REVIEW: Johnnie Shand-Kydd on Artfix

Johnnie Shand Kydd, "Father, daughter and dog, Via dei Tribunali, 2000." Silver gelatin print 50 x 40 cm.

We recently posted about Johnnie Shand-Kydd’s exhibition at The Estorick Collection here. Read Artfix’s enlivened review of it here.

July 7, 2010 by Ellie

PHOTOS: Keep Me Posted, East London

Thank you to Rachel Howard for sending through Jimmy Connor and Nickie Divine’s photos of Keep Me Posted’s opening night at a former East London Post Office. To read our previous post with details of the show, click here.

July 6, 2010 by Ellie

NEWS: Okido Updates

OKIDO issue 13 is LAUNCHING IN WHSMITH’S on 22nd JULY! (plus 300 new stores nationwide via their fantastic new distributors, COMAG!)

Issue 13 is on “NOISES OF THE BODY” and will be a BIGGER, F A T T E R AND EVEN BETTER OKIDO FOR THE HOLIDAYS!

MORE ACTIVITIES, A NEW-LOOK COVER AND A NEW SIZE:
ALL YOUR USUAL FAVOURITE CHARACTERS, plus some new ones,
CRAZILY CREATIVE STUFF to do,
SILLY STORIES and RIDICULOUS RHYMES to read,
DELICIOUS DOODLES to colour,
GORGEOUS GAMES to play,
SCRUMPTIOUS RECIPES to concoct
and SUPER SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS to conduct!

In fact, they’re aiming to keep kids happy from the start of the Summer to the very end of it with their unique mix of paper gymnastics…
(*And look out for a possible Very Special Guest’s contribution… who could it be?*)

PLEASE COME AND VISIT OKIDO’S stall at THE SAVE OUR SOULS SUNDAY MARKET *on 11th July from 11am-6pm *
Full of cool stuff to buy and do: comics, books, zines, prints, bags, objet d’art, cakes and pop and more!
Plus a raffle in aid of ART AGAINST KNIVES, with prizes that include prints donated by among others, Stephen Appleby Andrew Rae and Rob Ryan…
Where? Nicholls and Clarke Building, 3-10 Shoreditch High Street, Shoreditch..
For more info please visit:
http://www.save-our-souls.co.uk

“Escape to Wonderland, a history of Chilren’s Book Illustration”
From 7th August – 2nd January, a selection of artwork by OKIDO illustrators will be in this wonderful illustration exhibition at the LIGHTBOX GALLERY, Woking, alongside such greats as Shirley Hughes and Lauren Child and Children’s Laureate Anthony Brown. Okido will also be running a couple of worskhops there in the October half term.
For further details please visit:
http://www.thelightbox.org.uk/

WORKSHOP NEWS! Okido has been delivering original and awesome science/art workshops in a number of local primary schools. If you are interested in signing your school up, contact: sophie@okido.co.uk

REMEMBER, OKIDO has a facebook page! So if you are on facebook please become a fan of Okido and add to the buzzzzz….

HAPPY SUMMER OKI-DOKEY-KIDS!

July 5, 2010 by Ellie

CURRENT: Nothing is Forever, South London Gallery

25th June – 5th September 2010

Fiona Banner, Robert Barry, Ernst Caramelle, Brian Chalkley, Sam Dargan, Dustin Ericksen, Craig Fisher, Penny McCarthy, Paul Morrison, Henna Nadeem, Dan Perjovschi, Sam Porritt, Yinka Shonibare MBE, David Shrigley, Gary Simmonds, Lily van der Stokker, Milly Thompson, Mark Titchner, Lawrence Weiner, Gary Woodley

All photos: Andy Stagg

Fiona Banner, Black Hawk Down (detail), 2004

Nothing is Forever celebrates the completion of the SLG’s £2 million building project, bringing together wall paintings, drawings and text pieces by 20 British and international artists.

Seamlessly integrating art and architecture, each work is destined to be embedded in the fabric of the buildings when painted over at the end of the show. Nothing is Forever marks an important and transitional moment in the South London Gallery’s history as the institution expands into a formerly derelict house and a new building incorporating the surviving walls of a former lecture theatre and library. Featuring a 24 carat gold leaf wall painting, a 13-storey high design on a tower block and 5000-word film script handwritten directly onto the gallery walls, the exhibition draws visitors through the SLG’s new and existing spaces with a variety of approaches to making art directly on the walls.

Fiona Banner, Black Hawk Down (detail), 2004

Reflecting the scope of the SLG’s work in the local area in recent years, four parallel projects have been commissioned on walls by artists working with local residents, children, young people and gallery staff. Joanna Brinton, Orly Orbach and Matthew Shaw have worked with children from the SLG’s Making Play project to make works on Sceaux Gardens estate; Daniel Lehan has created a hoarding inspired by the words of children from Charlie Chaplin Adventure Playground; and Henna Nadeem collaborated with students from St Saviour’s and St Olave’s School on a mural project.

Nothing is Forever, Installation View, South London Gallery 2010

Ernst Caramelle, Untitled, 2010

A series of talks and events are scheduled to accompany the exhibition. For more information, visit the SLG website.

July 1, 2010 by Ellie

CURRENT: Neal Tait at The Apartment

June – 30th September 2010

Dan Walsh, Untitled, 2008, Ink on inomachi paper, 22 x 30 inches

The Apartment is pleased to announce “Once Removed”, a group exhibition curated by gallery artist Daniel Sturgis. Daniel Sturgis is known for his flat, abstract paintings, which imbue modernism with a sense of playfulness, anxiety and revived energy. Curating is an extension of his practice, as he often chooses to present other artists’ work and contribute to a dialogue and a wider awareness of painterly concerns. Daniel Sturgis has recently curated the posthumous Liz Arnold exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre, London, a series of group shows on contemporary abstract painting at a number of institutions in Britain as well as a major project with Daniel Buren for The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere.

Neal Tait, The Balloon, 2008, Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 41 cm, Courtesy the artist, The Apartment, Athens and White Cube, London

For this show at The Apartment, Sturgis has brought together a number of established and mid-career artists, who critically mine the history of painting and the modernist cannon, bringing out questions on the nature of representation. Amongst them are Keith Coventry, Peter Halley, James Hyde, Neal Tait, Dan Walsh and John Wilkins. In Peter Halley’s work, abstract geometries are continually re-contextualized in a democratic manner that incorporates references to communication systems, technological models and popular culture. Dan Walsh subverts the formal paradigm with a series of irregular lines and a fine sense of understatement. Neal Tait idiosyncratically appropriates historical styles in his enigmatic paintings, while James Hyde literally paints over representations of Stuart Davis paintings. The exhibition also features a nylon webbing by Hyde, a work that blends the boundaries between painting and sculpture.

James Hyde, Blender (Davis), 2006, Acrylic on archival digital print, 20.5 x 27.25 inches

All the artists in the exhibition purposefully create a distancing device within their practice, which allows them to make paintings whilst also referring to the problems of representation and the pressures exerted by the didacticism of modernist history. Once Removed further complicates such a reading with the inclusion of a film by the painter Keith Coventry, W.A.F.S 1996, a seemingly peripheral work, a playful re-presentation of a pre-war modernist film.

By bringing together artists from London and New York, Once Removed examines the shared and divergent relationships painters have to their medium, to each other and most importantly to the history of painting.

James Hyde, Swimmer, 2010, Nylon Webbing, 72 x 60 x 10 inches

June 30, 2010 by Ellie

CURRENT: John Isaacs, Berlin Pillar of Art 2010

In association with Art Barter Berlin, which we posted about here, Berlin Pillar of Art also launches this month.

Art_below

The third in the series, Berlin Pillar of Art project is an initiative first set up by Art Below’s Ben Moore whereby 14 foot high pillars in the districts of Berlin Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg are adorned with works by selected artists.

This method of presenting and curating art on the city streets is a brave and bold enterprise, bringing art to a wide public audience. It enables the artists to air their work in front of a larger audience than ever before and what better location than the culturally vibrant, artistic hub that is Berlin?

The project attracted a great deal of attention and success back in 2009, hence this year’s re-launch. The added bonus of Art Barter’s curatorship should inject a new and exciting twist to what was already a dynamic project. The two like-minded ‘art entrepreneurs’ have described themselves as the ‘perfect playmates’, both ‘revolutionary, resourceful and truly avant-garde in spirit’.

The 10 selected public pillars are located in the Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte districts, with work from Berlin’s hottest established and emerging artists being represented. In an added variation on last year’s theme, 2010’s Pillar of Art will exclusively showcase work from artists living and working in Berlin. Coinciding with Berlin’s 6th Biennale for Contemporary Art, this summer promises to further establish the city’s reputation as a creative melting pot.

Beth Jennings, J (Berlin Pillar of Art 2009)

Exhibiting artists are as follows: Jonathan Monk, Jason Dodge, Uwe Henneken, John Isaacs, Saâdane Afif, Evgeni Dybsky, Wolfgang Ganter, Yudi Noor, Sophie Holstein, Stefan Rinck, Haralampi Oroschakoff, Ilona Kalnoky, Charlotte Dualé, Stephan Balleux, Melissa Frost, Isabelle Graeff, John Kleckner, Alejandro Moncada, Sergio Roger, Yukiko Terada, Clémence Seilles, Ludwig Kreutzer and Jeremy Shaw.

by Ellie

FRIDAY: Keep Me Posted, Group Show

2nd July – 26th September 2010

Open Thursday – Sunday 11-5pm or by appointment

KEEP ME POSTED is a group show, directed and curated by Julia Royse, that launches a temporary exhibition space in a former post office in East London entitled POSTED.

POSTED will present a series of art exhibitions, performances, screenings and workshops celebrating the ‘post’ and exploring and examining our postal history and heritage.

For the first show, KEEP ME POSTED, artists – both established and emerging – have been invited to present work that reflects what the notion of post means to them – past and present. Andreas Blank presents a stone carved ‘parcel’ using a former weighing machine as a ready-made plinth; James White’s painting of a ‘scrunched up’ electricity bill is a reflection of the mundane and more unwelcome use of the postal service whereas Rachel Howard’s homage to the ‘penny black’ celebrates our postal heritage. Both Claire Brewster and Miyo Yoshida have made use of the old paraphernalia left behind by the former postmaster and have created installations that recycle and reanimate the ‘postal’ material.

The GPO (General Post Office) used to be a powerful institution in Britain with postman delivering mail up to 8 times a day. It was a highly valued and efficient service for making appointments as well as communicating the usual news and views. The GPO often commissioned leading artists and designers to produce short films and a selection of these inventive and charming works are screened in this first show.
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post”, and while we still enjoy studying the idiosyncrasies of handwriting and style of stationery on old correspondence, we are less inclined today to communicate through letters and cards. As a way of encouraging a return to letter writing and to celebrate the joys of sending and receiving letters, a number of artists including Tracey Emin and Georgie Hopton are creating stationery sets that will be on view and available from POSTED. For the same reasons, Oliver Clegg offers a permanent ‘writing station’ complete with hand carved seat on which viewers are encouraged to sit and write and then even post their correspondence in the elegant George V pillar box that stands directly outside the space. Postage stamps will be available!

The exhibitions at POSTED will hopefully inspire people to put pen to paper again as well as reminding us of a time when communication was more personal and less generic.

Artists participating in KEEP ME POSTED include Andreas Blank, Claire Brewster, Jo Broughton, Natasha Chambers, Oliver Clegg, Julie Cockburn, Adam Dix, Itai Doron, Sean Dower, Tracey Emin, Angus Fairhurst, Vanessa Fristedt, Tom Gidley, Cate Halpin, Susie Hamilton, Georgie Hopton, Rachel Howard, Duncan MacAskill, Harland Miller, Polly Morgan, Benjamin Newton, Molly Palmer, Julia Riddiough, Jane Simpson, James White and Miyo Yoshida.

Julia Royse is currently a director of RS&A Ltd as well as an independent advisor to artists and art collectors. She was a founding director and co- curator of White Cube from 1992 – 2000.

For further information, please contact Julia Royse on +44 (0)7973 490242 or at mail@postedprojects.co.uk

by Ellie