On the Art and Teaching of Jef Geys, a lecture by Nicholas Tammens

Please join us this Wednesday for On the Art and Teaching of Jef Geys, a lecture by Nicholas Tammens.

Jef Geys (1934–2018) lived and worked in Balen, a Flemish town in the De Kempen region of Northeast Belgium. Much of his work centres on this locale, reflecting the artist’s position in the area’s environment, history, language and social relations—what he referred to as its ‘biotope’.

Many of Geys’ projects begin at the site of his middle school classroom in rural Flanders. Giving evidence to a broader problematic between the term ‘education’ and what it designates, this lecture lines Geys’ practice with key educational precedents and artistic interlocutors: the Bauhaus model in Weimar, Nikolai Ladovsky’s teaching at the Soviet Vkhutemas, and the artistic practices of Marcel Broodthaers and Michael Asher, among others.

Nicholas Tammens is curator of 1856. He teaches art history at the Victorian College of Art, University of Melbourne and has worked as a childhood educator. In 2018, he curated an exhibition of Jef Geys at Yale Union, Portland, USA.

Organised by Matthew Hanson.