Thursday, November 13, 2008

Laura Lancaster: "Ego Documents", Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland


Ego Documents. The Autobiographical in Contemporary Art 14 November 2008 - 15 February 2009

List of artists
Darren Almond, Sadie Benning, Louise Bourgeois, Annatina Graf, Mona Hatoum, Xiaoyuan Hu, On Kawara, Martin Kippenberger, Isabelle Krieg, Elke Krystufek, Laura Lancaster, Nicolas Nixon, Jan Peters, Jack Pierson, Anri Sala, Vittorio Santoro, Carolee Schneemann, Annelies Strba, Ana Strika, Pascale Wiedemann/Daniel Mettler.

In her first exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, the new curator of the contemporary department, Kathleen Bühler, will be taking as her theme what is autobiographical in contemporary art as an instrument of self-representation and self-discovery. The exhibition will be showing works from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Bern and from private collections as well as some works created expressly for the exhibition by young Swiss and international artists.


"Ego Documents" is a collective concept for any kind of autobiographical self-testimony. The autobiography is more than a self-portrait: It is a retrospective and presents the finding of an individual identity in a narrative or documentary process.

In a time in which the borders between public and private, fictitious and real are continually being redefined, the presentation of one's own life can come under fire in the tension between contradictory impulses. Contemporary artists in particular are subject to pressure by the art market to present resumes that are as intriguing as possible.

This exhibition illustrates the fact that although what is autobiographical in art can be a narcissistic reflection of self, it can also be of service in the search for the ego or in the dialogue with transience.

Supported by
Foundation GegenwART, Dr. h.c. Hansjörg Wyss

The Exhibition

Opening
Thursday, November 13, 2008, 18h30

Duration
14.11.2008 - 15.2.2009

Curator
Kathleen Bühler

Opening Hours
Tuesday 10h - 21h
Wednesday to Sunday 10h - 17h
Holidays 24.12.08, 31.12.08, 1.1.09, 2.1.09: 10h - 17h; 25.12.08: closed

Entrance Fee
CHF 14.- / red. CHF 10.-

Francis Gomila and Cecilia Stenbom: "Connecting Principles" Culture Lab, Newcastle University, UK



Connecting Principle: Dialogue is a 2 day public event on Thursday and Friday November 13th and 14th at Newcastle University showcasing work in progress by artists in collaboration with other researchers.

Creative projects will take place throughout the Fine Art Building and Culture Lab, with collaborators from the UK, Germany, Australia and Canada. The event will present 15 diverse activities investigating the dialogue between research methodologies including discussions, performances, installations, transmissions and other works.

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/connectingprinciple/

image:
Cecilia Stenbom
The Protocol
2008
HD Video
Film Duration 27 Minutes (looped)
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Catherine Bertola: "THE INTERTWINING LINE" Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK


THE INTERTWINING LINE
DRAWING AS SUBVERSIVE ART
From Fri 7 November to Sun 11 January 2009

ARTISTS
Catherine Bertola, Rachel Goodyear, Margaret Harrison, Melanie Jackson, Naomi Kashiwagi, Ulrike Lienbacher, Dan Perjovschi, Guto Nobrega, Sissu Tarka
CURATOR
Tereza Kotyk

The Intertwining Line explores early and contemporary animation and its intertwined relationship with contemporary drawing. The exhibition features work by nine artists, including internationally acclaimed artists Dan Perjovschi and Margaret Harrison, a new generation of British artists, such as Melanie Jackson, Rachel Goodyear and Naomi Kashiwagi, alongside screenings of Czech animations and films selected from the Tricky Women festival. Animation is often considered to be childlike entertainment, however the radical potential of the medium has a long history - whether this is the implicit social criticism that is hidden within early Czech animation, or the use of humour to create powerful social commentary in modern artists’ animations. Drawing also has this potential and this can be through meticulously crafted images that merely hint at social unease or speedily drawn sketches which carry a powerful charge of immediacy to create political statements.

"TOMORROW THE FUTURE" curated by WORKPLACE, Fishmarket Gallery, Northampton, UK


Mon 03 Nov 2008 - Sat 22 Nov 2008

The Fishmarket is proud to welcome artists selected by Workplace Gallery in Gateshead for a special group show.

TANYA AXFORD Hula Hoops incessantly in a pitch-black room. Randomly exposed by oversensitive ‘slave’ camera flashes triggered by an intermittently firing strobe she circumnavigates performance, photography and sculpture.

Well known for his eclectic use of material ERIC BAINBRIDGE has spent his career reconsidering modernism. In Untitled 2008 Sausages and Melamine combine to revel in their own redundancy – visually heroic yet utterly futile.

Old TV sets play DARREN BANKS' re-cut videos from found movies in which Public Sculpture and Armageddon emerge as dominant themes for the present.

Christina Is Not Well after a heavy night out In Sunderland in SOPHIE LISA BERESFORD'S film, which inadvertently explores biography, social commentary and visceral sculptural presence to loud effect.

Human presence is the basis of CATHERINE BERTOLA'S archaeologies. In Flights of Fancy she re-inhabits found C19th glass photographs, posing as a middle class Lady in a Victorian interior.

CATH CAMPBELL presents the interior and exterior space of architecture as one through her intricate perspective drawings on paper that move from object to image to object again via her precise cutting away with a scalpel.

HUGO CANOILAS' arrangement of found and painted objects combines figuration, abstraction and political symbolism to resurrect the energy and ideology of the original avant-garde.

JOE CLARK'S film Gateshead Light Sequence features the humble street lamp shifting through degrees of luminescent intensity via an animated sequence of still photographs at night.

In 'Cadences' MARCUS COATES takes the last bars at the end of pastoral symphonies to construct a new audio landscape.

JO COUPE'S centrifugally cast bronze works fuse high precision jewellery techniques with botanical expertise to explore a complex relationship between beauty and decay.

JENNIFER DOUGLAS brings together carefully selected materials to create a discourse between the material world in which the work exists, and the imagined worlds that form the basis for her sculpture.

ASHLEY HIPKIN'S sculptures examine the memory and ethics of function and use through the combination of reconstructed objects from the past cut up, replicated, reformed and painted with the obsolete colours of yesterday.

Like a Polaroid fading into focus the identities of the subjects of LAURA LANCASTER'S paintings are never clear. This state of flux and fluidity allows the works to exist in a temporal, ambiguous space reaffirming the anonymity of the found photographs that she works from.

RACHEL LANCASTER takes photographs of seemingly insignificant passing shots from ‘cult’ films and television programmes. Her paintings from these photographs interrogate the seemingly unimportant moments of a greater narrative - a blurred portrayal of a corridor from Teenwolf or a car bonnet from The Sopranos. Divorced physically from the story her paintings maintain a mysterious connection with ‘the event’ and a cinematic monumentality.

ANT MACARI'S drawings function at once as a schematic, developmental process and constitute the resolution of ideas themselves. Through drawing and writing he communicates a tacit understanding of the culture that has made him.

PAUL MERRICK combines painting with sculpture, and the made with the ready-made. Investigating colour, shape and architectural arrangement whilst consistently referencing back to Painting as a subject and discipline in and of itself.

PAUL MOSS' work responds to the particularity of the urban environment by conflating hand-made processes with manufactured materials to form motifs that reference the information culture that we live in and also pure abstraction and modularity.

GINNY REED'S photographs are residues and remnants of performance events. Party Hard is incidental, monumental and autobiographical in the same moment, finding a new position between documentation and the authoritative image.

RICHARD RIGG'S work resonates within its own solipsistic self-referentiality. The work is its own context. Object, function and aesthetics combine to find a reductive equilibrium through which he re-examines the minimal strategy in art, moving its flawed logic towards an aesthetic endgame.

Using herself as a template for the individual and challenging the notion of self in today’s media-obsessed society through mediated mainstream reportage

CECILIA STENBOM presents the ideal of the perfect person as an unachievable but self consciously striven-for entity.

MILES THURLOW'S work is deliberately paradoxical - at once conceptually sophisticated and aesthetically bare. Referencing the demise of modernism and the rise of quick fix, cheap alternatives his work investigates the architecture of modern day living and our relationship with the products of consumer culture.

WOLFGANG WEILEDER'S long exposure photographs are of the sculptural rebuilding of specific houses and architecture. Constructed and deconstructed one façade at a time Weileder’s architectures are displaced and isolated through location, labour and time. These ephemeral, time based events become translucent images of urban regeneration portraying haunting civic visions of a possible future.

Image "It's Not The End Of The World", Darren Banks, 2007, Single Channel Video.

www.workplacegallery.co.uk

Monday, October 27, 2008

Catherine Bertola & Peter J. Evans: "Beautifully Crafted", National Glass Centre, Sunderland, UK




`Beautifully Crafted'
October 25 2008 – February 22 2009
Preview Friday October 24, 6 - 8pm.

10th Anniversary Open Weekend
25 & 26 October 2008 1am - 5pm
A weekend of tours, talks and demonstrations.

In 2008, National Glass Centre enjoys its 10th Anniversary. To
celebrate this and the work it does to support artists make, show and
sell their work, National Glass Centre is launching `Beautifully
Crafted'; an exhibition of ingenuity, exquisite workmanship,
innovation and delight, along with a weekend of special events.

Before the Industrial Revolution artisans were the dominant producers
of goods, handcrafting functional as well as ornamental items that
fulfilled a universal desire for beautiful objects. `Beautifully
Crafted' explores the innovative ways contemporary artists and
designers create works that fuse cultural histories and ancient
techniques with new technologies and new ways of working.

It will bring together the work of established and emerging artists,
designers and businesses from the UK, across Europe and beyond, who
are experimenting in a range of materials and form that pay homage to
bygone traditions, artisan techniques and display a meticulous
attention to `making'; from glassmaking to taxidermy, lacemaking to
marquetry.

NGC invited a range of curators, artists/designers and writers, to
choose an artist whose work they felt fitted within the philosophy and
premise of `Beautifully Crafted'. Along with research undertaken by
the NGC curatorial team, seventy artists are included in the
exhibition, working with around 20 different traditional techniques.
The exhibition will feature antique furniture and objects from the
late 18th and early 19th century, courtesy of The Bowes Museum
collection as well as objects from Beamish Museum's archive.

Beatifully Crafted Artists:
Kathleen & Nick Abbott, Michael Anastassiades, Louise Batchelor, Lise
Bech, Catherine Bertola, Martin Blenkin, Sarah Cant, Chien-Wei Chang,
Jonathan Chiswell Jones, Jennifer Collier, Jacqueline Cullen, Dot Sim,
John Edwards, David Ersser, Peter J Evans, Liam Flynn, Nora Fok, Eri
Funazaki, George Smith, Gillies Jones Glass, Michael Golding, Mia E
Goransson, Karina Hesketh, Magie Hollingworth, Sarah Hutchison,
Industreal, Grace Jacomb, Paul Jewby, Ditte Johansson, Jessamy Kelly,
Anna S King, June Kingsbury, Bovey Lee, Jennifer Lee, Carlyn Lindsay,
Beth Lipman, Malin Lundmark, Nicola Malkin, Joanna Manousis, James
Maskrey, Massey & Rogers, Maya Romanoff, Rupert McBain, Kelly
McCallum, Einav Mekori, Annie Millar, Michelle Ni, Lyn Randall,
Reptile Tile & Ceramics, Kait Rhoads, Stephen Richards, Riyaz Design,
Anthony Roussel, Mark Rowney, Henrietta Rose Samuels, Lucy May
Schofield, Cosima Sempill, Sheldon:Cooney, Urh Sobocan, Paul Stone,
Laura Strasser, Melanie Tomlinson, Jessica Townsend, Flora Vagi,
Sylvie Vandenhoucke, Anne Walker, Ceal Warnants, Kathryn Wightman,
Kate Williams, Robin Wood.

Some of the techniques and materials featured in the exhibition
include; Ceramics and Glassmaking, Wood Turning, Basketry, Furniture
design & making, Papermache, Millinery, Silversmithing, Book-binding,
Textiles, Wallpaper, Parquet & Floor design, Taxidermy, Upholstry, Bag
making, Leather working, shoemaking, Lace making, Stitiching, Automata
making.

NATIONAL
GLASS CENTRE

Liberty Way, Sunderland, SR6 0GL
0191 515 5555
0191 515 5532
NGC Reception: 0191 515 5555
reception@nationalglasscentre.com
www.nationalglasscentre.com

Wolfgang Weileder: "Le Terme", Ciocca Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy, Leuven, Belgium


le Terme
a time based site-specific architectural installation
Ciocca Arte Contemporanea, Milan Italy
October 08

Builders from R. Bau UK aided by architecture students from Politecnico di Milan are simultaneously constructing and de-construct a section of Diurno Venezea, a derelict 1920’s public bathhouse at Piazza Oberdan. The historical architecture that lies forgotten underneath the surface is revealed in a performative gesture and the square's surface becomes the mirror of memory: Diurno is upturned like an image reflected in the water. The sculpture will directly reference shape and scale of the bathhouse below (five metres high and sixty metres long).

Whilst reflecting the permanence and immobility of the remains below, Le Terme is a structure of constant movement where walls appear and disappear and the construction of the monumental becomes a visible experience, encouraging a public discussion about the city's forgotten spaces.



www.rossanaciocca.it
www.rossanaciocca.it/le terme

Peter J. Evans: "WHAT WE CAN'T SEE INFLUENCES BEYOND OUR REACH" ACA (Allenheads Contemporary Arts), UK



What we can't see influences beyond our reach

Peter J. Evans

Saturday 18th October 2008, 2-5pm, at ACAshop

In the summer of 2007 Peter J. Evans applied for one of the first Base Elements residencies at Allenheads Contemporary Arts. His proposal, titled Mountains into grains of sand was an attempt to draw out the familiar patterns weaving through all things and examine how scientific principles could lend support to existential philosophies and social theories. The idea was to find examples of these overlaps. However, on starting the project it quickly became apparent that due to the necessary rigidity of the scientific method, such overlaps, would need theories of how they might function; and ways of testing them. In short, Evans’ project would have to become reductionist and rigid and this fundamental switch would have moved the project away from its intention.

The proposal then, got placed on the back burner and for a while a front ring remained unlit. Over this period many books were read, on quantum physics, cultural theory, essays on silence and the more information gained the more lost and found the project became until it was clear that lost and found was a good enough fuel to burn.

Utilizing his drawing practice in which works, “are formed by diagrammatic processes and artificial systems are used to chart and delineate abstract concepts such as human relationships, memory and beauty,”[1] Evans has made a work in which the hidden may at moments become visible, links disappear and appear depending on the light and as in the quantum world things influence our experience without their presence being seen.

Peter J. Evans lives and works in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He has recently exhibited at Spacex Exeter, Seventeen London, Baltic and Workplace Gateshead.


Exhibition continues Sunday 19th, Saturday 25th & Sunday 26th October, 2-5pm. For further details please contact:

Allenheads Contemporary Arts
The Old Schoolhouse
Allenheads
NE47 9HR

www.acart.org.uk
acaheads@aol.com
01434 685040

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Marcus Coates: "Three BY Three (2)", Sunbury House, London, UK

Laura Lancaster: Voyage Sentimental - Poznań Biennale - Poland




Laura Lancaster
Voyage Sentimental

Poznań Biennale - Poland

3 -30 October 2008


Voyage Sentimental

The exhibition presents the most recent artistic endeavour, mainly from the area of Central Europe. The thematic scope is reflected in seven sub-titles: Private Stories / Public Conflict, Melancholy and Longing, Urban Rumors, Micro-realism, Mania and Obsession, On Time and Silence, Gardens and Islands.

Among 79 featured artists are: Marina Abramović, Günter Brus, Jan Fabre, Gloria Friedmann, Izabella Gustowska, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer, Jarosław Kozłowski, Laura Lancaster, Zbigniew Libera, Hermann Nitsch, Roman Opałka, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Günther Uecker, Lee Ufan.


Voyage Sentimental

Wystawa prezentuje sztukę najnowszą, głównie z regionu Europy Środkowej. Jej tematykę sygnalizuje siedem podtytułów: Private Stories / Public Conflict, Melancholy and Longing, Urban Rumors, Micro-realism, Mania and Obsession, On Time and Silence, Gardens and Islands.

Wśród 79 artystów są m.in. Marina Abramović, Günter Brus, Jan Fabre, Gloria Friedmann, Izabella Gustowska, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer, Jarosław Kozłowski, Laura Lancaster, Zbigniew Libera, Hermann Nitsch, Roman Opałka, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Günther Uecker, Lee Ufan.


Curated by Lorand Hegyi

http://mediations.pl/#/en/wystawy/voyagesentimental

Monday, September 29, 2008

Laura Lancaster & Rachel Lancaster: "The Sovereign Art Prize", Somerset House, London




SOVEREIGN EUROPEAN ART PRIZE

The Sovereign Art Foundation has announced the artists shortlisted for its third annual Sovereign European Art Prize.
Artists can only enter the prize through a process of nomination by one of the foundation’s Europe wide network of art experts.

The shortlisted artists are:

AES+F, Russia; Maurizio Anzeri, UK; Sandy Sykes, UK; Mimi Mollica, Italy; S¿ren Lose, Germany; John Stark, UK; Susanne S.D. Themlitz, Portugal; Nadia Hebson, Germany; Daniel Canogar, Spain; Laura Lancaster, UK; Rachel Lancaster, UK; Laurent le Deunff, France; Lynne Collins, UK; Nicola Di Caprio, Italy; Eòghann Mac Colla, UK; Andrew Gilbert, Germany; Miikka Vaskola, Finland; Douglas Fishbone, UK; Tiina Heiska, Finland; Joss McKinley, UK; Ben Murphy, UK; Peter Churcher, Spain; Anda Bankovska, Latvia; Rita Magalhaes, Portugal; Michael Fliri, Austria; Ida Cecilie Kvetny, Denmark; Julie Nord, Denmark; Goldin+Senneby, Sweden; Marisa Gonzalez, Spain; Tina Gibbard, UK.

Works by the thirty artists will go on show at Somerset House from the 1-10 October.
During the exhibition the judges will decide on the ultimate winner of the €25,000 first prize.

Judges:

Sir Peter Blake: Honorary Chair
Tim Marlow: Director, White Cube
Jarvis Cocker: Artist, Pulp
Rachel Campbell-Johnstan: Art critic, The Times
Philly Adams: Director of the Saatchi Gallery
Alan Yentob: Creative Director of BBC Television

In addition, members of the public can also vote for the shortlisted artists, on the Sovereign Art Foundation’s website or during the exhibition, to decide the winner of the €1,000 public vote prize.

www.sovereignartfoundation.com
www.somersethouse.org.uk

Images:
Laura Lancaster "Untitled" 2008, 13cm x 18cm Oil on Board
Rachel Lancaster "Untitled (Lipstick)" 2008, 40cm x 50cm Oil on Canvas

Wolfgang Weileder: "Slapende Meermin", STUK Kunstencentrum, Leuven, Belgium




Wolfgang Weileder

Slapende Meermin

a full scale site-specific
architectural installation

Martelarenplein,
Leuven, Belgium
30 September - 4 October 2008

Slapende Meermin references a historical building situated at the North end of Martelarenplein, Leuven. Above the ground floor window the name of a bar/café has been carved originally into the stone lintel: A la sirene - in de Meermin. The sculpture is a full-scale copy of the façade of this building turned by 90 degrees. Appearing like a physical manifestation of the building's shadow, the architectural structure stretches out on Martelarenplein over a length of nearly 18 meter.

Slapende Meermin has been developed by the artist with r.Bau Ltd, South Tyneside and Newcastle College UK, and Wonen en Werken Leuven.
Slapende Meermin is a STUK Kunstencentrum Leuven project and part of the STUKSTART openingevent. Martelarenplein is opposite Leuven Central Station.
For further information visit: www.stuk.be

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Laura Lancaster: "Behind", Monitor Gallery, Rome, Italy


Behind

allsopp&weir, Nina Beier & Marie Lund, Simon Evans, Sven Johne, David Maljkovic,
Laura Lancaster, Damien Roach, Agathe Snow, Sue Tompkins, Bedwyr Williams
curated by Ilaria Gianni

opening September 15th, 6.30pm

Monitor gallery is pleased to open its 2008-9 season with Behind, curated by Ilaria Gianni. This group show featuring several international artists takes a groundbreaking artistic and curatorial approach by placing completed artworks alongside elements from the preceding stages in the creative process, with a view to analysing the process that leads up to the creation of a work.

Behind has involved artists from diverse backgrounds, with different research methods and interests. The show will feature the documentation, archive material, sources, references, data and impressions behind each of the works included in the exhibition.

More than an exhibition in the traditional sense, Behind strives to be a kind of 'cabinet' displaying a critical strategy behind the artistic process itself. As Dominic Eichler states so eloquently, "even though art works aren't generally footnoted, references are now more than ever used as artistic material like lumps of clay to a potter" (Frieze #117, September 2008).

allsopp&weir, Nina Beier & Marie Lund, Simon Evans, Sven Johne, David Maljkovic, Laura Lancaster, Damien Roach, Agathe Snow, Sue Tompkins and Bedwyr Williams were all asked to reason out the creative process that culminated in their works by retracing their individual stages of artistic research. The artists reacted to this input by questioning their methods, rethinking their actions and shedding light on their moments of profoundest thought.

Sven Johne, Nina Beier&Marie Lund, David Maljkovic and Laura Lancaster responded to the Behind concept by opening up their archives, collections and essential research behind their works, while Agathe Snow and allsopp&weir revealed the cultural references and characters that provided them with inspiration. Sue Tompkins, Bedwyr Williams and Damien Roach on the other hand focused on the completion process of their pieces.

From the diverse feedback provoked by Behind it has emerged that this show is above all a reflection on method, on process as a concept and a look into the very personality of the artist.

Until October 20th

With the support of Residence Barberini, Rome

Monitor is open from Tuesday to Saturday from 1.00 p.m. until 7.00 p.m -viale delle Mura Aurelie 19 00165 Rome-t: 06.39378024 m:monitor@monitoronline.org w:www.monitoronline.org

image:
Laura Lancaster
Untitled 2008
Installation Film still
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Catherine Bertola: "Over the Teacups", Galerie M + R Fricke, Berlin


Over the Teacups: Exhibition of work by Catherine Bertola
Galerie M + R Fricke, Invalidenstr. 114, Berlin
13 September-1 November 2008
Private view: Friday 12 September, 7-9pm

This exhibition brings together a collection of new and existing work by British artist Catherine Bertola, and will include installation, drawing, embroidery and photographic works in her first solo show outside the UK.

The title of the exhibition, Over the Teacups is taken from the name of an advice column in Women at Home, one of the most pioneering and influential women’s periodicals of the Victorian period. The column was a place where women could exchange confidences as equals and friends regardless of class, age and status. In the radically changing period of the 1800’s the women’s periodical became a vital tool in helping to both define and challenge perceptions of femininity, that still underpin many of our views on women today, a theme which runs through the work brought together in this exhibition.

The exhibition will feature for the first time work from two new ongoing series Thought for the week and Bluestockings.

Thought for the week is a series of text pieces based on quotes collected by the artist from weekly emails received from a life coaching website. The quotes are intended to “inspire and encourage positive thinking”, in an attempt to affirm her belief in them and make her a better person, the artist has carefully and meticulously embroidered these statements to create a series of crafted objects, that hark back to the needlework projects featured in traditional women’s magazine

Bluestockings, is a series of black ink drawings of patterns of the artists’ own lace tights, and follows on from previous works developed out of a fascination with lace as an object through its manufacture and associations with femininity and women’s social history. The drawings allude to tradition lace design work, celebrating the beauty of fabric and the labour of the women who would have historically fabricated it . Each drawing is named after one of the original members of Bluestocking Society, a group of pioneering Georgian women who through networks of friendship, mutual support, intellectual encouragement and professional patronage promoted education for women in an age where they had few rights and little chance of independence.

Catherine Bertola (b. 1976, Rugby) studied at the University of Newcastle (1995-1999), she currently lives and works in Gateshead. Over the last seven years Bertola has undertaken a number of residencies and commissions, working with organisations such as; Locus+ and Vane in Newcastle upon Tyne, Beacon Art Project in Lincolnshire, and the Government Art Collection, V&A Museum and Triangle Arts Trust in London. She has exhibited widely across the UK including The Drawing Room, Union, Fieldgate Gallery and Jerwood Space in London and Baltic in Gateshead. Solo shows at International 3, Manchester (2005), Fabrica, Brighton and Firstsite, Colchester (both 2006). International exhibitions include CAC, Vilnius and Kaunas Picture Gallery, Kaunas, Lithuania (both 2007), Galerie M+R Fricke, Berlin (2007) and Artium, Vitoria Gastiez (2008).

image: Catherine Bertola
Bluestockings (Elizabeth Montagu), 2008
Pen on paper
135 x 80 cms

Matt Stokes:"SINGLE CHANNEL - RECENT VIDEO WORKS", Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin


SINGLE CHANNEL - RECENT VIDEO WORKS

Selected by Christopher Eamon

6. September – 4. Oktober 2008
Opening Reception:
Friday, September 5, 7-9 pm on the occasion of "abc art berlin contemporary"
Alongside the opening of Peter Rogier's solo show on Friday, September 5, 2008 between 7 and 9 pm, Galerie Thomas Schulte is presenting the project "Single Channel - Recent Video Works" with nine young international positions selected by Christopher Eamon.

Single-channel video making has had a relatively long history. Partially eclipsed in the 1990s by video installa-tions and video environments, the medium today still has an immediacy and accessibility that larger more com-plicated multi-channel works do not have. The works included in the presentation "Single Channel - Recent Video Works" at Galerie Thomas Schulte reveal perhaps even a sophistication that was not possible in the 70s through mid 90s without the mass availability of more complex software. The selection of works is an eclectic but refreshing look at some current practices. This selection avoids of the decades-long practice of video performance as well as an even longer practice of using appropriated film and TV images to produce new works. That which unites the selection is the artists' investment of time and energy to realize a unique vision in single channel. Some of the works are meant to be projected, yet all of the works take flexibility of the medium as a given.
Works such as those by Matt Stokes, Alejandro Vidal, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, and Kris Lefcoe take their starting point squarely in the heart of youth culture. Whether mass or sub-cultural in their subject matter, the spirit of youth in dance, music, eroticism and revolt is most evident. Zhenchen Liu and Taysir Batniji poeti-cally speak of changes in the contemporary world. Avoiding a direct message, the works take on current global issues from the point of view of the individual, which is not to say that these works bare no emotional or political impact. Indeed these are not documentaries and therefore do not in bad faith attempt neutrality. As art-works they speak and release their images to the necessa-rily subjective responses proper to all viewers. Similarly, the openness of the tableau-like work by Adad Hannah opens up fear, possibly even humour in its quiet enduring way. On the surface the videos shown by Alex Hubbard and Elisabetta Benassi have little to do with each other, yet in tipping the camera to the horizontal position looking down at the artist's imaginative activities in Hubbard's video, for instance, or the slow cumulative filming of actual demolition sites, shifts the horizontal-that which is normal at your feet to an eye line perspective becoming vertical moving images without imitating painting in any obvious way.

Christopher Eamon is curator of the Pamela and Richard Kramlich Collection, which is one of the largest private collections for media art, and director of the New Art Trust in San Francisco for promotion of media art. Before he was Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He has curated numerous exhibitions with video and media art for e.g. PS1/MoMA, ICA, London, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

image: Matt Stokes
Cipher, 2006 - 2007
Super 16mm film and audio transferred to digibeta/DVD
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK

Thursday, August 28, 2008

"All my favourite singers couldn't sing ..." Workplace Gallery, Gateshead, UK


“All my favourite singers couldn’t sing...”

Dan Arps, Tanya Axford, Darren Banks, Sophie Lisa Beresford,
Hugo Canoilas, Marcus Coates, Jo Coupe, Ashley Hipkin,
Graham Hudson, Laura Lancaster, Rachel Lancaster, Ant Macari,
Paul Merrick, Eleanor Moreton, Melanie Schiff, Cecilia Stenbom.

Preview: Friday 29th August 6 – 9pm

30th August – 27th September 2008
Tues - Sat, 11am -5pm (or by appointment)

“All my favourite singers couldnʼt sing…” is the first exhibition at The Old Post Office, the new home of
Workplace Gallery in the heart of Gateshead Town centre. This group exhibition includes works by
represented gallery artists alongside new local talent and invited international artists and spans all 3 floors of
the 18th Century red brick building.

A weird abstract painting hovers above the after swing of a Golfer in a palm tree landscape, silhouetted in
front of a sunset sky. Dan Arps makes additions to found posters by gluing and tacking painted symbols and
shapes to their glossy surfaces. The resulting images occupy a tense position between expectation and
fantasy, In Arpsʼ work the promise of the perfect feel-good moment is thrown into doubt.

Tanya Axfordʼs ʻHulaʼ is a Super 8 film installation documenting the artist Hula Hooping in a blacked out
room whilst being randomly exposed by a series of oversensitive ʻslaveʼ camera flashes triggered by an
intermittently firing strobe light. The random strobe effect creates a film that through its intermittent and
abrupt exposures circumnavigates performance, animation, memory and dislocation. ʻHulaʼ is shown for the
first time at Workplace Gallery, the film looping up through the three floors of the building through the
stairwell.

ʻPublic Sculpture / Private Radarʼ by Darren Banks is a looped excerpt from a found video of a heroic Cold
War era Moore-esque figurative sculpture slowly turning from left to right like a radar sweeping the horizon to
a wailing siren-like soundtrack. Shown on an upturned found 80ʼs plastic TV set Banks combines past
signifiers of progress and modernity whilst confronting them with their own obsolescence to create a tense
object that reflects our desire for power and fear of collapse and knowingly sends up Public Sculpture (past
and present) in the process…

ʻPizza Shop Danceʼ by Sophie Lisa Beresford is a video of the artist dancing manically to a hardcore
Makina dance track in her local Pizza shop in Sunderland, a regular occurrence that the Artist documented
for her recent degree show at Sunderland University. Beresfordʼs work emerges from deep within the
ʻCharvaʼ culture of the North East of England to be mixed with her own take on aspects of Hinduism,
Mysticism and New Age Philosophy.

Since his epic solo installation “Propaganda” at Workplace Gallery in 2006 Hugo Canoilas has continued to
make artworks that explore art and politics whilst fluctuating between the formal and the figurative. His new
sculpture ʻSit down and try another chair (To J.M.J.)ʼ presents us with a “Sexy/fashionable intervention on a
red square by Malevich” in which a seat less chair frame painted flame red is bisected by an elegant, but
nevertheless dislocated, shiny black mannequins leg.

Marcus Coatesʼ ongoing investigation into the natural world and its problematic relationship to society is
evidenced here in two works. ʻBlue Footed Boobyʼ was made by the artist whilst on a research trip in the
Galapagos Islands, the artist dressing up in a colourful outfit handmade and painted from found cardboard
boxes, photographed outside a human dwelling in one of the Galapagos more impoverished
neighbourhoods. ʻBritainʼs Bitternsʼ is a folk song written and sung by Coates lamenting the demise of the
rare bird from the British Isles.

Jo Coupeʼs new work told her to give it some of her favourite jewellery. Wall mounted Bronze castings of
Chickens Feet and Anthuriums, (also known as Painter's Palettes) support rotting fruit and brightly coloured
necklaces, earrings and trinkets to form a sinister looking talisman. Coupes ongoing research into chemistry
and natural sciences is seemingly leading us towards a darker Voodoo like visual language in which
Witchcraft and so called ʻPrimitiveʼ cultures are assembled from the detritus of our own.

Ashley Hipkinʼs discrete wall mounted sculptures in highly finished and luxurious turned hardwoods are
taken from the profiles of the nose cones of Fighter Jets. Serving as both a lexicon of boyhood fantasy and
taxonomy of the sculptorʼs craft these works are a persistent and intruding reminder of worldwide aggression
and the machinations of war.

Graham Hudson uses the tools of his trade, a jack saw, a tape measure, a cardboard box to assemble a
precarious minimal sculpture held in tension by a reflexive assertion of the functional aspects of its
constituent parts. As the saw bites into the top of a high wall its handle forms a fulcrum for a tape measure to
spool through and counter balance the box by its own weight high up the wall as if ready for a prat-fall prank
of slapstick nature. Its title ʻBlackmail Spectacleʼ implies the exchange, interdependency and implicit failure
within the relationship of one object to another.

Through a series of installations combining found 35mm slides and cine film projected onto second hand
books and picture frames Laura Lancaster confronts us with moments in time that are simultaneously lost in
the anonymity of the found image and ever present in our innate nostalgia. These films and slides are key to
Lancasterʼs practice as a painter, forming the source material of much of her practice over the last few years.
In these works sightseeing, holidays and leisure become silent weighty monuments to humanity and its
passing.

Rachel Lancasterʼs paintings, drawings, and photographs use images from paused cult TV and Film. In her
works based on explosions catastrophic moments are frozen in time stripped of scale and context, blurring
fiction and reality. Playing with the periphery of our imagination the images take on an almost pure abstract
absoluteness that points towards the possibility of an ugly endgame.

For Ant Macari Drawing is the most direct and immediate way of sharing both simple and complex ideas. It
is a language of symbolism, significance, instruction and occasionally ambiguity. Posing the question: can
meaning ever truly be known? In a new work for the exhibition Macari works to improvise within the imposed
parameters of the gallery building.

Paul Merrickʼs ʻRaised Painting (#1)ʼ is a continuation of his interrogation of painting and process in relation
to the found object. A scrap aluminium surface is raised above the floor supported by modular utilitarian
fluorescent lighting units, semi clad in sterling board to reveal the innards within. ʻRaised Painting (#1)ʼ is
reminiscent of a defunct and stripped back Donald Judd style minimal sculpture which asserts itself through
challenging and beguiling the viewer to accept it as Art.

Eleanor Moreton paints an imaginary world of princes, anchoresses, and queens and cottages. The princes
come in a range of disguises - their inspiration ranges from Disney to Slovakian puppets. They are always
ridiculous. The fairytale world that Moreton creates alludes to German Romanticism and psychoanalytic
theory, both of which have explored the theme of the unhomely (or uncanny). But her position is always one
of ambivalence, both desiring the imaginary and knowing that it is a desire that cannot be fulfilled.
The still life photographs of Melanie Schiff are composed of objects that belong to human experience. Often
referents of a generation and an American youth: Compact Disc cases, empty beer bottles, blue jeans,
album covers. Schiffʼs subject could be herself, but more accurately they are constructions that point to
romanticised experiences. Exposed in the sobering natural light of the morning after the objects in Schiffʼs
photographs act as props that imply a narrative, conjuring a sense of youthful carefree abandonment for
which we perhaps still yearn.

Cecilia Stenbom's video ʻThe Protocolʼ is a re-staging of an American infomercial, which in turn is an
imitation of a US talk show. An interviewee is selling a book about a weight loss cure; a set of guidelines
explaining how to lose weight without any deprivation or exercise, only occasionally interrupted in her
relentless flow by an interviewer seemingly in on the act. Stenbom performs both characters in a mirror
image that shifts the film away from straightforward re-enactment reflecting back the neurotic inner chitchat
of the consumer, and the perpetual sales pitch cloaked beneath the guise of junk science and daytime TV.

For further information regarding any of the works in the exhibition please visit sales@workplacegallery.co.uk

The next exhibition at Workplace Gallery will be a solo exhibition by Eric Bainbridge opening on 10th October.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Eric Bainbridge: "Forward Thinking 1976 - 2008", MIMA, UK


Workplace Gallery is pleased to announce:

Eric Bainbridge “Forward Thinking 1976 - 2008”
MIMA
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
Centre Square
Middlesbrough
TS1 2AZ
t:+44 (0)1642 726 720
www.visitmima.com

Preview: Thursday 28th August 6 – 9pm

Exhibition Continues
29 August - 16 November 2008

Celebrated for large-scale, everyday objects covered in man-made fabrics, Eric Bainbridge has spent the past three decades investigating a variety of materials and styles. This exhibition will combine selected works from the 1970s to the present, newly commissioned sculpture and a collection of works on paper. Together they will allow the viewer to take a closer look at an artist who has continued to play an influential role in post-war sculpture.

A graduate from the Royal College of Art in 1981, Eric Bainbridge has exhibited extensively on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the 1980s and 1990s including several highly acclaimed exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

For further information regarding the work of Eric Bainbridge please contact info@workplacegallery.co.uk

Image: "Vertical Extension" 1987, Eric Bainbridge, Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Ant Macari: New Commission for Side Cafe, Newcastle, UK



Side Cafe
Side
Newcastle upon Tyne
United Kingdom

Opening of newly commissioned permanent drawing installation (internal doors) at the Side Cafe (quayside).

The work takes as its reference; the polyptych panels of 15th century altarpieces, The Japanese Tea-Ceremony, sumi-e and manuscript culture. The piece also incorporates the 3,000-Year-old technique of Marouflage. The panels on the door contain symbolic narrative scenes illustrating the cross cultural story of Tea, unified by an architectural and decorative system of framing.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Darren Banks & Cath Campbell: "The Golden Record" Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, UK



The Golden Record - 1 August - 13 September

Curated by the Collective Gallery's Associate Producer, Mel Brimfield.

The Collective Gallery are proud to present, The Golden Record - Sounds of Earth, a unique cross platform/cross festival project which is part of both The Edinburgh Art Festival and The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Artists and comedians will come together to remake the original Golden Record - a phonograph record launched into space in 1997, containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. Over a hundred artists have created new work to be shown in the gallery space.

Commissioned by Collective Gallery in association with Pleasance Theatre, Go Faster Stripe and Battersea Arts Centre. Part of the Edinburgh Art Festival.

COLLECTIVE, 22-28 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh EH1 1NY

Gallery Opening Hours
Tuesday - Saturday, 12 - 5pm

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Marcus Coates: "Dawn Chorus" MANIFESTA7 Trento, Italy


Dawn Chorus is the latest in a series of films by Coates in which the human voice accurately mimics birdsong. In this multi-screen video installation 19 singers reproduce a recording of a group of wild British birds singing at dawn. Dawn Chorus explores the relationship between birdsong and its parallels with human culture and behaviour.

DATES
19.07.-02.11.2008

OPENING HOURS
Monday-Sunday: 10.00 am-7.00 pm
Friday: 10.00 am-7.00 pm

http://www.manifesta7.it

Manifesta is one of the most important European Biennials of Contemporary Art and it takes place every two years in different cities. Being itinerant is its peculiarity, and as Documenta Kassel and the International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, it is one of the highlights for international contemporary art.

In the past years Manifesta has been hosted in Rotterdam, Luxembourg, Liubljana, Frankfurt, San Sebastian.

In 2008 for the first time Manifesta will take place not in a city but in a whole region: Trentino – South Tyrol, Italy. The area has been selected for its historical heritage, its artistic and cultural facilities and especially for its striking examples of industrial archaeology buildings, which are linked to the work history and the progressive industrialisation of the territory. This land has always been a bridge between Latin and German culture and it connects cultural developments as well as Southern and Northern habits.

Manifesta 7 will take place in several venues chosen amongst the most important examples of industrial archaeology existing in the Brenner axis, from Rovereto to Trento, from Bolzano to the fortress of Fortezza, to create a broad, multi-faceted event characterized as “100 miles in 100 days”.

Along with the various exhibitions, the whole territory itself can be seen as the catalyst for a series of collateral events, encouraging research and focusing on the relationship between different cultures.

image:

Marcus Coates
Dawn Chorus (Installation View), 2006
14 Screen Installation at BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art. Photography Colin Davison
Duration 20 Minutes (Looped)
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

Cecilia Stenbom: "Breslau CV (New Media, Arcitecture, & Film)" Wroclaw, Poland


Cecilia Stenbom

will be showing the following 4 works:

The Inspector, 2007
Search & Destroy, 2006
Daily Escapes, 2005
Gadgets - A presentation of exceedingly useful technical devises, 2004

at

Breslau CV (New Media, Arcitecture, & Film) Festival, Wroclaw, Poland

14th - 17th July 2008

image:

Cecilia Stenbom
Search and Destroy, 2006 (detail)
Video
Duration 2'40"
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

Wolfgang Weileder: "Fold-up" Sunderland, UK


Wolfgang Weileder

Fold-up

a full-scale site-specific architectural installation
Sunniside Gardens, Sunderland UK,
June and July 2008

http://www.fold-up.info/

The latest in a series of architectural structures by artist Wolfgang Weileder, fold-up is a full-scale replica of 15 Norfolk Street which fronts onto the gardens. Reminiscent of an unfinished cut-out paper model, the artwork reveals the process, labour and skill of building as a visible experience. Fold-up offers a new perspective on the familiar and overlooked structures within the city, and creates a dialogue between the historic heart of Sunniside and the modern developments that are transforming this area of the city.

The project is being constructed and sponsored by Sunderland-based company r.Bau Ltd. Specialising in continental building technologies, their collaborations with Wolfgang Weileder have been an opportunity for r.Bau Ltd to demonstrate their workmanship throughout Europe. Company director Paul Webster and his team are particularly proud to be creating their most complex project to date for their home town. The speed with which fold-up will be built is achieved with dry-joint blocks which slot together without traditional mortar. For this project r.Bau Ltd will be joined by apprentices from Newcastle College, who are providing much of the joinery and roofing products and additional labour. Fold-up is a unique opportunity to learn a new technique and a high-profile showcase for their skills.

The project has been developed and supported by Sunderland City Council’s Arts Team and forms part of a major programme of temporary and permanent public art commissions throughout the city. When complete, the artwork will be open to the public for a sixteen day period, before being dismantled by r.Bau Ltd and the materials supplied to the construction college or recycled.

A documentary film and still photography will record the build process and the completed project, and these images will tour internationally to galleries and festivals. A publication of the project is also planned

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Marcus Coates: "Machinic Alliances" Danielle Arnaud contemporary art, London, UK


Machinic Alliances

Rieko Akatsuka, Liz Arnold, Edwina Ashton, Marcus Coates, David Cotterrell, Lucy Gunning, Jaki Irvine,
Paulette Phillips, Kate Smith, Mo Throp, & Clara Ursitti

curated by Maria Walsh, Mo Throp and Danielle Arnaud

4 July - 10 August 2008


Machinic Alliances

Rieko Akatsuka, Liz Arnold, Edwina Ashton, Marcus Coates, David Cotterrell, Lucy Gunning, Jaki Irvine,
Paulette Phillips, Kate Smith, Mo Throp, & Clara Ursitti

curated by Maria Walsh, Mo Throp and Danielle Arnaud

4 July - 10 August 2008

The 'machinic' is a process that expresses our capacity as humans to form alliances with non-human forces, be they animal, insect, plant or virus. The exhibition 'Machinic Alliances' takes this Deleuzian premise as the basis from which to propose unholy affiliations between categories of human/animal/technological.
The artworks in this exhibition seek to question, challenge, and flirt with traditional concepts of Western subjectivity. Thrown to the wind is the plot of an original wholeness and purity. Instead, 'machinic alliances' scramble and graft singular identities, creating perverse formations that escape the Oedipal trap of filiation (Donna Haraway 2004). These formations or assemblages have no father, like Frankenstein, and eschew anthropocentric identification. In their multiplicity, they push against the limits of form.
Categories are undone.
Awkward conjoinings arise.
Inhuman differences emerge.
But paradoxically, it is here in the interstitial spaces proposed by 'machinic alliances' that we can learn how to live differently. In these spaces, we can experience the 'mutual interdependences and productive mergers of forces' that characterise subjectivity at the end of the postmodern (Rosi Braidotti, 2006). The ‘new’ alliances explored by the artworks in this exhibition do not reproduce the antagonism of one self against another self, but generate a bestiary of possible selves, liberating us from the alienating problematics of narcissistic recognition and opening us up to the creative becomings of being. The artworks in this exhibition propel us to imagine wacky and wonderful possibilities for our identities. Disturbing, yet pleasurable, these 'machinations' acknowledge the difficulty of difference, yet relish in the production of anomalous differences that exceed categorization.

A catalogue will be published with writings by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Walsh

Danielle Arnaud contemporary art
123 Kennington Road London SE11 6SF
www.daniellearnaud.com

Image:
Marcus Coates
Red Fox (Self Portrait)
1999
Archival Inkjet Print

Ginny Reed & Richard Rigg: "draw a line, follow it" Allenheads Contemporary Arts, UK

"draw a line, follow it"

Friday 4th – Sunday 27th July
Weekends 10am – 5pm
Monday to Friday by arrangement

Exhibiting Artists:
Alex Charrington, Rachael Clewlow, Nick Kennedy, Tuesday Nesbitt, Ginny Reed, Richard Rigg, Anne Vibeke Mou

ACA, Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Old School House, Allenheads, Northumberland, NE47 9HR

www.acart.org.uk

Monday, June 30, 2008

Francis Gomila: "LAST TRAIN" Arts Council England North East, UK


Francis Gomila's Last Train will be exhibited at Arts Council England North East for the month of July.

In LAST TRAIN (filmed in no-man's-land territory between the Slovak/Austrian borders,) Francis Gomila presents a journey located between a deeper landscape of boundary-less
senses of the mind; a sculptural journey between the real and the imagined. We witness time captured and stretched in distilled detail. Time passing is held, pulled back,
information reversed, penetrated and shifting like a visual analogy of theoretical physics en route. Hannah Finlator.

further info contact:
www.artscouncil.org.uk

image:
Francis Gomila
LAST TRAIN 2005. DVD 5’:40.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Cecilia Stenbom: "VIEW08 Finnish Media Art Festival" Helsinki, Finland



VIEW08 Finnish Media Art Festival
Andorra, Helsinki

24.5.2008 - 25.5.2008

Artists included: Aho Björn, Antikainen Pia, Anttila Hanna Maria, Arlander Annette, Astala Lauri, Brander Pirjetta, Granö Veli, Ekström Saara, Haikala Eeva-Mari, Hukkataiva Helinä, Ivars Hanne, Kangasmaa Tuomo, Kasitonni Anssi, Koistila Tanja, Koivumäki Juhani, Kokko Jaana, Lampisuo Marko, Lassila Nina, Lecklin Johanna, Luhta Lauri, Maasalo Mikko, Mäki Teemu, Mäki-Jussila Juha, Näsänen Elena, Niemi-Junkola Fanni, Nygren Anneli, Oja Marjatta & Keränen Asko, Palosaari Sari, Pennanen Anu, Pink Twins, Puhakka Vesa, Puranen Saila, Reinhard Aurora, Renvall Markus, Renvall Seppo, Romo Heidi, Rouhiainen Simo, Rousseau Gregoire, Ruscica Jani, Saloranta Elina, Salosmaa Aarno, Savolainen Alli, Seraphin Lena, Stenbom Cecilia, Takala Pilvi, Timonen Maija, Tykkä Salla, Viita Milja, Virkajärvi Sampsa, Whitehead Oliver, Yli-Annala Kari, Ziegler Denize

Image:

Cecilia Stenbom
The Inspector, 2007
HD Video (Widescreen)
Duration 4'16"

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Peter J. Evans: "Prospects and Interiors: Recent acquisitions of sculptors’ drawings" Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK


01.06.08 - 24.08.08
Exhibition
Mezzanine Gallery
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

Taking as its point of departure Liadin Cooke’s compelling representation of the ‘Red Room’ in which Jane Eyre was locked up overnight by her unfeeling aunt, Prospects and Interiors looks at drawings by contemporary sculptors of interior space, both physical and mental. The selection ranges from perspective drawings of imagined architectural interiors, laid out as virtual stage sets with a series of suggestive props; through highly worked, close-up studies, in which floors, walls and furnishings are turned into abstract patterns; to more expressive abstractions which describe the interior spaces of the mind, those places onto which we project our hopes and fears.

Running throughout the show is the sculptor’s concern to find a way of representing space as matter. It explores the peculiar ability of the drawn line or mark to make evident usually invisible currents and forces - such as heat, sound and emotion - and to dissolve material differences between various objects and between objects and space. It suggests that, through drawing, sculptors can express space in new ways - in terms of light and shade, emotional and physical forces and particles of matter - and make ‘nothingness’ into something that is ‘full’ and charged with energy.

Prospects and Interiors is based around a core of works in the Leeds collection, including several new acquisitions, with the addition of a number of loans. It includes work by Ed Allington, Phyllida Barlow, Anna Barriball, Nathan Coley, Liadin Cooke, Tony Cragg, Peter J. Evans, Magdalena Jetelova, Minjung Kim, Rosie Leventon, John Newling, Rick Oginz, Carl Plackman, Martin Westwood, Rachel Whiteread, Stephen Willats and Bill Woodrow.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an essay written by the curator Sophie Raikes.

image:
Peter J. Evans
The Universe & You #4, 2004
Graphite on Paper
64 x 88 x 5 cms, 25.22 x 34.67 x 1.97 inches

Friday, May 16, 2008

Matt Stokes: "Manic Organic" Brighton Festival, Brighton, UK


Brighton Festival - Manic Organic - Thursday 15th May 2008
The Necks, Robert Lippok, Matt Stokes Sacred Selections, performed and transcribed by Paul Ayres and William Whitehead. £10, £15.

Exclusive to Brighton Festival

In its heyday Brighton Dome's hand-built 1936 pipe organ was the centrepiece of the world's longest running seaside concert series. Seventy years on Brighton Festival puts a subversive new spin on the 'organ extravaganza' in a 21st century renegade recital.

First to put its 3,000 pipes through their paces (with Italian harpist Beatrice Martini) is Robert Lippok, a seminal figure on Berlin's ambient electronica scene and founder of German post-rock outfit To Rococo Rot. In hot pursuit are Australia's The Necks, arguably the most exploratory and riveting avant-improv trio on the planet, tonight trading piano for pipe organ for their freeform sonic adventures.

Mixing up the medicine throughout in a series of mind-bending organ excursions is Sacred Selections, a brave music venture curated by Beck's Futures prize-winner Matt Stokes. Here, the high-octane break beats of rave-era Happy Hardcore and publicly selected tracks from Brighton's recent musical output are transcribed and performed live by renowned concert organists Paul Ayres and William Whitehead.

Pull out all the stops - its time to get Manic Organic!

Marcus Coates: "The HAMSTERWHEEL" MALMO KONSTHALL, Sweden


The Hamsterwheel
17 May – 17 August 2008
Malmö Konsthall, S:t Johannesgatan 7, SE-200 10 Malmö, Sweden

John Bock, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Marcus Coates, Urs Fischer, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, Olivier Garbay, Gelitin, Douglas Gordon, Rachel Harrison, Georg Herold, Christian Jankowski, Mark Leckey, Erik van Lieshout, Sarah Lucas, Jonathan Monk, Maurizio Nannucci, Paola Pivi, Rudolf Polanszky, Anselm Reyle, José Ruiz Gonzalez, Tamuna Sirbiladze, Annika Ström, Una Szeemann, Piotr Uklanski, Hans Weigand, Franz West, Toby Ziegler, Ralf Ziervogel, David Zink Yi, Thomas Zipp.

The Hamsterwheel is an exhibition initiated by the Austrian artist Franz West, and was originally presented at La Biennale di Venezia, 2007. The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, installations, films, text works etcetera by some thirty artists. The video works are selected in collaboration with Veit Loers. The exhibition has since then travelled to the Festival de Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, and Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona. At each exhibition venue the presentation of the works and relation to each other changes dramatically.

Marcus Coates
Radio Shaman, 2006
HD Video Installation
09:31 mins
Courtesy of the Artist and Workplace Gallery

Catherine Bertola: "The Enchanted Moment" BALTIC Centre For Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK



THE ENCHANTED MOMENT
17 May - 25 May 2008
Catherine Betola, Karen Davies & Natalie Frost

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead Quays South Shore Road Gateshead NE8 3BA UK

The Enchanted Moment is a cluster of contemporary art exhibitions organised by VAF – Visual Arts Forum, North East. Three artists from the North East - Karen Davies, Natalie Frost and Catherine Bertola have transformed the level 5 viewing box with site-specific work.

Natalie Frost’s series of candy-coloured posters reveal the experiences of new mothers whose ‘enchanted moment’ was not the positive one commonly promoted. Catherine Bertola’s delicate designs will creep across the floor of Level 5 and are enlarged details of patterns from mass manufactured lace and templates used in hand making bobbin lace, contrasting the traditional and contemporary aspects of this fabric. Karen Davies has created a series of new drawings of British birds to introduce the idea of height and flight to the majestic Level 5 viewing box, and bring an element of nature to the architectural space of BALTIC.

Ginny Reed: "The Late Shows" Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, UK


The Late Shows
Saturday 17th May 7pm – 11pm
Hatton Gallery
Newcastle University
Exhibition continues until May 22nd

Through the looking glass and over the rainbow

Go home to drawing, to the breath, to the magic of thought spiralling out of a pencil or a pen. Only rarely do we stop to imagine the potential in a pencil or a jar of ink. Artists can draw in other materials in addition to ink, but what is consistent is that limited means always produces something beyond the materials. Always the potential multiplies.
Ginny Reed’s work is very generous to the viewer because it gives us an intensification of a moment in time. It is almost always most joyful. I once described her work to someone as consisting of the blessing of a moment. Her work is particularly ambitious in the context of the enchanted moment because she is taking the above text as fuel for the work.

www.thelateshows.org.uk

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Marcus Coates & Laura Lancaster: "Micro-Narratives" Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint Etienne, France



Micro-narratives : tentation des petites réalités, Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint Etienne
07 May 2008 - 21 September 2008

Curated by Lóránd Hegyi

The exhibition 'MICRO-NARRATIVES' represents 85 positions by contemporary artists whose activity manifests an occupation with an anthropological orientation and tries to find the new narrative in the micro-communities, in the personal experiences, in the intimate and personal inmediate contexts, which resist again the monumental, hierarhic, universalistical explications of society and culture.

List of Artists: Alberola, Andjelic-Galic, Armleder, Arnautovic, Badiola, Bajic, Barabash, Berruti, Binder, Boggasch, Bosnic, Bussmann, Cabrita Reis, Calic, Cano, Cantoni, Cernicky, Chun, Civera, Coates, Cornet, Den Uyl, Djuric, Dzafo, Eichhorn, Feriancova, Friedl, Friedmann, Gontarski, Grassino, Gray, Han, Hapaska, Holcova, Horakova, Irazu, Joatton, Kimsooja, Kim, Kovacheva, Lancaster, Langlade, Lehocka, Leikauf, Levini, Löhr, Mattii, McCaslin, Mezzaqui, Milicevic, Mizrachi, Moizer, Nemeth, Nolan, Noh, Palla, Paris, Perez Simao, Pétrovitch, Petrovic, Poljak, Popovic, Prego, Prodanovic, Rajkovic, Revesz, Rubiku, Savini, Seric Shoba, Stefanoff, Stojanovic, Szepfalvi, Toguo, Vasquez de la Horra, Vedovamazzei, Vidor, Vincourova, Weinberger, Skart, XYZ, Yee, Yoo, Zupanc

http://www.mam-st-etienne.fr/
http://micronarratives.wordpress.com/

Marcus Coates
Radio Shaman, 2006
HD Video Installation
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

Laura Lancaster
Untitled, 2005 (detail)
Watercolour, Gouache and Graphite on Paper
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Jo Coupe: "Tatton Park Biennial 2008" UK



Image: Jo Coupe 'Rarefied (Phalaenopsis lobii)', 18ct rose, 15 x 10cm

Tatton Park Biennial 3 May - 28 September 2008

Tatton Park Biennial is a new contemporary art event for the UK supported by The Northwest Regional Development Agency; Arts Council England, Northwest; Cheshire County Council; Cheshire's Year of Gardens 08; The National Trust; Manchester Airport; The Tatton Park Trust and Tatton Park. The Biennial will be staged from May to September 2008 and presented in association with Cheshire’s Year of Gardens 08.

Curated by Danielle Arnaud and Jordan Kaplan from commissioning group Parabola, the 2008 Biennial theme is Botanical Collections and Collectors. Over 30 artists, performers and writers will develop new work in response to Tatton Park's gardens, investigating the legacy of collections, collectors and the designed landscape amid current issues of climate change and globalisation.

Jo Coupe’s work for the Biennial focuses on the value and collectability of objects; their value as things bought and sold, traded, catalogued and displayed. She has worked with Tatton’s Orchid collection, which, like any botanic assemblage is prone to decay. It is also of extreme monetary worth, with some specimens fetching thousands of pounds when made available for sale. It is this sense of the ‘worth’ and ‘value’ of Tatton’s collections that has caught the artist’s imagination and has spurred her on to produce a solid gold cast of a rare orchid. Its placement, in the Orchid House, is deliberately problematic – how can the work of art be viewed when the glasshouse that contains it is not opened to the public most of the time? How can these specimens afforded titles of exceptionality be anything but rarefied?
Corruptibility is part and parcel of a valuable collection: it suggests both issues of decay and, more pertinent to this work, perhaps, issues of conscience. The Orchid House is normally only open to the public when staffed because of the precocity and delicate nature of its contents and the need to interpret these unusual plants. Coupe’s cast challenges this perception, tossed to one side in the gravel alongside its living relatives, it invites theft, but, as it is contained within a ‘safe’ environment (literally and figuratively – the living orchid has been cut, killed and preserved as a gold-encrusted corpse), little harm can come to it.
Part of the joy of the work is the knowledge that many of the plants that sit near to it are much more ‘valuable’ than the object itself. The artist asks which one is most precious? When all known signifiers of status are removed, can we see the inherent value the connoisseur dedicates a lifetime to perfecting their understanding of?

contact Tatton Park
Tatton Park, Knutsford,
Cheshire, WA16 6QN
Tel +44 (0) 1625 374400
info@tattonparkbiennial.org

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Matt Stokes: "I desired what you were, I need what you are" MAZE Gallery, Turin, Italy


I desired what you were, I need what you are
Curated by Ilaria Gianni

April 23 – June 15, 2008
Turin , Maze Gallery
Opening: Wednesday April 23 April, from 6 pm

Marcelline Delbecq, Patrizio Di Massimo, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Cyprien Galliard, Ryan Gander, Mario Garcia Torres, Olivia Plender, Jamie Shovlin, Matt Stokes

I desired what you were, I need what you are, is a group show that reflects upon the re-elaboration and interpretation of residual cultural elements and symbols that have remained in front line as issues or as myths in dominant cultural practices such as cinema, art and music and which have been used, interpreted and desired by a generation that has lived a lack of ideologies, but which has had the scent of them through a second hand experience.

I desired what you were, I need what you are, aims to concretize the discourse that many times has been superficially approached, concerning how the generation born between the 1970s and 1980s has grown up deprived of the possibility of believing in a present certainty, disillusioned after having experienced the social, political and cultural failures of the time they lived. Their attempt of revolutionary élan has been suffocated by the massive productivism of an era in which everything is englobed by the dominant systems and transformed in industrial mechanisms. I desired what you were, I need what you are focuses on the 'attitudes' of a time that gives no possibility of utopian thinking, no space to be heroic.

I desired what you were, I need what you are reflects upon the loss and lack of absolute ideals in the present age, through the use of past cultural products and ideologies, adopted, appropriated and inherited by generations. It is the gap between what 'has been' and 'what is', that I desired what you were, I need what you are positions itself.

It is not the myth of art, cinema and music in their essence that the show aims to explore but a particular legend that has been legitimized by its presence in these macro cultural products that create our system, and that has resisted through time, taking the form of the 'residual'. This last concept is intended as sociologist Raymond Williams explains: as something that "has been effectively formed in the past, but is still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all, as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present". The notion of myth seems to explain what the residual has become.

Patrizio Di Massimo, Cyprien Galliard, Mario Garcia Torres, rethink artistic practices, especially those from the 1960s and 1970s, considered, by many artists, the last cultural art movement that brought idea, criticality, provocation, experimentation and courage in front line, a period seen as mythical, whose figures have become sacred monsters. Residual elements are also evident in the music system, surviving as living legends. Bands, movements and events from the past become spaces in which memory gathers and emotions conceal. Certain events, figures and experimentations, so far away but still so close, continue to play a key role in society as underlined by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Jamie Shovlin and Matt Stokes. The element of illusion created by the overlapping of fact and fiction, which constitutes cinema's essence and haunts our approach towards its reading, has also been analysed in its stratifications through time. The tangible and profound myth of cinema isn't in its figures or in its films but primarily in its revolutionary capacity of 'illusion'. The works by Marcelline Delbecq, Ryan Gander, Jamie Shovlin, Olivia Plender are looking at this substantial moment.

I desired what you were, I need what you are, shows how art is attempting to produce a device that serves secret desires: a way of making mythologies, issues and legends come true, an attempt to get closer to the desire for the authentic. The show positions itself precisely where the revolution of our time seems to lay: fulfilling a dream of authenticity where the 'residual' becomes 'emergent'.

A catalogue in limited edition, expanding on the ideas raised in I desired what you were, I need what you are, edited by Ilaria Gianni with contributions by Stephanie Bertrand, Cecilia Canziani, Isobel Harbison, Luca Lo Pinto, Filipa Ramos, Francesco Pedraglio, Cally Spooner, Caterina Riva and Ilaria Gianni, will be presented the day of the opening.
I desired what you were, I need what you are, is a project elaborated in the framework of Goldsmiths College University of London , MFA Curating, 2006-2007.

The show is opened until June 15; Tuesday to Saturday, from 3.30 pm to 7.30 pm, except for holidays

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Eric Bainbridge: "OPEN SPACE" Art Cologne 2008




Eric Bainbridge
Das Rheingold (No. 2), 2008
Melamine, Glasses
122 x 120 x 20 cms
(EB0058)
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

OPEN SPACE 2008 IS THE 4TH APPROACH TO A PROJECTORIENTED, SPACIOUS OVERALL ART PRESENTATION, INVOLVING MORE THAN
40 INTERNATIONAL GALLERIES WITH CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECTS
AND SOLO SHOWS AT THE 42ND ART COLOGNE (16–20 APRIL 2008).

PARTICIPANTS international galleries with a current program of contemporary art are invited to present a singular artistic position and/or work of art. Participants will be expressly invited and selected by the independent committee for OPEN SPACE. All participants and presentations will be part of an unique, spacious setting to overcome common booth separations towards a joint experience.

COMMITTEE Tobias Berger (Hong Kong), Jörn Bötnagel (Köln), Sorcha Dallas (Glasgow), Daniel Hug (Los Angeles), Stefan Kalmár (München), Beatrix Ruf (Zürich), Gabriele Senn (Wien)

OPEN SPACE 2008 galleries A–Z
Adamski, Aachen / Berlin • BQ, Cologne • Lena Brüning, Berlin • Sandra Bürgel, Berlin • Charim Galerie, Vienna • Galerie Crone, Berlin • croy nielsen, Berlin • Figge von Rosen, Cologne • Carl Freedman Gallery, London • Vera Gliem, Cologne • Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne • The Happy Lion, Los Angeles • Hauser & Wirth, Zurich • Kai Hölzner, Berlin • Hohenlohe, Vienna • Daniel Hug, Los Angeles • Johnen + Schöttle, Cologne • Iris Kadel, Karlsruhe • Galerie Kamm, Berlin • Ben Kaufmann, Berlin • Anton Kern, New York • Dennis Kimmerich, Dusseldorf • Johann König, Berlin • Kontainer Gallery, Los Angeles • David Kordansky, Los Angeles • Krobath Wimmer, Vienna • Layr Wüstenhagen, Vienna • Stella Lohaus, Antwerp • Linn Lühn, Cologne • Madonna Fust Galerie, Bern • Mirko Mayer, Cologne • Mezzanin, Vienna • Francesca Minini, Milano • Mot International Ltd., London • Christian Nagel, Cologne / Berlin • Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt • Nosbaum & Reding, Luxembourg • Maureen Paley, London • Thomas Rehbein, Cologne • Rental Gallery, New York shows: Andrew Kreps, New York / Sister Gallery, Los Angeles / Ritter Zamet, London • Jette Rudolph, Berlin • Schmidt & Maczollek, Cologne • Schnittraum / Lutz Becker, Cologne • Gabriele Senn, Vienna • September, Berlin • Solway Jones, Los Angeles • Vartai, Vilnius • Michael Wiesehöfer, Cologne • Eva Winkeler, Frankfurt • Workplace Gallery, Gateshead