ArtsKeele A/W 2018 3102 ArtsKeele.ProgrammeAW2018.online | Page 48

48 ArtsKeele Lecture Series Public Lecture Public Lecture Public Lecture Cornelia Parker Reginald Haggar Memorial Lecture: “Avoiding the Object” Dr Helen Parr Commemorating the dead: bodies, cemeteries and mourning Dr Paul Mulvey MP, Col. Josiah C. Wedgwood 3 November 2.00pm Westminster Theatre, Keele University Free Entry 6 November 6.00pm Westminster Theatre, Keele University Free Entry In 1980, as a student, Cornelia Parker caught the eye by winning the top prize in the new ‘Midland View’ open exhibition, at the City Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke- on-Trent. Since those early days, of course, she has gone on to become one of the UK’s most exciting and innovative contemporary artists, with a solo exhibition at the Whitworth, Manchester (2015); the creation of the monumental ‘PsychoBarn’ on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum, New York (2016); and her commission as official artist for the General Election (2017). Her vision and imagination is often applied to ordinary and familiar things, which she transforms into the extraordinary and the unforgettable. The industrialised slaughter of the Great War was unprecedented. Between 1914 and 1918, three quarters of a million Britons lost their lives in military service. More than one in seven of the adult male population under the age of twenty-five was killed, and about one in nine households lost a man in the war. This lecture examines the challenges of remembering the dead; and asks how, a century after the Great War, the contemporary practice of bringing bodies home reflects Britain’s changing relationship with its war dead. 22 November 6.45pm Keele Hall Free Entry The History of Parliament Trust, Keele University and the Remembering Eleanor Rathbone Group will host a public seminar to commemorate the exceptionally active campaigning career of longstanding Staffordshire MP, Col. Josiah C. Wedgwood, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1906-1942, during the 75th anniversary year of his death. Dr Paul Mulvey, Wedgwood’s latest biographer, will give a brief biography and account of Wedgwood’s activism. He’ll focus particularly on Wedgwood’s tireless campaigning for democracy and freedom in the 1930s and 1940s and his vehement opposition of Nazism and those he considered willing to appease it.