Artists’ run spaces reinvigorate the gallery

Opening on 4 July at Eastside Projects in Birmingham, a solo show by Glasgow based artists Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan. The collaborative duo have made a new work which through its very naming, Does your contemplation of the situation fuck with the flow of circulation, clearly, eloquently and aggressively, introduces the duo’s playful, provocative and interrogative art practice. Tatham and O’Sullivan have been creating work since 1995 that is concerned with the mythic potential of art, and how art can exist as an event in a particular space and time.

Embodying the concept of interdisciplinary their work is situated between and utilising, sculpture, painting, architecture, photography, performance, literature, institutional critique and curation. The artists’ works use carefully crafted paths, displacements and diversions as strategies for synthesising the concept of culture as a localised system of meanings and the world of art - seen as a community.

Does your contemplation… is a complex re-presenting of the artists’ rhetoric as a new construct, tackling the fact that the artists’ most significant works exist in the form of an exhibition. While an exhibition may be comprised of a number of ‘pieces’, it is the choreography or curation of these pieces that needs to be read as the work-construct. Eastside Projects’ very particular state of reflexive performativity as a venue, and context within which to make a new work, provides the artists with an opportunity to test out new strategies as a public process of re-analysis.

Tatham and O’Sullivan consider Eastside Projects a non-standard gallery and are treating it as a found site, working “on top of” the venue with components that form the exhibition as a series of objects (or constructed artefacts) designed to challenge the function and status of the venue and its contents. The objects consist of a new architectural construction, a large patterned Z-shaped tunnel which can be entered and passed through, positioned centrally amongst elements that adapt and reclaim the artists’ existing tropes with a new development in the form of a digital projection sequencing colour manipulated photographs interwoven with an innate rhetorical question.

The artists are opening up the language that they use in order to better fashion an exhibition to make the viewer aware of their own thinking processes - an environment to highlight consciousness. Very exciting work.

The exhibition runs from 4 July until 6 September. www.eastsideprojects.org

Image credit (c) Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan

Yayoi Kusama at Victoria Miro, London

Installation is one of my favourite art forms. Depending on the work it can embody the space, enhance it and inevitably change it in some way. Thinking about the natural world versus the built environment led me to follow up Victoria Miro’s press release on Yayoi Kusama’s three giant pumpkins that will be on view for about a month this summer. The new giant dotted pumpkins will be installed in Victoria Miro's canal side garden to mark the 80th birthday of Japan's most revered contemporary artist.

Yayoi Kusama - whose legendary career spans six decades - celebrates her 80th birthday this year. To mark the occasion, for the first time in London, three new pumpkin works will be on display. Situated in the gallery's canal side garden the sculptures will be presented alongside her permanently installed iconic piece Narcissus Garden (1966-).

Kusama's acclaimed presentation in the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993, which consisted of a mirrored room filled with tiny pumpkin sculptures in which she sat in colour coordinated magician's attire - marked the beginning of the artist's preoccupation with the pumpkin motif. Following the Biennale she went on to produce a huge, yellow pumpkin sculpture covered with an optical pattern of black dots. This pumpkin came to represent for her a kind of alter ego or self-portrait and remains one of her signature series of works.

Kusama is a fascinating artist; the fact that her career has lasted over 60 years is a testament to the longevity of her work. I am amazed that in Novemvber 2008, Christies New York auctioned her a piece of her for $5,100,000. The hightest sum ever paid for a living female artist’s work!

Another fabulous Japanese artist is Yoshitomo Nara. His last work in the UK was at BALTIC, A-Z project.

Yayoi Kusama: Outdoor Sculptures runs at Victoria Miro from 23 June until 25 July. Opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm.

Image credit (c)Yayoi Kusama courtesy of Victoria Miro

The First City of Film: Congratulations Bradford!

Beating Los Angeles, Cannes and Venice on 12 June Bradford became the first ever UNESCO City of Film.

Revealing pride for his home-town, Slumdog Millionaire screenwriter, Simon Beaufoy said of the award: “This is superb news for Bradford and is testimony to the City’s dedication to the film and media industry. Not only has Bradford played a crucial role in the story of cinema and helped shape its history, it has inspirational plans to enhance its future relationship with film, which will benefit both the local community and the industry at large.”

The UNESCO award (United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) means that Bradford is now part of the Creative Cities Network.

The only other two UK cities awarded UNESCO status, are Edinburgh City of Literature and Glasgow City of Music. Designed to promote the social, economic and cultural development of cities in both the developed and developing world, this important award promotes the shared interest of Bradford and UNESCO in the mission towards cultural diversity.


One crucial component to Bradford’s success is the city’s film festivals. These encompass the length of breadth of film making, with Bite the Mango, Bradford International Film Festival and Bradford Animation Festival showcasing shorts, feature-films, documentaries and animation from every corner of the globe.

Aesthetica was present at Bradford International Film Festival 2009, where we chatted with festival director Tony Earnshaw about his personal highlights of the festival and the importance of festivals to independent film. For a further overview of film festivals on a global scale, take a look at the Aesthetica ‘Film Festival’s at a Glance’ feature, which covers the best of contemporary and classic film from Munich to Cambodia

Bradford’s City of Film bid was chaired by Bradford-born Steve Abbot, producer of films such as “A Fish Called Wanda” and “Brassed Off”. If you want to emulate Abbot’s success, why not try your own hand at filmmaking? The current issue of Aesthetica has a step-by-step DIY guide penned by leading industry insiders Shooting People and Branchange Festival Programmer Philip Ilson. Here at Aesthetica, we are committed to supporting independent film making, and host a new short film every month on our homepage – courtesy of Shooting People.

If part one of our DIY Film Guide has sparked your creativity, our August-September issue is set to be essential reading. We’ll be bringing you the second part of our how to’ guide – with tips on how to promote, distribute and just get your film seen!

Image Top: Awayday

Middle: Steve Abbott producer and chair of the Bradford City of Film Board and Simon Beaufoy Oscar winning screenwriter