Event Details

Artist and researcher Franziska Schenk explores Ruskin, 'rainbow iridescence' and the contemporary nano-realm.

The Ruskin Seminars invite scholars, artists and thinkers to explore how Ruskin's ideas can unlock the pressing cultural, social and environmental issues of today and tomorrow. This year, our seminars explore the relevance of Ruskin’s thinking to topics ranging from ecological crisis to evolutionary theory.

Join us to open the 2019-2020 Ruskin Seminars with Franziska Schenk, who casts a close eye on Ruskin’s high-resolution nature-centric artwork to extend the Victorian’s sharp-focused vision into the contemporary nano-realm.

Franziska Schenk is an artist and researcher with an MA in Fine Art (with Distinction) and First Class Honours degrees in Fine Art (Birmingham City University), and in Art Education (Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt). Schenk is a Lecturer in Fine Art at Birmingham City University and Honorary Research Associate at the University of Birmingham.

She is initiator of, and principal investigator on, funded art and science projects focusing on the conversion of nature’s iridescent colour to the painter’s palette – thereby introducing flow, dynamism, transience and an evolutionary element into painting.

Image: Franziska Schenk, Erebus Obscura, diptych II, 2010. Iridescent medium on board, 160 x 190cm. © Franziska Schenk.