slow Works – Deceleration as Curatorial Paradigm (Lead supervisor)
- Gustavo Grandal Montero, Concrete poetry, conceptual art and the 'turn to language' in the 1960s. (Lead supervisor)
- James Lander, Storeys/stories of Ernö Goldfinger's Balfron Tower: archival investigations from a contested site. (Lead supervisor)
- Lynton Talbot, Exploring Constitutive Practice: A New Curatorial Paradigm (Lead supervisor)
- Ana Teixeira Teles, Copying the work of other artists: an Inquiry into Artistic Identity and Authenticity (Joint supervisor)