Latest news with #WynEvans
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
If it was up to this artist, all his creations would be Untitled
Very often, says Cerith Wyn Evans, exhibitions of his work – whether that work is a box of photographs or the huge, spiky webs of neon lights he is showing in Sydney - are shaped principally by the spaces where they are shown. At the Museum of Contemporary Art, he is particularly excited by the prospect of opening all the windows onto Circular Quay. Light will pour in, along with the sounds of the harbour. 'We are opening up the entire façade!' he enthuses. 'And because it is right on the quay, there are thousands of tourists walking up and down, boats coming and going, really a hustle and bustle outside which is extremely vital – and very unlike a museum.' Wyn Evans, 67, has represented Wales at the Venice Biennale, exhibited all over the world and is represented by galleries in seven cities, but this is his first solo show in Australia. His earliest works were in experimental film; he says he regarded them as essentially sculptures, but he has always played fast and loose with disciplinary categories. He also has a magpie's eye for influences and quotations. Having grown up speaking Welsh, he is particularly interested in forms of language reflecting specialist uses, from Morse code to dance notation, which frequently appear in his work. But he is seemingly curious about almost everything. In a single sentence, he touches on Chinese medicine, yoga, mathematics and optics. 'What I'm attempting to do is run all of that through a scrambling mill,' he says. 'If we somehow feed them all through each other, we arrive at something that is a kind of form.' This exhibition, mostly drawn from his own collection, focuses on his big neon works made over the last 10 years. Wyn Evans isn't worried about the neon being drained by all that daylight. 'It lessens the impact, which is what I'm looking for. We're not making a sci-fi movie with futuristic neons,' he says. 'It's about looking at light. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than seeing a neon in blazing white sunshine. It's so compromised it becomes almost tender: it becomes more poetic, becomes broken somehow as a force for consumerism or legibility.' I'm in want of a better word to overcome latent blockages, that broad dissatisfaction that I'm unable to express what I want to say. The first neon signs, he says, were made as advertising. 'But artists have been working with neon since the 1930s. Then, with pop art and conceptualism, a lot of artists tried to popularise their materials so they were not working with bronze or marble, expensive rare materials, in order to somehow attach that value to the sculpted object.' Wyn Evans himself worked initially in film, he has said elsewhere, because it provided an escape route from that hierarchy of materials. In recent times, he has been making mobiles with broken car windows from wrecking yards: materials that cost nothing, but that allude both to the cracked The Large Glass by Marcel Duchamp – one of his artistic beacons – and to the daily disaster of the smashed mobile phone, a real-world reference. 'We're all dealing with these sorts of screens; we're all confronting this the entire time.' There are plenty of scrambled signifiers everywhere in the exhibition, in fact, with Noh theatre as a dominant theme. Wyn Evans first went to Japan 37 years ago as a visiting professor at Kyushu University in the country's subtropical south, a tough area known for its mining and steel industries – Richard Serra, he says, has his works cast in its huge foundries – as well as palm trees and spectacularly fresh sushi. He loved it. 'It became urgent to me that whatever I did on this trip to Japan, I got to secure my next trip. And it's been like this ever since. I spend two months a year there.' During that time, he might see three Noh performances a week. For an experimental artist, Noh's prescribed rhythms and gestures are surely an ostensibly incongruous passion? 'It's not, actually,' he says. 'The aleatory aspects of Noh are vast. Nothing is rehearsed. There are no lighting cues. It's a bit like a marathon; there is an elasticity to it.' He glows as he recounts a visit to a Noh school where the master's 106-year-old mother not only made sweets but danced for the visitors. 'She's extraordinary, about this tall' – very small – 'bent over double, you have to fight off the tears, you know.' It should be added that today, as usual, he is wearing Japanese traditional dress: a snow-white kimono and trousers. Old ladies in the supermarket often ask him about it, he says. 'I say it's my workwear.' The titles of his work point towards this source of inspiration, among others, but the works themselves don't spell it out; if someone looks up Noh on the internet and ends up watching a snippet of this ancient, precise and poetic blend of theatre and dance, that would be 'absolutely great'. If not, fine. 'I don't think Cerith is a didactic artist in the slightest,' says curator Lara Strongman. 'I don't think he's thinking this is my meaning and here you are. I think he's the opposite of that, that he argues for slippage, for mutability, for the different possibilities coming in from different people, much as the work manifests the idea of fragments of things taken from here and there.' Everything slants Japanese, however, in the exhibition's design. Stepping stones like those found in traditional gardens lead the viewer, providing different angles and points of view on the works. 'You have to position yourself here, then there, to take another step,' says Strongman. 'It's a way of really grounding yourself, this sense of thinking about your own passage through time and space as you walk.' Following the path, the works loom in your way. 'So you have to stop and think about them. You get a real sense of your own bodily presence; you can see through the works to other works and your view is changing the whole time. You're aware of yourself in a way we often aren't, because we're mediating our lives through a tiny screen.' The materials may be obviously industrial but, she says, 'it's the most analogue exhibition I've ever worked on. It's a show that asks you to spend some human time with it.' Loading Words, whether it be a wall full of Marcel Proust's work rendered in Japanese or one of his elaborately flourished titles, are ostensibly central to this work. Wyn Evans particularly loves a homonym; one show he did in Britain was called Cite/Sight/Site. 'They sound the same, but you can prise them open to find a myriad of associations and construct this little model where you create these interstitial spaces between' – he fishes for two sufficiently disparate elements – 'a quote from Elizabeth Bishop and the plan of the Alhambra.' He says he thinks of language and communication as distinct materials, on a par with light, air and time, even suggesting as a title for this piece 'For want of a better word' to represent the way he chews over them. 'I'm forever, in a sense, converting thoughts into language, but I'm in want of a better word to overcome latent blockages, that broad dissatisfaction that I'm unable to express what I want to say.' Loading It is thus not entirely surprising when he says he would prefer not to have any titles at all. 'Whatever doesn't embarrass me kind of gets through but, if it were up to me, I would call everything Untitled.' He feels no obligation to explain himself. 'They can buy you that red herring space in order to come in with something from underneath,' he says. 'But there is a certain resistance in the work also. I don't lose sleep over people not understanding it. Children are perfectly happy running around, just enjoying the awe of it. And I try not to be judgmental or to take it personally if people don't like it. Why should I play by someone else's rules? I'm not a politician, after all. I'm an artist.'
The Age
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
If it was up to this artist, all his creations would be Untitled
Very often, says Cerith Wyn Evans, exhibitions of his work – whether that work is a box of photographs or the huge, spiky webs of neon lights he is showing in Sydney - are shaped principally by the spaces where they are shown. At the Museum of Contemporary Art, he is particularly excited by the prospect of opening all the windows onto Circular Quay. Light will pour in, along with the sounds of the harbour. 'We are opening up the entire façade!' he enthuses. 'And because it is right on the quay, there are thousands of tourists walking up and down, boats coming and going, really a hustle and bustle outside which is extremely vital – and very unlike a museum.' Wyn Evans, 67, has represented Wales at the Venice Biennale, exhibited all over the world and is represented by galleries in seven cities, but this is his first solo show in Australia. His earliest works were in experimental film; he says he regarded them as essentially sculptures, but he has always played fast and loose with disciplinary categories. He also has a magpie's eye for influences and quotations. Having grown up speaking Welsh, he is particularly interested in forms of language reflecting specialist uses, from Morse code to dance notation, which frequently appear in his work. But he is seemingly curious about almost everything. In a single sentence, he touches on Chinese medicine, yoga, mathematics and optics. 'What I'm attempting to do is run all of that through a scrambling mill,' he says. 'If we somehow feed them all through each other, we arrive at something that is a kind of form.' This exhibition, mostly drawn from his own collection, focuses on his big neon works made over the last 10 years. Wyn Evans isn't worried about the neon being drained by all that daylight. 'It lessens the impact, which is what I'm looking for. We're not making a sci-fi movie with futuristic neons,' he says. 'It's about looking at light. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than seeing a neon in blazing white sunshine. It's so compromised it becomes almost tender: it becomes more poetic, becomes broken somehow as a force for consumerism or legibility.' I'm in want of a better word to overcome latent blockages, that broad dissatisfaction that I'm unable to express what I want to say. The first neon signs, he says, were made as advertising. 'But artists have been working with neon since the 1930s. Then, with pop art and conceptualism, a lot of artists tried to popularise their materials so they were not working with bronze or marble, expensive rare materials, in order to somehow attach that value to the sculpted object.' Wyn Evans himself worked initially in film, he has said elsewhere, because it provided an escape route from that hierarchy of materials. In recent times, he has been making mobiles with broken car windows from wrecking yards: materials that cost nothing, but that allude both to the cracked The Large Glass by Marcel Duchamp – one of his artistic beacons – and to the daily disaster of the smashed mobile phone, a real-world reference. 'We're all dealing with these sorts of screens; we're all confronting this the entire time.' There are plenty of scrambled signifiers everywhere in the exhibition, in fact, with Noh theatre as a dominant theme. Wyn Evans first went to Japan 37 years ago as a visiting professor at Kyushu University in the country's subtropical south, a tough area known for its mining and steel industries – Richard Serra, he says, has his works cast in its huge foundries – as well as palm trees and spectacularly fresh sushi. He loved it. 'It became urgent to me that whatever I did on this trip to Japan, I got to secure my next trip. And it's been like this ever since. I spend two months a year there.' During that time, he might see three Noh performances a week. For an experimental artist, Noh's prescribed rhythms and gestures are surely an ostensibly incongruous passion? 'It's not, actually,' he says. 'The aleatory aspects of Noh are vast. Nothing is rehearsed. There are no lighting cues. It's a bit like a marathon; there is an elasticity to it.' He glows as he recounts a visit to a Noh school where the master's 106-year-old mother not only made sweets but danced for the visitors. 'She's extraordinary, about this tall' – very small – 'bent over double, you have to fight off the tears, you know.' It should be added that today, as usual, he is wearing Japanese traditional dress: a snow-white kimono and trousers. Old ladies in the supermarket often ask him about it, he says. 'I say it's my workwear.' The titles of his work point towards this source of inspiration, among others, but the works themselves don't spell it out; if someone looks up Noh on the internet and ends up watching a snippet of this ancient, precise and poetic blend of theatre and dance, that would be 'absolutely great'. If not, fine. 'I don't think Cerith is a didactic artist in the slightest,' says curator Lara Strongman. 'I don't think he's thinking this is my meaning and here you are. I think he's the opposite of that, that he argues for slippage, for mutability, for the different possibilities coming in from different people, much as the work manifests the idea of fragments of things taken from here and there.' Everything slants Japanese, however, in the exhibition's design. Stepping stones like those found in traditional gardens lead the viewer, providing different angles and points of view on the works. 'You have to position yourself here, then there, to take another step,' says Strongman. 'It's a way of really grounding yourself, this sense of thinking about your own passage through time and space as you walk.' Following the path, the works loom in your way. 'So you have to stop and think about them. You get a real sense of your own bodily presence; you can see through the works to other works and your view is changing the whole time. You're aware of yourself in a way we often aren't, because we're mediating our lives through a tiny screen.' The materials may be obviously industrial but, she says, 'it's the most analogue exhibition I've ever worked on. It's a show that asks you to spend some human time with it.' Loading Words, whether it be a wall full of Marcel Proust's work rendered in Japanese or one of his elaborately flourished titles, are ostensibly central to this work. Wyn Evans particularly loves a homonym; one show he did in Britain was called Cite/Sight/Site. 'They sound the same, but you can prise them open to find a myriad of associations and construct this little model where you create these interstitial spaces between' – he fishes for two sufficiently disparate elements – 'a quote from Elizabeth Bishop and the plan of the Alhambra.' He says he thinks of language and communication as distinct materials, on a par with light, air and time, even suggesting as a title for this piece 'For want of a better word' to represent the way he chews over them. 'I'm forever, in a sense, converting thoughts into language, but I'm in want of a better word to overcome latent blockages, that broad dissatisfaction that I'm unable to express what I want to say.' Loading It is thus not entirely surprising when he says he would prefer not to have any titles at all. 'Whatever doesn't embarrass me kind of gets through but, if it were up to me, I would call everything Untitled.' He feels no obligation to explain himself. 'They can buy you that red herring space in order to come in with something from underneath,' he says. 'But there is a certain resistance in the work also. I don't lose sleep over people not understanding it. Children are perfectly happy running around, just enjoying the awe of it. And I try not to be judgmental or to take it personally if people don't like it. Why should I play by someone else's rules? I'm not a politician, after all. I'm an artist.'
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
QI host Sandi Toksvig and anti-Brexit firebrand Gina Miller make Cambridge University Chancellor shortlist
Bake Off and QI star Sandi Toksvig and anti-Brexit firebrand Gina Miller are on the shortlist to be the next chancellor of Cambridge University. Both are hoping to become the first woman to hold the ceremonial position in its 800-year history. But fellow candidate Wyn Evans, an astrophysics professor at the university, warned they may lower the tone at the highbrow institution. 'If Cambridge needs a high-profile or celebrity chancellor to be noticed, we might as well give up and rebrand the university as a reality TV show - Keeping Up with the Cantabrigians,' he said. Ms Toksvig, 67, who studied law, archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge, questioned whether it was 'time for a change'. She said: 'The first known chancellor of Cambridge was Richard of Wetheringsett who served sometime between 1215 and 1232. 'After that we have had a plethora of other Richards, many Johns and an awful lot of Stephens - after over 800 years I wonder if it isn't time for a change?' The comedian and TV host once told how she was almost kicked out of the university for having a girlfriend sleep over, and was only allowed to stay because of her 'excellent academic record'. 'If you are going to be gay, at least be clever,' she joked. 'What [they] don't want is gay stupid people.' Gina Miller, 60, who successfully challenged the government in court over the implementation of Brexit, said she would champion 'civil discourse, fairness, and democratic principles' at Cambridge. 'Electing the first woman to the role - while not essential - would be powerful and symbolic, affirming Cambridge's commitment to modernity and equality,' she said. In 2017, Ms Miller won a Supreme Court ruling that MPs should have a say over triggering Article 50, which took the UK out of the EU. She also successfully challenged Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament in 2019 as a Brexit debate was looming. The other eight people on the shortlist for chancellor are all men. They include Cambridge college presidents Lord Smith and Dr El-Erian, former BP chief executive Lord Browne, professors Tony Booth and Wyn Evans, and Cambridge alumni Ayham Ammora, Ali Azeem and Mark Mann.
Telegraph
13-04-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Cambridge University accused of staff bullying ‘cover-up'
The University of Cambridge has been accused of 'covering-up' a culture of staff bullying. The allegation was made after it emerged that most staff members were not satisfied with how bullying and harassment was handled in a survey carried out in January 2024. The survey, obtained by the Observer, showed that just 27 per cent of staff were happy with the university's attempts to combat bullying and harassment. Fifty-two per cent said that their department supported their mental health and wellbeing. The results caused astrophysicist Prof Wyn Evans to break ranks and claim that university bosses were presiding over a 'cover-up' of the results. 'This survey reveals a grim culture of bullying and harassment, yet the most shocking thing of all is that the university found this out a year ago and hasn't taken any action,' he said. An 'internal crisis' Prof Evans claimed that Cambridge would be reluctant to touch 'a senior academic... valuable to the university because they hold a lot of research grants bringing in a lot of money', adding: ' If there is a grievance, it will be discarded.' The academic added that the university was facing an 'internal crisis' of bullying and that it needed a chancellor who would push for 'sweeping reforms'. Prof Evans is seeking nominations in the upcoming election of Cambridge's new chancellor on an anti-bullying manifesto, and leads the 21 Group which campaigns against bullying and harassment in academia. When approached for comment, a university spokesman told The Telegraph: 'We take concerns about bullying seriously, and we strongly encourage anyone who experiences such behaviour to report it. 'The university strives to provide an inclusive and supportive working environment where all staff feel valued.' They added that it is supporting departments to take action and has recently introduced a new code of behaviour. The university declined to release surveys for some of its departments under Freedom of Information requests, it was reported. However, the Observer noted particularly concerning results within science departments. In the Medical Research Council toxicology unit, 69 per cent of staff who responded disagreed or strongly disagreed when asked if they were happy with how bullying was addressed. This statistic was also high within the pathology department (61 per cent), the Cavendish laboratory of physics (58 per cent) and at both the oncology department and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute (50 per cent). This is not the first time there have been allegations of staff bullying at Cambridge. In 2020, a similar survey carried out by Unite, Unison and the University and College Union revealed that nearly a third of staff had experienced bullying and harassment in the workplace. At the time Will Smith, a secretary at Cambridge's Unite branch, claimed bullying had been an issue for years, and had pushed for the survey as there were no signs of it being tackled. The 2024 report had a response rate of 23 per cent, and the university says it is aiming to 'to increase participation in future surveys to ensure a more comprehensive understanding of staff experiences'.
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Cambridge University accused of bullying ‘cover-up' as internal survey revealed
Only a quarter of staff at Cambridge University are satisfied with how their department tackles bullying and harassment, according to an internal survey seen by the Observer. Cambridge undertook its staff culture survey in January 2024 and is now facing accusations from academics that it tried to cover up the 'grim' results, which have been released through freedom of information (FoI) requests. A spokesperson for the university said this weekend that it was supporting departments to take action where issues had been identified. They said: 'We take concerns about bullying seriously and strongly encourage anyone who experiences such behaviour to report it.' Just 27% of staff agreed that they were happy with attempts to address bullying and harassment – with some of the most high-profile science departments scoring especially badly – and only half of staff (52%) said their department supported their mental health and wellbeing. The results have prompted an academic at the university, astrophysicist Prof Wyn Evans, to break with tradition and seek nominations in the forthcoming election of Cambridge's new chancellor on an anti-bullying manifesto, after Labour peer David Sainsbury announced his resignation from the post last year. Evans said: 'This survey reveals a grim culture of bullying and harassment, yet the most shocking thing of all is that the university found this out a year ago and hasn't taken any action. 'If a senior academic is valuable to the university because they hold a lot of research grants bringing in a lot of money, Cambridge won't touch them,' he added. 'If there is a grievance, it will be discarded.' The chancellorship is a largely ceremonial position that is expected to attract big name alumni, including leading politicians and peers. William Hague, the former Conservative leader and foreign secretary, was elected chancellor of Oxford University last November, and Prince Philip preceded Lord Sainsbury at Cambridge. Evans said that having an outward-facing ambassadorial chancellor had worked well in the past, but the university was facing an 'internal crisis' of bullying and too many academics on insecure short-term contracts. It now needed a chancellor who would push for 'sweeping reforms'. A survey by the university and the three main campus unions in 2020 found that nearly a third of staff had experienced bullying or harassment at work in the previous 18 months. Then vice-chancellor Stephen Toope wrote a statement to accompany the survey results, pledging action and stating: 'To be a leading institution, we must accept this type of behaviour has no place at Cambridge.' The university is far from alone in facing challenges of this kind. In 2020, a survey by the Wellcome Trust, one of the largest charitable funders of research in the UK, questioned more than 4,000 researchers across 20 universities, and found that nearly two-thirds of them had witnessed bullying and harassment, and 43% had experienced it themselves. More than three-quarters of them felt that intense competition to win research grants and publish in high-profile journals – with research departments also competing to perform well in league tables and respond to government initiatives – had created 'unkind and aggressive' conditions. Diego Baptista, head of research and funding equity at Wellcome, said: 'Research shouldn't come at the cost of damaging people's wellbeing, and it's encouraging to see institutions asking students and staff about the issues they face.' He added: 'The research sector can and should learn from one another. By painting a picture of people's experiences, we are all better placed to design a positive and inclusive research culture.' Wellcome has explicit anti-bullying, exploitation and harassment rules as a pre-condition of its grants, and in 2018 revoked £3.5m in funding from Prof Nazneen Rahman, one of Britain's leading cancer scientists, who was then based at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, after 45 colleagues made accusations of bullying and harassment. Rahman, who resigned from the institute, denied the allegations and said at the time 'there were no disciplinary findings against me'. Cambridge declined to release survey results for some of its departments under FoI. However, among the detailed results seen by the Observer, there are some departments with more concerning results. In the Medical Research Council toxicology unit, 69% of staff who responded disagreed or strongly disagreed when asked if they were happy with how bullying and harassment was addressed. In the department of pathology, this figure was 61%; in the Cavendish laboratory of physics it was 58%; and at both the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Cambridge Institute and in the department of oncology it was 50%. Other departments with close to half of staff disagreeing or strongly disagreeing that these issues were tackled well included earth sciences, history and astronomy. A cancer researcher who left the university recently and claims they were 'intimidated, harassed and bullied' by a senior academic at CRUK Cambridge Institute said: 'Research was my whole life. I really looked forward to coming into the department, exchanging ideas and inspiring research students. I was left despairing and had many months of demoralisation.' The researcher said: 'The ordeal ruined my personal life. I stopped sleeping. I had support from friends, colleagues and former students – but from the university just bland exhortations to see the GP.' Dr Krzysztof Potempa, founder of biotech startup Braincures, supported a colleague in blowing the whistle on bullying at a UK research institute and now campaigns for universities to tackle the issue better. He said: 'Sadly, complaints against revenue-generating professors often result in the victim leaving, while the perpetrator continues to build their career.' The spokesperson for Cambridge added: 'The university strives to provide an inclusive and supportive working environment where all staff feel valued.' He said that the university had introduced a new code of behaviour and updated its dignity-at-work and grievance policies.
