The Annotated Reader: Ryan Gander & Jonathan P. Watts Past Event
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Accessible bathroom All Gender bathroom Assistance Animals welcome Wheelchair AccessAbout The National Gallery of Victoria

The Annotated Reader: Ryan Gander & Jonathan P. Watts Past Event
For the first time in Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria presents ‘The Annotated Reader’, a publication-as-exhibition and exhibition-as-publication featuring 281 personal responses to a chosen piece of writing.
Celebrated British contemporary artist Ryan Gander and Jonathan P. Watts invited a range of creatives to imagine they’ve missed the last train and asked the question “Is there one piece of writing that you would want with you for company in the small hours?”. Contributors including Marina Abramović, Art & Language, Paul Clinton, Tom Godfrey, Ragnar Kjartansson, Sarah Lucas, Alistair Hudson and Hans Ulrich Obrist, submitted a text with personal annotations and notes made directly onto it.
The exhibition features each contribution and invites viewers to read, critique and collate their own annotated reader. The full collection of contributions is available as a digital keepsake for purchase.
Ryan Gander, 1976 Chester, UK Artist
Ryan Gander has established an international reputation through artworks that materialise in many different forms, ranging from sculpture, apparel and writing to architecture, painting, typefaces, publications and performance. As well as curating exhibitions, he is a committed educator, having taught at international art institutions and universities, and has written and presented television programmes on and about contemporary art and culture for the BBC. Through associative thought processes that connect the everyday and the esoteric, the overlooked and the commonplace, Gander’s work involves a questioning of language and knowledge, as well as a reinvention of both the modes of appearance and the creation of an artwork. His work can be reminiscent of a puzzle, or a network with multiple connections and the fragments of an embedded story. It is ultimately a huge set of hidden clues to be deciphered, encouraging viewers to make their own associations and invent their own narrative in order to unravel the complexities staged by the artist.Ryan Gander is an artist living and working in Suffolk and London. He studied at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, NL and the Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht, NL. The artist has been a Professor of Visual Art at the University of Huddersfield and holds an honorary Doctor of the Arts at the Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Suffolk. In 2017 he was awarded an OBE for services to contemporary arts. In 2019 he was awarded the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. In 2022, he was made RA Elect for the category of Sculpture.
Jonathan P. Watts, 1986, Great Yarmouth, UK. Writer
Jonathan P. Watts is a writer, editor and occasional curator based in Norwich, UK. Jonathan is co-director of Josey gallery, Norwich, and runs the public talks programme ‘Of & By’.