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Thursday 12 August 7:00pm via Zoom
Tonight’s guest speaker Ben Altman didn’t start out as an artist. He studied Physics, he has towed icebergs, raced sailboats and became a commercial photographer.
Altman’s mother was Anglican and his father was Jewish. Although only collateral members of his father’s family were caught up in the Holocaust, that connection underlies concerns addressed in his work. His mixed origins, emigration to the United States, and his dual British and US citizenship often lead him to frame his ideas with questions of home and belonging.
This artist’s work responds to violent turning points of modern history, how they have formed our world, and what it means to inherit these collective traumas. Through his work he tries to understand the challenges imposed by the past and use them to decode the present.
His work seeks to mourn, memorialise and activate our unpalatable histories by drawing ideas and materials from a range of practices. Working in the context of his home and at sites around the world, he uses photography, video, and performance. His presentations vary from traditional to multi-disciplinary and interactive.
Ben Altman is an internationally exhibited artist. In 2019 he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for his project “The More That is Taken Away.” In the same year he also received an Individual Artist Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts and a Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Other awards include the Houston Center for Photography’s 2015 Fellowship and the 2015 Critical Mass Top 50.
He continues to develop his practice towards personal and public ownership of mass violence
Website: https://www.benaltman.net