INCCA hosted the fourth Student Café on the 6th of February 2025, which focused on the treatment, documentation and ongoing research of challenging contemporary materials and artists who use them. For the first time, all speakers were offered one-on-one mentoring before the Café with members of the INCCA Steering Committee for support with their presentations, and to help them start to connect with professionals in the field. Given its successful feedback, INCCA now hopes to continue this for all upcoming Student Cafés.
Isobel Finlay, Leah Balagopal and Lan Chang began the Café with a joint presentation about their ongoing research on suitable adhesives to consolidate PUR-ester foam with acrylic painted surfaces, outlining current gaps in knowledge and the tests they will conduct to fill them. This was followed by Catherine Campos’ presentation on the storage, degradation and preventive conservation of Karla Black’s chalk, plaster and polythene site specific work Contact Isn’t Lost (2008), National Galleries of Scotland. Maja Rogowska presented a case study on Jonasz Stern’s double-sided Work Wyniszczenie/ Devestation (1962) made of non-artistic materials such as bones, plant residues and feathers, detailing how 3D scanning was used to document the movement of the artwork during a flattening treatment. Haizea Salazar-Basañez began a discussion on the display and storage of ‘Bio Vanitas’ artworks: those which are made of organic material intended to decay and deteriorate, and where time is part of the object. She discussed the ethics over documenting an artwork that is intended to change, and how one would need to respect the artists’ original intention. The theme of ephemeral continued with Maddalena Gazzetta who presented her treatment of the artworks Wirtschaftswert Speisekuchen by Joseph Beuys and Untitled Christian Boltanski, both made of food materials that cannot be replaced. English captions and AI Korean translation was accessible throughout the Café.
Questions following the presentations allowed the speakers to discuss with the 53 participants more freely the challenges, limitations, and practicalities of their research, such as the difficulty in predicting the lifespan of the artworks discussed, the involvement of the artist, as well as their aims for future research. Their presentations demonstrated how important it is to continue to share ideas within the conservation community to help expand our knowledge on the treatment of complex contemporary artworks.
Find the speakers' bio here.
Photo: Screenshot of INCCA Café: Student & Early Career Research pt.4.