Aesthetica Magazine Blog

The Archaeology of Place | Zarina Bhimji | Whitechapel Gallery | London

2012-01-27T12:04:00.001Z

Text by Emma Cummins

Spanning 25 years of a practice embedded in historical and empirical research, Zarina Bhimji portrays buildings and architectural surfaces as “protagonists” in an unpeopled, yet politically charged landscape of violence, migration and complex, colonial histories. Opening with two black and white seascapes and a vast selection of prints from the series Love (1998-2007), the exhibition segues from hazy horizons in Zanzibar, to abandoned residences and bullet encrusted walls in Uganda, with an ostensibly effortless sweep.

Belying the political complexity of Bhimji’s work, the depth and aesthetic texture of images such as Bullet Riddled (2001-2006) - where a decontextualised cell reveals traces of missile attacks among the anonymous scrawl of absent inhabitants - distances the viewer from social or historical specificities. As such, a strangely unsentimental tone pervades the walls of the Whitechapel Gallery in an exhibition where themes of loss, betrayal and political violence seethe ominously beneath the surface of buildings and terrestrial landscapes.

As loci of a colonial past, riddled with bullet holes, cobwebs and a cast of anonymous objects; the buildings Zarina Bhimji chooses to capture, on 35mm film or through various photographic techniques, exist in a seductively, precarious present. Imbued with the vestigial traces of history and personal memory, sites such as Entebbe Airport in Uganda – a site reminiscent of Idi Amin’s 1972 decree to expel 80,000 Ugandans of Asian descent - silently suffer the forces of material entropy and human abandonment, while asserting their presence as intriguing, contemporaneous objects.

Absent from the works themselves, details of the sites’ political significance are revealed in wall texts that, while offering insights into Bhimji’s ambiguous practice, do not encumber the viewer with history or unequivocal fact. Framed instead by aesthetic and atmospheric conditions - such as quality of colour and light - Bhimji’s architecturally grounded works refuse to succumb to the logics of narrative or documentation that often shape research-led artistic practices.

As T.J.Demos suggests, Bhimji’s research is "extensive", however "[i]f anything, her work is informed by the blockage of information, as much as it results from the collection of historical research". Harking back to the violence of Amin’s despotic regime, of which Bhimji and her family were victims, works such as Yellow Patch (2011) quietly contemplate the "echoes" of facts and political events without recourse to testimony or pedagogical language.

Taking centre stage in both the gallery itself and the exhibition’s beautifully illustrated catalogue; this immersive, 35mm colour film takes the history of trade and migration between India and Africa as a point of departure. Honing in on a few key locations across the Indian sub-continent, we see lifeless interiors littered with bundles of bureaucratic documents and items of deteriorating furniture; the once grand confines of houses and Victorian offices in Gujarat and the Port Trust of Bombay; elegiac scenes of the desert landscape of the Rann of Kutch, and glimpses of the Indian Ocean near the port of Mandvi.

Punctuated by a panoply of sounds; the sound of birdsong and violins seeping smoothly into the patter of footsteps, rain, or fragments of political speeches, Yellow Patch is an unusually mesmerizing film – its ambiguity affording a feeling of relaxation and visual absorption, despite the ghostly presence of past cruelties and imperial brutality.

With a poignancy and elegance unrivalled by Bhimji’s still photographic works, Yellow Patch glides through once-significant sites of human activity and colonial administration that today are but relics of a complex and unfathomably violent past. Captured with a "painterly" refinement, these rolling images of objects, architecture and interior spaces collide with heterotopic depictions of a present-day harbour in Mandvi. In the film’s final scene, we see wild dogs roam the port’s slate-coloured sands amidst the skeletons of dhows (wooden boats that are still constructed today). Unlike the disused buildings and forgotten documents portrayed earlier in the film, these colossal vessels appear to be under construction – creaking loudly in the windswept desolation of the beach.

As a wilfully ambiguous epilogue, the scene seems to enforce the primacy and persistence of the present in sites saturated with history and painful memory. In turn, the gallery’s decision to focus less on Bhimji’s preoccupation with the past, and more on her fascination with the contemporaneous presence of old buildings and historical objects, reinforces the artist’s assertion that her "…work is not about the actual facts but about the echo they create, the gestures and the sound."

Through both sensitive use of text and quotations, and a deliberately anachronistic ordering of works (which create a kind of tapestry, rather than a chronological survey), the Whitechapel Gallery has managed – like Bhimji herself – to distance these works from notions of biography or personal catharsis.

Sharing the fate of thousands of Ugandan citizens, Bhimji’s displaced citizenship is an implicit strand that colours her work and bleeds through the walls of the gallery. Rather than tones of anguish or fury however, a sense of possibility and oxymoronic beauty permeates this very nuanced exploration of the sites, buildings and structures of power that have shaped the artist’s conception of self. In turn, the exhibition is both captivating as an aesthetic experience, and provocative in its intellectual and ontological connotations. Far from fetishising the objects of political or personal pasts, Zarina Bhimji is defined by a curiosity with the gritty materiality of the present, its constant formal transformation, and its ability to transmit beauty despite the terrible histories it harbours, and the violence it conceals.

Aesthetica's December/January issue features History in Context, an extended piece on Zarina Bhimji's work by Charles Danby. You can buy a copy here.

Zarina Bhimji, Whitechapel Gallery, 19/01/12 - 09/03/12, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX. www.whitechapelgallery.org

Aesthetica in Print

If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Captions:
1. Zarina Bhimji, Your Sadness is Drunk (2001-2006) Ilfochrome Ciba Classic Print
2. Zarina Bhimji, Shadows and Disturbances (2007) Ilfochrome Ciba Classic Print
3. Zarina Bhimji, Memories Were Trapped Inside the Asphalt (1998-2003) Transparency in Lightbox
4. Zarina Bhimji, Bapa Closed His Heart, It Was Over (2001-2006) Ilfochrome Ciba Classic Print
All images courtesy the artist

The Human Face of Climate Change | Last Days of the Arctic | Proud Chelsea | London

2012-01-26T10:06:00.000Z

Last Days of the Arctic is a moving and insightful photographic portrait of a disappearing landscape and the Inuit people who inhabit it, by celebrated photojournalist Ragnar Axelsson. Inspired by the fast-diminishing way of life of communities dependent on nature and the land around them for survival, Axelsson presents us with a breathtaking introduction to a life of Greenlandic hunters in one of the most remote regions of the world, and at once demonstrates its temporality.

As the world turns its gaze towards the Arctic; the landscape whose inhabitants have done the least to cause climate change is where the devastating effects are most visible. Their ancient culture is set to become extinct; the probability of these communities continuing to live traditionally is becoming increasingly unlikely. In his native Iceland, Ragnar looked at the fishermen and farmers of remote villages and thought if he did not photograph them, no one would know they ever existed. It is this thought that has led to this unique body of work captured in Greenland, with unprecedented access to a community that rarely lets outsiders in.

Last Days of the Arctic, Proud Chelsea, 161 King's Road, London, SW1 5XP. www.proudonline.co.uk

Aesthetica in Print

If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Captions:
1. Drummers house, Kulusuk, East Greenland 2009
2. Girl in a swing, Tiniteqilaaq, East Greenland 1997
3. Horns, Uummannaq, West Greenland 1998
4. Dog in a window, Sermiliqaq, East Greenland 1997
All © Ragnar Axelsson

Mark Power: The Sound of Two Songs | Impressions Gallery | Bradford

2012-01-25T11:22:00.000Z

Text by Daniel Potts

The Sound of Two Songs is Mark Power’s photographic survey of Poland, formed and collected over a period of five years. He made his first visit to the country in 2004 as part of a project intended to record and document ten countries joining the European Union in that year. Power’s survey takes place over a period when around a million Poles migrated to the UK to live and work: a period of fascinating social change. As the title of the exhibition suggests, Power engages and captures more than one force in the visual aspect. He presents Poland as a land “bursting with visual contradictions…like listening to several melodies at once to the point where it’s difficult to hear anything clearly.”

The first image with which the visitor is greeted impresses and arrests both for the natural and artificial intricate beauty of the contrary visual forces. It is titled Warszawa 10/2006, and here we find an apparent marriage of opposites – a Warsaw cityscape in which the skyline is captured halfway down the image. In the lower half the city is shrouded in a mist or smog through which we discern the grimy regularity of the grey buildings framed and fashioned into pattern by dark streets. It seems to be early morning. The upper half presents the viewer with the brilliance of interlacing wisps of cloud illuminated and pierced by intense sunlight. This has the effect of an optical illusion. The composition seems to be an expression of two different worlds coupled: the earthly, commonplace and mundane meets the sublime firmament itself. The piece captures religious sensibilities in this way. This element of divinity is captured, again within an apparent contrary context in Warszawa 04/2005. Here the visitor is presented with, what seems to be, the dull, dark sand used in the casting of iron by blacksmiths pierced by an embedded, glowing metal crucifix, apparently cooling. Perhaps this bold visual expression of two contrary, material states reminds us symbolically of the historical forces - contrary, mutually exclusive, though perhaps substitutional - of Catholicism and totalitarianism evoked by the industrial context.

A sense of organised, regulated, totalitarian anonymity forms a contradictory part of the whole effect of the image titled Rzeszów 12/2004. Here we find a number of blocks of flats captured. The regularity of the fenestration might daunt the viewer with its clinical lack of humanity were it not for the cheerful, multicoloured geometrical shapes painted on to the concrete surrounding the windows. Perhaps this contrary element of the image evokes a sense of an optimistic breath of life into a tired and ineffective structure, reflecting the social and political change intended to be captured by the project. Perhaps similar to this evocation is that which can be felt when engaging with Stężyca 2005. Stark, winter silver birches are presented in the foreground of what at first appears to be a row of large canvas tents enclosed with a high barbed wire fence. At first glance the heart sinks at a visual memento of totalitarian atrocity, only to be lifted on closer inspection by the revelation that the “tents” are greenhouses, illuminated within, perhaps for hydroponic crop development. Here then, dark historical forces visually intermingle with optimism for the future. In this case “the sound of two songs” deafeningly confuses the viewer with the contradiction.

Deblin 04/2005 presents rows of differently coloured garages with varied types of entrance. Here the pleasing regularity of garage after garage can be felt to tie in with and evoke the sense of anonymity presented in the other images. However, each structure is unique. Perhaps this reflects a sense of individualism growing out of uniformity. Individualism translated into consumerism is one of the effects of Zabrse 10/2004 where we find the glowing sign lights of an enormous retail mall vaguely piercing mist or fog against an oppressive grey sky. The mist is ethereal, creating a sense of the ephemeral, perhaps reflecting the volatile nature of consumerism over time.

Visual cues as a reflection of social, historical and political forces and contradictions are striking, but where are the people? Well, they come in the image of Magda – Warszawa 09/2004; Kryspinów 08/2009 where we find crowds on a beach; and Gdańsk 11/2004, in which a man wearing a boiler suit is shown against an industrial backdrop. In Warszawa 04/2005 we are confused by the contradiction of an optical illusion involving a crowd and a large screen. Patryk, Natalia, Damian Zabrun 11/2004 captures the energy and life of three young boys. In these we find the humanity, hinted at in the contrary forces at work in the aforementioned images, which makes the exhibition complete and satisfying.

Mark Power: The Sound of Two Songs, 14/01/2012 - 24/03/2012, Impressions Gallery, Centenary Square, Bradford, BD1 1SD. www.impressions-gallery.com If you can't make it to the gallery itself, the whole series is available to view online here.

Aesthetica in Print

If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Captions:
1. Warsaw, Poland. 2005.
© Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Existence at the Threshold | Alex Dordoy | The Modern Institute | Glasgow

2012-01-24T10:00:00.000Z

Text by Bethany Rex

Alex Dordoy's work exists at the threshold of completeness and often retains the potential for change, or even destruction. Using materials including glass and plaster, on occasion the glass is broken or the plaster precariously vulnerable. Dordoy's current exhibition at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, includes a series of paintings on canvas and wall mounted plaster objects. The new paintings are based on the image of a figure in the landscape, with the form digitally re-worked and then meticulously reproduced in paint by Dordoy to create what he describes as highly worked photorealist, psychedelic mindsapces. The plaster objects will include objects based on the figure's head, and also several Folded, Unfolded, Sunk and Scanned works which take their shape from an unfolded paper aeroplane. Here Dordoy talks to us about his work and his plans for the future.

BR: This will be your third exhibition with The Modern Institute. How did you first get involved with the gallery?
AD: We started a dialogue at my Glasgow School of Art degree show in 2007. This led to the solo show Winner in 2009, in The Modern Institute’s old space on Robertson Street in Glasgow.

BR: This show includes a series of paintings on canvas and wall mounted plaster objects. When did you first begin working in this medium?
AD: I have always shown paintings along side wall mounted and free standing objects. In the simplest terms this comes from a desire to expand painting’s 2-dimensional space out into the physical world. The first plaster work was a head cast, Forever for Nothing (2009), shown in Winner. This opened up the possibility of an object being structurally composed of the trace of something, as opposed to a thing in itself; I find this slippage fascinating.

BR: Do you feel working in this way gives you more freedom to be expressive than a painting perhaps would?
AD: The new plaster works use a technique that I have developed in which toner is transferred from a laser print to the plaster surface. This allows me to turn digital information – found information – into a found object. For example, the ‘heads’ in the show, Paradise of New Age 1-5, all have variations of a digitally manipulated image of the runner Caster Semenya transferred onto a plaster supports moulded from plastic bags. The billowing folds of plaster echo the surfaces depicted in the image and thus serve as shorthand for human flesh.

The idea of an art work being expressive is problematic as it places total emphasis on the artist at the expense of the agency of the viewer and object. I believe that a work functions when it creates an emotive charge in the viewer (as distinct from conveying an emotion); by which I mean an understanding that matter can also be an idea, which really has nothing to do with the artist. The plaster works are liberating because of the ease with which they eliminate me from the equation.

BR: How important do you think traditional forms are in our digital age?
AD: The new paintings are composed on Photoshop. The process is as intuitive as making a collage with paper and glue yet allows for far more complex image manipulation and layering of information. It is quick and there is an undo button. I designed the three paintings to work as a series, with certain motifs repeated between them, and titled them accordingly: Four Times Around the Sun, A Halo of Mist as a Warning, The Clouds of my Youth and Dreams are Gone. At this point, they could have just been scaled up and printed out. Painting them, however, fuses a much denser form of time into the surface and generates pathos from my inevitable failure to function as a printer. Painting is additive and hence the physical inverse of the plaster work. I believe that polarity is important to the show.

BR: Did you always want to become an artist?
AD: Yes

BR: What are you working on now?
AD: A publication covering the works in the gallery (and painting my flat).

Alex Dordoy, 14/01/2012 - 22/02/2012, The Modern Institute, 14—20 Osborne Street, Glasgow, G1 5QN. www.themoderninstitute.com

Aesthetica in Print

If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine

Caption:
Alex Dordoy
Installation view
The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow
Courtesy the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow
Photography by Ruth Clark

The Fundamental Collaboration between Maker & Material | Formed Thoughts | Jerwood Space | London

2012-01-23T13:27:00.000Z

Text by Karla Evans

There are certain exhibitions whose titles are so ambiguous and nonsensical that even before attending the show you are met with a quiet sense of dread on whether you will get it. Don’t let that opening sentence put you off this one though. The Jerwood Space’s remotely vague title of Formed Thoughts does give off a whiff off indeterminate expectation but what it lacks in an enticing name it makes up for in an intriguing collection of works on a subject matter rarely discussed.

The exhibition is curated by British artist, Clare Twomey known for her unashamedly pretty ceramics and site specific installations that have appeared everywhere from London’s Tate Modern to The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan. For Twomey the show appears a labour of love focused on her preferred subject matter of site-specific work involving diverse materials and highlighting the oft forgotten processes that have helped the works into their finalized forms. Phoebe Cummings shows a special inkling towards clay and its disintegration; two-person design team Glithero use fire as a means to an artful end; and Tracey Rowledge works directly onto the gallery’s very walls. Oil paints and movable easels, you won’t find here.

For a site-specific space London boasts no better establishment than the Jerwood; its glass ceiling atrium is perfect for Rowledge’s epic granite work that is plastered on to a long, lone wall demanding your attention on entering the gallery. Look close enough at the appropriately named Surface and it seems the material has been scratched away at with the side of a coin giving off reflective glimpses in its indentations. It’s a work that speaks of the burgeoning New York artist Jacob Kassay whose silvery paintings distort the surroundings in a very similar way. The harder you look at Rowledge’s reflective surface the less you see, we are no longer solid human forms but swashes and swirls of colour. One can’t help get carried away whilst trying to find themselves within the shimmering mass.

Formed Thoughts’ most mesmerizing work comes from the video and canvas project from Glithero. The two borderline pyromaniacs have continued on their 2011 project Burn, Burn, Burn in which they outlined patterns in flammable screen-printed paint, set them alight and allowed the fire to burn out across the works leaving a charcoal streak of the initial, often very beautiful, motif. This time they brought a little more drama to the table with a video installation showing the process itself; fire slowly burning out along the assigned maze. The result was mesmerizing. Even amongst the hustle and bustle of a complimentary wine-fuelled opening you couldn’t help but stop and stare at the work, captivated. It appears our ancient awe of fire has never left us. The idea that something so destructive and wild as fire has created something so aesthetically pleasing and orderly is not ignored. And Buddhist-like it nodded to reincarnation; by destroying one thing, we create something else in return.

It was Phoebe Cummings’ that gave off an all-together very different atmosphere. Last year’s ceramicist-in-residence at the Victoria and Albert museum was spot on when she said; “however intricate and detailed the works may be, they can always be reduced in essence to mud.” The vaguely nautical theme felt sinister with rotting chains hanging from the ceiling alongside an unsettling, flaking pile of clay pancakes. Two fish tanks appeared at opposite sides of the room; one containing dried out, disintegrating coral and the other half full of wet cement. All of which were oddly disquieting for such seemingly simple works. Cummings is challenging the notions of ceramics– usually such a personal craft, something you can take home and set upon your wall. But here ceramics were temporal pieces melded into the gallery walls and being encouraged to dismantle themselves in the space itself. The charm is that these works are not suspended in a moment of time but constantly changing.

Lover or hater of these rarely used mediums this is an exhibition that may not pull you in at the off but spend a little time to quandary the works and you may find your own presumptions of art being disputed.

Jerwood Encounters: Formed Thoughts, 18/01/2012 - 26/02/2012, Jerwood Space, 171 Union Street, Bankside, London, SE1 0LN. www.jerwoodvisualarts.org

Aesthetica in Print

If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine

Photography: Tomas Rydin

Physical Manifestations of Information | Merseyside's Leo Fitzmaurice wins Northern Art Prize

2012-01-20T12:04:00.000Z

The fifth annual Northern Art Prize, worth £16,500, has been won by Merseyside-based artist Leo Fitzmaurice, it was announced at Leeds Art Gallery last night. Three remaining short listed artists; Liadin Cooke, James Hugonin and Richard Rigg each walk away with £1,500. Not bad for a Thursday night in Leeds.

In choosing Fitzmaurice as the winner, the judges commented: "The strength of this year's exhibition and the Prize are testament to the generosity and commitment of all the artists. However, Leo's work for the Northern Art Prize exhibition in particular is ambitious, risky and compelling. Drawing upon historic resources and current mobile phone technology, he provides a fresh perspective on the traditional subject of landscape, whilst at the same time pushing the boundaries of his own practice."

Fitzmaurice, who lives and works in The Wirral, is known for his witty installations and sculptures. The Way Things Appear, a collection of photographs of objects and graphical elements taken in their everyday setting, is presented for the first time as a digital slide show for the Northern Art Prize exhibition. The initial piece of design, for example a sign or iron railing is captured in the photograph and then repeated or mimicked by other objects nearby or, in some other way, made strange by its situation.

Fitzmaurice also presented Horizon,(Leeds) as part of his Northern Art Prize selection, originally displayed with pieces chosen from the Grundy Art Gallery collection. For the Northern Art Prize exhibition he selected landscape paintings from the Leeds Art Gallery permanent collection creating a new piece of work by lining up the historic works to create a continuous landscape. This work continues Fitzmaurice’s fascination with relationship between graphic design, landscape and objects and their relation to language.

Northern Art Prize, 25/11/2011 - 19/02/2012, Leeds Art Gallery, The Headrow, Leeds, LS1 3AA. www.northernartprize.org.uk

Aesthetica in Print
If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Photography: David Lindsay

Manifesto for a Modern World | Henri Gaudier-Brzeska:Vorticist! | Kettle's Yard | Cambridge

2012-01-18T14:48:00.001Z

Text by Leaf Arbuthnot

Vorticist!, Kettle’s Yard’s latest show, draws deserved attention to a sculptor whose career was as important and impressive as it was brutally short. The exhibition showcases a small but intense core of some of the most striking sketches, ink drawings and sculptures of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), key exponent of the Vorticist movement that began in London, 1914. The group was distinctive for its interest in the machine age and its reactionary attitude to the Victorian civic setup, regarded by its members as disadvantageous to individual sovereignty and maturity.

Born in Saint-Jean-de-Braye, France, to a carpenter father and wheelwright grandfather, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska arrived in Britain in January 1910 with Sophie Brzeska, a Polish woman twice his age whose presence the couple sought to justify by presenting themselves as siblings. Lacking in official artistic training and living off wages as a clerk, Gaudier spent his four years in London in unanticipated creative ferment, rethinking his artistic ideals and reformulating his creative style with astonishing rapidity and comprehensiveness. This flourish was partly stimulated by the remarkable circle of friends that swiftly assembled about him, including the writer H S 'Jim' Ede, philosopher E. H. Hulme and American poet Ezra Pound.

Though Gaudier’s autonomy of spirit remained pristine throughout this four-year period, as is testified by the perennial singularity of his work, he nevertheless absorbed many of the most valuable principles promoted by his contemporaries. His development of a sparse and economical drawing style hints at an empathy for Pound’s well-articulated regard for calligraphy. Stag (1913), perhaps the exhibition’s most memorable drawing, captures the distinctive physical essence of its subject with just a few ink strokes and is indeed highly evocative of the traditional Chinese style. Following Gaudier’s introduction to Jacob Epstein in 1912, the former’s sculptures became increasingly geometric and primitive, with some boasting visible tool marks as insignia of their human beginnings. Gaudier’s artwork continues to intrigue partly thanks to its almost schizophrenic ensemble of influences and allegiances which might ordinarily feel immiscible or contradictory, but which are united intelligibly by the artist.

This coherent incoherence plays out particularly in Duck (1914), a fist-sized marble sculpture that arouses the animal’s singular physicality with rudimentary, even brutish, geometric shapes. Deceptively simple looking, Gaudier’s carving retains its bestial verisimilitude while reminding the viewer of the tools perhaps used in its creation, evoking the mechanical age to which the Vorticists bore witness. Moreover, while Gaudier’s contemporaries might be accused of a certain hyperbolic solemnity, his own works are shot through with wit and joie-de-vivre that the exhibition exposes with proficiency. A sexually entwined couple are soon discerned as the subjects of the 1914 brass Doorknocker (1914), betraying Gaudier’s artistic playfulness and trumpeting the youth and insouciance key to his creative drive.

Gaudier’s eclectic circle of friends was not only to stimulate him intellectually but also financially, with Pound buying many of his sculptures and sometimes providing him with the raw materials needed for sculpture. Despite this aid, the artist remained reliant on the off-cuts of a neighbouring studio and was purportedly prone to scavenging for more in local stonemasons’ yards. As Vorticist! shows, the poverty with which Gaudier grappled forced him both to restrain the size of certain sculptures and to open himself to experimentation with different materials – two fortuitous constrictions, however, which would lend great diversity to his creative output. Perhaps as a result of the imposed variety of materials, Gaudier displayed a growing desire to stay true to the inner, irreducible qualities of different stones by leaving sculptures unpolished and thus invigorating them with a visceral rawness that remains hugely appealing.

Just as Gaudier’s financial circumstances demanded that he work according to laws of parsimony by "sculpting small", so too is the exhibition space the current subject of physical constraint, though in this case because of building works. Nonetheless, the quality of the drawings and sculptures displayed and the serenity of the room itself more than make up for the cramped space. Moreover, the restrictive size of the rooms are balanced by an admirably thought-out gallery plan that deals especially skilfully with the bulky sculpture Bird Swallowing a Fish (1914), mounted in the centre of the principle room. The two walls banking it initially appear awkwardly imposing until it is noted that one bears a preparatory sketch of the then uncreated sculpture, while the opposite wall shows an ink drawing of the sculpture that probably made after it had been completed.

While celebrating the accomplishment of Henri Gaudier-Brzseka, Vorticist! also quietly mourns his untimely demise in the War. It does so not explicitly nor sentimentally, but more powerfully by the virtuosity of the works themselves, which gesture tantalisingly towards a promising future that was interrupted by the very weapons by which Gaudier and his fellow Vorticists were so intrigued.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: Vorticist!, 14/01/2012 - 01/04/2012, Kettle's Yard, Castle Street, Cambridge, CB3 0AQ. www.kettlesyard.co.uk

Aesthetica in Print
If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Caption:
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Sketch of Bird Swallowing a Fish, 1914
Courtesy of the artist and Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge.

A Fictional Institution with an Authoritative Voice | Museum Show Part II | Arnolfini | Bristol

2012-01-17T11:09:00.000Z

Text by Regina Papachlimitzou

Museum Show Part II, the second part of the Arnolfini’s ultimate 50th anniversary exhibition, continues exploring the preoccupations touched upon by Museum Show Part I with a distinct shift of focus onto more anthropological and socio-historical concerns.

Occupying the first floor gallery, works such as Jaime Davidovich’s Museum of Television Culture and Maarten Vanden Eynde’s Museum of Forgotten History examine the specific interconnections (or lack thereof) between the contents of a museum-institution and the ‘real’ world. Museum of Television Culture sets off from Theodor Adorno’s observation that “the German word museal [...] describes objects to which the observer no longer has a vital relationship and which are in the process of dying. […] Museum and mausoleum are connected by more than phonetic association. Museums are like the family sepulchres of works of art.” The idea of a museum as the place where art goes to die informs the piece, in the uncomfortable parallel drawn between museums and television: in the same way art can be viewed as already dead, or somehow spent, once it is being displayed in a museum, human life as displayed on TV can be said to have lost an essential component of itself –to have, in some way, died. Davidovich’s work is an almost sinister reminder of this idea, consisting as it does of a shelving unit populated by myriads of TV sets of all shapes and sizes, silent and unmoving, juxtaposed with an actual TV set on which a looped clip is monotonously postulating and analysing the relationship between museum and mausoleum.

Museum of Forgotten History almost follows on from this idea, by offering up a collection of works representing ‘remnants of a possible future past’. The breakdown and dissipation of meaning so strongly suggested in Davidovich’s work also recurs in Maarten Vanden Eynde’s. Works such as Modern Menhir (a curious, menhir-shaped, redbrick structure, as secretive and exclusive as it is challenging and open to interpretation), or Ikea-Vase (an amphora-shaped vase made of reconstruction paste and incorporating the fragments of an Ikea mug) question the ability of historical artefacts to truly impress on us what life in an inherently unknowable past would have been like –and in the process point out out the fallacious impressions a future archaeologist might conceivably formulate on our present based on its surviving remnants.

On the first floor, we encounter Karen Mizra and Brad Butler’s Museum of Non-Participation: a collection of ‘acts’, dubbed by the artists as ‘the performative utterance of folded, contested spaces’. Act 0015 is displayed across three monitors that only turn on as soon as a visitor walks past, the three of them providing a sort of chorus of speech acts to the Museum of Non-Participation as a whole. The first monitor features speech acts by actor and activist Khalid Abdalla (the particular clip explores the representation of Arab population in American media, with snatches of the actor/activist’s phrases echoed by a wistful, dreamlike female voice); the second monitor features a series of photographs interspersed by explanatory notes, neither of which stay on-screen long enough to allow for proper contemplation or even taking in (the photographs and notes deal with events surrounding and stemming from military intervention in the Middle East); the third monitor features a prolonged clip of artist Nabil Ahmed discussing issues relating to the language movement in Bangladesh (the speaker switches between languages, the sound is occasionally muted; at times the black censorship strip appears over the speaker’s mouth or eyes, other times the entire image blurs). All three elements of the work act separately and unison to demonstrate the simultaneous power and powerlessness of speech acts, and to underline the close interdependence between it and the visual in the creation of collective memory.

Tucked into the smallest exhibition space, on the third floor of the Arnolfini, Khalil Rabah’s Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind makes perhaps the most poignant statement among the Museum-works showcased. A fictional institution with an authoritative voice, an almost unbearable blurring of the line between fictitiousness and reality, Rabah’s work acts as both a reminder and a parody of the tenuous connection between the purpose and contents of a museum as an institution and the reality of the world outside it. At the same time, the spectator’s painful awareness (or lack thereof) of the fact that Palestine does not, in fact, have a national museum infuses the work, paradoxically reinforcing the significance of museum institutions in the creation and preservation of a national heritage, culture, and identity. The work showcased in the Arnolfini is the archive section of the Palestinian Museum: it consists of large wood-framed canvasses neatly stacked side-by-side, each full of information near impossible to read due to their proximity to each other. Nonetheless, the information is there, in addition to which there is a promising presence of three empty wooden frames waiting to be filled. The fictional archive of a national museum of a nation without a recognised state, Palestinian Museum speaks to the human need for memory, and the struggle of this memory to keep itself alive against the forces of the present.

Museum Show Part II is an intriguing exploration of the extent to which the world and our experience of it are, essentially, a construct and one in which memory plays a key part; and it is precisely this dimension of our world that the works showcased are interested in exposing.

Museum Show Part II, 09/12/2011 - 19/02/2012, Arnolfini, 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol, BS1 4QA. www.arnolfini.org.uk

Aesthetica in Print
If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Captions:
1. Museum of Non-Participation
Karen Mirza & Brad Butler
Installation shot, Arnolfini 2011
2. Museum of Incest
Simon Fujiware
Installation shot, Arnolfini 2011
3. Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind
Khalil Rabah
Installation shot, Arnolfini 2011
4. Museum of Forgotten History
Maarten Vanden Eynde
Installation shot, Arnolfini 2011
Photography: © Jamie Woodley

Richard Mosse: Falk Visiting Artist | Weatherspoon Art Museum | Greensboro | North Carolina

2012-01-13T16:30:00.000Z

Irish photographer Richard Mosse is known for his restraining and highly aestheticised views of sites associated with violence and fear, such as his 2008 depictions of the war in Iraq, and his large-scale photographs of aeroplane crash sites. For his new series, Infra, Mosse used Kodak Aerochrome - an infra-red film designed in the 1940s to assist the U.S. military in detecting camouflage - to photograph the people and landscape of the Eastern Congo. The film reveals a spectrum of light beyond what the human eye can perceive, turning the lush, green landscape of the Congo into a bubblegum pink. The photographs investigate the severe circumstances within which the people of the Eastern Congo live and draw our attention to the complex social and political dynamics of this region of the world.

Richard Mosse: Falk Visiting Artist, 14/01/2012 - 15/04/2012, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. weatherspoon.uncg.edu

Aesthetica in Print
If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Captions:
1. Richard Mosse, Taking Tiger Mountain (Infra series), 2011, digital c-print, 72 x 90 in., Private collection. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
2. Richard Mosse, Better Than the Real Thing (Infra series)", 2011, digital c-print, 48 x 60 in., Private collection, Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
3. Richard Mosse, Ruby Tuesday (Infra series), 2011, digital c-print, 48 x 60 in. Private collection, Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
4. Richard Mosse, General Février, North Kivu, Eastern Congo (Infra series), 2010, Cibachrome print, Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Working Papers: Donald Judd Drawings 1963 - 93 | Sprüth Magers London

2012-01-12T15:07:00.000Z

Text by Bethany Rex

A new exhibition of 33 drawings by Donald Judd (1928-94) opens tomorrow at Sprüth Magers London. Covering nearly the entire period he made three-dimensional work, the show is curated by Peter Ballantine, who since 1969 has specialised in almost all aspects of the artist's work. Peter Ballantine discusses Judd's radical type of delegated fabrication and his own connection to the work.

BR: To someone who might be an architect but doesn’t know a lot about Judd, can you just talk briefly about what you see as the essence of Judd from a design standpoint?

PB: It's a huge question, but let me try to answer it as follows: architects often especially understand Judd intuitively because he is so much about space and how to create it with objects (or architecture), the higher quality the object (or architecture) the higher quality the space. Imagery is the enemy of three-dimensionality. All artworks are of course functional, most usually expressive, which involve some form of symbolic claim (this is that, this is not this, etc.). A Judd objects' functionality is not expressive but performative (to make space). Compromise of an object, especially, for example, by damage (added detail) is the problem it is in Judd because these marks so quickly become (interpreted as) imagery, which is essentially two-dimensional.

BR: In a similar way could you explain briefly what you think Judd was referencing when he spoke of ‘manifold space’?

PB: The space Judd is concerned with is not a pre-existing volume of air but an ambitious, high quality artistic/architectural space that has to be created by the existence of an equally high quality object. Judd writes that in art/architecture, like geometry and physics, no object, no space. Compromised object, weakened space. The ways objects can be compromised is a long list.

BR: The debate surrounding this delegated fabrication that you speak of has been rekindled recently with David Hockney’s snipe at Damian Hirst ("All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally.") What is your opinion on the use of assistants by artists?

PB: My experience is with Judd, so it's probably best if I restrict my answer to him. Moving from making his works himself to delegating the work (including many of their practical decisions) to small traditional sheet metal or carpentry shops, was an essential part in moving what had been sculpture to a situation where the works became true objects. What objectness is is a long discussion, but there are many things objectness isn't. It's doubtful that any artist-made 'object', even if the artist were, say, a union machinist, can ever achieve being an object in the sense Judd means because of the presence of the artist's 'hand', with interpretation as expression. Fine if that's what the artist intends, not fine if part of your project is an art without illustrated external content.

BR: It’s interesting that the largest (and most formal) drawings in the show were made after the actual works the drawings document had already been completed. What do you think Judd’s aim was with these drawings?

PB: To record his work in the only non-photographic way possible, and on his own terms. Judd might not have been the only artist opposed to photography of art, especially three-dimensional art, but he was very aware of its many famous flaws - its subjective/fictional aspects (likelihood of being manipulated), its deeply anti-empirical nature (distrustworthiness as evidence). Worst of all is colour photography, which claims more equivalency to its subject. In some ways, resistance to being able to be adequately represented by photography isn't a bad indicator of quality for three-dimensional art. On his own terms means slightly incomplete or otherwise 'sabotaged' picture-making, to 'guarantee against' conventional representation, a major issue for him, and the chief reason he abandoned painting in 1961.

BR: How do you think Judd would respond to this exhibition given his empiricism and standpoint that art should never include any arbitrary elements?

PB: One the one hand, I don't see this exhibition as including arbitrary elements. It's actually rather tightly focused on Judd's drawing's tight relationship with the three-dimensional work and how it got made (the title Working Papers is a reference to this). About the other question, about arbitrary elements in his art, arbitrary, random and 'found' need to be carefully compared and contrasted, but it needs to be pointed out that 'found' elements play (found objects, colors, materials, number systems, etc.) were an important way around composition and other forms of expression. Found objects, for example, were Judd's entré into sculpture.

BR: You speak of “how things can go wrong when the artist is not there to defend or explain himself”. Are there any other specific examples of exhibitions you’ve come across where the display and handling are what you would see as unauthentic?

PB: An obvious example, and one your readers might have seen, is the use of what Judd called pedestals with some of the early floorpieces at the Tate's 2004 Judd retrospective, something Judd always completely banned, because they instantly neutered whatever space a floorpiece had been able to create around itself, , turning a piece into a 'museum piece' (if that term is used in the same way here—implying no longer being able to function, artifact-ness, should be removed from previous circulation ), altering the height of the object above the floor, and exhibiting, in effect, two boxes (one by Judd one by a museum designer. The list goes on and on, but suffice it to say that Judd would never have allowed it.

Peter Ballantine will give a talk about the issues of Judd drawing and fabrication at the Courtauld Institute of Art's Kenneth Clark lecture theatre on Friday, 17 February at 7pm.

Working Papers: Donald Judd Drawings, 1963 - 93, 13/01/2012 - 18/02/2012, Sprüth Magers, 7A Grafton Street, London. www.spruethmagers.com

Aesthetica in Print
If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Caption:
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968, black marker in white paper
© Judd Foundation. Licensed by VAGA, New York/DACS, London 2012.
All photos by Stephen White.

Installation & Interactive Monuments | Brook Andrew: Travelling Colony | Carriageworks | New South Wales

2012-01-11T10:45:00.000Z

Text by Ella Mudie

This is not the sort of behaviour typically encountered in an art installation. In the foyer of Sydney's inter-disciplinary performance venue Carriageworks, seven hand-painted caravans are being poked and prodded by curious audiences. Visitors duck their heads as they step into each van, look around inside to check out the tatty, retro 1970s décor then sit back on the vinyl lounges. Hyperactive children are climbing the furniture, inspecting the cupboards and testing the taps. From the outside, the boldly decorated exteriors of the vans recall the precise, geometric lines of Op Art but in fact Travelling Colony, a major new installation by renowned Australian indigenous artist Brook Andrew, is emblazoned with the striking black, white and primary coloured jagged stripes of Andrew's ancestral Wiradjuri patterns.

There's a certain novelty in turning caravans into artworks. But for Andrew, both play and physical engagement form signature components of his often large-scale installations where entertainment acts as a starting point for a deeper engagement with more complex concerns frequently centred around issues of “race, consumerism, and history.” Here, the peripatetic makeshift home of each caravan is transformed into a site for a mini multi-media oral history project with televisions inside screening interviews with a cross-section of locals, or people with connections to, the surrounding suburb of Redfern, which since the 1970s has figured as a key urban hub of Australian indigenous culture and activism.

Redfern, says one interviewee – Lily Shearer, is where Aboriginal people “became citizens in our own country,” citing the community-based instigation of indigenous health, legal and housing services as among its greatest achievements. The films presented here record residents' personal reflections upon the suburb's tumultuous history, its highest and lowest points, its significance to contemporary indigenous culture and reactions to its current contested evolution into a more gentrified inner-city suburb. What emerges as a common thread in the responses is an appreciation of the powerful role that theatre, performance and art has played in Aboriginal empowerment and self-determination. It's fitting, then, that Travelling Colony also forms the centrepiece of Black Capital, the Sydney Festival's three-week celebration of indigenous theatre and culture.

Visitors will find Andrew's caravans moored in the Carriageworks foyer until early March but as part of the Sydney Festival First Night launch party last weekend, Travelling Colony took to the streets for a more nomadic manifestation. As festival goers wandered Macquarie Street, passersby stopped outside the caravans to form an impromptu audience for a motley crew of gypsy circus performers who emerged from within the caravans to erupt into an enthralling routine of acrobatic stunts and festive dancing. There was exuberance and joy in their energetic melding together of various cultural styles, from Flamenco and Irish jigs to traditional Indonesian dance and modern Krumping, yet also a vague sense of unease simmering beneath the spectacle. Where had this unlikely mix of entertainers been plucked from, what circumstances might have brought them together?

A probing and critical enquiry into history typically belies the dazzling surfaces of Andrew's work and here a darker story of exploitation is referenced although not overtly stated. When the circus was transplanted from England to the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century, a shortage of available performers led circus proprietors to 'adopt' juvenile Aborigines into their troupes. Beneath the spectacle of Andrew's hybridized modern incarnation of the travelling circus is a nod to the little acknowledged fact that, as academic Mark Valentine St Leon writes in his essay, The Erosion of Aboriginal Identity in Circus, the “induction (or adoption) of children into 'apprenticeships' (however spurious) remained an established practice in Australian circus as late as the 1920s.”

By retrieving a buried chapter of the story of colonisation in Australia, Andrew reanimates and brings it into the present for contemporary debate. Yet his approach is far from didactic and at Festival First Night, the circus performances were lively, generous and fun. Ultimately, the extent to which audiences engage with the historical undercurrents of Travelling Colony will vary greatly. Some visitors to Carriageworks will stick their heads into the caravans for a quick peek out of curiosity and move on. Others will sit, listen, and absorb the thought provoking stories and messages contained in the films inside. Either way, all will experience in this vibrant, multi-faceted and compassionate installation an encounter with history not as something remote and finite but as protean and actively informing the continuous present.

Brook Andrew: Travelling Colony, 08/01/2012 - 04/03/2012, Carriageworks, Redfern, NSW, Australia. www.carriageworks.com.au

Aesthetica in Print
If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Caption:
Brook Andrew Travelling Colony
Installation view courtesy of Susannah Wimberley

Art, Ideology and Political Ideals | Asier Mendizabal | Raven Row | London

2012-01-09T12:21:00.000Z

Text by Travis Riley

Entering Asier Mendizabal’s solo show at Raven Row, the friendly greeting of the gallery receptionist is perfectly complemented by, what seem to be, two mock-worn, ornamental park benches. They are entitled Hard Edge #5 and #6 (both 2011), and look very much at home in a white-walled foyer. The sham wood effect is produced by several sheets of affixed MDF, the dark glued edges imitate the appearance of a wood-grain, albeit much too uniform to be natural. Angled swathes have been cut from the sculptures, giving the impression of use, but the cuts are symptomatically precise. These works are emblematic of what is to come in the show. Overtly deliberate in their presentation, they imply a play on abstraction, with direct reference to Modernist sculpture, but also exhibit a system of signs that allows multiple possible meanings or functions. Through the employment of visual, cultural, and ideological symbols, Mendizabal intends to call attention to mass-participatory, sub-cultural, and political ideals.

In the next room, it is La Ruota Dentata [The Cogwheel] (2009) that really breaks the ice. Industrial in appearance, La Ruota Dentata is a large-scale sculpture made from concrete surfaces and an iron frame. It appears to be the skeletal structure of an incomplete cog, containing only its top three teeth. The form of a cogwheel symbolically speaks of collectivism and labour, but its fragmentary form gives a sense of expectation, the omission goes unexplained. The main body of the sculpture is leant up against a platform, causing it to face outwards, angled from the corner of the room, consuming the open space before it, and generating a directional gaze to another piece of wheel-like equipment. Untitled (Targu Jiu) (2010) is a concrete cast of a large tyre from a piece of heavy machinery. The tyre is deprived of air, its central gap, and consequently, of any sense of functionality.

Throughout the exhibition Mendizabal juxtaposes his more abstract sculptural forms against more immediately political work hung on the walls. In this room, contrasting with the representations of machinery, there are: a set of prints from Mendizabal’s Figures and Prefigurations (2009) series, showing images of ideological crowds and rallies obscured by templates of early Modern photomontages, Bigger than a Cult Smaller than a Mass (2006) a direct presentation of a series of sixteen flags concealing a wall of newsprint behind them, and an essay giving a coherent theoretical reference point from which to view the show.

The essay presents and contextualises quotes from a letter written by Jorge Orteiza. The letter was addressed to the judges of a 1952 sculptural competition, run through the ICA, for a sculpture as a monument to “The Unknown Political Prisoner”. Along with the Medizabal’s own remarks concerning the objectionable subject matter, the essay allows quotations from the letter in question to address an argument conveying the issues of abstract sculptures potential to provide apt political representation. Needless to say, the topic sits very comfortably within the themes of the surrounding work.

Given the heavy contextualisation of the exhibition literature and two further essays presented alongside, it is possible to get so caught up in the series of references as to miss Mendizabal’s strongest suit, his remarkable sculptural intuition. In Le Trou (The Hole) (2009) he converts bathroom tiles and Styrofoam into a free standing tiled surface, that appears absurdly two-dimensional when viewed from the front. Its conceptual reference points, from French cinema, and a Basque prison escape (made clear in the exhibition literature) add a political dimension to the work, but cannot be perceived in any way from the fabric of the sculpture. Although conceptually interesting, they ultimately detract from the piece’s curious material value.

Further proof of Mendizabal’s sculptural deftness of touch is Know Your Rights (2009). The sculpture consists of an aluminium frame covered with rectangles of plasterboard. It takes the strictly symmetrical shape of a recumbent ‘K’, and fills one of the gallery’s small rooms. Although, the jutting diagonals of the structure don’t reach far from the floor, the leaning angles draw the spectator into the sculpture, giving a heightened sense of spatial awareness, almost to the point of vertigo. It is illusively simple in form compared to the other sculptures, but its use of the materials and aesthetics of modern construction mean it retains an immediate reference point despite its abstraction.

In many of Mendizabal’s works, what is omitted is as important as what is shown. The missing two thirds of La Ruota Dentata, the newspaper hidden behind the flags of Bigger than a Cult Smaller than a Mass, and the ink showing through from the reverse of the page in his beguiling prints, entitled Assemble (this is the way its done) are all accomplished examples of this motif. Further to this, the very deliberate curation of the individual pieces is admirable. Series of works are not presented together, but separated across the three floors of the gallery, aiding a coherent, correlative reading of the work as a whole, and providing much more contrast and intrigue along the way. Contrarily, throughout the show, too much information is given too soon. The works are strong enough in their own right for the viewer to be given the chance to read them independent of the provided material. Go and see the show, but maybe take the essay home with you to read later instead.

Asier Mendizabal, 08/12/2011 – 12/02/2012, Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London. www.ravenrow.org

Raven Row will host Asier Mendizabal in conversation with Pablo Lafuente, an editor at Afterall and curator at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and Alex Sainsbury, Raven Row's director, to talk about his current exhibition and practice on Wednesday 18 January at 7pm. This event is free but booking is essential as space is limited. Please email info@ravenrow.org to reserve a place.

Aesthetica in Print
If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Captions:
1. Bigger than a Cult, Smaller than a Mass (one, two backdrops), 2006
Fabric and newspapers
Collection of Patric San Juan, Bilbao
Photo: Marcus J.Leith
2. La Ruota Dentata (The Cogwheel), 2009
Iron and concrete
Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
Photo: Marcus J. Leith

Creating Ideas Through Advertising | Terry Hall & Coggles

2012-01-06T16:54:00.001Z

Olubiyi from coggles on Vimeo.

Text by Bethany Rex

The importance of creativity in advertising has been widely recognised for decades. A creative ad campaign has to be both divergent and relevant. It is a difficult scale to balance and the failures certainly outweigh the triumphs. Advertising is about more than promotion of any given product; it’s centred on communicating a message, managing expectations, and brand positioning. There is no measure of success, however any advertising campaign that succeeds in stimulating interaction between these three subsystems: creator, domain and field, is certainly moving in the right direction.

In reality, creativity is a multi-dimensional phenomenon and creativity in marketing communications does not function in isolation. That’s the best thing about it for audiences and marketers; it’s about putting creativity to the test. With advertising, the creator alone is not the sole determinant. Thousands of individuals come together to decide whether or not the idea of novel enough for their consumption. Will you or will you not share this video on your social networks? None of this is a secret; most brands are selling a lifestyle not a product but there are a handful who do so in a way that isn't brash, presumptive or condescending. In fact, it's a pleasure to be sold these ideals. Coggles is one such brand.

The Coggles site does not only carry clothing brands such as APC, Comme de Garcons, PPQ and Sam Edelman but also features furniture, vintage pieces, bicycles and music. Coggles has taken this concept of selling a style, rather than fashion one step further by including images of self-styled young men and women on their site, taken by photographer Nick Scaife. Having shot over 1,000 individuals over the last two years, Coggles have now commissioned three short films which these well-dressed tastemakers. Produced by filmmaker, Terry Hall, we can here offer you a glimpse at the first film which takes as its subject Jean-Michel Basquiat fan and Central Saint Martins fashion student, Olubiyi. Terry has also taken time out of a very busy schedule to talk to Aesthetica about the project. The final two films in the series will be on the Aesthetica Blog in the following months.

A: Firstly, could you talk us through the concept behind this series?

TH: The idea was to expand upon Coggles’ extensive street style archive by creating a series of individual video portraits. These films could be about anything, something that they wanted to share that would give us a little insight into the person behind the photograph.

A: Who was responsible for the styling of the films?

TH: Each person we worked with was asked to style themselves for the shoot. We gave them the option to choose pieces from the Coggles collections which they could use with their own personal wardrobe items, or not, it was totally their choice. I think that is one of the great things about Coggles' street style archive; it stays true to the original concept of street style which is about championing the individual and this idea of personal style was incredibly important to us when we were making the films.

A: Going back a few years, The Sartorialist was pretty much the only street style photographer of note. Now the street style blog is ubiquitous, with superstars from the bloggersphere making their way onto the highstreet (Elin Kling for H &M) even. What is it about these three individuals that makes them stand out from the madding crowd?

TH: Just looking through the original street style photos there are people that obviously jump out and make you think they’d make a great film but during the casting process our opinions changed. I think the way people behave can be almost as important to their style as the clothes they wear. Each of the three people we selected had that little, extra something.

This idea of a person’s behaviour is interesting in the wider context of fashion film vs photography. As more editorial work becomes time based, models will have to do much more than capture a single moment in a still image. They will have to become performers.

A: As a commercial filmmaker, do you have an outlet for your more creative thoughts and ideas?

TH: Music videos and fashion film are a great way of making more avant-garde ideas but without good funding it is becoming more and more difficult to create really outstanding work. I think the commercials industry is a lot more open to creative work than it used to be plus there is money there to really develop a project and collaborate with lots of talented people.

A: Was there one short that you found most challenging to make?

TH: Olubiyi’s was probably the toughest. It was the day after the police had cracked down on the rioters and we were walking around Hackney with camera equipment wondering if it was the right thing to do.

A: Can you describe the creative process for you?

TH: It changes depending on what I’m working on but usually I will try and gather as much information about the subject: reading as much as I can and collecting images. This will usually set me off on a number of tangents that I’ll research further and the first initial ideas will emerge. Then I’ll go through everything and try to bring it all together in one finished piece.

A: Finally, what does 2012 have in store for you?

TH: I’m waiting to hear back on a couple of commercial projects plus I’ve just started work on the second series of the Coggles Street Style films. Plus I really want to make a short film this year as well.

Celebrating Contemporary Filmmaking | Global Lens 2012 | MoMA New York

2012-01-04T17:01:00.003Z

Global Lens is a touring film exhibition, organised annually between MoMA and the Global Film Initiative (GFI). Designed to encourage filmmaking in countries with emerging film communities, the select of 10 programs, which include films developed with seed money from GFI, represents a concise survey of contemporary filmmaking from areas where local economic realities making such expensive and technology-driven endeavours a challenge. Accomplished, entertaining, and thought-provoking, the films are deeply rooted in the social and political realities of the countries where their talented and resourceful makers live and set their stories. Taking place from 12 - 28 January in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters at MoMA, the screening schedule is packed. Here are our recommendations for those of you lucky enough to be in NY at the moment:

Gişe Memuru (Toll Booth). 2010. Turkey.
Written and directed by Tolga Karaçelik. With Serkan Ercan, Zafer Diper, Nergis Öztürk.
Various screenings from 12 - 18 January.
In Turkish; English subtitles. 96 min

Kenan is a taciturn 35-year-old toll booth attendant shuffling between the monotony of his traffic
besieged box and caring for his ailing but domineering father at home. Desperate to resist his father’s attempt to marry him off to a neighbor, and equally determined to prove his worth by fixing his father’s old car, Kenan edges ever closer to a nervous breakdown. Making wonderful use of an expert cast (led by the excellent Serkan Ercan), a richly saturated colour palette, and keen art direction, writer-director Karaçelik has crafted a wry, heartbreaking ode to lost dreams in a sleepwalking world.

Amnistia (Amnesty). 2011. Albania.
Written and directed by Bujar Alimani. With Luli Bitri, Karafil Shena, Todi Llupi.
Various screenings from 14 - 20 January.
In Albanian; English subtitles. 83 min

A newly enacted law allowing prisoners conjugal visits sparks an unlikely friendship between two lonely people visiting their incarcerated spouses. Elsa’s contact with her husband is silent and dutiful; Shpetim, a gentle, soft-spoken man who visits the prison to see his wife, experiences equally passionless encounters. When an amnesty sets their spouses free, their fragile bond is threatened. Alimani’s quietly sensual, contemplative first feature takes a wonderfully personal approach to a profound social transformation.

Qarantina. 2010. Iraq.
Written and directed by Oday Rasheed. With Asaad Abudel Majeed, Alaa Najem, Hattam Auda.
Various screenings from 19 - 27 January.
In Arabic; English subtitles. 90 min.

A broken family, headed by the patriarch, Salih, lives within the gated courtyard of a dilapidated house in Baghdad. Salih’s pregnant daughter has fallen mute, and only finds solace with Salih’s young second wife, Kerima, and his preteen son, Muhanad. To keep the family afloat, Muhanad must work in the street shining shoes and, more ominously, they are forced to take in a sullen and imperious boarder. Rasheed’s brooding second feature captures the beautiful surroundings of modern Baghdad, and finds unexpected sources of resilience in the wake of catastrophe.

Riscado (Craft). 2010. Brazil.
Directed by Gustavo Pizzi. With Karine Teles, Camilo Pellegrini, Dany Roland.
Various screenings from 13 - 16 January
In Portuguese; English subtitles. 85 min

Bianca is a talented young actress trying to get her career off the ground, but so far her jobs have been limited to impersonating movie divas and promoting events. After auditioning for a major international film, she finally gets her big break with a director who, inspired by her personality and her work, molds the character into a version of Bianca. Is this the chance of a lifetime? Pizzi portrays the casual cruelty of the competitive world in which we live, and heightens the drama not through melodrama or exaggerated scenarios but by picking the perfect protagonist: an actress. Craft was cowritten with the astounding Teles, who inhabits the role of Bianca with heartbreaking poignancy.

Films are screened Wednesday - Monday. For screening schedules please visit the Film Exhibitions page.

Global Lens 2012, 12/01/2012 - 28/01/2012, The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. www.moma.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, join us!

Captions:
Gişe Memuru (Toll Booth). 2010. Turkey. Written and directed by Tolga Karaçelik.
Amnistia (Amnesty). 2011. Albania. Written and directed by Bujar Alimani. Pictured: Luli Bitri
Qarantina. 2010. Iraq. Written and directed by Oday Rasheed. Pictured: Asaad Abudel Majeed.
Riscado (Craft). 2010. Brazil. Directed by Gustavo Pizzi. Pictured: Karine Teles.
All images courtesy of The Global Film Initiative

Unfinished World | Graham Sutherland curated by George Shaw | Modern Art Oxford

2012-01-04T11:10:00.002Z

Text by Asana Greenstreet

Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) was an official World War II artist from 1941-44. He was commissioned to paint scenes of bomb devastation, as well as work in mines, quarries and foundries. He is a modernist painter who stands on his own two feet: moving away from the traditional representation of landscapes, however formerly innovative, treating the paper and the relief as a live entity. As a doctor would a patient, Sutherland examines every possibility and change through the medium of painting, and produced a vast collection of works on paper that scrutinise, explore and spiritualise the landscape he sees before him.

This exhibition at Modern Art Oxford brings together 85 of Sutherland’s lesser known works which are given a contemporary jolt by the artist-curator George Shaw. In a short film in the gallery’s basement, Shaw explains his interest in Sutherland’s painting, of the obsessive reworking of a familiar landscape. It comes as no surprise that Shaw admires and is inspired by Sutherland. Shaw’s interest in landscapes personal to him, rendered in all their painterly mimesis, won Shaw his Turner Prize nomination this year.

Interestingly, the anticipation of odd juxtapositions and positioning of artworks in an artist-curated show is missing. Shaw clearly sees merit in Sutherland’s work, aligning him with the old Masters such as Constable and Van Gogh. He refreshes an interest in Sutherland’s practice, and gives the viewer a space to contemplate Shaw’s thought that
"it seems he [Sutherland] always has something else to say, but never quite does". There is ample space to contemplate each painting, and the display case that shows three of Sutherland’s sketchbooks make a nice addition to the show, as the visitor can match an initial sketch to the finished painting.

Certain elements of the exhibition are easy to read: the colour juxtapositions of the pre, mid, and post war paintings are evident in their respective depiction of calmness, darkness and a renewed positivity of life. This is also seen in a change of medium, from gouache to a mix of crayon and ink that display a thickened obscurity to the picture space. However simple in their semiotic parallels between art and life, these techniques are powerful, and hold the viewer’s attention throughout the exhibition.

The Devastation series, painted in 1941, in all their darkness indicate approaching death, and imagine an apocalyptic atmosphere ever so relevant to their contemporary social context. These war paintings also depict elements from nature such as thorns and trees, and Sutherland gives them anthropomorphic qualities, as if holding a mirror up to man as he gazes at nature. As the trees scream out their pain through human-like orifices in Dwarf Oaks (1941), the viewer recollects the horrors of the war, and even of the memory of the concentration camps, where Thorns (1945) appear as a vicious barbed wire matrix that press any sign of jovial life deeper into the image. This aligns Sutherland in the same camp as Francis Bacon, using similarities between the figure and nature to draw out narratives of horror in the human psyche.

How resonant and appropriate this lesson is today. Wars fought because of politics, ideology, and religion bring out the worst in human nature, resulting in a tangible destruction of earth’s landscape. If this stands as true today as it did then, Unfinished World is a potent title for this exhibition, as it indicates not only Sutherland’s implicit ideas of human nature, but as history repeats itself, so will humans continue to destroy their relationships between each other as well as with nature.

Unfinished World, Graham Sutherland curated by George Shaw, 10/12/2011 - 18/03/2012, Modern Art Oxford. www.modernartoxford.org.uk

Two film screenings selected by George Shaw which accompany the main exhibition will take place on 13 January between 7 - 8pm.

Wales - Green Mountain, Black Mountain (Dir. John Eldridge, UK, 1942) takes its title from a classic piece of wartime propaganda written by Dylan Thomas under the instruction of the Ministry of Information. It presents idyllic images of a Welsh landscape, the work ethic of its communities, and their pastimes and traditions. The film features evocative footage of the Welsh countryside, which inspired many of Sutherland's most enigmatic works.

Sutherland in Wales (Dir. John Ormand, UK, 1978) is a BBC documentary which provides a rare insight into the artist and his life-long interest in the Pembrokeshire landscape. Coinciding with the creation of the Graham Sutherland Foundation at Picton Castle, the film follows the artist on a walk through the Welsh countryside, as he explains the inspiration behind his work and his efforts to build up a repertoire of unique shapes and forms.

Caption:
The Wanderer, 1940
Pencil, watercolour and conte crayon on artists’ board
47 × 61cm
Victoria and Albert Museum
© Estate of Graham Sutherland

Aesthetica January Sale: Save in 2012!

2012-01-03T16:33:00.000Z

Happy New Year!

2012 looks set to be an exciting year and we’ve certainly got plenty of great things lined up here at Aesthetica.

To make sure that you don’t miss out on anything with Aesthetica in 2012, we’re offering a fantastic sale on our subscriptions!

This January get 12 months of Aesthetica for just £12 + p&p! Stay up-to-date with the latest from the art and culture world and discover the best exhibitions, events and new releases in 2012.

Distinguished by elegant design and offering an extended selection of beautiful images and stunning artwork, each issue of Aesthetica brings you a diverse array of features, interviews and reviews and covers visual art, film, music and performance from around the world.

In addition, the December/January issue comes with a FREE DVD of short film from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival. An inspiring collection of independent films from across the world, this is the perfect antidote to the long January evenings.

Visit our website today to get your copy.

Just £12 + p&p for a subscription. Offer ends soon.

Contemporary Art in Northern Ireland | Parliament Buildings | Stormont

2011-12-30T10:53:00.000Z

Text by Angela Darby

Below the gilded King Edward VII chandeliers and between the Italian travertine engraved marble walkway the exhibition Contemporary Art in Northern Ireland is situated in The Great Hall of Parliament Buildings at Stormont. The exhibition’s curator Dr Suzanne Lyle, Head of Arts and Acquisitions at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, states: “The invitation from the Speaker to bring this exhibition to Parliament Buildings is an important opportunity to champion our artists... business leaders will cite the strength of a society’s arts and culture as a key factor influencing any decision to invest...” Staging the exhibition in Stormont is a positive step to improving public access and additionally the political decision makers who allocate cultural funds can view firsthand the quality of the works on display. The 24 selected artists are drawn from emerging and established artists. Miguel Martin (b.1985), a talented young artist pays homage to an established artist with an intricate, detailed line drawing entitled Neil Shawcross’s Studio Space whilst internationally recognised artist Colin Darke (b.1957) raises questions concerning intellectual copyright and appropriation in his painting Mannish Boy V – Policeman. This breadth of practice is well represented throughout the exhibition.

Brendan Jamison’s (b.1979) large impressive sculpture Yellow Helicopter shares an eyeline with the bronze statue of Sir James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. The striking work grabs the viewers’ attention with its skeletal composition and bright woolly draped flesh. The piece sits in The Hall as an ironic testament to the military occupation of Northern Ireland’s past. Artists such as Christopher McCambridge and Jennifer Trouton seem to relate metaphorically to the environment. In Re-interpretation: Falling for Grandeur, McCambridge meticulously stitches his canvas with royal blue, blossom pink and turquoise threads. The chinoiserie wallpaper referenced is rendered by the artist’s physical action into a luxurious tapestry, an historical artefact echoing the affluence of the architectural environment within which it hangs. Trouton’s oil on linen painting Harrow captures a similar sensibility. An intricate photo-realist painting of a textured blanket draped over a chair suggests a story of comfort and tranquillity. But the fragments of broken crockery strewn and discarded beside the chair disturb the picture’s equilibrium. As the painting’s title suggests there is no room for harmony.

Simon McWilliams’ oil on canvas, Stairwell captures a fragment of Belfast’s prolific re-development that spread throughout the city like a raging virus. Resembling invasive weeds on a riverbank, green fluorescent netting and scaffolding provide a stagnant ‘still’ from an emergent tower block’s metamorphic growth. Caught in a frozen moment the image reveals the city’s faltering regeneration. The artists Terry McAllister, Gareth Reid, Gail Ritchie and Robert Peters poignantly capture aspects of rural landscapes and woodlands. Ritchie’s Dead Tree, a fine graphite pencil drawing on paper, hauntingly commemorates the traditional 12th of July Orange March to the field in Edenderry Village, Belfast. The faces of menacing sprites and gargoyles emerge from the gnarled bark and twisted knots on the tree’s decaying surface. The tree’s totemic symbolism seems to point to a time before the transformation of the province’s political situation and a time when one community had a monopoly over the other. Robert Peters’ digital print, entitled Uccello of the Potato Field I and II, portrays a traditional children’s game played in the potato fields on his family farm during the 1970s. This is not a game of childish innocence however but one of brutal combat as the sport’s object is to target and hurt one’s opponent by hurling potatoes propelled from the sticks. Peters has arranged the composition of his improvised weaponry to correspond with the upright lances in The Battle of San Romano (1438-1440) by the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello.

In the works by Zoe Murdoch, Maria McKinney, Shaleen Temple and Carrie McKee there is a polar presence of escapism and capture. Murdoch’s sensitive and melancholic sculpture Oh Muse Be Near Me Now and Make a Strange Song is dedicated to a long distanced correspondence. The anatomical objects and printed text contained within the small wooden box form clues to the artists’ reflection on the frustrations of a relationship spent apart. Maria McKinney examines the pursuit of leisure time and the activities devised to combat monotony in an appropriated jigsaw composition The Earl of Leicester. The photographic portraits by Temple and McKee poignantly narrate the condition of each of their subject’s entrapment. From the series entitled Boys and Girls, Temple’s documentation of South African servants exposes a world of subordination and subservience. The artist’s subject, Jerita stands tentatively in the interior of her employer’s home in Johannesburg. The red wall’s arch and dark wooden furniture frames and engulfs Jerita, the very objects that define her occupation seem to imprison her. Temple draws attention to these domestic servants who would otherwise be overlooked and in so doing she credits them with the recognition that they deserve. McKee chooses the backdrop of derelict Belfast cityscapes for her stunning depictions of young dancers. In Orlaigh (2011), a girl poses defensively with her arms folded; she is dressed in a bright orange and fuchsia coloured costume, a large pink blossom frames her face. This beautiful, ‘tiger lily’ sprouts with strength and determination from the desolate wasteland, waiting for her hopes and aspirations to be fulfilled.

One can easily imagine how Stormont’s opulent surroundings and ornate architectural features might overshadow the exhibiting works, rendering them undistinguished and lacking in impact. Surprisingly this is not the case; Dr Lyle’s strong curatorial vision corresponds with the context of this stately environment.

Contemporary Art in Northern Ireland, 21/11/2011 - 04/01/2012, Parliament Buildings, Stormont. www.artscouncil-ni.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, join us!

Caption:
Carrie Mckee Gilded Youth - Orlaigh Burns 2011
Courtesy the artist

Mette Winckelmann | We Have A Body | Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art | Copenhagen

2011-12-28T10:30:00.000Z

Text by Bethany Rex

We Have A Body is a comprehensive solo exhibition by Mette Winckelmann. Winckelmann initiates a dialogue with Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art's architecture and history as well as J.F. Willumsen's thoughts behind the exhibition space's layout and colour combinations. We spoke to Mette before the exhibition opening to find out more:

A: We Have A Body features installation work, painting, textile collages, objects and Sønderjyske Solæg – a speciality from Southern Jutland. What exactly is Sønderjyske Solæg and why have you chosen to work in this medium?

MW: Yes, Sønderjyske Solæg is a speciality from Southern Jutland. I am familiar with this phenomena since I grew up in this area of Denmark. I sometimes use language/dialect and different local traditions from this area in my practice. This is how you make the eggs: you boil the egg for quite a long time, then you put them in saltwater for 3-4 weeks, and then you peel them, and divide them in halves. Take one half boiled egg, lift up the, now greenish, yolk, put in some tabasco, mustard, oil and vinegar, eat it together with an Aquavit. This is a personal ritual which everyone has to do on their own. It is interesting to use this ritual because it divides people into a certain and unexpected hierarchy in the exhibition space, a hierarchy of people who might, and people who don’t, know about this ritual, and it creates a new agenda. It is also a repetition of a recipe, a phenomena which is important in terms of defining our identity. The fact that people physically accept the work by eating it is also of great value. The fact that it is an egg is also very nice as it is quite a heavy symbol of where your body came from in the very beginning. It is for the same reason that I am using the Danish dialect, or as I did in other works, dealt with insider gay language or abstraction. In all cases it defines an agenda that might or might not be familiar to you, depending on your background and experiences.

A: The abstract painting plays a central role in your practice. When did you start working with abstractions and why do you consider it to be the most appropriate ‘container’ for your messages?

MW: I have always worked in abstract, from a very young age with objects like rugs, made at the sewing machine. For me abstraction is a basic way to express important questions about our society, because it refers to the actual surroundings without trying to make an illusion or story of the imagination which stops at the edge of the square. In an abstract work, the materials step forward and become a significant part of the work itself. I believe that the viewer meets the abstract work in a physical way. The body immediately compares an object in a space to the body its self, and it enables a physical stimulating dialogue. I also see the abstract painting tradition as an important part of my own ethnic history as well as the Scandinavian patchwork tradition. Using it, or fragments of these traditions, combined with each other, or other ethnic traditions, I try to find new possible spaces.

A: This exhibition focuses on ‘the body’ and how different forms of artistic practice can liberate the body from traditional ways of looking. This is certainly not a new idea but I’m interested to hear your interpretation on this?

MW: The body is everyone’s basic starting point and basic material. The human body defines itself in relation to other bodies, placing other bodies in categories. When there is a body there is a gender, which is one of the strongest ways to categorize the human body (and individual) today. The problem is that the focus on gender deals with men and women as two binary poles. By focusing on the body and not the gender highlights my believe that there are variations of gender. It is flexible, meaning that there are many genders, and that they can change over time.

I consider my works as redefined bodies. In a very simple way, you could say that the media is the body, the material is the gender, and that it can be performed in many ways. That is also why I often make more than one version of each image, using the same abstract image, repeated in different versions and materials: as a flag, a painting or a fabric collage etc…. And that is why I also use exactly the same material in two totally different works! In our society I think it is a problem that people don't think about the body as flexible and unique. That constitutes a problem for developing our society if we believe that we have to fit into a certain idea about the ideal way of performing the body.

A: Do you have your own answer to the subtitle of the exhibition: Do our views on gender and sexuality have an effect on our view of art and historiography?

MW: Actually that was not a subtitle that I came up with, more an explanation written by the curators. For me, I would rather ask the question: Are our lives, lifestyles and ideas about what we want from life influenced by the selection of artworks in the national museums and collections, which have become, both in their status and actual physical size, much like a powerful and religious monument?

A: When it comes to looking at painting through the lens of queer theory, I can understand how this would open up the possibility of the work in a new light, but surely this is the case for any object of criticism? For example, if we apply the theories of psychoanalysis to an artist’s work, we might achieve a broader experience, but not necessary an accurate one. If you were to carry out a mini ‘reception study’ during the exhibition what would you hope to find?

MW: During the work I have different experiences with the materials and media I am using. I sincerely believe that, if every person thought about the body as a flexible object it would open up a variety of new perspectives on gender, sexuality, age, family life, feminism, equal rights for every person and eventually lead to a more stimulating society. I wonder why people in general don't know that their body is actually owned and dictated by the law, and that every country has its own idea about the ideal life, even countries like Denmark which in general is defined as liberated and democratic. As a woman in Denmark you are not allowed to reduce the gender you were born with. I mean, if you want to remove your breasts, you are required to have psychological tests beforehand. On the other hand, if you want to get a breast enlargement, you can just go ahead and do it. It is my belief that any improvement in this situation is beneficial, not only for the people who do not fit into the normative ideal idea of the body, but maybe also for the people who actually fit in in terms of a emancipation by having or getting a totally different view on the body.

03/12/2011 - 29/01/2012, Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark. www.denfrie.dk

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

United Enemies: The Problem of Sculpture in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s | Henry Moore Institute | Leeds

2011-12-26T09:30:00.000Z

Text by Daniel Potts

United Enemies brings with it the spirit of Arte Inglese Oggi (English Art Today) – a 1976 British Council show in Milan featuring the work of many of the artists included – but concentrates on the complex nature of British sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. Arte Inglese Oggi was organised into strict categories: Sculpture, Painting, Performance Art, Artist’s Film and Alternative Practices. United Enemies retrospectively allows us to carefully consider sculpture in relation to these other practices. The ambition is to impart how the concerns of sculpture at this time were relevant to contemporary artistic change and thinking, and thus formed the basis for the New British Sculpture of the 1980s, and what followed. This exhibition is divided into three sections – Manual Thinking, Standing and Groundwork.

Manual Thinking is the first section encountered by the visitor. Here we are encouraged to appreciate how the hand preoccupies the pieces and the methods of production. The work nearest to the entrance of the gallery certainly engages the viewer in this way. It is Roelof Louw's (b.1936) Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges), (1967). We are invited to take and consume one of the oranges from the pyramid. Doing so begs the question: what is the nature of this work? Does the placing of the oranges in a pyramid by the artist constitute the work? Or does the work consist in the taking of an individual orange by the viewer? And so, does an exhibit need to be physically made to constitute a work? These questions alter the parameters of aesthetic perception, thus the work is a successful example of how the concerns of sculpture, at the time of its production, were relevant to artistic change and thinking. However, it is also a most striking work for the brightness of the constitutive parts taken together, and for the regularity of the large-scale geometry. The pungent citric aroma, redolent of the childhood stocking-filler associated with this time of year might prove a welcome waft of nostalgia for many visitors.

In the same section we find the exhibit Untitled (1961-62), by Stuart Brisley (b. 1933). This wall-mounted work consists of pieces of dark wood, many of them curved and set in one direction with the effect of a sense of sweeping movement in that direction, mounted on a wooden frame. The sweeping effect is occasionally balanced by other sections of the dark wood, contiguous with the relatively square direction conveyed of the frame. The piece is striking because of the contrast between, on the one hand, the different natures of the apparent direction of movement conveyed by the mounted pieces of wood, and, on the other, the homogeneity of the material used. It is possible that the work will strike the viewer in an irksome, unsettling way because of this contrast, and because the dark wood used is somewhat reminiscent of that used in the construction of furniture.

The second section of the exhibition is Standing. Here, spatial tensions are used to unsettle and challenge the viewer. Two works seemed most remarkable for the unsettling sense of synaesthesia they conveyed, subsisting between the title of the works and the physical manifestation. One was Sir Anthony Caro's (b. 1924) Whispering (1969). Made from (what seemed to be) some sort of heavy metal and painted red, the piece was somewhat reminiscent of a very long thin anchor, precariously leaning against the wall, with the addition, again consistently homogeneous in the use of material, of a sort of long extended spiral of the shape of those used in the distillation of alcoholic spirits. This addition, with the regular undulations of the thin strip when viewed from most angles, seemed to convey the bubbling, breathy scratchiness of the phenomenon implied by the title. And taken together with the general precariousness of the work, this seemed to impart and evoke the annoyance often felt when one hears the sound of whispering without perceiving the detail.

The other work was Maid of Honour (1965) by Garth Evans (b. 1934). Consisting of what seemed to be, two long, thin pyramids arranged vertically, the uppermost point of one meeting and enveloping the other which pointed to the floor, their coupling requiring that both uppermost points were not visible, the work was taller than the average person. Blocks and lines of colour adorned this tall piece. The sense of synaesthesia between the title and the work seems to come from the severity of the sharp lines of what seemed to suggest a formal dress and that of the old-fashioned word 'maid'. The sense of severity also comes from the anonymity – there is certainly no discernible physical, human identity. Perhaps the general sense of severity conveyed is unsettling because it suggests emotional damage and severity of character. The nuptial association compounds this sense.

The third section of United Enemies is Groundwork. This focuses on the ground as a sculptural subject. Bruce McLean's photograph, titled Floataway Piece, Beverley Brook Barnes 1967 (1967) is a depiction of wooden sticks floating in a brook. Monochrome allowed for a starker contrast between the light coloured sticks and the dark waters, which they seem to frame as corpuscles of the natural world, taken collectively as the aggregration of things framed and interrupted.

United Enemies does not claim to be a comprehensive survey of British sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. However, it does convey an illuminating sense of the way things were moving during this period, and acts as an explanation of the convergence of different and varied practices that come under the term sculpture, with which we have contemporary acquaintance.

United Enemies: The Problem of Sculpture in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, 01/12/2011 - 11/03/2012, Henry Moore Institute, The Headrow, Leeds. www.henry-moore.org

United Enemies Events:
Gallery Discussion - 18 January 2012 2-4pm
Film Screening 1: Manual Thinking - 1 February 2012
Film Screening 2: Standing - 8 February 2012
Film Screening 3: Groundwork - 15 February 2012

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, join in!

Caption:
Roelof Louw
Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges) (1967)
6,000 large oranges, timber framework, plastic ground sheet
© Leeds Museums and Galleries (Art Gallery) and the artist

The Best Features from Aesthetica 2011 - In Pictures

2011-12-21T11:56:00.001Z

This year the arts have been subject to a double squeeze – big falls in business contributions to the arts (making the renewal of BP’s sponsorship deal with Tate even more contentious) coupled with the much documented cuts to funding from the public sector, despite this visitor numbers at galleries have remained stable, highlighting that there is still much to celebrate. Three new public galleries have opened to great success: the Hepworth in Wakefield, the Turner Contemporary in Margate, and Firstsite in Colchester, whilst White Cube opened a third space in October. Perhaps in relation to the Turner Prize at Baltic, Nicholas Serota noted an increase in appetite for contemporary art across the country, which should come as no surprise given the quality of exhibitions coming out of galleries at the moment. At Aesthetica, we have spent 2011 doing what we do best, but better. In November, we launched our film festival, ASFF to great success and to top it all off, we extended the current issue of the magazine to include over 100 pages of visual content.

This was a good year. We've racked our brains to choose our favourite exhibitions and features from the magazine in 2011:

Issue 39: February/March
Susan Hiler: The Collective Conscience
The artist who needs no introduction takes over London with a massive retrospective at Tate Modern and new works at Timothy Taylor Gallery.

Read the article for free here.

Issue 40: April/May
A Reaction to Globalised Production: Making is Thinking
15 international artists exhibit at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, in a ground-breaking exhibition exhibition that deciphers new meaning within the difference between making and thinking.

Read the article for free here.

Issue 41: June/July
Transgressing Conventional Boundaries: Bruce Nauman
Kunsthalle Mannheim celebrates Bruce Nauman's 70th birthday with a retrospective examining the artist's fascinating body of work.

Read the article for free here.

Issue 42: August/September
A Survey of the Postmodern: Postmodernism Style and Subversion 1970-1990
With 20 years hindsight, the V&A's autumn blockbuster is the first major show to survey the visual products from the postmodern era.

Read the article for free here.

Issue 43: October/November
Photographic Dialogues
Photophnompenh: 4th Edition, Various Locations
Cambodia, 26 November - 3 December

For the forth consecutive year, PPP will present a programme of 30 exhibitions that aim to increase the dialogue between Europe and Asia. As in previous years, there is no dominant theme to the festival, but a selection of exhibitions that provide a genuine discussion on ideas such as the visual environment of Phnom Penh, its architecture and landscape. In its representation of a broad spectrum of narratives, PPP offers a unique glimpse into contemporary Cambodia and how local and projected modes of artistic production form part of the wider global dialogue.

Buy the issue, or download the article here.

Issue 44: December/January
History In Context: Zarina Bhimji
The first major survey of three decades of Zarina Bhimji's highly emotive work, and the premiere of her new film, Yellow Patch, opens at Whitechapel Gallery, London in January.

Buy the issue, or download the article here.

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Captions:
1. Susan Hiller
Monument 1980-1
Tate © Susan Hiller, 2010. Courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery, London
2. Eva Rothschild, SUPERNATURE, 2008
Courtesy of the artist & The Modern Institute / Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow
Installation photo Witte de With 2011: Bob Goedewaagen
3. Bruce Nauman
Double Poke In The Eye II 1985
Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in Hamburg Bahnhof. Photo by Stefan Altenburger, Zurich.
Courtesy of VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011.
4. Arata Isozaki
Team Disney Building 1989-90
Orlando, Florida.
Photograph by Victoria Slater-Madert
5. Alexander Gronsky
From the series Edge 2008
Courtesy VU'la Galerie, Paris
6. Zarina Bhimji
Your Sadness is Drunk 2001-2006
Ilfochrome Ciba Classic pRINT
Courtesy the artist

Dislocated Flesh | Julien Ottavi & Jenny Pickett | Tenderpixel Gallery | London

2011-12-20T14:57:00.000Z

Text by Bethany Rex

Dislocated Flesh features the work of Julien Ottavi and Jenny Pickett. This new body of work stems from their long term collaboration exploring perception, memory and architecture. Considering physical and virtual space they are intrigued how these phenomenons influence the body, particularly in a post-human construction of society. Aesthetica spoke to Julien and Jenny about their collaborative practice:

A: When did you meet and how long after did you start to work together on your projects?
JP: Julien Ottavi and I met briefly in 2007 at DEAF - the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival. I was collaborating on a tactical media project with the artist Sunshine Frère which involved gifting hacked objects for the purpose of again reconfiguring or recording by peers. One of these objects ended up in the hands of APO33 and Julien Ottavi, we were subsequently invited to participate in ECOS rencontres in Nantes in 2007. Here Julien and I met again and go on like a house on fire. We began to exchange immediately and planning collaborations from early 2008.
JO: We are working all the time together, the ideas and projects that we come across circulate in a fast flow of exchange through practices. Our collaboration started really quickly after we met.

A: Your work explores physical and virtual space in a post-human construction of society. Does this mean that your work focuses on science fiction or the speculation on future developments in science?
JP: There is definitely an element of science fiction and/or technological, scientific futures that arise through the subjects and materials we work with, however as a focus we find the human condition or conditioning vastly complex, historically rich and still relevant to current social and political aesthetics.
JO: The concept of post-human is not only coming from science-fiction, unfortunately we are already post-human. We have somehow re-created a new environment, we are seeing the world through different filters: machines, digital, networked, speed, flying, and so forth. Our bodies have mutated through pollution, ready-made foods, GMO, preservatives, medication, prosthesis, machine parts that let us live longer and much more. The virtual space is already a place that has its own life, where odes, worms, viruses and other avatars "live". Our work questions the "reality" that surrounds us, our future is embedded in the questions we asses in our artistic work.

A: What was the inspiration between Possession, a suspended human scale cocoon-like sound sculpture?
JO: This work has multiple roots but predominantly conjures the sense of an "in between" state of being. The cocoon is a form potentially containing all the others forms, it’s a representation of what is coming, it’s a gate between our past and our future through an instant (the flash), it is also a digestive system that transform one thing into another state. Possession is this state of becoming that goes beyond our inherent condition.
JP: The form, materials, sound and flashes of Possession could be read on a number of different ways and produce various narratives from protection, transformation, desire, aspirations and emergence. Our inspiration comes from a marriage of retinal traces, intestinal echoes and nature as we try to uncover or discover a transition, prolong an instant or discharge a reflection.

A: What experience do you hope this will create for the viewer?
JO: In Possession, there is an intense flash that almost blinds the viewer so quickly that he doesn’t know what happening, he is attracted and is slightly afraid. The cocoon represents a hidden side of our psychology. It is also a beautiful sculpture hanging in the gallery, as mystery that suddenly hatched.
JP: Possession is a large looming and tactile object in the Tenderpixel Gallery’s modest space. The sound is quiet yet intense and may cause some people to feel uncomfortable in the space, but it can also draw the viewer in to listen more closely. Then there is the light and the overall experience is perhaps perplexing but we would hope for visitors to spend a little time to contemplate this work, its ideas and meanings.

A: Moving on to the other work in the exhibition. Could you talk us through this?
JO: Radotage is a piece that brings the obsession of being in a loop, all those wigs turning endlessly, scratching the surface of a cymbal. It creates a space for listening that is both minimalist sound and repetitive visually creating a worrying strangeness.
JP: Radotage has a haunting appeal to it both sonically and visually. The piece is a reflection on aging, narrative memory and entrenched loops. Loosely translated Radotage means drivel. On another level Radotage plays with ideas of composing with these repetitive behaviours, live sampling and importantly the disturbances and difference.

A: What exhibitions are you looking forward to seeing in the coming months?
JP: I would like to catch the Anselm Kiefer show at White Cube (9 December 2011 - 26 February 2012) and Elsa Tomkowiak at Le FRAC (Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain des Pays de la Loire) in Nantes (19 November 2011 - 22 January 2012).
JO: For me it's Memories of The Future, the Olbricht Collection (22 October 2011 - 15 January 2012) at La Maison Rouge, Paris.

A: Finally, what projects can we look forward to from you in the future?
JO: For the coming year, we are preparing a couple of projects, residencies for the spring but nothing is official for the moment. We are also working with videos/film and one of our films will be shown in March 2012 at Experimental Intermedia in New York City. In addition we have lots of performances coming up: Subtecture, Great Steaming Orchestra, Block2030, Apo33, amongst others.
JP: In addition to our personal practice we are working on different projects with our Association APO33: Open Sound Group is a European sound art network with artist run organisations from seven countries: Modus (UK), Live!iXem (Italy), Granular (Portugal), Audiolab Arteleku (Spain), Piksel (Norway), NK (Germany) and APO33 (France). We will also be working with Upstage, a virtual stage (online) along with other European partners we are collaborating on realising a new updated version of this platform which has been producing an annual online festival since 2007 for Live Networked Performances.

Dislocated Flesh by Julien Ottavi and Jenny Pickett, 02/12/2011 - 22/12/2011, Tenderpixel Gallery, 10 Cecil Court, London, WC2N 4HE. www.tenderpixel.com

noiser.org
jennypickett.co.uk

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Caption:
Courtesy the artist

Stretching the Physical Limitations of Art | Mark Handforth: Rolling Stop | MOCA | North Miami

2011-12-19T16:16:00.000Z

Text by Heike Wollenweber

Mark Handforth’s (b. 1969) Rolling Stop opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, for Art Basel Miami Beach. Curated by MOCA Executive Director Bonnie Clearwater, the exhibit of 25 works marks a major milestone for Handforth, MOCA and the Miami art landscape, as the Miami based sculptor rarely actually shows his work in Miami. The exhibition stretches the physical boundaries of Art Basel by showing in North Miami as opposed to Miami Beach, relating back nicely to Handforth's stretching of the physical limitations and space of art in his practice.

Born in Hong Kong, raised in England and schooled in Germany, Handforth chose to relocate to Miami in 1992 and has become part of its dynamic art scene. He understands the intrinsic functions and motions of city life, whether based on the past as in European cities or focused on the future as in the US metropolis. Handforth knows the Miami prior to the glamour that Art Basel brought and his intimate relationship with the original grittiness of the city feeds his work. His large sculptures and light fixtures are designed to be interpreted with a sense of humour as he changes the size and shapes or otherwise distorts everyday objects to make them visible and elevate what we see daily above a state of obscurity. Handforth was the first Miami artist to receive a solo show at the Joan Lehman Building of MOCA in March 1996. Rolling Stop coincides with the museum's celebration of its 15th anniversary in its current Joan Lehman Building. Since 1996, Handforth has received major international recognition and has emerged as an important role model for Miami artists, his work being exhibited at The Modern Institute (Glasgow), Galerie Almine Rech (Paris), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The grandeur of the metropolis is mirrored in Handforth’s work. The physical aspect is reflected very literally in the often enormous size of the sculptures but Rolling Stop also continues Handforth’ urban discourse. He engages the viewer into a conversation with every day objects by making them larger than life, altering them to create something new rather than a depiction of something that already was. Handforth adds another dimension by placing these huge street signs, lamp posts or a gigantic wire hanger next to sculptures of stars, moons and light fixtures reminiscent of the cosmos.

Upon entering the exhibit one is first struck by its enormity and a feeling of having walked into a chapter of Gulliver‘s Travels. The second sensation is of being surrounded by light, fluorescent light and candle light, illuminating the exhibit in an almost surreal manner. After a few moments the eyes adjust and the shadows change the look of every sculpture in the room as the light makes the darkness visible. The main source of the light is Eclipse (2003), a light fixture of 100 fluorescent bulbs, practically exploding across 100ft of MOCA’s walls. Inspired by William Blake as well as Miami’s ubiquitous neon signs, it is an example of how Handforth combines personal experiences and influences of various geographical spaces into one work of art that is then no longer limited by any geographical or cultural boundary.

The Eclipse illuminates especially the Silver Wishbone (2010), a very prominent sculpture reminiscent of an ancient archaeological relic. Other light sources are Syd Barrett (2006), a trash can with tree branches and fluorescent tubes, as well as Vespa (2001), which occupies a niche by itself. The blue old-school scooter is covered in candle wax of every colour of the rainbow. The burning candles cover the piece in dripping lines of green, purple, yellow, blue and red and thereby alter the art continuously. Handforth himself sees his art as a never-finished process, open to change, ever moving and evolving. Ironically, the Vespa cannot move in its intended way as the wheels are immobile casts. The flickering of the candle light and the dripping wax is what keeps the art in continuous flux just like Rome, the city hat inspired Vespa.

Handforth takes his art beyond the expected and literally, beyond the intended space. He wants to see his work outdoors and part of the public space. For Rolling Stop the artist goes beyond the museum walls of MOCA with Herbal Hill (1998) in the museum courtyard, Electric Tree (1998-2011), a giant banyan tree in North Miami’s Griffing Park and the pink neon Weeping Moon (2010), a pink neon sign billboard in the Wynwood Arts District. Handforth’s choice of utilizing public space adds an additional layer of realism as well as an organic quality. The art becomes part of the ever changing environment and is shaped by its surroundings as much as it alters the space it inhabits. The art becomes part of a public domain and is no longer reserved to any elite. Without the limitations the art is no longer confined to being art.

Rolling Stop is an innovative exhibition of Mark Handforth’s works between 1996 and 2011. It brings his work to a rolling stop in the city that shapes his vision while he participates in the shaping of the city and its extraordinarily vibrant art scene.

Mark Handforth Rolling Stop, 11/29/2011 - 02/19/2012, MOCA, North Miami. www.mocanomi.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Captions:
1. Foreground: LampostSnake, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York.
Midground left: Blue Hanger, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York.
Midground right: Slow, 2005. Collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, Promised gift of Gayle and Paul Stoffel.
Background: Eclipse, 2003. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York.
2. Foreground: Silver Wishbone, 2010. Collection of the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY.
Background: Eclipse, 2003. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York.

Aesthetica Wish List 2011

2011-12-19T15:30:00.000Z

The Aesthetica Wish List 2011 offers interesting and creative options for your 'To Buy' list.

Michelle Oh ‘Twig Solitaire Ring’

Michelle Oh is an Indonesian designer and maker based in London. She trained in Jewellery Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and makes the most exquisite pieces. Her work is inspired by the commonplace and the everyday; the relationships we forge with others as well as our own environments. The whole collection is beautiful but we are particularly hoping to find the Twig Solitaire Ring under the tree. Cast from a real twig, this piece highlights Michelle’s interest in organic sources and challenging concepts of luxury.

www.michelle-oh.com

Stack Subscription

Stack is a unique service that brings together the best independent English language magazines from around the world and delivers them directly to your home. If you’re not sure which magazine they read, then this is the perfect failsafe gift. Beautifully made and offering an intelligent alternative view of films, music, art and whatever else crosses their pages, guaranteeing a fresh perspective on the world.

www.stackmagazines.com

The Nest Learning Thermostat

The highly anticipated next move of iPod designer Tony Fadell came, perhaps surprisingly, in the form of a thermostat. The Nest Learning Thermostat programs itself to keep you comfortable and manage your home’s energy use. You can also control the beautiful dial online or from your mobile device. This is truly one of the most interesting home designs of the year.

www.nest.co.uk

MAC X Iris Apfel

At the wonderful age of 90, Iris Apfel’s style influence has come full circle. The American interior design is the subject of cosmetic powerhouse MAC’s latest creative pursuit – a limited edition make-up collection inspired by the ineffable icon. Known for her uncanny ability to mix textures, materials and prints, Apfel’s eponymous colour collection is equally as varied and includes vibrant offerings like a matt teal eyeshadow named Robin’s Egg – definitely not for the faint-hearted.

www.maccosmetics.co.uk

Stella Mccartney ‘Hawaiian-print Top’

This might be a bit last season, but Stella McCartney’s Hawaiian prints are the perfect way to show the world that you won’t be kept down by the January blues. If you can’t quite stretch to these fabulous pieces then you might be able to find something similar in your Dad’s wardrobe.

www.net-a-porter.com

Roberts Bespoke Bike

There is a revival of interest in hand built, bespoke steel frames, which offer unrivalled comfort and durability. Britain still has a wealth of expert frame builders. Roberts, based in Croydon, has a very wide range of styles and options, and reasonable prices. We might just enjoy cycling on one of these.

www.robertscycles.com

Elin Høyland – The Brothers

Norwegian photographer Elin Høyland has captured a moment in time. Fascinated by two brothers, Harald and Mathias Ramen living in rural Norway, she photographed them, documented a way of life that is all but on the brink of extinction. This book is emotive and Harald and Mathias’ story is moving. Shot with sensitivity and realism – the narrative is gripping.

www.elinhoyland.com

Debut Contemporary x Agnetha Sjogren ‘Linea’

The Linea dog is built using original prints from a book printed in 1920 with an introduction by the Swedish professor Carl von Linné. The names of the flowers are in Latin and their very first classifications came from Linné. By making reference to Linné and the original nomenclature he awarded to all flora Sjögren reminds us that although cultural heritage is bound by time and place it has allowed ideas to be transferred the world over by breaking the boundaries of geography and language.

www.culturelabel.com

The Aesthetica Creative Package

What’s not to love about this? This is the ultimate creative package. Inspirational and elegant, this includes our beautiful new anthology of artwork from artists across the world, a book of collective writing to stimulate your imagination, and a stunning DVD of films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival. On top of all this you also receive a 12 month subscription to Aesthetica, bringing you six issues packed full with the best in contemporary art and culture across the year.

www.aestheticamagazine.com

Louis Vuitton ‘Drawer Box Collections’

Louis Vuitton is of course famous for its associations with travel. This month, the house releases a portfolio of its most iconic travel photographs, shot by the artist Jean Larivière, who, for the past 30 years, has travelled the globe for the house’s Spirit of Travel advertising campaigns, capturing dawn-lit landscapes in destinations such as Patagonia, Thailand, Nepal and Yemem. Just 50 of the drawer box collections have been produced, comprising three sets of unpublished pencil drawings and 20 black and white photographers printed on pure white cotton.

www.louisvuitton.com

2011 Royal Mail Year Book

It’s not yet become cool to collect stamps, but give it a couple of years and philately may just become the activity du jour. Along with a whole year’s Special Stamps, this book includes contributions by experts relating to the Special Stamp issues, which this year include the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with an exclusive interview with Seb Coe and an item from Melvyn Bragg on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, as celebrated in this year’s Christmas stamps. This is all good stuff, but the best thing about this collection is that it also includes a pack featuring every single stamp so you can not only look at the stamps, but use them as well. No excuses not to send Thank You cards this year.

www.royalmail.com

The English Caravan Company ‘Vintage Style Caravan’

This teardrop shaped classic caravan is inspired by the original caravan designs of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The Tilly caravan is the first of three innovative retro designs from The English Caravan Company, all of which are individually hand built in England, combining traditional workmanship and skills with state of the art materials and contemporary design to create a caravan for today.

www.coggles.com

The Language of Television| Dara Birnbaum | South London Gallery

2011-12-16T10:01:00.000Z

Text by Paul Hardman

The main room of the South London Gallery is entirely taken up by Birnbaum's latest piece, Arabesque (2011). Before even entering the room, the gently ebbing and flowing piano of Robert Schumann's composition Arabesque Opus 18 reaches out to draw one into the space. Long benches face four screens, the furthest into the room shows video footage of a female pianist playing the music, the rest of the screens alternate between showing others playing the same piece (apparently various amateurs found on YouTube), text pages from a book, and black and white stills from an old film depicting a young woman and an older man conversing in a living room. Subtitles occasionally appear, perhaps from the book, perhaps from the film. A visitor will sit, observe the screens, listen to the soothing piano, and contemplate the text and images while considering the meaning the artist has constructed through this combination of elements. All quite pleasant, but this experience could hardly be in greater contrast to viewing the early film work from Birnbaum's career on display in the upstairs gallery.

Arabesque continues some of the main preoccupations of Birnbaum's ouvre – a fascination with media, (previously television in particular, and in this new work the phenomena of YouTube), and a focus on the representation of women in media. Perhaps her most celebrated piece, subject of a One Work book published by Afterall, is Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-79) a pre-VCR re-edit of clips from the television series showing Wonder Woman spinning, transforming, deflecting bullets. It is exemplary of her work, which asks questions about the possibilities of female empowerment – Wonder Woman only becomes empowered by becoming a hyper sexualised exaggerated male fantasy, but Birnbaum unsettles this simple reading by seemingly reveling in the transformation.

Arabesque approaches the subject of genre equality by bringing Clara Schumann's story to the foreground with the inclusion of both the stills from the film, Song of Love (1947) – based on the relationship between Robert Schumann and his wife Clara – and the text, which is from Clara's diary. Clara cared for Schumann throughout his troubled periods (he suffered from depression and even madness) and raised their eight children. She too composed music of great quality, but as the female in the relationship it seems that Robert's work would alway be given priority and prominence. The story is compelling, the issue pertinent, but there is a danger that the format of the installation is too pleasant, perhaps it soothes rather than challenges.

The curators have paired Birnbbaum's newest work with some of her oldest – the exhibition includes several of her first films and installations. Six Movements (1975) consists of six films shown simultaneously in a small room, in two rows facing each other. Here there is no possibility of calm and pleasant contemplation. Each film deliberately frustrates through a variety of strategies, and a viewer cannot watch any film without the sight of at least one other in the peripheral vision, and the sound of all six at all times. The sounds that dominate and therefore draw the attention initially come from Addendum: Autism. A young Birnbaum rocks on her haunches, staring out of the screen, straight-faced, intense, panting, disturbing. The two other screens in the same row are shot in the same grainy black and white video footage and show Birnbaum manipulating a chair, scraping it along the floor, adjusting it, sprawling on it. These two films are Chaired Anxieties: Slewed and Chaired Anxieties: Abandoned. A play on the phrase 'shared anxieties', these films are tense to watch and do indeed have a feeling of anxiety which one will share with the artist. The other three films in this room also contain performances of one kind or another as Birnbaum creates tricks through repetition, mirrors and projections creating sequences that further explore the possibilities of performer / camera / viewer.

These films reveal a link to the generation of artists just preceding Birnbaum, the conceptual, performance and body artists of the mid to late sixties, and in another of her works on display here, Attack Piece (1975) it is possible to spot Dan Graham who is one of several artists in the installation's film. This is one of the earliest examples of Birnbaum's work with moving image, and again contains her central themes of gender and media. She is the only female in the film (the installation consists of two projections, a film and still photographs). She sits in a static position while circled by the male artists who take turns filming her in such a way that making an image becomes a form of aggression.

Birnbaum has consistently found ways to investigate the moving image and problemetise it over her long and undersung career. Her body of work more than bears revisiting as we move into a situation where the image, and particularly the simulation possible in the moving image, becomes ever more inescapable. It is encouraging that she has begun to turn her attention to the phenomena of the internet and the new psychological spaces it is creating. The pianists in Arabesque repeat Schumann's composition, and attain some kind of affirmation by uploading their performances to the internet, but each achievement in perhaps lessened and nullified by the presence of the others. Is each performance of Schumann's Arabesque a missed opportunity in which one of Clara Schumann's compositions could have been played, redressing the balance between them? It is not obvious where Birnbaum is going with her new investigations, one can only hope she continues with as much curiosity and originality and continues to 'talk back to the media' for the rest of her already long career. Arabesque has a scale and depth that makes it imperative to visit, but it is the formative films that really give this exhibition its depth. The exhibiton also includes Everything's gonna be... (1976) and Liberty: A Dozen or So Views (1976). Perhaps this exhibition could bring one of our other galleries to consider a much needed full retrospective of this influential and highly relevant artist.

Dara Birnbaum, 09/12/2011 - 12/02/2012, South London Gallery, Peckham Road, London. www.southlondongallery.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Captions:
Dara Birnbaum
Arabesque, 2011
Four channel video installation, four stero audio, 6' 30"
Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York - Paris
Photo: John Berens

Paloma Varga Weisz | Spirits of my Flesh | Chapter Gallery | Cardiff

2011-12-15T11:23:00.000Z

Text by Luke Healey

Taking its place in Chapter’s 2011 roll call directly after Resident (30/10/11 – 06/11/11), WITH Collective’s über-conceptual Autumn show, Paloma Varga Weisz’s solo outing at the Cardiff gallery is a difficult one to approach. The former exhibition had seen the café extended into the gallery space, but with the latter the habitual reverent hush has returned. Now, nine ceramic objects and one somewhat anomalous watercolour sit (or perch) in vast pools of white space, each one looking heavy, mute and sullen. In a text accompanying the artist’s 2007 show at Vienna’s Kunsthalle, Angela Stief wrote of Varga Weisz’s work, that “it requires the classical, pre-modern conditions of observation and feeling, of contemplation of the opening up of the works of art and an atmosphere of stillness”. Her advice is appropriate, and there seem to be few alternatives in confronting this artist’s output. But what are we to expect from opening ourselves up in this way?

A great deal of affect, for sure. The surfaces of Varga Weisz’s ceramics seem to smoulder with angst. This is as much an observation of the artist’s rough approach to moulding and glazing her clay as it is a figurative assessment: with the exception of Volcano (2011), Varga Weisz’s subjects are all human, and the haunting effect of such an evocation of roughshod, damaged flesh cannot be easily ignored. A degree of cathexis may well have intruded here – while attempting to find a way into these sculptures I was simultaneously negotiating an agonising toothache. But the effect of Varga Weisz’s work seems equally dependent upon canonical iconographies of suffering: Kneeling (2011) carries the melancholy charge of monumental dedications to the war-widowed, a trope which itself casts its memory back to medieval depictions of the bereaved Virgin Mary. The palimpsest of history and its representations seems to speak through the soot-black glaze that covers this figure’s face, from which her eyes, nose and mouth are eerily picked out in white.

It is significant that this figure is positioned in such a way that we are forced to look down on it. Throughout this show, the craning of the viewer’s neck is repeatedly milked for emotive effect. The contemporary comes flooding in to Varga Weisz’s otherwise stolidly traditional practice with this gambit, for it implies an engagement with works as conceived from the vantage point of a curator. What looks at first glance like a series of passive, autonomous, craft objects opens out onto a more experiential plane: hung high up on the back wall of the main space, the platinum-coated Father, Young (2011) reads like a frustrated, childish interpretation of parental megalomania; while the air around Mother (2011) crackles with a charge of profound alienation, the sort that can only be experienced while looking down upon the person that gave one life as she lies, prostrate, vulnerable, and surrounded by childish wallpaper patterns. Walking round Spirits of my Flesh is like being sucked into the artist’s own psycho-biographical vortex, and it is to Varga Weisz’s credit that she has worked this degree of affect from a subtle tweaking of the white cube’s normative display model.

It is also to the artist’s credit that this psycho-biographical vortex never becomes banal, a common pitfall after more than a century of psychoanalysis. Even with knowledge of Freud’s theorisation of the Elektra Complex and its attendant anxieties in mind, the disembodied-head-in-a-pail that is simply titled Father (2010) is still a powerfully strange object to confront. This may or may not have everything to do with a suggestion that, once again, the traditionalist Varga Weisz is subtly opening the floodgates to contemporary discourses: looking down into this work lucidly evokes the famous scene from the 1995 thriller Seven, directed by David Fincher, in which a box revealed through reactions and dialogue to contain a severed head triggers the film’s denouement.

If there seems to be an imperative in this review to glean aspects from Spirits of my Flesh that situate Varga Weisz’s work within identifiably contemporary concerns, then that should point to what is so prickly about viewing the works on show here. It is easy, and somewhat entertaining, to pull apart Varga Weisz’s traditionally executed works for their art-historical associations – here a Fontana or a Giacometti; there a Rodin and a Grünewald. This somewhat melancholy exercise in referential relativism – one inevitably turns here to the artist’s compatriot, Gerhard Richter – is what might seem to be the determining factor in Varga Weisz’s formal preoccupations, but only at first glance. Neither can her historical reiterations be tied down to the mere spectacular appeal of anachronism. Rather, the historically rich but contemporarily devalued materials from which the artist creates her sculptures suggest an exercise in trans-generational contact that is entirely in tandem with her choice in subject matter.

This affective dialogue with previous – but not lost – generations seems emblematic of a movement within the art world as a whole, into which might also fit Dominik Lang’s installation for the Czech and Slovak Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, where the artist displayed sculptures realised by his father in Eastern Europe’s heyday of Modernism; and Becky Beasley’s 2009 work Brocken, a hinged wooden sculpture whose dimensions are based upon the arm span of her own father. These artists may in fact be illustrating a prediction made by Benjamin Buchloh in 1998, that an era in which all forms of material practice have been more or less equally devalued might prompt among artists, “a more conciliatory approach to the continuing viability of the genres”, and “more moderate claims concerning the social consequences of artistic strategies at large”. It is the jarring tension between the hospitability of Varga Weisz’s works to both the recent and the distant past, and the disorienting personal affect that pours out of it, that makes spending time with this artist such a vital proposition.

Paloma Varga Weisz: Spirits of my Flesh, 25/11/2011 - 04/01/2012, Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, Market Road, Cardiff. www.chapter.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Captions:
Paloma Varga Weisz, Installation at Chapter
Paloma Varga Weisz, Mother, 2011. Glazed ceramic and installation
Paloma Varga Weisz, Mother, 2011. Glazed ceramic and installation
All images taken by Phil Babot and courtesy of Chapter.

A Peep Through The Looking Glass | Alice in Wonderland | Tate Liverpool

2011-12-14T16:49:00.000Z

Text by Liz Buckley

Since their original publication in 1865, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have had an unprecedented influence on the visual arts. Charles Dodgson, working under the pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, created a kind of dream world that can be appreciated by both children and adults alike. Exploring themes of the uncanny, unexpected, irrational, absurd and fantastical, the story of Alice is one that we all know and love. Tate Liverpool’s current show, Alice in Wonderland, offers visitors everything from original manuscripts, sketches, photographs and memorabilia, to both traditional and contemporary painting, sculpture, and video responses to the Alice adventures. The pieces on show in this exhibit explore various ideas such as the temporary nature of time, the precariousness of childhood, the impact of the written word upon visual culture and issues of identity. As a collective, these works highlight the more sophisticated themes which, even as children’s books, the Alice stories still present.

This exhibition displays an exciting range of media which explore themes that have arisen from the Alice stories. Jason Rhoades’ playful neon lights which hang from the ceiling are colourful and stimulating, and portray how the written word still influences contemporary art. Whimsical pieces such as Mel Bochner's, Measurement: Eye-level Perimeter (Ask Alice)(1969/2011) takes the form of a black line marking 9 feet around the top of the exhibition’s first room, signifying the exact height which Alice grows to after consuming the contents of the ‘Drink Me’ bottle at the beginning of the book, which shows that the Alice stories are continuing to inspire fun and thought-provoking artwork, which can make all ages reminiscent of fairytales they have once enjoyed.

As many know, the tales of Alice were of course inspired by a real little girl named Alice Liddell, the daughter of one of Carroll’s good friends. In this exhibit visitors are treated to a whole host of photographs by both Carroll and other artists, of Alice and her sisters, ranging from when they were little girls up until their late teens. Carroll felt that childhood was so precious and short that he tried to preserve it using photography and story writing. As well as photographs of the real Alice, this exhibition also showcases many original manuscripts and sketches from the Alice adventures, as well as some of Lewis Carroll’s diaries and famous drawings by Sir John Tenniel.

In 1907, the copyright for the Alice stories ran out, allowing the public sphere to positively run wild with it. Innumerable other illustrated editions of the story were published and in a wide variety of languages, many of which are on show in this exhibit. Alongside these are fascinating cabinets of curiosities, containing early Alice memorabilia such as painted wooden figures, card games, lantern slides and crockery. This extensive and impressive collection shows visitors just a snapshot of how Alice became a worldwide phenomenon.

Many well known Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and Roland Penrose were inspired by the Wonderland adventures. Surrealism took great influence from Carroll’s Alice books, and the British Surrealist Group of 1936 were even dubbed the 'Children of Alice'. With the use of such vivid and odd imagery one can see clearly how Surrealism and Carroll’s dream world tie together. A particular highlight of this exhibition is Dali’s 12 illustrations for Alice in Wonderland. His famous melting clocks and ‘crutches of reality’ can of course be seen within the drawings, relating perfectly to the relativity of time and space in Wonderland.

Even by the 1960s, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were still having an impact on visual culture. Part of this exhibition is dedicated to the way Carroll’s stories influenced the more psychedelic art of the era, bringing to light the ‘alternative experiences’ that came with drug culture, as well as questions of identity, and our perceptions of immediate reality. Here one can see the work of John Wesley, Paul Laffoley and Peter Blake amongst others.

There are additionally many video installations to be found relating to the Alice adventures, ranging from original silent film clips by Cecil Hepworth, Magritte and even Walt Disney, to contemporary video responses from Diana Thater, Gary Hill, and Douglas Gordon to name a few. These explore themes such as time, mirrors, double perceptions, space and more, putting a modern twist on the connotations of Wonderland.

It is clear from the sheer amount of paintings, illustrations, photographs, sculptures, installations, videos, and memorabilia in this exhibition that Alice has had a significant impact on visual culture from the word go. Alice’s whimsical adventures with talking cats, mad hatters and stones that turn into cakes have certainly made children and adults alike a little less sceptical of falling down the rabbit hole. As a story that can be enjoyed by all ages, Carroll has created an alternative reality to which, even well over a century later, one still enjoys escaping to, and the Tate Liverpool has celebrated it perfectly.

Alice in Wonderland, 04/11/2011 - 29/01/2012, Tate Liverpool, Albert Dock Liverpool. www.tate.org.uk/liverpool.

Aesthetica's December/January issue includes an interview with the curator of the exhibition, Christoph Benjamin Schulz. Pick up a copy in one of our stockists or order one here.

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Captions:
1. Jason Rhoades Tate Touche from My Madinah: in pursuit of my ermitage (2004). Courtesy The Estate of Jason Rhoades
2. Torsten Lauschmann Digital Clock (Growing Zeros) (2010). Copyright Torsten Lauschmann. Courtesy of Mary Mary Glasgow
3. Anna Gaskell Untitled #5 (Wonder) (1996). Courtesy of Yvon Lambert Gallery

Things Which Come Together & Then Fall Apart | Martin Boyce Wins The Turner Prize 2011

2011-12-14T10:11:00.001Z

Text by Colin Herd

When Mario Testino announced Glasgow-based Martin Boyce as the winner of this year’s Turner Prize at the Baltic last Monday night, he accepted the award with modesty to the point of bashfulness: “Uh, well,” he said, “I didn’t expect that”, before going on to dedicate his prize to the importance of teachers and education. His reaction reflects a quiet generosity (as well as a sense of modest unexpected surprise) that is ever present in his art practice, which Tate-director Nicholas Serota has praised for the way it explores “things which come together and then fall apart”.

Boyce won the prize for an installation that was originally exhibited this year at the Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, and which built on the work that he showed at the Scottish pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. Do Words Have Voices (2011), the sculptural installation at the centre of the room, is a hauntingly thoughtful piece that evokes an urban, autumnal and distinctly Modernist atmosphere. A ceiling-based sculpture of angular white aluminium fans suggesting a shady canopy that, combined with the concrete structural pillars in the space, creates a sense of a concrete tree looming and sheltering above. The room is remarkably peaceful and quiet, the light refracted to a dapple by the aluminium leaves above. Boyce’s sculpture references a design for a Modernist garden from 1925, including four cubist concrete trees, by the French sculptors and designers Jan and Joël Martel, made for the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris . On the floor, scattered around the room, are delicate papery geometric forms the colour of toast, like autumn leaves.

The different sculptural elements in Boyce’s installation exist in curious counterpoint and balance to one another. The attention is drawn as much to the atmosphere created, the spaces between the works and the conversation between different elements as the individual pieces themselves. You find yourself threading carefully past his paper leaves for anxiety they could sweep up in your wake. Perforated and Porous (Northern Leaves) (2011) is a red metal sculpture, slanted like a parallelogram with a lattice pattern. Inside the sculpture is a grey soiled rag of a jumper, as if a ‘hollowman’ has got his head stuck at the base. This piece has prompted the usual criticism from Turner-phobes, who have christened it the ‘wonky bin’, but it is in fact a decidedly subtle and evocative work. It manages to appear both mangled, like something you’d just stumble across in an abandoned play- park, and fresh-off-a-Modernist-designer’s-pen, like something from Charles and Ray Eames, or Danish master furniture-designer and architect Arne Jacobsen. The forms in the lattice of the bin also evoke the angular lexical shapes in the Martel twins’ concrete trees, a motif that is also picked up in one of the most easy-to-overlook aspects of Boyce’s subtle installation, the grilles he’s designed for the air vents in his gallery of the Baltic’s third floor. Elegant and simple, these geometric white panels wouldn’t look out of place in the lounge of an art-deco hotel or ocean liner, but they also have the strange edgy geometric quality generated from Boyce’s recasting of the Martels’ trees.

Boyce has been creating work from these concrete trees since he first encountered a photograph of them in Berlin in 2005, where he shared a studio with Simon Starling, another Glasgow School of Art graduate to have won the Turner prize. On seeing the photograph in a book, Boyce began making series of patterned drawings based on their shapes. Gradually, these drawings developed into lexical forms and he began developing typographic pieces using the slanty geometric lettering devised from the drawings. A piece called No Brilliantly Coloured Birds created for his No Reflections show at Venice 2009 features the phrase from the title text on a wooden bird box. The letters have the appearance of tumbling to the ground, some upside down, some on their sides etc, and they require considerable effort in deciphering what’s a “t” and what’s a “y”. In the Turner Prize exhibition, this typographical work has developed into a large concrete wall panel created from the process of ‘shuttered concrete’, i.e. concrete that is set in a frame of wood so that it retains the grain when the frame is removed. It gives the pane the disquieting appearance of wall-mounted concrete floor-boards. The same Martel-inspired tumbling script spells out “petrified songs”, possibly in reference to the birds from the earlier piece.

One of the most compelling aspects of his Turner Prize exhibition is the way the environment Boyce has created feels both “inside” and “outside” at once. Both like a landscape and an interior scene. Boyce has long shown an interest in architectural space, particularly with reference to twentieth century Modernist architecture and design. His 2002 exhibition For 1959 Capital Avenue in the foyer of the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, constructed an interior space of a fictional address in the USA, drawing on and subtly altering designs by architect R.M. Schindler and Mies Van Der Rohe. The date in the house number connects Boyce’s project to the way that the cultural significance of these pieces of furniture alters over time; what once were relatively affordable and readily available become treasures of private collectors, as suggested by the exhibition’s loaded street-name. Constructed as it was in a foyer, (which itself seems a critique on the capital attributed to modern art, its transition from the up-market apartment-block foyer to the museum floor) the exhibition seemed on the cusp of being outside and inside, an effect compounded by the utopian quotation from Mies van der Rohe that Boyce had printed around the walls of the space: “punching through the clouds”.

Boyce’s work manages to capture some of this utopian vision and filter it (through an intricate critique) into a peaceful and compelling architectural environment, the spaces between the sculptural objects in his installation seeming as if they’re pulling away from each other in perfect tension. Ilfracombe-based painter George Shaw may have been the popular choice for this year’s Turner Prize with his highly detailed enamel landscapes of the Coventry estate where he grew up, but to my mind, Boyce’s exploration of our engagement with architectural space is far subtler, and more magical.

The Turner Prize 2011, Baltic, Gateshead, 21/10/2011 - 15/01/2012

balticmill.com
tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Caption:
Martin Boyce
Turner Prize 2011 Installation view
BALTIC presents Turner Prize 2011
© BALTIC & the artist
Photo: Colin Davison

40:40 - Forty Objects For Forty Years | Craft Council Online Exhibition Launches Today

2011-12-13T14:06:00.000Z

The Craft Council celebrates 40 years of the Crafts Council Collection with a major online exhibition 40:40 - forty objects for forty years that launches today. It's an innovative concept, with forty objects from the Collection, selected by makers, writers and curators, presented with a personal response from their selector alongside a range of archive material including exhibition catalogue texts, films, audio clips, sketches, press articles, loan correspondence and installation instructions. Essentially, by installing the exhibition online, the viewer is encourages to do all those things you promote yourself you're going to do after you've seen a gallery exhibition - read a bit more about the artist, their work, what people are saying about them, and critical responses to the work.

There are pieces by some of the most important makers of contemporary craft from the last 40 years, including Fred Baier's Star Wars Chair (1978), a small yellow bowl by legendary potter Lucie Rie (1983), pioneering jewellery by David Watkins (1983), Caroline Broadhead's Wobbly Dress (1990), Grayson Perry's anarchic Mad Kid's Bedroom Wall Pot (1996), Toord Boontje's Wednesday Light (2001) and Arcady (2007) by Edmund de Waal.

Our favourites are listed below, but given that it's only a click away, we recommend you take a look for yourself.

Laura Potter Cliché (1997):
Cliché is a bottle of tiny silver sheep to be taken out and counted at bedtime. Exquisite.

El Ultimo Grito (Rosario Hurtado & Roberto Feo) Miss Ramirez Chair (2006):
The Miss Ramirez Chair is named after the Spanish-speaking bar owner in the 1952 Western High Noon. Husband and wife partnership, El Ultimo Grito's work questions our relationships with objects and culture, exploring them across disciplines in projects ranging from interiors to graphics. Playful and humorous.

Grayson Perry Mad Kid's Bedroom Wall Pot (1996):
Grayson Perry was never motivated by a desire to work in clay as such, but chose pottery because studio ceramics was in thrall to a formal idea. Perry challenges the idea, implicit in the craft tradition, that pottery is merely decorative or utilitarian and cannot express ideas. Deeply psychological.

Maria Militsi Ballet To Remember (2009):
Ballet to Remember is a collection of 11 pieces choreographed by Felicity and Edna Dean's book published in 1944 demonstrating a variety of ballet poses. Militsi's series reassesses the object's function by filling their empty space with precious metals.

Michael Eden Wedgwoodn't Tureen (2010):
Playfully entitled Wedgwoodn't Tureen, this reinterpretation of a classic Josiah Wedgwood pottery is a strong example of the successful fusion of traditional craft skills with digital technology in the Crafts Council Collection. Designed using a rapid manufacturing machine, which prints in three dimensions from a digital file, the sheer beauty of this piece belies its wit and historical resonance. Truly striking.

40:40 - Forty Objects For Forty Years, www.4040.org.uk & www.craftscouncil.org.uk

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Captions:
1. Laura Potter Cliché (1997). Image courtesy of Nick Moss.
2. El Ultimo Grito (Rosario Hurtado & Roberto Feo) Miss Ramirez Chair (2006). Image courtesy of Heini Schneebeli
3. Grayson Perry Mad Kid's Bedroom Wall Pot (1996. Image courtesy of Nick Moss.
4. Maria Militsi Ballet To Remember (2009). Image courtesy of Nick Moss.
5. Michael Eden Wedgwoodn't Tureen (2010.Image courtesy of Nick Moss.

Two New Collections From Aesthetica | Artists and Writers

2011-12-09T12:16:00.001Z

At Aesthetica we encourage creativity and innovation, fostering artists and writers through the Aesthetica Creative Works Competition. This year’s competition saw a fantastic response from across the world and the calibre of work presented to Aesthetica was superb.

We’ve compiled the finalists and winners from the competition into two excellent collections: the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual and the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual.

The Aesthetica Creative Works Annual is a stimulating anthology of new works that explore contemporary artistic practice, bringing together 75 artists who represent contemporary visual culture across a range of media.

Artists from across the world are presented in this collection, and through this international representation it’s possible to see works that are being produced today in different contexts; yet several of these works, although diverse in medium, explore related ideas. Many of the overriding themes are centred on identity, location, economy, 21st century alienation, politics and globalisation.

The works in this collection fuse the personal with the global and unite to communicate a wider message about the world in which we live.

Inside the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual you will find short fiction and poetry that will stimulate your imagination and inspire you long after reading.

Covering a broad range of themes, this anthology invites you to explore the different facets of contemporary life, resonating on many levels. This collection will ignite your passion for new writing, and you will return to it over and over again.

Pick up one (or both) of these beautiful Annuals online at www.aestheticamagazine.com/shop.htm

Captions:
Image 1: Blue Street #2 by Natalia Davis
Image 2: Sea Point Pool by Michael Meyersfeld
Image 3: Drawing Room with Pheasant by Roger Hopgood
Image 4: Flow by Simon Shepherd
All images from the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual 2012

Christophe Von Hohenberg | The Day The Factory Died | Coldharbour London Gallery

2011-12-09T09:00:00.000Z

This December Coldharbour London Gallery will be exhibiting The Day The Factory Died, a collection of never-before published photos by acclaimed fashion photographer Christophe Von Hohenberg, of Pop artist Andy Warhol's memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1987. Curated by Aretha Campbell, the exhibition will bring together letters from the memorial, photographs, as well as works by Warhol himself. Published in conjunction with the exhibition, is a bible-like 176 page book featuring a calvacade of celebrities from the world's of Hollywood, Fashion, Pop Music, International Society and Art.

Von Hohenberg, came upon Warhol's funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, whilst on assignment for Vanity Fair. His probing lens snapping beautiful black and white photos, capturing the swirl of celebrity that forced itself, shoulder-to-shoulder into the event, it was as if Andy Warhol had planned his own funeral, a dizzying crush of fame and fakery.

The images, in this exhibition, convey warmth and sadness, despite the high-glitz factor of that day. Bianca Jagger, her hair pulled over one eye...The Stern defiant chin of Claus Von Bulow, looking down on the proceedings and the poor fools below him. A hurrying Robert Maplethorpe, angry mane blowing behind him. And the wild-eyed mania of punk and pop fashion designer Stephen Sprouse, perhaps the most Warholian of the subjects photographed.

The imaginatively-designed book, by Daniel Stark of Stark Design in New York City, features endpapers of the day-glo, Stephen Sprouse-designed, Warhol camouflage aprons that waiters wore at the luncheon following the memorial mass. It also features a foreword by well-known art writer Anthony Haden-Guest on Warhol’s expanding and still-controversial legacy. The book as well features an essay entitled Time Capsule by New York cultural historian and curator Charlie Scheips, who collaborated with von Hohenberg on the creation of the book. Scheips draws together the events of that day, and the character of those times, both as a search for a lost, bygone era but also as a guide to for those too young to remember that halcyon era that Warhol profoundly influenced. The book features over 45 letters from many of the notable figures present that day as testimony to the influence which Warhol had on their own lives and times—in many different ways. It concludes with rarely-seen photos of the actual burial ceremony in Warhol’s native Pittsburgh; and ends with a never-before published 1978 photo of Andy Warhol by Bill Kornreich.

The Day The Factory Died, Coldharbour London Gallery, 7/12/2011 - 22/1/2012. www.coldharbourlondon.com

Captions:
Courtesy the artist

Photography Vs. Photography: Lara Jade & Joey L

2011-12-08T10:10:00.001Z

Text by Bethany Rex

Each issue of Aesthetica features works by some of today's rising stars in photographic practice from around the world. This year's August/September issue featured the work of Lara Jade, a fashion, portraiture and commercial photographer who has worked with brands such as Sony and magazines such as Elle. Originally from the UK, Lara has relocated to New York City where she has collaborated with commercial photographer Joey L for LJ vs JL Photographer Shoot-Off, a photographic educational DVD which was released on 1 December. Lara took some time out of her busy schedule to speak to Aesthetica about the project and her current work.

A: First of all, could you tell us a bit more about your project LJ vs JL Photographer Shoot-Off?
LJ: Of course! This comprehensive photography tutorial DVD is a collaboration between me and photographer Joey L - we've been working closely for the past two years to develop an interesting way to share our knowledge and experience with amateur and professional photographers alike. The content has a comedic-aspect for viewing purposes (both 'rival' photographers competing to find who is the better photographer on a set number of 'challenges') but it is jam-packed with knowledgeable information: behind the scenes videos, interviews, technical information and Photoshop tutorials.

A: Are you both self-taught photographers? If so, when did you first start to develop an interest in being professional photographers?
LJ: Essentially our styles have been a process of self-learning and experimentation over many years. We both started photography (seriously) around the same time (around the age of fourteen/fifteen) and have honed our skills through trial and error and gaining knowledge by constantly working. My own personal journey began at the age of fourteen where I first picked up a camera and started experimenting with themes of self-portraiture and fine-art photography. For Joey, it's slightly more humorous: he started filming 'home movies' of dinosaurs (inspired by Jurassic Park) at the age of seven in his hometown of Lindsay, Ontario then slowly moved onto photographing bands and obviously those bands got more recognisable and in return so did his work!

A: The DVD represents two sides of the photography industry; commercial and fashion. From your experience, what are the essential differences here?
LJ: In my own opinion I think what makes the DVD content unique is that we're both young photographers working on different sides of the industry (I in the fashion and Joey in the advertising) but what is most recognisable is that we equally both work as hard developing and investing in our personal portfolios. Our styles are completely different but this is what makes the content interesting: the way we shoot and how we produce a shoot from start to finish is completely different and this is what we want to show other photographers - there's no two photographers the same, everyone is unique.

A: The DVD features a selection of ‘Challenges’. Was there an overall winner here, is something you were aiming for?
LJ: We have four shoot challenges on the DVD which are shot all over the world: Colour Portrait, Studio, On-Location and Shoot A Stranger. We had fun competing in the challenges and we were constantly curious to what the other photographer did, so there was a real element of rivalry involved! What we came to discover is that there is not an obvious victor - everybody shoots differently and the winner essentially comes to what you the viewer think. Ultimately we want to try and inspire each and every photographer with the content we share and hope that they interpret our ideas and knowledge into their own work.

A: Stepping outside of the DVD world, which photographers' work are you following closely at the moment?
LJ: Admittedly I don't try to look for inspiration in the obvious places - I'm always thinking outside of the box. I find the best inspiration in closed places - old books, movies, the fine-art themes in the masters of photography and in every day life. Some of the photographer's I currently find inspiration in are artists like Ellen Von Unwerth, Steven Meisel, Tim Walker & Richard Avedon. Being a fashion photographer there has to be some element of styling interest so I try to find that through individual characters; What are they expressing? What is their personality? What styles are in right now and how can I interpret that in my own work?

A: Finally, what’s the most exciting project you’ve both got coming up in 2012?
LJ: We are both expanding our personal photography portfolios (as well as any commercial work that comes our way) and I have a number of travelling opportunities next year for personal work and workshops. 2012 should be a great year for us both!

larajadevsjoeyl.com
larajade.com
joeyl.com

Captions:
Image 1 & 2: Courtesy Lara Jade
Image 3 & 4: Courtesy Joey L

In The Presence | Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011 | ICA | London

2011-12-07T16:00:00.000Z

Text by Sophie Caldecott

The Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition has long presented art lovers with an annual snapshot of emerging talent from the next generation of artists in the UK. The first exhibition was held in 1949, and despite having evolved from featuring the work of young graduates to profiling more broadly the work of emerging artists at the beginning of their careers, it has remained close to its original concept: to present a cross section of the new talent on the artistic scene. The success of its endeavour is highlighted by previous exhibitions which have included such illustrious names as Eduardo Paolozzi (1958), David Hockney (1960), Patrick Caulfield (1961), Helen Chadwick (1977) , Anish Kapoor (1977), Antony Gormley (1978), Grayson Perry (1980), Mark Wallinger (1981), Peter Doig (1982), and Damien Hirst (1989).

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011: In the Presence at the ICA in London features mixed media work by 40 new artists, whose work was chosen by a panel of internationally established artists in an open, anonymous submission. For many, this is the first time their work has been exhibited in a professional art gallery. The common theme was a prevailing fascination with the corruption of mid-to-late 20th century suburbia that carried notes of Jonathan Franzen’s 2001 novel, The Corrections (reviewed in The Guardian here). Hyun Woo Lee’s looped video of a sprinkler rotating with the words “I hate my job” flashing repeatedly across the bottom of the screen as if typed by an invisible type-writer resonated bleakly with the graffiti announcing “Death is here!”, spray-painted onto the grey doors above the hood of a woman’s grey car in Noel Hensey’s photograph.

Jonathan Trayte’s gold-plated bronze slice of tree trunk, In the Presence of Nature, presented a refreshingly tender engagement with the title of the exhibition. Every wrinkle of bark and line in the wood was glorified in gold, as Trayte brought new life to the dead stump.

The Ghosts in the Back Garden by Anna Ilsley is a large Chagall-like oil painting of a dreamscape with an orange sky and distorted perspective. Together with Ian Marshall’s video of geometrically arranged explosions, these pieces form part of the more apocalyptic end of the emotional spectrum. Hyewon Kwon’s disused buildings, Sophie Neury’s abandoned gymnastic equipment and Joshua Bilton’s black-and-white photographs of some triangular boards in an empty field and sticks woven into a triangle shape in a wood contrasted with this frenetic energy; quiet meditations upon the loneliness of the material world devoid of human contact.

Savinder Bual’s Train and Samuel Williams’ We are the Robots, both videos, raise interesting points about modern life. Train, a series of layered black and white photographs of a railway track and an approaching train getting closer and closer hint at the relentlessness of the passage of time. In his choice of a steam train, Bual draws attention to the progression of modern technology rendering what came before it redundant. We are the Robots highlights the modern disjunction between human skills and machinery. In a six-minute looped video, a pair of roughly constructed “mechanic arms” (two pieces of wood with hammers or paintbrushes and other tools attached to the end) try to perform pointless tasks like smashing a can and hammering nails into potatoes. Williams makes modern society’s reliance on mechanical world look faintly ridiculous, as well as pointing out that all machinery is human-made in the first place.

The exhibition started near the entrance to the ICA, continued past the café and up several flights of stairs. Walking through to the second half of the exhibition made the question – provoked by several of the artists – ‘what is art?’ yet more pertinent. With such a variety of media, tone and subject matter, this year’s Bloomberg New Contemporaries demands engagement and challenges the viewer to unpack the meaning behind each piece of art.

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011: In the Presence, 23/11/11 – 15/1/12, ICA, London. www.ica.org.uk

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Captions:
Installation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Photo: Steve White

Don't Miss This | Sarah Baker | Le Fan Fan | CARTER Presents | London

2011-12-06T09:00:00.000Z

Text by Bethany Rex

In her explorations of representation and social status, Sarah Baker often disseminates her artwork unconventionally to heigten the tension between fabrication and authenticity. Over the past decade Baker has assembled obscure subjects, characters and personalities that form an unlikely amalgamation which she has showcased, interviewed, appropriated, and obsessed over. Her subjects are often lionized and made to look as if they stepped out of a glossy fashion magazine, resulting in unstable positioning within a fantasy landscape of the extraordinary.Baker's latest project Le Fan Fan at CARTER presents focuses on her obsession with a Chinese legendary ladies-fan who fights enemies with a folding hand fan. Inspired by a 1980s Chinese Soap Opera, Baker has assembled a cast and crew to reinterpret Wuxia legend, Chu Liuxiang. As in her previous endeavours, Baker makes it a point to actively involved collaborated into the making of Le Fan Fan. We spoke with Sarah about the exhibition and her plans for the future.

A: First of all, could you tell us about your project, Le Fan Fan?
SB: It's a video inspired by a popular 1980s Chinese soap opera, Chu Liuxiang, about a beautiful man who fights evil with a fan, among other weapons including his good looks. The video is projected onto a big fan-shaped screen in a gallery that is double sided sculpture and also features a hand-made origami fan by fan maker Sylvain Le Guen who I met at The Fan Museum in Greenwich. The compositions in the video are inspired by Sylvain's fans, but also by fans that I have seen on private research visits to The Fan Museum, where curator Jacob Moss showed me 17th and 18th Century oriental fans that were at one time were high art and status fashion items that are not even rivalled by the IT Bag of today, as they were all hand painted and often featured portraits of the fan patrons. Some other scenes in my video are reenactments of Chu Liuxiang, where I actually copied the soap opera shot by shot. On the surface the piece is about lust, jealousy and revenge but has more complex preoccupations with memory, language, choreography, status, sculpture, and exoticism. I am also thinking a lot about Hollywood casting habits and how those choices effect the cultural psyche; I mostly just wanted to feature a gorgeous Chinese man on a big fan, as a sex-symbol on a status symbol of the ultimate commodity.

A: Your installation represents the character of Chinese martial arts expert Chu Liuxiang. Could you tell us a bit more about his character?
SB: Chu Liuxiang is a character developed by Gu Long, who wrote many novels as a part of Wuxia series; period adventure mysteries where there is an awful lot of fighting and killing; these novels are the foundation of many martial arts period dramas adapted for TV and film. I have never read these novels, as they are not officially translated into English, but I have found some real gems online where amateur die-hard fans have translated entire novels, and I used some of this in my script. Chu, aside from being gorgeous, is kind and good to a fault, lives on a boat, and is usually surrounded by beautiful women who are desperately in love with him and also fight along side him.

I first discovered Chu Liuxiang when I was in Taiwan and I took some Tai Chi Fan classes with my mother-in-law. I fell in love with Tai Chi Fan, the look and sound of the big red fans all snapping open and closed in a synchronized dance routine, and set to music. The routine that we learned was set to the theme song of Chu Liuxiang, and that is why I became interested in the soap opera. I am fascinated with the idea of Chu's character but I'm also really interested in how popular the TV show was in Taiwan and China in the 80s; it was as famous as Dynasty in America in the 1980s, and was similarly obsessed over, particularly by the women who were all in love with Chu Liuxiang, the ultimate stud.

A: This project has seen you collaborate with various people in the making of Le Fan Fan. Where do you find these people?
SB: Everywhere. Some collaborators are friends, some are referred, some are met at parties, on the street, and some are discovered through research. Collaborations are an important foundation in my practice and I choose my media so that I can collaborate. It's important for me to delegate aspects of the work to those who are of specialized expertise, and that's why my work generally has a polished look to it. For instance if I'm doing a magazine spread, I treat the process the way I think an actual professional magazine fashion shoot would be treated; I fantasize about how its done and use that fantasy to drive my process within my means. I try to make the work look as close as possible to the thing I am talking about weather it be criticizing or celebrating; it's that fine line that I am carefully balanced on, often delivering a somewhat unstable outcome.

A: What experience are you trying to create for the viewer here?
SB: Mostly I wanted to create an immersive viewing experience where details, down to the red gel in the spot light on Sylvain's fan, are not only visually pleasing but also have symbolic meaning. To me, the red spot light evokes the moodiness of film noir, and I wanted to question Western film tropes in relation to Oriental martial arts films. But I don't want to give anything away too easily, and the soundtrack is a good example of my attempt to keep my audience considering the work beyond the gallery experience. I found a very authoritative yet gentile English voice-over actor to tell the story throughout the piece, like a narrator somewhat reminiscent of an David Attenborough programme. The dialogue is a mix of the Chu Liuxiang translation, Kabuki dance translations from Youtube, The Cure song lyrics, and bespoke lines written by Shumon Basar. The music is Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten, and royalty-free heavy metal. I want the work to have a different meaning depending on each viewers personal perspectives, and to bring up questions of authenticity, authority, and challenging expectations like, what we are used to looking at, and hoping to offer some element of delightful surprise. But, one can only hope!

A: Finally, what are you working on at the moment?
SB: I'm on my way to Buffalo, where I grew up, to do a residency at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center. Hallwalls is a really interesting organisation that has existed since 1974 on Buffalo's west side, where i'm from, and was founded by Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo, among others. Hallwalls are supporting my production of a new work which is a mini soap opera series about characters and dramas that have had some impact on Buffalo and the surrounding area including Niagara Falls. I will be collaborating with local actors and musicians, including students from Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, where I graduated. The work will be exhibited in the gallery at Hallwalls, but will also be broadcast on the local TV station.

But before I shuffle off to Buffalo, I have been commissioned by the Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel to do a series of works, mostly signage and ephemeral pieces that the hotel guests are sort of forced to handle. I am currently in the midst of my first piece, which is the Do Not Disturb sign. For the card, I am modeling as a maid, indicating Please Clean Room. Inspired by stripper pens but made from cardboard, I have designed it to be have a reveal/conceal mechanical black card that moves. When you flip the card over, the maid's dress disappears (to reveal me in my knickers) indicating Do Not Disturb. A real collectors item, or at least I hope they will get nicked by the hotel guests.

Sarah Baker Le Fan Fan, 08/10/2011 - 10/12/2011, CARTER Presents, 59 Old Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 6QA. www.carterpresents.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Caption:
Video Still. Courtesy the artist.

Who should win the Turner Prize 2011?

2011-12-05T11:08:00.001Z

The Turner Prize will be awarded at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art later this evening, during a live broadcast on Channel 4 between 8:00 - 8:30pm, to an artist under fifty, born, living or working in Britain, for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation in the twelve months before 4 April 2011.

An exhibition of work by the shortlisted artists is currently on show at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead until 8 January 2012. The following images are a selection from the exhibition and, away from the noise of the fervent criticism and the energetic debate and countless column inches, they are something to behold.

Karla Black

Karla Black has been nominated for her solo show at Galerie Capitain Petzel, Berlin, and for contributions to various group exhibitions, which together consolidated her innovative approach to sculpture and displayed her increasingly powerful works made with ephemeral materials.

Earlier this year, Regina Papachlimitzou reviewed Structure & Material, Black's joint-show with Claire Barclay at Spike Island, Bristol. Follow this link to read the piece.

Martin Boyce

Martin Boyce has been nominated for his solo exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, which built upon his project for the 53rd Venice Biennale by holding the viewer within an atmospheric sculptural installation. Boyce's work combines references to design history and text and is marked by a subtle attention to detail.

Boyce's work is featured in the current issue of Aesthetica as part of a survey of this year's Turner Prize. To buy a copy click here.

Hilary Lloyd

Hilary Lloyd has been nominated for a solo show at Raven Row, London. The exhibition marked a step-change for the artist in terms of the ambition and scale of her project, which investigates the interrelation of moving image, sound and sculptural form in the portrayal of the urban environment.

Lloyd's work is featured in the current issue of Aesthetica as part of a survey of this year's Turner Prize. To buy a copy click here.

George Shaw

George Shaw has been nominated for his solo exhibition at BALTIC, Gateshead. Shaw's paintings depict the area around his childhood home and are rendered exclusively in Humbrol enamel paint. With their deeply personal juxtaposition of subject matter and material, they lie intriguingly on the edge of tradition.

Earlier this year, Paul Hardman reviewed The Sly and Unseen Day when it travelled to the South London Gallery. Follow this link to read the piece.

Turner Prize 2011 Exhibition continues until 8 January 2012 at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.

balticmill.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Images (Top to Bottom):
All Photos Colin Davison
All Images © BALTIC & the artist
Karla Black Turner Prize 2011 Installation View
Martin Boyce Do Words Have Voices (2011)
Martin Boyce Turner Prize 2011 Installation View
Hilary Lloyd Floor (2011)
Hilary Lloyd Moon (2011)
George Shaw The Devil Made Me Do It (2011)
George Shaw The New Houses (2011)

Artistic Responses to the Icelandic Ash Cloud 2010 | Under That Cloud | Manchester Art Gallery

2011-12-02T17:00:00.000Z

Text by Liz Buckley

The Icelandic ash cloud of 2010 brought many parts of the world to a halt, and showed international societies just how fragile our technological networks really are. Despite unbelievably advanced machinery and the ease of travel in our modern world, nature usually always wins. For those stranded in foreign destinations across the globe, the easy option may have been to panic, and spend what was essentially an extended holiday just trying to find a way home. The new exhibition Under That Cloud at Manchester Art Gallery showcases work from 18 international artists, all of which were stranded in Mexico City during the air travel standstill. Fascinatingly, they have all chosen jewellery as a way to manifest their responses to the crisis, as well as their experiences of Mexico and its culture.

The conflict between nature and human technology is a perplexing one. Many of those prevented from flying due to the ash cloud simply put faith in technology to let them know when it was safe to travel again, and get to where they needed to be. Others turned to God. The feeling was that if he had caused this then he was surely the one to rectify it. Jorge Manilla’s necklaces entitled Two Possibilities, embody his religious response to the predicament. As a Mexican artist stranded in Mexico, he did not feel too alarmed by the situation, but instead tried to imagine how others were feeling. Had he been far from home, Manilla said he would have turned to his religion to return him safely; the crucifix on one of his necklaces symbolises this. This artist has used predominantly black for his pieces, as he felt this implied both the negative and doubtful nature of the situation, but also how from the darkness often comes new beginnings.

Colour is definitely a prominent theme in this exhibition. Many of the artists have chosen to use grey, black and silver to represent the mechanical nature of the crisis. Jurgen Eickhoff’s steel and silver abstract mesh brooches signify the conflict between home and far away, and the mass of networks in-between. He feels that “the local has global effects,” and that one small breakdown in a network can bring all corners of the world to a standstill. Disasters such as the ash cloud can often show us the sheer fragility of networking, and how nature can overwhelm even the most complex technology, bringing back a primitive feeling of uncertainty.

While it may have been easy to feel trapped by the upheaval, many saw the ash cloud crisis as an opportunity to experience more of the place they were stuck in, and to absorb the culture further. This is certainly true of many artists in this exhibition. Karin Seufert’s necklace and brooches, made of melted plastic, embody the vivid and colourful personality of Mexico City. She tried to create pieces which for her represented the heat of the sun, the noisy streets, colourful surroundings and exhausting chaos of Mexico’s culture. The deep purple of Jiro Kamata’s Arboresque brooch shows how this artist was also inspired by the rich colours and particularly the architecture of the city. Nedda El-Asmar’s piece Structured Coloured Chaos is a beautifully quirky reaction to her experiences. This artist has used many colourful clothes lines, which she bought while in Mexico, as a representation of how she experienced the environmental qualities and vibrant nature of the place.

Andrea Wagner’s brooches entitled When Skies Were Silent hope to symbolise how society can take for granted the ease of transport in modern life, and this is really the underlying message of this entire exhibition. The artist said, while stuck in Mexico City, she took time to appreciate the “rare beauty of the silent skies,” while air travel was briefly halted. The collection of works in Under That Cloud are an intriguing insight into how people’s reactions can differ so greatly, and how an unexpected breakdown in our global networks can make us take time to consider the vulnerability of technology. Culture is integral to this exhibition, whether it is regarding the vibrant societies of Mexico, or our worldwide cultural dependence on travel and communicative networks. In creating jewellery, which is a beautiful thing, the pieces in this exhibition have managed to extract something positive from the dark cloud, whilst also engaging the viewer with how it felt to be at the heart of such an exasperating situation.

Under That Cloud, 19/11/2011 - 15/05/2012, Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3JL. www.manchestergalleries.org

Captions:
1. Nanna Melland
2. Caroline Broadhead
3. Andrea Wagner
4. Tore Svensson
5. Cristina Filipe
All courtesy of Jonathan Keenan

Aesthetica December/January Issue Out Today

2011-12-02T10:48:00.001Z

This issue offers a diverse range of features starting with The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum and explores Sir Terence Conran’s impact on contemporary life in Britain. Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break runs at SFMOMA and reflects on the position of the individual in the framework of industrial labour.

Anselm Kiefer opens Shevirat Ha-Kelim: The Breaking of the Vessels at Tel Aviv Museum of Art to inaugurate their new building. Zarina Bhimji’s retrospective of 30 years and the premiere of her new film Yellow Patch open at Whitechapel. There’s a visual survey of this year’s winner and shortlisted photographers for the National Portrait Gallery’s photography prize, and we look back at this year’s cover artists with an overview of their works, as well as introduce two new series of works.

In film, highly acclaimed and award-winning director, Pablo Giorgelli, talks about his subtle and beautiful new film, Las Acacias. There is also a round-up of ASFF 2011. In music, we examine the niche genre of musical comedy and chat with American four-piece Wild Flag about their new album. In performance, we look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history.

Finally, Christoph Benjamin Schulz discusses Alice in Wonderland, Tate Liverpool’s latest show.

Pick up a copy from one of our stockists or order online.

Share Aesthetica with your friends and family this Christmas. With six issues over 12 months, Aesthetica keeps you up-to-date on the very best in contemporary art and culture all year round! Covering the latest exhibitions, events, performances and reviews, Aesthetica offers a comprehensive overview of the international art world. Each issue is liberally accompanied by a selection of stunning images and makes for a beautiful Christmas gift.

Images:
Image One: Still from Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break (c) the artist
Image Two: Zarina Bhimji, Your Sadness is Drunk 2001-2006 Ilfochrome Ciba Classic Print 127 x 160 cm Courtesy the artist.
Image Three: Nicolas Floc Performance painting 2005 Interprete Rachid Ouramdane Reims Frac Champagne Ardennes Adagp Paris 2011

ASFF 2011 | Q&A with Maria de Gier | Winner of the Best Music Video Category

2011-12-01T11:23:00.000Z

The Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF) was a dynamic, four-day international event that took place in the City of York from the 3 - 6 November. After screening 150 films in 15 venues across 4 days, and after hours of deliberation, the judges announced the category winners on Sunday night at our Awards Ceremony. Amongst the winners was Maria de Gier, whose music video for Amatorski, Soldier won the Best Music Video category. We caught up with Maria post-festival to talk about the video, and her future plans.

A: Congratulations on winning the ASFF Best Music Video Award. What impact do you think this will have on your career?
MDG: It’s a great kick-start for my film career! This is my directorial debut and this prize really means a lot to me. I have a feeling the benefits will slowly present themselves to me over the next few months, which is an exciting prospect.

A: How would you describe your work?
MDG: To me Soldier is a mixture of pain and beauty. I feel it contains great sorrow, yet hope. It is a collection of lost dreams, but you can still catch a glimpse of them. The overriding message is that all is not lost. War breaks, destroys and tears apart. I wanted to show, not only the horror of war, but also the personal face of war, sort of like a stream of consciousness, or a memory in the mind, perhaps one of a dying soldier.

A:Could you tell me a little bit about your music video and how it came about?
MDG: At the time (and now still) I was very much interested in the possibility of different layers of film merging with each other. I made a short clip that I sent to Amatorski, which they liked very much. That little experiment is the very first beginning of what was to become the music video. Soldier is composed of stock material, mostly from an internet library; an amazing initiative containing accessible knowledge of all sorts mixed with all new material that I shot myself. (www.archive.org) Mixed with all new material I shot myself. When I was editing I felt like I was piecing together an enormous puzzle, but this puzzle came without a box! There were moments when I felt it was an impossible project I had made for myself but somehow I made it all fit. I’m really glad it came out the way I hoped and imagined it to be.

A:What were some of the challenges involved in making your film?
MDG: Mixing the, often very short, fragments of film, collected from hundreds of hours of old news reels and documentaries. It was a real struggle to make everything work together. At some points in the video there are up to nine layers of film that had to merge into one. Finding balance in image, pacing, movement, transition and meaning throughout the whole timeline of the music video was a big challenge.

A:What is your all time favourite music video?
MDG: I have several, it is hard to pick just one. I admire Jonathan Glazer's video for Radiohead's Street Spirit (Fade Out), Royksopps's What Else Is There? by Martin De Thurah. Björk has so many amazing video’s, I could go on for a while...

A: What are you working on next?
MDG: I’ll be working on a cross-over film, art and music video project with the wonderful musician Ozark Henry. You will definitely hear from me in the future, I feel like this is the start of really something.

www.mariadegier.com

Maria travelled to York from Brussels via Eurostar and East Coast Trains.

The Poet of Modernism | André Kertész Retrospective | The Hungarian National Museum | Budapest

2011-11-30T15:15:00.001Z

Text by Alison Frank

Following on from the Royal Academy of Arts' show, Eyewitness: Hungarian Photogrpahy in the 20th Century earlier this year, The Hungarian National Museum celebrates the career of Hungarian-born photographer, André Kertész, originally named Andor Kohn, (1894-1985) who spent most of his career as an exile, first in Paris, then in New York. The Hungarian National Museum's retrospective of his career contains two sections. The main section gives a chronological overview of Kertész's career; curated by Michel Frizot and Annie-Laure Wanaverbecq, this retrospective was previously exhibited in Paris, Berlin and Winterthur (Switzerland). The second, much smaller section, is a special Hungarian addendum curated by Eva Fisli and Emöke Tomsics as part of the museum's international conference, Views of Kertész.

The latter section looks at the reception and influence of Kertész's photography in Hungary from the beginning of his career to the present day. It begins with a copy of the magazine where Kertész published a photograph in 1917, and ends with some pieces by contemporary photographers responding to his work. This text-dense segment of the exhibition explains that under Communism there was an attempt to appropriate the work of Hungarian nationals living on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Successful Hungarian émigrés were taken as examples of innate Hungarian talent, and their work was scrutinised for its sociological dimensions. This led to Kertész being incorrectly categorised in Hungary as a social realist photographer rather than the independent documentarian of emotion he considered himself to be.

The exhibition's main retrospective spreads across five rooms: one each for Kertesz's Hungarian, Parisian and New York periods, a round room for his photographic nude “distortions”, and finally a long narrow room displaying magazine spreads of his photojournalism.

Kertész was 18 years old before he received his first camera, but as early as the 1910s, he was already experimenting with night-time and underwater photography: his Underwater Swimmer (1917) appears particularly ahead of its time. Kertész began by taking photographs of friends and family, especially his brother Jenö who was willing to be photographed in a variety of dramatic and athletic poses. When he was conscripted during the First World War, Kertész took photographs of fellow soldiers at rest. Capturing lighter, informal moments of military life, these images offer an unaccustomed image of World War I.

In 1925, Kertész moved to Paris, where (the exhibition notes explain), he became “one of the leading figures in avant-garde photography”, alongside Man Ray. Characteristic of his modernist experimentation was The Fork (1928), in which he made clever use of shadows to alter the object's usual appearance. For the light-hearted and “racy” Parisian magazine Le Sourire he created a series of “distortions” of female nudes, which he achieved through the use of curved mirrors (hence the curators' decision to exhibit these images in a curved space). Some of these images are intriguing artistic abstractions; others create bizarre funhouse mirror effects, while others still give a disconcerting impression of deformity.

Kertész achieved a more consistent impression with his photographs of artists' studios, starting with Mondrian's. In these, the photographer managed to create a portrait of the artist in absence, making use of light, shadows, personal items and occasionally art pieces to evoke the style and personality of the studio's inhabitant. In Paris, Kertész made his living through photojournalism, contributing to the birth of a new medium of expression. He worked primarily for the news magazine VU, creating more than 30 photo essays between 1928 and 1936.

In 1936, Kertész moved to New York, where he would spend the rest of his life. He was lured to America by a contract with the Keystone agency, which was broken after just one year. Not speaking English, and classified as an enemy alien during World War II, Kertész felt isolated and unhappy in New York. These feelings were reflected in Kertész's photographs of lone clouds, menacing pigeons, and general abstraction which rendered the city anonymous. His work was not well-received in New York, and in order to survive, Kertész spent 14 years taking conventional shots for Home and Gardens magazine. Following his retirement in 1961, Kertész saw his work gaining international recognition, with exhibitions at the Venice Photography Biennale, the Bibliothèque Nationale and the MoMA. In 1982 the Ministry of Culture in Paris awarded Kertész the Grand Prix National de la Photographie.

Long after he had become an established photographer, Kertész said, “I regard myself as an amateur today, and I hope that's what I will stay until the end of my life. Because I'm forever a beginner who discovers the world again and again.” Kertész saw photography as a sort of visual diary that documented the way he felt about the world around him, and insisted that emotion was the basis of all his work, rather than an artistic impulse. The power of Kertész's images seems accordingly to emanate not just from their strong and balanced composition, but from the intense feeling that they capture.

André Kertész Retrospective, 30/09/2011 - 31/12/2011, The Hungarian National Museum, 1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 14-16, Hungary. www.hnm.hu.

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Caption:
Víz alatti úszó, Esztergom, 1917
Courtesy La Bibliothèque nationale de France

ASFF 2011 | In Pictures

2011-11-30T09:31:00.002Z

From Australia, to the Netherlands, South Africa and France, crowds descended on York for the inaugural ASFF. See who came out to play for this year’s event!

ASFF 2012
We will be accepting submissions for ASFF 2012 in December 2011 so check back soon for more information!

Jim Poyner Photography - www.jimpoyner.co.uk, ASFF, Aesthetica, Short Film Festival, York ©jim poyner 2011 all rights reserved

The Orchestrated Spontaneity of Ryan McGinley | Wandering Comma | Alison Jacques Gallery | London

2011-11-29T15:52:00.001Z

For his first London exhibition since his celebrated Moonmilk series, Ryan McGinley has assembled seven new photographs, all in the largest format the American artist has yet worked in. Scale is one of the central variables in McGinley's practice, as each photograph taken is initially printed in an array of sizes in order to fix the exact dimensions that allow the image to speak most effectively to the viewer. All prints in other sizes are then discarded. McGinley rarely produces his artworks at this 280 x 180 cm format, the maximum size, and only does so when the photograph truly calls for a vast canvas - an expanse that demands a heightened scrutiny from the viewer, as it does more attention on the part of the artist.

Ryan McGinley's aesthetic has evolved over the past decade from a verité snapshot style to one that is more cinematic, even epic. More director than documentarist, McGinley has recently made photographs in which his imagination has become imprinted on the reality he captures. His working method involves a careful balance of the orchestrated and the unpredictable, the staged and the spontaneous. Although the images begin with choreographed scenarios, the images that result are never wholly pre-meditated. Indeed, it is this very sense of the potential for randomness that is alluded by the exhibition's title, which refers to a kind of fluttering butterfly. McGinley determines the activities and locations of his shoots in advance, preparing elaborate studio-style lighting - despite these contingencies, McGinley's models are encouraged to behave on their own initiative, taking actions as utterly unpredictable as a fall from a cliff or a tumble down a cascade. When photographing his models jumping in a haystack, sliding down a rushing river or holding a wild animal, he cannot know what image will result. The subject matter of his recent work occupies a profound middle ground between reality and the artificial: McGinley's images are dreamed worlds willed into existence.

The taking of the photograph is only the beginning of McGinley's artistic process, as his chromatic interventions and manipulations of scale are central to the emotional and spiritual landscapes evoked by each image. He applies effects to the entire image, rather than to individual sections, printing each image in an enormous variety of colour variations and grain amplifications before deciding on its final appearance. In Purple Beacon, for instance, the artist chose a filter that radically changed the colour of the sky and water, but left the tone of the girls' bodies unchanged. The grain amplifications endow the images with a familiarity and immediacy, relating them to the kinds of casual photography found in family photo albums. McGinley's adherence to apparent realism is not an attempt to trick the viewer; rather, it serves only to make the images that much more evocative and accessible.

McGinley's orchestrated spontaneity also plays heavily into his studio work. In one sense, the physically confining studio offers more freedom than the great outdoors: the element of illegality, a significant concern when shooting nudes in public spaces, is removed. McGinley never demands a pose; he prefers to offer only light direction, allowing for the models position themselves naturally. When making the photograph Jessica, he did not ask the girl to pair a sweet smile with a profane gesture; it was simply what he got, and captured.

McGinley's current practice, which alternates between lengthy cross-country journeys and studio shoots, repeatedly breaks down the barrier between private and public spaces - between nature's space and culture's; between what is personal and what is constructed. Whereas he once photographed his close friends, his elaborate casting process now involves photographing hundreds of people he meets - on the streets, at concerts, through the internet - before selecting a small group with which to travel, and on whom to turn his camera. Although McGinley is no longer so personally involved with his subjects, however, his technique still constructs a powerful sense of intimacy and pathos - particularly when rendered at a scale which commands such physical and emotional presence.

Ryan McGinley: Wandering Comma, 24/11/2011 - 22/12/2011, Alison Jacques Gallery, 16-18 Berners Street, London, W1T 3LN. www.alisonjacquesgallery.com

Captions:
Ryan McGinley Taylor (Rushing River) 2011
Ryan McGinley Purple Beacon 2011
Ryan McGinley Brandee (Midnight Flight) 2011
Ryan McGinley Amanda (Haystacks) 2011
All courtesy the Artist and Alison Jacques Gallery, London

Time and Memory | Cecilia Edefalk and Gunnel Wåhlstrand | Parasol Unit | London

2011-11-28T13:23:00.001Z

Parasol Unit presents a major exhibition of works by two of Sweden's leading contemporary artists, Cecilia Edefalk and Gunnel Wåhlstrand, on show until 12 February 2012.

Cecilia Edefalk (b.1954) uses traditional methods of oil and tempera in her paintings, which are executed on small canvases. Edefalk often places her work in carefully choreographed arrangements, using mirror effects, displaying paintings at 90-degree angles or turning canvasses upside-down, which lends a quality of performance to her shows.

Gunnel Wåhlstrand (b.1974) uses a meticulous technique, painting with only black ink and water to create photo-realistic drawings on large sheets of paper. Her work is based on photographs found in her family album of her father's early childhood in Sweden. These images present deeply personal scenes of family life, given a haunting resonance as imposing, monochromatic drawings of an era frozen in time. The precise and demanding work of depicting this archive allows Wåhlstrand to physically and psychologically connect to her father who died when she was one year old.

Aesthetica caught up with Cecila and Gunnel to find out more after the opening earlier this month.

Gunnel Wåhlstrand

A: The family photograph is one of the major motifs in your work. Could you talk us through what this type of photograph means to you?
GW: Before I started painting in this photographic way, I used to paint really fast, often finishing one painting a day where I allowed the ink to spread and chance came into play. I used images, photos of people unknown to me or photos I had staged myself, but this way of working eventually came to an end because it felt too made up to me and I had a sense of circling, avoiding something more essential.

Since my father died when I was only one year old, the photos that remained of him were always very important to me throughout my whole life. At one point, I began every day by flickering through these photos to become focused, and soon realised I needed to find a portal into these pictures, a technique that allowed me to remain in each one of them for as long as possible, since when they were finally finished, I would never return to that certain image or moment.

The black ink is extremely permanent - you can only work from the light quality of the paper towards the darkness of the ink, and never take anything back. Once it's there it's permanent - like a slow developing process, which I liked. The level of concentration this technique demanded from me was somehow similar to the concentration within the image, and this similarity made me feel close to them in a very intimate way.

A: This concept of remembrance is a key one in your work. How do you both perform and interrogate the idea of memory, and remembrance in the work on show in this exhibition?
GW: They are not my own memories, but through painting them they somehow become mine. I can't just paint the mere surface of the photo, I have to go further and understand how everything works and what it looks like from all angles. Only then can I delve into the picture and almost experience the feeling of having been there in that moment. Through recreating the past, that which will be is also added. Therein lies one of the many differences between photography and painting.

A: The family photograph is often discussed as the place for the identification and the formation of identity. Is this something you can relate to?
GW: Yes. They are the origin and the very core of me.

A: What aspect of Edefalk’s work first appealed to you?
GW: The first time I saw her work was at a large exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. She was showing grey paintings, some of which are part of the show at Parasol unit. They stayed with me and helped me take the leap into grey myself.

A: And now you know her work better?
GW: I have been following her work since that first time, but some of the older paintings included in the show were new to me. It's nice to see all the stages she has gone through over the years, and how the spiritual, ethereal quality has always been there. One of the striking things about her work is how the ever present inner bright light almost obliterates itself and makes the air vibrant.

Cecilia Edefalk

A: The relational nature of your work requires the physical installation of your paintings to become an integral part of your practice. Could you talk us through how you have installed the work in the current show at Parasol Unit?
CE: The space itself is the starting point for the installation and also the distance between the works. First I was very confused as the different works I am showing are picked from my entire career as an artist and Ziba Ardalan (Director/Curator at Parasol) helped me with the outlines of the installation. She knows the physical space and I know the space in my works. It was very excitng to put the exhibition together, linking the paintings and sculptures together and thereby creating a new and old story that exists physically during the time the exhibition is up but that also exist as a memory for those who had the opportunity to see the exhibition.

A: What aspect of Wahlstrand’s work first appealed to you?
CE: The vibrating stillness.

A: And now you know her work better?
CE: The way she is investigating and creating darkness , shadows and light.

Time and Memory: Cecilia Edefalk and Gunnel Wåhlstrand, 23/11/2011 - 12/02/2012, Parasol Unit, 14 Wharf Road, London. www.parasol-unit.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Caption:
Gunnel Wåhlstrand, By the Window, 2003–2004.
Ink-wash on paper, 151 x 198 cm, The Michael Storåkers Collection.
Photograph Björn Larsson

Don't Miss This | Rashid Rana: Everything Is Happening At Once | The Cornerhouse | Manchester

2011-11-25T13:44:00.001Z

Text by Liz Buckley

Everything Is Happening At Once at The Cornerhouse, Manchester, is the first solo UK exhibition in a public institution by Asian artist Rashid Rana. Rana's work explores how physical realities and social practices affect our culture and identity. He is also particularly interested in the contrasts that appear in everyday life. This interest manifests itself itself in the exploration of both two and three dimensional fields found in the artist's work. Using a mixture of both micro and macro images in his work, which reference the idea of the whole vs. fragment that many of the pieces in this show embody, Rana uses the theme of abstraction, however his techniques are not abstract.

The first part of Rana’s exhibition is titled Dis-Location. In this section visitors can find varying examples of the artist’s work, including both 2D and 3D. The three dimensional sculptures on display are made up of magnified pixels, which gives the effect of digital movement in a solid space. These pieces play with the idea of stillness and motion coinciding. A particularly fun piece is Plastic Flowers in a Traditional Vase (2007); here Rana has created an almost digitised bunch of flowers, a subtle hint at how our everyday culture is affected by technological advancements. Dis-Location (2007), is a large flat print, and consists of thousands of small pictures which make up one larger image. It appears Rana is trying to portray how many components go towards building a society, culture or identity, and it is the little details which create the big picture. The question of whether to concentrate on the micro or macro image created here shows viewers the contrasts of perceptions that we all experience. A similar piece is The World is Not Enough (2006-2007), which uses the same techniques. Here the small pictures are of masses of waste and rubbish, which ironically creates quite a pleasing abstract and colourful image when one stands back. From a distance the busy movement of forms and colour here could be reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock.

Gallery Two of The Cornerhouse holds work of more explicit content. Rana’s pieces here are concerned with the human body, and the conflicts we find within cultural practices. Again the artist plays with the contrast of the image both up close and far away. Several pieces in this part of the exhibition appear to be paintings of blurred bands of colour, however they are actually made up of yet more pixels, taken from photographs of flesh, blood and wounds. Standing back, Rana’s piece What Lies Between Flesh and Blood I (2009) could be a Mark Rothko with its strips of dense colour, but Rana has used magnified squares again here, making the photographed wounds appear to be painterly in a clever fusion of art with the body.

It is clear Rana likes to experiment with scale in his work, using both magnified and shrunken images in many of his pieces. Veil VI (2007) and Red Carpet I (2007), a couple of the artist’s more explicit pieces, are large scale Asian-inspired prints seen from afar, and are even quite attractive. However these are also made up of tiny images which the viewer can only notice if they get right up close. It seems Rana is using these techniques again and again to portray how every part of social culture is double sided, and that even demure and traditional civilizations almost always have an explicit and violent side to them.

The final part of Rana’s exhibition is on the top floor and holds another mixture of the artist’s work, including some of his most well known pieces. Untitled (HOC) (2010) consists of 4 square panels that form an open-top cube. The panels are covered with tiny mirrors, which are tilted so that only one side shows the viewer their reflection. Behind each mirror there are many tiny images of urban landscapes and buildings from Rana’s home town of Lahore in Pakistan. Desperately Seeking Paradise (2010-2011) uses the same technique but on a much larger scale. Both of these pieces show the relationship between a person’s physical appearance and what makes up their personal identity and culture, as well as the constant contrasts we find in every area of life.

From the range of Rashid Rana’s work on display in Everything is Happening at Once, we can see how the artist uses a range of both modern, minimalist and abstract expressionist techniques to create his art. His pieces compile photographic imagery on an alternative scale, and provoke the viewer to consider how we perceive images. Rana’s work expresses his ideas about personal identities and the contrasts found within varying cultural practices in the modern world. The way he constructs his pieces, whether it’s a sculpture, print or otherwise, shows a curious investigation of the physical realities we create around us, and how existence is made up of many dimensions.

Everything is Happening At Once, 01/10/2011 - 18/12/2011, The Cornerhouse, Oxford Road, Manchester, + 44 (0)161 200 1500. www.cornerhouse.org

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Captions:
Photography: WeAreTape
All images courtesy the artist and Cornerhouse

New Horizons | Robert Mapplethorpe Curated by Sofia Coppola | Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac | Paris

2011-11-25T09:00:00.000Z

There are a few things you will already know about Sofia Coppola; she wrote Lost in Translation, was the first American woman to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival with Somewhere and was the woman behind the Dior commercial for Miss Dior Chérie which she shot in Paris with Maryna Linchuk. Then there are the things you may not know about Sofia Coppola, which you probably should. She grew up on the sets of Francis Ford's films and even appeared as a baby boy in the christening scene of The Godfather. After partnering with Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon on her clothing line Milk Fed (sold exclusively in Japan), Coppola must have got a taste for collaboration as since then she has worked with Robert Wilson, Hedi Slimane and The White Stripes. Her latest project sees Coppola take the role of curator of a new Robert Mapplethorpe exhibiton at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris.

This exhibition uses the same approach as Robert Mapplethorpe: Eye to Eye curated by American artist Cindy Sherman in New York in 2003 for the Sean Kelly Gallery and Robert Mapplethorpe: Curated by David Hockney , which was presented at Alison Jacques Gallery, London in 2005. The idea is to have a contemporary artist bring his or her take on an œuvre as significant as that of Robert Mapplethorpe’s.

Coppola selected the images from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in New York, with whom the gallery has collaborated for this exhibition. By using rarely seen and little-known images taken by Mapplethorpe, Coppola has created an exhibition very much in step with her world. Always inspired by images, the director uses photographs to orient the visual concept of her films. She draws inspiration from images pulled from magazines, taken by iconic photographers, and even snapped with her own camera. Whether done consciously or not, from a single glimpse of the photographic ensemble, the viewer could easily imagine the photos to be a mood board for a future film. However, there is no “narrative” that weaves the selection of images together: the viewer has the freedom to invent fictional characters within the nuances of gray.

Coppola has extracted gentle images from Robert Mapplethorpe’s archive: contemplative moments from which a delicate tension emerges. Known for his erotic and provocative images and the metaphysical nature he often imbues his subject matters with, the viewer is able to discover an almost unexplored side of the artist.

Robert Mapplethorpe, 25/11/2011 - 07/01/2012, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 7 Rue Debelleyme, Paris, France. +331 4272 9900. www.ropac.net

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Captions:
Lisa Lyon (1982)
Annabelle's Mother (1978)
Katherine Cebrian (1980)
Paloma Picasso (1980)
All Mapplethorpe Works © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg.

A Celebration of Swedish Art History | Moment-Ynglingagatan 1 | Moderna Museet | Stockholm

2011-11-24T09:21:00.001Z

Text by Bethany Rex

Celebrating Swedish Art History in the 1990s, Moderna Museet, Stockholm unveils their new exhibition Moment-Ynglingagatan 1. The non-commercial gallery Ynglingagatan 1 was a vital forum for Swedish contemporary art in the 1990s, featuring international artists such as Pierre Huyghe, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Takashi Murakami and M/M (Paris), decades before their work were recognised by critics and major institutions all over the world.

With modest means and fuelled by a feeling of exasperation with the existing art scene, Ynglingagatan 1 took matters in their own hands in autumn 1993 with their first exhibition which was Bjarne Melgaard. The focus on relational aesthetics, multi-disciplinary art, design and fashion, and a distinctly international profile helped to set Ynglingagatan 1 apart from other galleries and art institutions in Stockholm. Ynglingagatan 1 was also a launching pad for the careers of a group of Swedish artists, including Karl Holmqvist, Ann-Sofie Back, Peter Geschwind and Johanna Biling.

This exhibition, which opens tomorrow, is a retrospective presentation of works from the gallery's programme, in chronological order. It attempts, as far as possible, to feature the works that were exhibited at the gallery, comparable works from the time, or documentations of exhibitions and projects. With its ambition to emphatically focus on the 1990s, a programme of events, debates and lecturers that will reflect the thoughts and ideas that were circulating at the time when the gallery was open.

Thomas Ekström is the co-founder of Ynglingagatan 1 and also curator of this exhibition. Here we discuss the impelling force behind the project, his vision to create an alternative art scene, and the stand-out pieces from the show.

What was the inspiration behind this new exhibition, Moment – Ynglingagatan 1?

I don't know if inspiration is the right word, Ynglingagatan was an alternative space that existed between 1993-1999 in Stockholm. From the start in 1993 when we were four friends managing the gallery the community around Ynglingagatan grew and in the end we where around 20 people managing three gallery rooms, a design shop, a film club and a café. We had events, design lectures and at some point Jarvis Cocker from Pulp did a DJ set. This exhibition is more of a representation of what we achieved in that time and what we got up to in the 1990s.

As co-founder of Ynglingagatan 1 and curator of this exhibition, why do you think artists such as Takashi Murakami and M/M Paris were so attracted to the gallery, and the location itself?

I think you might have to go back in time to really appreciate the reasons why the gallery was such as success. It’s difficult to pinpoint an exact set of rules and reasons but I can think of a few contributing factors. For example, we housed Takashi's first solo exhibition outside Japan and when it comes to Michael and Mathias of MM Paris they were more or less designing theatre posters at the time. But in a broader perspective we always gave 100% to artists that we liked as people. Word got out, and other artists and designs began to flock to the gallery. We also had a much broader view on art that included fashion and graphic design for example, that was not really common at the time.

When you founded the gallery in the autumn on 1993 the space was only 16 m2. It must have been a constricted exhibition space for artists such as Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley and Larry Clark. Before you moved to your larger space, how did you overcome these spatial constraints?

I think it is a common misunderstanding that works of art have to be big or valuable to be interesting or important. Nothing can be more incorrect, but yes we had to cancel Rudolf Stingel because the gallery was too small. In Larry Clark's case the Moderna Museet has a very nice collection of works, so we can actually show more now than we originally did at the gallery and Jessica Diamond’s wall painting will be quite a lot bigger than it was back in 1993.

Could you talk us through some of the most important works in the exhibition?

It is a pretty complete set of the best from the 1990s, just look at the artist list. Then we’ve got the historical depth to the 1960s and 70s in form of artists such as Peter Saul, Chris Burden and Sister Corita. But of course I am honoured to show works like Carsten Höllers Killing Children (1992), Dominique Gonzalez-Foresters Parc Central (2006), work by Pierre Huyghe and Swetlana Heger, early collages by Richard Hawkins or the complete run of Ed Ruscha´s books.

And do you have your personal favourites?

Well it is hard to choose one or two pieces from a bunch of your favourite works by a great generation of artists. But in my current state of mind, a stressed out curator, two days before the exhibition opens, with some works still not in the museum, two particular works come to mind. Cary S. Leibowitz or Candy Ass’ painting If I ever have an out of body experience I hope I stay there and Tom Marionis conceptual work from 1970, The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, which is a subject close to my heart right now!

Finally, what impact would you say Ynglingagatan 1 has had on contemporary art history in Sweden? I know it is hard to be objective on this one!

As you say it's hard to be objective, but I think it is the only gallery that ever will be honoured with a museum exhibition so take from that what you will!

Moment - Ynglingagatan 1, 25/11/2011 - 22/01/2012, Moderna Museet, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm. +46 8 5195 5289. www.modernamuseet.se

Captions:
1. Tom Marion The Act of Drinking Beer Is The Highest Form of Art.
Installation view from Galleri Ynglingagatan 1, 1999 © Tom Marion.
The artwork was performed for the first time in the U.S. in 1970
2. Takashi Murakami Mr Dob.
Installation view from Galleri Ynglingagatan 1, 1995 © Takashi Murakami
3. Cary S. Leibowitz aka Candyass Fair/Unfair, 1993
© Candyass
4. M/M Paris Theatre posters.
Installation view from Galleri Ynglingagatan 1, 1999 © M/M Paris
5. Carsten Höller Killing Children III. Installation view from Galleri Ynglingagatan 1, 1994
© Carsten Höller

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Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2011 Winner Announced

2011-11-22T20:00:00.000Z

Laure Prouvost has been announced as the winner of the Whitechapel gallery's Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Iwona Blazwick, OBE, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery and Chair of the Jury announced the winner this evening at the Italian Embassy in London.

French artist, Prouvost (b.1978) was chosen from a distinguished shortlist of artists which included Spartacus Chetwynd, Christina Mackie, Avis Newman and Emily Wardill. Prouvost graduated from Central St Martins in 2002 and was part of the Lux Artist Associate Programme, an initiative for artists working with the moving image that aims to provide an intensive development focused on critical discourse, extending to the practical and infrastructural issues that present challenges for artists working with the medium. Her work includes film, performance and installation and has been part of group shows at Tate Britain, the ICA, Serpentine and BFI Galleries. The Max Mara Prize is an addition to her collection of accolades,which include the EAST International Award (2009) and a FLAMIN commission in 2011.

The Max Mara Art Prize for Women in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery celebrates the aesthetic and intellectual contribution that women artists bring to the contemporary art scene. The unique initiative set up to promote and nurture female artists based in the United Kingdom, enables artists to develop their potential with the gift of time and space. The winning artist is given the opportunity to create a new work of art inspired by a six month residency in Italy. The resulting work is then shown in Britain and Italy.

The Judging panel for the fourth Max Mara Art Prize for Women was chaired by Iwona Blazwick and included Lisa Milroy, artist; Muriel Salem, collector; Amanda Wilkinson, gallerist; and Gilda Williams, critic and lecturer. Laure Prouvost will embark on an all expenses paid six month residency that is divided between an urban and a rural environment. The first part will be located at the British School in Rome; the second at the Pistoletto Foundation in Biella founded by the great Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. The work that results from this commission will be exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2013 and at the Maramotti Collection in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

Iwona Blazwick, OBE, Director, Whitechapel Gallery and Chairwoman, Max Mara Art Prize for Women, said: "Prouvost's gripping short films and intriguing environments unhinge the connection between language and comprehension to open out for us surreal horizons of meaning. It will be of immense interest to see how the literary, cinematic and visual cultures of Italy will impact on her work."

Laure Prouvost said "Ideally these few words would express how pleased I am to win this award - it will be very interesting for me to work in another cultural environment and for the work to be challenged and grow out of this context. It will give me a really long period away from distractions to build on and develop new work. It is a real endorsement of what I do and I am very glad that the judges are supporting my practice."

laureprouvost.com
whitechapelgallery.org

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Captions:
1. Laure Prouvost Idealy This Sign Would Take You In Its Arms (2010)
Courtesy the artist
2 & 4. Laure Prouvost The Wanderer (Betty Drunk) (2011)
Courtesy the artist and MOTINTERNATIONAL
3. Laure Prouvost It, Heat, Hit (2010)
Courtesy the artist and MOTINTERNATIONAL

A Ticking Timebomb | Shen Shaomin: The Day After Tomorrow | 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art | Sydney

2011-11-22T10:56:00.001Z

Text by Ella Mudie

A futuristic world of unfeeling biological experimentation that's just a small step away from the one we inhabit now. This is what conceptual artist Shen Shaomin invites his visitors to enter in The Day After Tomorrow, Shaomin's first solo exhibition in Sydney for a decade. Having moved to Australia from China after the political unrest of 1989 until resettling permanently back in China in 2002, over the course of his globalised artistic career Shaomin has become known for his commanding quasi-biological and anthropological installations that carry a string in their tail, confronting the darker implications of human intervention into nature and unchecked scientific, political and technological ambition. The Day After Tomorrow sees Shaomin return with a startling new manifestation of his striking yet critical approach.

Displayed across both floors of the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Chinatown, at street level Shaomin's first installation, I heard the sound of distance (2011), offers a somewhat elliptical experience for the viewer. Arranged in a ritualistic circle are 12 muyus, the traditional Chinese wooden fish drum, cast in varying sizes and diverse materials from throwaway plastic and aluminium to the more enduring stone, ceramic, steel and wood. Placed on white plinths beneath yellow cushions and with accompanying gongs, there's a sense of cultural and chronological displacement in these ancient instruments' resemblance to consumer objects on display. In Chinese culture, the drums are traditionally struck by monks when reciting texts as reminders to concentrate on their sutras while the fish symbolises wakefulness and in this way the drums may also signal to the visitor to pay attention and remain alert to their surrounds.

At the top of the stairs the tone changes as the visitor encounters the main gallery transformed into a vast expanse of clinical crystalline whiteness by a wall-to-wall carpet of rock salt. Inhabiting one corner is I sleep on top of myself (2011), an array of hyperreal silica gel sculptures of sinewy pink flesh coloured farm animals stripped of their coats of fur or plucked of their feathers, incubating atop hilly mounds of salt. Animals typically bred either for domestication or human consumption from goats and piglets to a cat, dog, goose, and rabbit at first glance they resemble carcasses, disturbing given their setting of heaped quantities of salt seasoning, but upon closer inspection subtle signs of life are discernible. On one mound a bald rooster, burrowed into a messy array of plucked feathers as if ready to cook, uncannily rocks backward and forward as it gently breathes in and out, quietly defying death.

What might be the cause of this perverse and disturbing scenario? At the other end of the room, the lifelike silicone figure of a frail elderly woman, all skin and bones and a shock of silver white hair sprouting like whiskers from her head, suns herself naked while reclining on a wooden deck chair. Titled I want to know what infinity is (2011) the viewer can't help but draw connections between her apparent desire to prolong life and the pressure this places on the natural world, particularly those animals we rely upon as food supply or potentially might seek to exploit as resources for the regeneration of our flailing bodies. Could city life, which increasingly distances us from the animal world, accelerate this trend? A step removed from Chinatown's footpaths bustling with shoppers and the noisy din of traffic, the surreal artificial ecology of Shaomin's installations offer a rare opportunity to pause and consider some future realities we'd rather ignore.

The Day After Tomorrow by Shen Shaomin at the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney continues until 10 December.2011.

4a.com.au

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Image:
Shen Shaomin, I sleep on top of myself (2011) detail of production image, silica gel simulation, acrylic and fabric, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist.

The Frozen Rollercoaster | The Tiger & Turtle: Magic Mountain

2011-11-22T09:04:00.001Z

Designed by Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth, The Tiger & Turle - Magic Mountain is the name of this imposing outdoor sculpture which opened last week in Duisburg Wanheim, Germany. This rollercoaster-cum-pedestrian walkway sits on a large hill overlooking a sleepy surburban town. The steel forms visually allude to the nearby decommissioned factory structures looming over the small town stretched before it. At 45 metres tall (147 feet), the sculpture is the largest in the country and is easily visible from every angle.

Visitors to the sculpture might, however, be disappointed as this is not a white knuckle ride, but a €2 million euro curved flight of stairs. This perceptual play is key to the project's success, whereby, as the designers note "the roller coaster stands for acceleration and high speed of a tiger but the visitor has to explore it step by step like a turtle."

phaenomedia.org

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Images:
Photography by Werner Hanappel & Mutter Genth

Bo Christian Larsson | Run To The Hills | Steinle Contemporary | Munich

2011-11-18T15:35:00.001Z

Swedish artist, Bo Christian Larsson combines sculpture, video, and works on paper. Larsson's previous exhibitions have featured a central work - often a large-scale installation or a performance remnant yet with Run To The Hills, Larsson instead presents a collection of smaller works that interrelate and build upon one another.

In this, and many other works, Larsson employs a wide frame of reference from Western Art History and classical iconography to pop culture and folklore (the title of the exhibition is taken from an Iron Maiden song). Larsson even goes as far as to source his materials from the flea markets and used book stores that surround his working environments. These referential differences are displayed most emphatically in the pairing of two works: Imaginary Raft of Medusa and Pygmalion.

The first of these works takes a poster from the Louvre of Géricault's famous Raft of Medusa painting and multiplies the bodies, collaging the copied figures onto each other. The original picture is exaggerated to the point of absurdity, but at first glance it is hard to say whether it looks familiar because we known the work, or because we have become so accustomed to these scenes of mass violence and destruction in the media. Alongside this collage, and literally illuminating the exhibition is a blue neon work that reads Pygmalion, a reference to the Greek myth of the sculptor who fell in love with his own creation. Produced as if written with a shaky hand, Larsson is acknowledging the loaded subject matter, pulling the focus away from the myth itself, using the contemporary, and often commercial, material to highlight society's fixation with perfection, trying to create something at such high speed that it becomes inhuman.

Bo Christian Larsson: Run To The Hills continues until 17 December at Steinle Contemporary, Munich.

steinle-contemporary.de

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Last Chance To See | ING Discerning Eye | The Mall Galleries | London

2011-11-17T16:30:00.000Z

ING Discerning Eye is an exhibition of small works independently selected by six prominent figures from the art world. This year's selector are: Artists, Eileen Cooper RA and Lisa Wright, Collectors, John Pluthero (Chairman, Cable & Wireless Worldwide and founder of abstract critical) and John Deston (The Mall Galleries, London) and critics, Ossian Ward (Visual Arts Editor, Time Out, London), and Brian Sewell (Art Critic, Evening Standard. Each selector has curated one section of the exhibition, drawing their own selection from works submitted by artists and the work of artists they have personally invited to exhibit. The result is an unmissable collection of six smaller exhibitions within one, each with very distinct personalities.

The uniqueness of having each work chosen by an eminent individual, unlike in a group selected show, has earned the exhibition an excellent reputation among art lovers and collectors alike. Speaking about his selection of British landscape work, Ossian Ward said that he "wanted to discover whether there still existed as strong a seam of British landscape art being made in the U.K. as there ever was, given that this genre has not been deemed fashionable since the late 1960s. Thankfully, looking at the hundreds of works submitted for selection to the Discerning Eye exhibition, it seems my suspicions were well founded...The beauty of this open submission show is that not only do all the judges have to pick separately and wrangle over pieces if more than one of us is keen on something, but it allows for differing tastes and aesthetic patterns to emerge."

The charm of The ING Discering Eye exhibition lies in the unpredictably and variety of the selectors' choices. Works of lesser-known artists hang alongside those of more established artists helping to connect hundreds of new artists with new audiences.

A total of 611 works of all mediums including print, paintings, drawing, sculpture and photography, by approximately 300 artists have been selected for the 2011 exhibition. The exhibition continues until Sunday 20 November. Don't miss it.

discerningeye.org

Images:
Carolyn Gowdy, Bird Woman
Joby Williamson, Field
Anna Gardiner, Mauve Morn
All images courtesy the artist

Altea Grau Vidal: Marcant Paraules | Ards Arts Centre | Newtownards | Northern Ireland

2011-11-17T09:49:00.001Z

Text by Angela Darby

The International Residency programme at Seacourt Print Workshop offers a selected artist the opportunity to work in a new environment and share their knowledge during a three-month stay at the groups print facility in Bangor, Northern Ireland. Over the past 11 years recipients have included artists from Japan, Canada, USA and across Europe. Altea Grau Vidal from Valencia, Spain is the present recipient and her exhibition, Marchant Parules, contains a selection of combined processes including intaglio, relief, screen-printing, handmade paper and sculptural objects formed from rusted printing plates. The artist identifies the works under four separate headings; Because I know that the dreams are always corrupt, Object Poems, Object Books and Visual Poem.

The number of works, attention to detail and quality of production reveal an intensity of purpose that might benefit from being placed in a larger space. Each work is immaculately crafted with processes allowed an importance uncommon in contemporary practice. Line, mark and gesture combine in rich displays of tone and muted colour. Across the picture plane, repeated rectangular forms compete for dominance with scribbled textures as if the artist is revealing her own struggle between defining structure and free expression; between rules and liberty.

This dynamic also plays out in relation to text and our understanding of its meaning. Poems in poetry books have been rendered illegible through the stitching of thread entangled with wool. Written words may have assigned meanings but they are not the things they describe. They rely on the pre knowledge of the reader to decipher an understanding from what is really only the shadow of an empty shell. The creative re-interpretation of the words by the reader is the essential element in decoding meaning and in the process the reader can be transformed. It is this alteration of consciousness that Grau Vidal’s meditative works celebrates. It does this by being infused with ‘time spent’ and is made more remarkable for having been produced over a two-month period.

Several works are particularly striking. Mi tiempo entre dos olas and El mar sigue moviéndose incorporate the same form echoing an inverted arch. In the first version this is a velvet black form on white, whilst the second is a negative rendition; white on grey. Hovering above the black form are small squares of thin paper scattered with the empty rectangles and scribbled notation described above. Across the white form are marks suggestive of calligraphic strokes imposed on pale indigo rectangles. These rectangles imply the absences of words, their meanings replaced by a shimmering, transcendent colour. Aquí seguimos, a pesar de los humos presents white glyphic symbols on a stark, black background. These personal ideograms communicate in spite of being unreadable in the usual sense. They convey an energetic belief that thought conveyed through writing is an essential element of what it is to be human.

Altea Grau Vidal: Marchant Parules continues at Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards until 2 December.

seacourt-ni.org.uk
alteagrau.blogspot.com

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Image:
Courtesy the artist

Tactile & Sensory Exploration | Jaume Plensa | Yorkshire Sculpture Park | Wakefield

2011-11-16T16:15:00.000Z

Text by Daniel Potts

Jaume Plensa has had a good year; Echo, his first public art project in New York City was extended for an extra month by the Madison Square Park Conservancy, in the UK, Chichester Cathedral announced Plensa's winning proposal for the Hussey Memorial Commission, Together, expected to be unveiled in the Cathedral in 2012. All the more reason to take the time to visit Plensa's open-air exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park which is on show until 22 January 2012.

Jaume Plensa (b.1955) describes his current exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park as the most complete exhibition to date. His work deals with the subject of humanity, using the human body – either stating it explicitly or implying it by its absence – in a figurative way. The setting of Yorkshire Sculpture Park creates a sanctuary for the urban visitor from the harsher realities of a post-industrial milieu, with a tweaked and manicured rusticity, on the rural outskirts of Wakefield. On entering, visitors first encounter Plensa's La Llarga Nit (Blind) (2010) – an illuminated figure seated atop a tall pole, the hands covering the eyes. One of the ideas behind this large-scale, outdoor exhibit draws on the early Byzantine phenomenon of the Pillar Saints – Christian ascetics who resided on platforms in pursuit of spiritual fulfilment. Another idea drawn on by this work is that of the artist-guardian, interpreting a society's problems and character and acting as a guiding beacon – literally, in the case of this work. That the eyes of the figure are covered by the hands endows it with a certain sort of anonymity (or rather robs it of identity) which, because it can then be read to be a sort of universal representative of humanity, heightens the sense of spirituality intended in the work. This sense is compounded by the seated pose of the figure, which invokes the idea of meditation. In the daylight, when the figure is not illuminated, the matt finish to the skin - reminiscent of carved stone – further conveys the spiritual with a glimpse at eternity in the sense of permanence.

Near to the entrance of the park, not far from La Llarga Nit (Blind), stands Spiegel (2010). In German, the title means 'mirror'. The work consists of two large-scale sculptures in the form of two seated figures facing one another. The figures are, again, anonymous and therefore speak of universality: no individual identity is discernible in the physiognomies. The sculptures are hollow, thus allowing the visitor to enter them physically. They are constructed from a highly intricate interlacing of metal letters, taken from eight different alphabets. Thus the idea of human communication is introduced and we realise that the figures facing one another are in dialogue. By walking into the hollow sculptures there is a sense, perhaps, of a bridging of the gap: that the visitor animates a silent, universal dialogue, divesting the figures of their separateness. However, what is most striking is the precision and intricacy of the small-scale construction of the letters translated into the large-scale contours of the figures. In this way, it is possible for the visitor to be moved by gaining the sense that the aggregation of all human communication is a universal dialogue. This method, in which letters are used to form the small-scale structure of the contours of a large-scale anonymous, universal figure is used again in House of Knowledge (2008) and Yorkshire Souls I, II & III (2009). These outdoor sculptures allow the surrounding environment to pierce, play and interact with them. It is most effective when bright sunlight is reflected from the metallic letters, creating moments of dazzling beauty.

The indoor exhibits continue these themes of human communication and universality conveyed through anonymity. In the latter case,Alabaster Heads (2008-2010) is, perhaps, most successful in its execution. Here, we find eleven large-scale heads of young females carved from alabaster, arranged and though not regularly placed, facing in the same direction. The universality, again, comes from anonymity: although they are portraits, they have been robbed of individual, physical identity by being elongated. In being so, the universality is heightened by the sense of spiritual dignity this brings – a bridging of the gap between heaven and earth seems to be imparted by it - and this is further reinforced by the eyes being closed, apparently in meditative contemplation. The size and weight of the heads lends extra charisma to the sense of permanence created in the use of material. It feels like entering a temple when they are first encountered. Plensa makes a clear distinction between male and female characteristics. His belief that male traits have caused many of society's problems, and that the future ought to have a more female emphasis, makes this serene, contemplative work one of great optimism.

In a documentary about Plensa shown on a loop in the main building at YSP, we find that one of his concerns is the time of his birth – the middle of a century – and how, because of this, he has to bridge the gap between entirely different ranges of discourses of ideas and trends. With this in mind, it is possible read the universal, spirituality of the human body evident in his work as testimony to the influence of the nineteenth century idea of art-as-religion, or kunstreligion; and the use of text in his work as testimony to the influence of Western logocentrism. Perhaps, their marriage, in Plensa's work is a solution to the problems inherent in both trends. Whatever the case, for the scale of the works and the charisma exuded by them owing to the technical execution, it is possible to engage with them in a very moving, spiritual way.

Jaume Plensa continues at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 January 2012.

ysp.co.uk

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Image:
Jaume Plensa, Song of Songs III, IV (2004)
Photo: José Luis Gutierrez

New Cultural Identities | The Salsali Private Museum | Dubai

2011-11-16T14:59:00.001Z

Exceptional numbers of contemporary art collectors are building private museums to display works that they currently store in warehouses. The latest in a long line of these museums is The Salsali Private Museum (SPM) where current exhibition SHOW OFF! features works from Ramin Salsali’s private collection by artists such as Jonathan Messe, Reza Derakshani, Max Sheler, Amir Hossein Zanjani and the specially commissioned A Door to Heaven and Hell from Philip Muller.

SPM aims to contribute to the UAE’s effervescent art scene by being the first space to enable the collaboration between local and international collectors, public, museums and foundations to exhibit a challenging exhibition programme.

Aesthetica caught up with founder of the SPM, Ramin Salsali to find out more about the project.

Where did the idea for the SPM come from?

I believe that art is a global tool for creating tolerance, peace and dialogue and is a natural and logical conclusion of the work of a group of people who support the development of Dubai as a hub for arts and culture in the UAE region. When I arrived in Dubai, I asked my friends, “where can I meet other art collectors?” Nobody could really answer as there was no platform as such. I have always wanted to create a space where local emerging, established and travelling collectors can meet each other and exchange ideas and views.

The museum is billed as private? Considering this, how will the space function for both collectors and the general public?

We have built a dedicated conference room which will provide space for art collectors to meet but all visitors will be able to view a rich programme of exhibitions through our collaborations with other art collectors, museums and foundations. I’m particularly excited about The Magic of Persia, a show which highlights the unique contribution of Persian culture to society which will open in the gallery in 2012.

Could you talk us through some of the key works in the inaugural exhibition?

Absolutely. The collection consists of artworks by Iranian, Middle Eastern and European artists. It’s so difficult to pick the key works because I am very passionate about the collection as a whole. SHOW OFF! features a new work by Reza Derakhshani and another by Philip Muller which visitors should not miss.

SHOW OFF! runs until 14 January 2012.

salsalipm.com/en

Image:
Courtesy The Salsali Private Museum
Photography by James Harvey

A Ghost Story for the Digital Age | Dark Matters | Whitworth Art Gallery | Manchester

2011-11-15T10:41:00.001Z

Text by Liz Buckley

It is by the ghostly light of Daniel Rozin’s Snow Mirror that visitors enters Dark Matters at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester. This haunting new exhibition is an amalgamation of digital installations, paintings, film and a variety of other media, all of which have a dark and mysterious undertone. All the works explore themes of shadows, memory, solitude, loss, mystery and magic, as well as how mechanical and scientific developments are increasingly impacting upon visual culture. What could once only be experienced by a paranormal encounter can now be recreated with technology. However, the major pieces within the Dark Matters exhibition still maintain that initial magic and wonder that came with the first optical inventions.

Away from the glow of the atrium, the viewer is immersed in darkness. As mentioned the first piece is Daniel Rozin’s Snow Mirror (2006), a large scale projection on silk, which gives the first room of the exhibit an ethereal glow. As people pass, their images are conjured in the screen’s snowy static; a spectacle that could only be experienced by seeing it for oneself. This digital installation begins a thread of several quite unnerving pieces throughout the rest of the gallery, such as: Francis Bacon’s Portrait of Lucien Freud (1951), a leaning man immersed in black and silver whose suited body almost becomes part of the shadows behind him; Pascal Grandmaison’s Fake Imagery of a World Upside Down (2009), a disturbing ultrachrome image of a man falling into black depths; and Pavel Büchler’s Short Stories: Human Breath (2002), a shaded in outline of somebody’s breath on a surface, exploring the often chilling traces that human life can leave behind.

There is an overwhelming feeling of what once was in this exhibition, many of the pieces suggest loss, and that which is just out of reach. Idris Khan’s illuminated digital prints show the blurred pages of important literary texts. These are just blurred enough that we cannot make out the words, reminiscent of a memory which is almost forgotten. The viewer is barely able to make out the ghostly figures behind the texts, perhaps symbolising the translucent presence in our minds of those who are gone. The second room holds a host of pieces from the major exhibiting artists. Another by Daniel Rozin entitled Peg Mirror (2007), a large circle of wooden pieces which create the viewers’ silhouette as they pass, by flickering slightly. This for me was perhaps the most playful and fascinating piece of the exhibition, and like Rozin’s other installation in Dark Matters, the piece requires the viewer’s participation to be complete. Also in this room one can find several pieces by Elin O’Hara Slavick. Her photographic negatives are related to Hiroshima, and show objects damaged by the atom bomb. These works highlight the relation between impressions not only left by an image in a camera but by horrific events on a community. Other artists to be found in this part of the gallery include Ja-Young Ku, and the haunting video installations of Hiraki Sawa and R. Luke DuBois.

The third part of the exhibition is dedicated to the work of Barnaby Hosking. In the centre of the room visitors are confronted by Black Flood (2006), a daunting installation consisting of four ceiling-high screens of black carpet creating a cube of dark space. Projected on the inner walls are bands of light which move in a way that makes the carpet appear to be black water, filling the space and highlighting darkness as a place of uncertainty, which may or may not swallow us up. Stepping inside the space is indeed intimidating, as the high walls are dark and consuming. However Hosking’s piece shows that, like others within Dark Matters, using different mediums to create a piece, as well as involving the viewers, can change our ways of perceiving art.

Around the walls of the room holding Black Flood, are small butterfly wings made of bronze, copper, brass and stainless steel. These butterflies make up another piece by Hosking entitled Thoughts: Butterflies (2010), and by creating both shadows and light on the wall with the use of materials, shows the contrast of both the negative and positive aspects of human identity.

Upstairs holds a large group of paintings, drawings and prints from the Whitworth’s existing collection, all of which embody the themes that are dominant within dark matters. Such artists include Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Henry Spencer Moore, William Hogarth, Paul Morrison, Anthony Gormley and Colin Self, among many others. While many of these pieces have religious connotations I feel this entire exhibition is not a matter of Science vs. Religion but in fact Science vs. Superstition. The ingenious way in which artists like Daniel Rozin have incorporated both technological advances with what turns out to be quite a ghostly experience is what makes this exhibition so innovative. The chilling silhouettes and velvety darkness of Dark Matters certainly does create a ghost story for the digital age.

Dark Matters continues at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, until the 15 January 2012.

Aesthetica Magazine
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Image:
Snow Mirror
Daniel Rozin
2006
Photo by John Berens
Image courtesy Bitform Gallery NYC

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize | National Portrait Gallery | London

2011-11-11T16:43:00.001Z

Text by Sophie Caldecott

"We never get tired of looking at faces," says Torben Åndahl, whose black and white photograph, Eike, is featured in this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition. Celebrating the fascination of the human face, the annual award has developed a prestigious international reputation since its inauguration in 2005.

The disagreement and debate that went on between the judges when narrowing over 6000 entries down to just 60 must have been heated, and something of that debate still lingers over their final choices. The portraits are diverse in tone and subject matter, and the photographers who have had their work featured range from young students and amateurs to established professionals. Jill Woodward, winner of the £12,000 First Prize, is a newcomer to the award, whereas Fifth Prize winner David Knight has been featured in the exhibition twice before. Michael Birt’s famous photograph of Keira Knightley for her role in The Children’s Hour is one of the only portraits featuring a celebrity in the exhibition; most of the subjects’ faces are unfamiliar to the viewer, leaving their expressions and body language to communicate their stories.

Eike is taken from Åndahl’s series called Those Left Behind, which explores the bereavement of the friends and family of suicide victims. Eike stands in her kitchen in Denmark, her arms hugging her body defensively and her expression desperately vulnerable and yet somehow strong and proud as she stares directly at the camera. The photograph was taken moments after she told Åndahl’s wife, a trained psychologist, the story of her father’s suicide. It is a stark emotional appeal, striking in its intensity. Åndahl sees the smile that most people automatically assume when a camera is pointed at them as a kind of mask, and works to build up a bond of trust with his subjects so that their raw emotions can be captured.

Rebecca Martinez’s Zoila With Freckles challenges us to rethink the automatic judgements we make about each other, simultaneously demanding a reaction from the viewer as well as urging empathy. It is with shock you realise that the baby cradled by the young woman with gentle brown eyes is not real. "So many of the women I photographed were reluctant to let people in, in case they were going to be judged," says Martinez of her project, The PreTenders, photographing women with artificial babies.

The best portraits in the exhibition, indeed, are the ones that force the viewer to question their own responses. Mario Marino’s striking portrait of a Surma boy from Ethiopia staring straight out at the camera with a defensive frown has unsettling undertones of the colonial era, the Enlightenment obsession with labelling, defining and controlling other cultures. Marino felt that his project was "a race against time", as the remaining pockets of traditional African culture started to disappear before his eyes.

The Embrace by Jonathan May portrays a moment of tenderness between two men, their naked skin covered in colourful patterned tattoos. They clearly see their bodies as living works of art, with the photographer noting that one of them intends to donate his skin to a museum after his death. The portrait embodies and presents both the alien and the familiar; the pair’s extraordinary skin and the mundanity of their activity. An emotionally stimulating selection of portraiture that engages the viewer with so many intensely intimate stories, it is almost a relief that the exhibition is not any larger in scale.

The question of how photography differs from other artistic media is also explored in portraits such as Julia Schestag's Maria With Child. Here, a weary mother holds her baby in a pose reminiscent of a Madonna and Child painting, with a golden disc on the wallpaper behind her head acting as a halo. There is something incredibly painterly about the translucence of her skin. In recalling the work of Leonardo Da Vinci and the old masters, Slater-Hunt highlights the responsibilities and sacrifices of parenthood. As with all of the portraits, however, something about the immediacy of photography makes the subject matter all the more poignant.

What made the winning entry stand out to the judges is indefinable and intriguing. The girl’s red hair that matches the coat of her guinea pig, the clinical white coat and bars of sunlight falling through the steel roof behind her? Her shy, adolescent unease? The five prize-winning entries are not given a particular emphasis in the arrangement of the exhibition, which seems appropriate given its message about the subjectivity of preference.

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize continues at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until 12 February 2012.

npg.org.uk

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We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
Christina and Mark, 14 months (2011
Dona Schwartz © Dona Schwartz

Hedi Slimane's California Song | The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

2011-11-10T16:29:00.000Z

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, opens a new solo exhibition of Hedi Slimane's work, on show from this weekend until 22 January 2012. California Song spans the photographer's California period and traces his explorations of cycles of urban youth culture and artistic communities, through installations of photographic essays, exhibitions, and publications.

Slimane has achieved global recognition over the past decade for his discovery and presentation of emerging musicians and artists. His publications on London youth are among the first books published about the early days of the new British punk-rock movement at the beginning of this decade, capturing the birth of the first generation of Internet users, and redefining the concept of “fans” as an indie youth imagery that has developed globally through emerging social networks. Slimaneʼs widely followed photographic diary, created in 2006, established and popularized an entirely new genre—the online photo diary.

Slimane has invented a new and oblique visual language to represent youth and reinvent the rock documentary. In his work, live performance is reduced to a minimal, photographic lexicon—a ritual black-and-white convention of signs. Still life photographs become almost liturgical—a singular, silent expression of youth.

Slimane's exhibition at MOCA will be divided into two parts. An installation and a series of black-and-white print photographs from his California years will be presented on the ground floor, and a sonic, motion-photography installation, produced specifically for MOCA, will be featured on the second floor. The installation will reference a multi-projection, cubic, architectural format, which Slimane has constructed in previous exhibitions to present his photographs, using serial construction and repetition to create an archaic form of cinematic narration.

Slimaneʼs allusive portraiture, in which photographs, portraits, and still life compositions are often signs or fragments of a portrait, will be projected in a repetitive, almost ritual, manner. The installation will also address “performance act,” as defined for the first time in Slimaneʼs photographic essay, Stage (2004), and will include a live performance space underneath the projection.

Select California bands, such as No Age, will contribute to the installation, using a fragmentary sound system, and composing panoramic scores—extended, visual song formats—which will form a dialogue with and define a sonic vocabulary for the photographs.

Hedi Slimane's California Song is on show from 12 November - 22 January.

moca.org

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Images:
All courtesy the artist

Opening Tomorrow | Roman Polanski: Actor & Director | BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts | Brussels

2011-11-09T16:05:00.000Z

From 10 November to 8 January 2012, the Centre for Fine Arts will host Roman Polanski: Actor & Director curated by the Łódź Museum of Cinematography. Through photographs showing him as an actor and director, and film posters from all over the world, the show retraces the career of one of the great masters of cinema.

This exhibition at the Centre for Fine Arts, which has also shown in Poland, London, São Paulo, and at the Berlinale, is split into two parts. The first part presents photographs that illustrate the great Polish film director's career chronologically, from his first steps as an actor to images from his latest film Carnage, due for release next month. These images will be accompanied by descriptions written by Polanski himself or by internationally-renowned artists he worked with or for as an actor. Most of the photographs come from film set archives or from the private collections of Polanski's friends such as Andrzej Wajda, Lina Kostenko, Gene Gutowski and Stanley Nowak.

The second part of the exhibition shows posters of the director's films from all over the world; USA, Japan, Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, Russia, Hungary, France and Germany. Forming part of the Łódź Museum of Cinematography collection, these posters highlight the international popularity of the Polish director and his work.

The show also includes sculptures of Polanski created by Pawel Jocz and Waldemar Pokromski alongside videos that clearly recall Polanski's roles as an actor.

Roman Polanski: Actor & Director continues until 8 January 2012.

bozar.be

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We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Images:
Niewinni Czrodziej Innocent Sorcerers 1960 © Archives Film Museum Lodz
Zaczarowany Rower Enchanted Bicycle 1955 © Archives Film Museum Lodz
Pokolenie (A Generation) 1955 © Archives Film Museum Lodz

The Aesthetica Short Film Festival | 3-6 November | Official Category Winners

2011-11-09T11:08:00.001Z

The Aesthetica Short Film Festival - the latest addition to the British film festival circuit - threw open its doors last Thursday night. The inaugural event spanned 4 days (3-6 November) and offered both visitors and residents the opportunity to experience film in the historic city of York. With 150 short films screened in 15 diverse locations across the weekend, medieval halls, historic buildings and contemporary art spaces were transformed into one-off, site-specific venues that allowed visitors the chance to see films from the world-over in a unique setting.

Individual screenings were complemented by a rich programme of special events and discussions, including the ASFF Awards Ceremony where Festival Director, Cherie Federico and Tony Earnshaw, former head of Film Programming at National Media Museum, announced the category winners. The following films will be on the Aesthetica Shorts DVD which will be available with the December/January issue.

Best Documentary and Overall Festival Winner

River Dog (2011)
James Muir/Daniel Hunter
(Mangakuri Pictures)
New Zealand

River Dog is an intimate look into a farmer’s life, and the struggle he endures to protect the river he lives by.

Best Drama

LIN (2010)
Piers Thompson
(Hector Film Ltd)
UK/Bulgaria/Turkey

A woman arrives at a Port Town in an unknown country as dawn turns to day. Her recounted stories begin to contradict themselves as she travels across the landscape. She is searching for something, a shape or a structure, which we are not even sure exists. Along the road she is eventually forced into initiating the process of self-reckoning. As her artifice begins to fall away she finds herself continuing her journey but now with a sense of resolution.

Best Comedy

Tooty’s Wedding (2010)
Frederic Casella
(Hoot Comedy)
UK

A young couple’s marriage hilariously hits the rocks during a weekend wedding in the country. Co-written by Ben Willbond and Laura Solon, this is an excruciatingly funny glimpse into a marriage on the blink.

Best Thriller

Cleaning Up (2011)
The Guerrier Brothers
(Big Finish Productions/Dead Dog Films)
UK

Mr Jackson is the perfect hitman; cold, calculating and professional, you see him and you die, don’t you? Cleaning Up stars Mark Gatiss as Mr Jackson, with Louise Jameson as Mrs Pellman and Anton Romain Thompson as James.

Best Music Video

Amatorski: Soldier (2011)
Maria de Gier
(Independent)
Best Animation

Best Animation

Hasan Everywhere (2009)
Andrew Kavanagh
(Kavaleer Productions)
Ireland

They were young, talented and free in New York. Dorit Rabinyan was an Israeli novelist and Hasan Hourani was a Palestinian artist. Their passionate friendship, impossible at home, flourished abroad. Then, in 2003 while visiting his family, Hourani drowned in Jaffa. Inspired by Dorit’s 2003 article The Exile’s Return and Hasan’s children’s book Hasan Everywhere, this film contrasts the lonely voice of the writer with the warm, imaginative landscapes of the artist.

Best Art Film

Wall (2011)
Michael Barwise
(University for the Creative Arts, Farnham)
UK

Wall is a short film designed for installation in a gallery space. Shot in super 16mm film, it tackles issues surrounding peace walls in Northern Ireland. Through the manifestation of feelings of paranoia, uncertainty and isolation it explores what it is like to grow up and live beside one of these walls, questioning the spaces that we consider home.

Best Experimental Film

Dogged (2011)
Jo Shaw
(Red Crow Films)
UK

In a world where bogeymen roam freely, devouring people randomly and the only creatures they fear are dogs; Old Dog does her best to defend the family home.

People’s Choice

Dr Knowgood: Lion’s Pride (2010)
Arnold Zwanenburg
(Googoo)
The Netherlands/Indonesia

Dr Knowgood: Lion’s Pride is a clay and stop motion animation directed by Arnold Zwanenburg. Telling the story of a lion that has lost his voice and a monkey doctor who saves the day, this is a charming piece of short film.

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoy reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary art and culture you should read us in print too. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!