FORMAT News: 2 weeks to go

Join us for one, some, or all of the amazing events taking place during FORMAT21. The Opening Night, Festival Conference, artist talks and films are just some of the activities you can log into via our digital venue New Art City and steaming services.

• FORMAT21: Opening Night

Date: 11 March 2021
Time: 5.30pm onwards
Location: FORMAT21 Digital Venue – New Art City
Tickets: FREE

Join us to celebrate the opening of our new arts venue featuring 20 galleries, 160+ international artists in the exhibitions, plus 10,000 artists in #massisolationFORMAT, from 90+ countries.

Featuring special guest speakers:

• Louise Fedotov-Clements : FORMAT Director FORMAT & Artistic Director QUAD
• Professor Keith McLay : Pro Vice-Chancellor Dean, College of Arts, Humanities & Education, University of Derby
• Rebecca Blackman : National Director for Engagement & Audiences Arts Council England
• Brian Griffin : Photographer & FORMAT Patron
• Marina Paulenka : FORMAT21 Guest Curator
• Adam Buss : CEO QUAD
• New Art City

Ending the evening with a DJ set by Artist Juliana Huxtable.

Click on the booking button to register and we will send you a link to join the launch before the event

Book – Opening Night

• FORMAT21: Conference

Date: 12 March 2021
Time: 9.00am – 5.30pm
Location: Microsoft Teams
Tickets: £5 – £10

This year’s conference looking at the festival theme of Control, promises exciting innovations and will enable greater responsiveness to the needs of distance-engaged delegates. With eminent keynote speakers, special guests, individual presentations, ‘in conversation’ dialogues, and interactive panel discussions, the conference will frame an aperture of context for all virtual festival visitors to enjoy.

Featuring International Speakers:

• Cemre Yesil Gonenli – TR          Joy Gregory – UK
• Robert Good – UK                       Philip Harris – UK
• Skinder Hundal MBE – UK       Melanie Kathryn King – UK
• Brigitte Lardinois – UK              Paul Lowe – UK/BiH
• Gemma Marmalade – UK          Mitchell Moreno – UK
• Sergey Novikov – RU                  Azu Nwagbogu – NI
• Annebella Pollen – UK               Max Sher – RU
• James Stanford – US                  Clare Strand – UK

Discover more about the speakers and how to book by clicking the button.

Book – FORMAT21: Conference

• Brian Griffin In Conversation

Date: 27 March 2021
Time: 3.00pm – 4.30pm
Location: Zoom/New Art City
Tickets: Free

Join the legendary photographer Brian Griffin for a virtual tour of his exhibition and autobiographical book Black Country DADA which charts his stellar and fascinating career, covering the period 1969 – 1990.

Brian recounts his student days at Manchester Polytechnic alongside fellow photographers Martin Parr and Daniel Meadows; his arrival on the photography scene in London, working with Management Today where he developed his signature style of surreal portraits, working for Haymarket publishers and being sacked by Vogue; his move into commercial photography and the audacity of visualising the financial Big Bang in Broadgate; working with Stiff Records and creating some of the 20th century’s most iconic album covers, including for Joe Jackson, Siouxsie and Iggy Pop and his move into advertising with Saatchi and Saatchi.

There are some wonderful surprises of less well known but brilliantly made portraits and some amusing personal stories including his 1974 holiday in Moscow where he encountered a military parade and the KGB and his evening with a drunken knife throwing circus act in Rotherhithe, the East London borough he made his home and where he still lives today.

Book – Brian Griffin In Conversation

• Picturing Lockdown: photography and the pandemic

Date: 17 March 2021
Time: 2.30 – 30.30pm
Location: Zoom
Tickets: Free

A panel discussion looking at two photographic projects initiated in response to Covid-19: Historic England’s commissioning and crowdsourcing project Picturing Lockdown and FORMAT’s mass participation #massisolationFORMAT.

The speakers will give an insight into what it was like to develop and take part in these pandemic photography projects.

Speakers:

• Anand Chhabra : Founder, Director and the Incumbent Chair at Black Country Visual Arts.
• Louise Fedotov-Clements : Artistic Director of QUAD, a centre for contemporary art, film and new technologies in Derby UK since 2001, and the Director of FORMAT International Photography Festival, which she co-founded in 2004.
• Brigitte Lardinois : Director of the Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC) at University of the Arts in London.
• Paul Lowe : Course Director of the Masters Programme in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
• Tamsin Silvey : Cultural Programme Curator at Historic England, the public body that looks after England’s historic environment.

Book – Picturing Lockdown

Films

• I Walk on Water

QUAD has teamed up with Dogwoof Films to bring you brand new film I Walk On Water (15) which you can stream in your home, directly supporting Derby’s Art Centre during the lockdown..

From visionary artist and photographer Khalik Allah, I Walk On Water (15) is an intimate and visually stunning deep dive into Harlem after dark.

Rent Now – I Walk on Water

• White Colour Black

QUAD has teamed up with Peccadillo Pictures to bring you brand new film White Colour Black (15).

Leke (Dudley O’Shaughnessy) has it all. He’s successful, has no responsibility and women fall at his feet. When a message from Senegal calls him to return ‘home’, he reluctantly leaves his carefree, hedonistic lifestyle behind. Leke finds returning to a culture he no longer feels connected to daunting.

Rent Now – White Colour Black