Studio K.O.S – Artist Educators

Rosemary Cronin visits Where Have We Gone, Studio K.O.S. at Morena di Luna, Maureen Paley's space in Hove

 

At the private view for Hard Candy, Transition Projects’ latest show at the gallery attached to SPACE studios in Mare Street, East London, I mentioned to one of the other artists that I run the Fine Art Outreach pathway at Chelsea and Camberwell College of Arts – ‘I didn’t know you did that?!’ was the reply. It’s often a tricky line to walk as an artist to balance both studio practice and teaching so I tend not to talk about the teaching in the art context – but here I am now… unveiled. Yes, I too am an artist educator!

 

So I was absolutely thrilled that I saw the current show at Maureen Paley’s Morena di Luna showcasing the work of Studio K.O.S., a collective founded by artist teacher Tim Rollins as a project for young people growing up in the South Bronx. The group created works using whatever they had to hand: bricks from torn-down buildings in the neighbourhood, used school materials, textbooks, and notebooks. With a strong political motivation and shocked by conditions in the South Bronx, Rollins developed a unique learning environment that ultimately turned into the artist group the Kids of Survival (K.O.S.).

Studio K.O.S., A Midsummer Night’s Dream (after Shakespeare and Mendelssohn), 2023, watercolour, ink, mulberry paper, collage and mustard seed on music score on wood panel, each 30.5 × 23 cm

 

The beautiful Regency setting of Morena di Luna is always a joy to visit and the watercolour works in this show particularly sang with the sunlight streaming through the windows, the wild watercolour posies that cover manuscripts from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Nights Dream, as the gallery explains ‘Decorated with colourful “flowers”, these forms serve as physical manifestations of Puck’s power.’ These works draw on workshops conducted throughout the last decade and have all the etherealness you expect of Shakespeare – but there’s a playful freedom in the works, one that matches the energy of a really good creative teaching session – where things are abundant in making, focus, energy and joy. There is careful intention in the colourway, but there is a devil-may-care attitude in how the colours sit on top of the original manuscript – and it works.

Studio K.O.S., A Midsummer Night’s Dream (after Shakespeare and Mendelssohn), 2023, watercolour, ink, mulberry paper, collage and mustard seed on music score on wood panel

In an artworld where vapid works can go for large sums, how special would it be to own a piece that has been truly transformative in its making? Tim Rollins sadly passed away in 2017 but his legacy survived, arguably because he placed such power in the hands of collaborative making. In August 1981, Tim Rollins, then 26 years old, was recruited by George Gallego, principal of Intermediate School 52 in the South Bronx, to develop a curriculum that incorporated art-making with reading and writing lessons for students who had been classified as academically or emotionally 'at risk.' Rollins told his students on that first day, 'Today we are going to make art, but we are also going to make history.' When asked to elaborate on what he meant by 'making history,' Rollins says, 'To dare to make history when you are young, when you are a minority, when you are working, or non-working class, when you are voiceless in society takes courage. Where we came from, just surviving is "making history." So many others, in the same situations, have not survived, physically, psychologically, spiritually, or socially. We were making our own history, something that wasn’t given to us. We weren’t going to accept history as something given to us.'

Studio K.O.S., The Scarlet Letter / All About Love (after Nathaniel Hawthorne and bell hooks), 2023, collage on wood panel, 26 × 20 cm

Literary texts were a backbone for Rollins’ sessions, the works on show include The Scarlet Letter / All About Love (after Nathaniel Hawthorne and bell hooks), 2023, a ‘mash-up’ of pages from The Scarlet Letter an 1850 book by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Set in the 17th century, the novel follows Hester Prynne, a woman who conceived a daughter out of wedlock and was forced to wear a scarlet letter ‘A’ for adultery. The pages are collaged with excerpts from bell hooks’ All About Love, with delicate monogram-style lettering painted carefully. This series was made in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts and Upward Bound High School. In this workshop, participants studied hooks’ text, writing down words that resonated with them. Funnily enough it was the text on my teacher training course that I resonated with most… one that dares to unpack the essence of love and care.

Tim Rollins and K.O.S., By Any Means Necessary (after Malcolm X), 2008, matte acrylic and book pages on canvas, 183 × 183 × 4 cm

I unveil another mask of myself, that I fell in love with art after being part of an arts project at Tate Modern for teenagers… we were never told we were put together because we were ‘at risk’ but because I had my own personal chaos in a tempestuous family home, art was my salvation, the gallery a space where I could breathe and be. Within the works on show you can feel the careful absorption, the mental clearing that the K.O.S. sessions perhaps created for the young people. The works in the final room of the gallery pack a punch with a large-scale piece made in 2008 by Tim Rollins and K.O.S. By Any Means Necessary (after Malcolm X), with large graphic symbolism that is both confident and considered, sitting across from more collage works created using text from Martin Luther King and James Baldwin. 

Angel Abreu and Ricardo Savinon were original K.O.S. members as teens and now form Studio K.O.S. now that Rollins has passed away and Abreu described, “We conducted a series of seances of sorts in which MLK and Baldwin were conjured to collaborate with us.” During workshops, excerpts from both books were read and participants were encouraged to use blades to scalpel the texts and create poetry by subtraction, addition, and omission. Here, cutting, pasting, and obliterating foster novel modes of interpretation.

Studio K.O.S, The Fire Next Time (after James Baldwin), 2022, collage on panel, 7.8 × 12.7 cm

The show and overall practice of the collective is brave, and perhaps speaks to a current artworld trend of social purpose, justice and socially engaged practice. However one should note that Paley had worked with Rollins and Studio K.O.S. for a long time before the trend became popular – this is not a fad and I tip my hat to Paley for recognising and showcasing a collaborative practice that is so important. We need more galleries to be as supportive of such purposeful and networked projects, then perhaps we wouldn’t be so quick to separate the role of artist/teacher.

Rosemary Cronin, May 2023

Studio K.O.S, Where we have gone
Morena di Luna, Hove
13 April – 16 June 2024