Walls in Online Places: Reporting back

Every day, more and more institutions are upping their game in the light of our current situation. Congolese choreographer and dancer Faustin Linyekula was meant to perform at this year’s Tate Live Exhibition, alongside other performances by Okwui Okpokwasili and Tanya Lukin Linklater. Linyekula and his collaborators worked with Tate to stage a one-off, site-specific work, performed to camera in the empty Tanks.

Many of London’s galleries and museums are even rethinking ways to reach the art-starved among us through 360 degree museum tours and artist talks.

Post-Grad Community was inspired by the idea of transporting artwork online, and what better way to do this than with UAL’s talented students. Walls in Online Places (WIOP) is an online exhibition programme for UAL postgrads to share their work whilst in isolation and practicing social distancing.

The exhibition open call was inspired by Hans Ulrich Obrist’s article The Kitchen Show for Paris Review in 2014. It describes how Obrist went about curating an exhibition in his kitchen and the alternative ways in which artists made and installed work in this non-gallery setting.

WIOP was hosted digitally across the UAL Post-Grad Community online platforms, utilising Post-Grad Stories and Post-Grad Community Instagram.

The first cohort of artists have shared their artworks which has been compiled into an online catalogue which you can view or download here.

To celebrate their success, we held an online private view to connect all of the artists from their individual locations and inviting fellow artists, tutors, friends and family to join to talk over some of the artworks and share their experiences of creating art during isolation.

Feedback of the event was well received:

‘A sense of uplift and hope that people are continuing to make work under these conditions.’

‘Togetherness, inspiring, there’s hope for normality maybe when this all ends.’

‘Meeting others in the community with Inspiring work and motivational people.’

‘I really enjoyed it since you don't often get to hear from artists and in such an unrehearsed and intimate way.’

‘An energising and interesting event with great presentations of artists’ works, good for inspiration.'

Many of the artists have written an article about their individual work and experiences of isolation, which are regularly published on the Post-Grad Stories platform.

Keep an eye out for Walls in Online Places Part II and gear up for some seriously enlightening self-isolation projects from students and alumni across UAL which you can explore from the comfort of your home.

Due to the current Coronavirus pandemic and UAL temporarily closing its buildings, the Post-Grad Community team has had to cancel all planned physical activity and now 100% online collaborating with our students remotely until further notice.

Walls in Online Places Vol.2 is now online!

Walls in Online Places, Vol. 2 is a continuation of this project and received double the submissions.  Launched on 7 July via an online Zoom event and showcases 45 postgraduate student works from across UAL's 6 colleges, disciplines and from all over the world.

View the WIOP Vol.2 digitally linked Catalogue