Kiki Smith on Nancy Spero – opening at The Serpentine, London in March

Opening on 3 March, The Serpentine Gallery presents the first major exhibition of Nancy Spero’s work since her death in 2009. Nancy Spero (1926–2009) was a leading pioneer of feminist art, and throughout her 50-year career, she created a vibrant visual language constructed from the histories and mythologies of past and present cultures. Nancy Spero was initiated by the Centre Pompidou, Paris,(presented from 13 October 2010 to 10 January 2011), and adapted for the Serpentine Gallery.


Kiki Smith on Nancy Spero

Nancy’s work was political, forthright, and unambiguous. Her practice was tenacious - a confirmation, and permission to be fearless and to find one’s own voice.

Nancy used the gestural language of the body to create non-linear, serial narratives. She implied movement by accumulating and layering still images. Her narratives could be read both horizontally and vertically, suggesting simultaneity and a non-hierarchical reality.

Artistically, she embraced ancient pictorial forms (i.e. frescos, hieroglyphics and friezes) and often included both historical and contemporary text. She preserved, witnessed and revitalized hundreds of these images and words. She recognized these images as testaments to endurance, while she subverted them.

She allowed the images their own integrity and attributes, and gave them agency and free movement outside of their prescribed narratives and cultural constraints. She relocated the written word out of context, in a pictorial space, which could constantly change and conjure new meanings.

Nancy used overtly sexual images, images of women at war, victims of violence, women of resistance, women exercising and at play, images of motherhood, tenderness, and humour in ways that were often transgressive and revelatory.

She created a dynamic corporal dialogue, disallowing a fixed or prescribed reading or vantage point. In the work, the collaged figures reveal new relationships to one another. She used her personal life and vitality to invigorate her work, without co-opting the images she used into an autobiographical narrative. Her work was topical without being dogmatic or didactic. Nancy made a generative, open story of humanity. The figures and language, as well as narrative, were multi-dimensional and non-fixed.

Nancy opened a narrative and visual space insistent on encompassing a complex human experience. She created work using the female body and allowed it to represent humanity. Her work was innovative both formally and in its content. It expanded our contemporary notion of art.

Kiki Smith (2010)

Nancy Spero opens on 3 March and continues until 1 May. www.serpentinegallery.org

Image:
Nancy Spero
Marduk, 1986
Ink, handprinting, and collage on paper
60.90 x 914.40 cm
Courtesy of Collection G. & R. Mayer

Technologically Augmented Theatre @ Tenderpixel

Preview by Bethany Rex

Scapes opens next week at Tenderpixel in London. A new project part commissioned by Tenderpixel, Scapes is a new installation by media arts collaborative Squidsoup. Scapes conjures into being three-dimensional cities, landscapes and abstract architectures purely from sound, software and light. These visions occupy physical space, but only fleetingly. They leave nothing behind when they, and the sounds that spawned them, vanish.

Discussing theatre, dramatist Antonin Artaud used the phrase ‘virtual reality’ in 1938, some forty years before Myron Krueger coined the term ‘artificial reality’ with reference to the computer-controlled interactive environments he pioneered in the 1970s. Squidsoup updates the field’s multimedia potential, commenting on the creative and immersive possibilities of light-based real-time visualisation in physical space.

Tuned software and specifically designed sounds are used to generate a series of abstract landscapes visualised on a bespoke room-sized 3-D grid of lights controlled in real-time. As the sounds are played through speakers and picked up with microphones, the visual process can be interacted with- intercepted, corrupted and altered by visitors making their own sounds to interfere with the original audiovisual designs.

Scapes is a conceptual environment with no physical existence. It unites visitors to the gallery in common experience, allowing them to interact in unexpected ways through different mediums. By bringing into play discussions surrounding the autocracy of the artist, this project authors a new narrative technique, which allows for the interactive and emergent features of the mediums to be fulfillingly embodied.

The installation itself is a room-sized 3-D grid of individually addressable points of light (Ocean of Light) that is controllable in real-time to simulate objects and movement in physical space. This custom hardware enables the creation of dynamic, interactive, three-dimensional sculptures from light. The resulting imagery has a presence, a location in physical space that allows the viewer to move around and experience the work from any angle.

Evoking new conditions of interactive narrative and its possibilities, autonomous narratives are embodied in each element. On the other hand there is the hyper-narrative of interactive relations and experiences that is effected by the viewer’s explorative journey within the virtual environment. Squidsoup’s work combined sound, physical space and virtual worlds to produce a technologically augmented theatre where each performance becomes a unique retelling.

The work has been show at numerous festivals and galleries around the world including Glastonbury (2010), Kinetica Art Fair (2010) and at the V&A (2008) so if you haven’t had the chance to immerse yourself in the Squidsoup experience, then now is your chance.

The exhibition opens on 10 February and continues until 5 March at Tenderpixel Gallery, London. Please see www.tenderpixel.com for more information.

Aesthetica New Issue - February / March out Today

Inside this issue we’re exploring some of today’s most innovative artworks. Russian born Anna Parkina explores history and perceptions with her New Works opening in San Francisco whilst Northern Art Prize winner, Haroon Mirza probes cultural and social history with his latest sculptural installations and audio compositions at the Lisson Gallery. Susan Hiller, who is known for fusing conceptual and minimalist art, takes London by storm with a massive retrospective at Tate Britain and simultaneously shows new works at the Timothy Taylor Gallery. The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize announces its shortlist and we explore the works of two emerging women photographers.

In film, Marc Evans talks about his latest feature, Patagonia and Rachel Millward, Director of Birds Eye View Film Festival, discusses this year’s programme. In music, The Epstein is the band to watch in 2011 and we look at the art of packaging. Awarding winning journalist, Leo Benedictus, chats about his debut The Afterparty, a vignette of our self-obsessed culture and Elaine di Rollo discusses her new book Bleakly Hall set in post WWI Britain. In theatre, we explore the inner workings of improvisational theatre, and a round up of this season’s must-see productions. Finally, gallerist Simon Oldfield offers an insider’s view on what it takes to run a gallery

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