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

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

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