Overview
This course will take you through everything you need to know about NFTs within an art world context. Who are the key artists?, How are artworks minted?, What is the buying process?, Collecting NFTs, the legal framework around the NFT art world, insurance implications, curating and exhibiting NFT artworks and transacting within the Metaverse.
The NFTs – A Complete Guide is for anyone interested in moving towards a career in NFT artworks, creating and selling or buying and collecting NFTs. This comprehensive programme will answer all your questions regarding the NFT phenomenon with insights into the future of this fascinating art market.
Academic Profiles
Jo Kennedy
Joe Kennedy is co-founder and Director of Unit London group comprising of Unit London Gallery, Unit London Web3 and Unit London Editions.
Unit London was founded in 2013 by Kennedy and Jonny Burt with the mission of identifying and supporting the world's most gifted artists by showcasing their work to the widest possible audience. In 2018, Unit London opened their 6,000 ft gallery space on Hanover Square, in the heart of Mayfair.
Unit London boasts a diverse and thought-provoking programme, having presented group and solo shows with artists including Ithell Colquhoun, Linder Sterling, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer, Sthenjwa Luthuli, Suchitra Mattai, Barti Kher, Jenny Saville, Ryan Hewett, Stacey Gillian Abe, Cydne Jasmin Coleby, Helen Beard, and Annie Morris. The gallery has worked with leading curators such as David Anfam (Senior Consulting Curator, Clyfford Still Museum), Rachel Thomas (Senior Curator, Irish Museum of Modern Art), Aindrea Emelife (Writer and Curator) and Azu Nwagbogu (Founder and Director of African Artists' Foundation).
In line with the gallery’s broader vision of inclusivity and social impact, in 2020 Unit London launched Platform, an innovative virtual exhibitions programme designed to give artists a dedicated and focused space to spark conversations around socio-cultural and political issues. Subsequently, a percentage of all proceeds from the programme are donated to charities or non-profit organisations chosen by the artists.
In 2021, Kennedy created the first art world led platform for NFTs as part of the Unit London brand. The inaugural exhibition 'NFTism: No Fear in Trying', curated by Kenny Schachter, convened more than 100 artists working at the cutting edge of their field.
Kennedy is on the advisory boards of several art prizes, fairs and awards and acts as a young patron of various cultural institutions including Tate, the Serpentine Gallery and the Royal Academy. In 2019, Kennedy was named as one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 entrepreneurs for his contributions to the global art & culture industries.
Previous speaking engagements include CogX London, Art Dubai, the Art Business Conference, The Arts Club and Talking Galleries, where he regularly speaks about entrepreneurship and the changing face of the contemporary art market.
Robert Alice
Robert Alice is an artist, curator and pioneer in the crypto art and NFT space. He is the first artist to sell an NFT at a major auction house, a project widely credited as being one of the early catalysts in the rapid growth in NFTs. Robert Alice has curated major NFT shows in London, Venice, New York, Hong Kong and the Metaverse. His work has been reviewed by leading curators such as Hans Ulrich Obrist and published in the New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, Forbes, Fortune and Vogue, among others. He has staged exhibitions in New York (Christie's), London and Hong Kong (Sotheby’s), Venice (Palazzo Lolin), Hamburg (Kunstverein Hamburg), Beijing (Ullens Center of Contemporary Art), Shanghai (JinArt Center) and Singapore. In 2022, alongside his practice, Robert Alice has been writing a major publication on the NFT space with TASCHEN, which will be released early next year.
Gordon Berger
Gordon Berger is one of the pioneers of the Crypto Art movement. Since late 2011 he has been exploring blockchain and the concepts of value, materiality, and abstraction. He was the first TEDx speaker to give a talk on Blockchain Art/NFTs in early 2018 at the Museum of London and held the first NFT solo exhibition in New York the following year.
His early exploration of using blockchain as a medium for art, lead him to contribute to the earliest Generative Art Platform on the blockchain. In 2018 he was also one of the first artists who started tokenizing digital art on an NFT platform and he minted 3 of the initial 100 tokens on SuperRare. He created the first NFTs ever to be materialized into physical reality (‘Solidity’ & ‘Materiality’ Series 2019) and his art has been exhibited internationally.
Being one of the early adopters of blockchain and Web3; these technologies have heavily influenced his creative process and are reflected in his work. While being an abstract and generative artist, Gordon has been drawn to the fusion of the virtual and physical with blockchain as a binding medium, and its ever-evolving output in our contemporary world.
As a graduate of Central Saint Martins University in London, and The Belgrade School of Design, he has dedicated his career to creating art by blending the digital creation process with smart-contract capabilities and traditional painting techniques.
● Earliest TEDx speaker to give a talk on NFTs and CryptoArt in early 2018
● Minted 3 of the initial 100 NFTs on SuperRare (2018)
● Contributed to the first Generative Art Platform on the blockchain (2018)
● Innovative use of smart contracts in the creation of ‘Solidity’ & ‘Materiality’ Series (2018/2019)
● Generated the first NFT that was ever materialized into physical reality (2019)
● Heald the first NFT solo-exhibition in a physical space by a single artist (New York, March 6, 2019)
Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile
Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile is a renowned patron of the arts, mathematician, economist and investor. He is well known for his significant contributions as an architect of the digital art ecosystem, supporting pioneering artists pushing their creativity beyond the boundaries of their practice. His personal collection “RFC Art” is recognized as the most comprehensive digital art collection worldwide, with significant and iconic works by digitally native artists such as Pak, Andrés Reisinger, Refik Anadol, and Beeple, of whom he was his first collector.
Pablo is an expert in tokenomics, incentive systems and early-stage markets and he is also one of the largest global virtual landowners across the different projects of the metaverse. For the past several years, he has been actively involved in the blockchain space as an early adopter, investor, and advisor to distinguished projects such as Algorand, Hedera Hashgraph and Filecoin. In 2021, Pablo co-founded Aorist, a next-generation cultural institution that supports a sustainable NFT marketplace for artists working at the intersection of art and technology.
Before becoming a leader in the blockchain and digital art space, Pablo earned a mathematics and economics degree from Columbia University, where he later returned to earn his MBA after working in various roles in finance including private banking, hedge funds and private equity.
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Image Credit: Andrey Metelev, Unsplash
