Collezione Maramotti, RVia Fratelli Cervi, 66, 42124 Reggio Emilia RE, Italy

Svenja Deininger: Two Thoughts

At risk of stating the obvious, Svenja Deininger’s work is really something to be seen up close. The pared back minimalism of the Austrian artist’s paintings mean that subtle textural shifts take on an important nuanced role in the articulation between tessellating panels of colour and abstract forms. Noticing the fine grain of a wood panel slotted into the canvas, or the highly buffed sheen of a protrusion like nubuck leather, is one of the small rewards that come by spending more than a fleeting glance on each work. Review by Jessica Saxby

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Forma Arts and Media, Peveril House, London, SE1 4TD

Interview with Alberta Whittle: ‘RESET’

Alberta Whittle’s new moving image work ‘RESET’ (2020) was awarded the 2020 Frieze Artist Award. Filmed across the artist’s native Barbados, as well as South Africa and the United Kingdom, it charts a polyphonic journey, woven together through contributions by writers, performers, and musicians, who Whittle refers to as her accomplices. ‘RESET’ is steeped in postcolonial and queer theory, informing Whittle’s process, which is also a form of protest: the work addresses contagion, xenophobia and their colonial entanglements, while exploring healing and meditation as forms of resistance. To reset, by Whittle’s terms, is not only to wipe the slate clean, but also to create a new de-colonial language: aural and written, embodied and spiritual, made up of multiple diasporic alliances. Interview by Inês Geraldes Cardoso

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Prototype Publishing

Helen Marten: The Boiled in Between

Helen Marten was awarded the Turner Prize in 2016 for her enigmatic work in sculpture. Two years later, the artist noted a disconcerting lack in critical dialogue surrounding her work. Marten usually works across sculpture, painting, print-making, film and writing, but decided to temporarily vacate her studio for a year to solely focus on writing her first novel, ‘The Boiled in Between’, published by Prototype in 2020. Article by Olivia Fletcher

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Towner Eastbourne, Devonshire Park College Road Eastbourne BN21 4JJ

Towner International 2020

A new biennial exhibition, with a £10,000 prize, features 24 artists selected from an open call by art world heavy weights: Polly Staple (Director of Collections, British Art, Tate), Turner Prize nominee Mike Nelson and Towner’s own Curator, Noelle Collins. There’s a lot of good things to be said about Towner International, Towner Gallery’s new biennial exhibition. It celebrates artists in the vicinity of Towner’s East Sussex location—10 have been chosen from Sussex, nearby Kent and Hampshire, 10 from elsewhere across the UK and 4 from international locations. Review by Kirsty White

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Gagosian, 22 Anapiron Polemou Street, Athina 115 21, Greece

Brice Marden: Marbles and Drawings

Gagosian’s new space in Athens opens with work by American artist Brice Marden. The show is focused primarily on paintings made since the 1980s on pieces of salvaged marble, found on the idyllic island of Hydra, where the artist has lived and worked since the 1970s. Review by William Summerfield

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Online

Femme Inc.: Shades of Grey

In times of magnified instability and palpable uncertainty, it’s tempting to seek the steady hand of explanation, to cling onto what seems to offer refuge in simplicity and sureness. Truth and falsity, reality and artifice, the allure of these black and white flipsides lies in their illusory straightforwardness. Review by Cultura Plasmic Inc.

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Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB

Jimmy Robert: Akimbo

‘Akimbo’ is the largest presentation of Jimmy Robert’s work in the UK to date: a survey spanning nearly two decades of Robert’s video, collage, drawing and sculpture. ‘Akimbo’ aims to embody the action of its title (standing with hands on hips) as a defiant posture which converges works in new arrangements to create new conversations and fresh perspectives. Throughout his practice questions of intimacy and touch, and what it means to see and be seen are explored using the body as a vehicle for enquiry. Review by Joshua Lockwood-Moran

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Ikon, 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, Birmingham B1 2HS

Krištof Kintera: THE END OF FUN!

‘THE END OF FUN!’ is the pertinent title of Krištof Kintera’s (b. 1973) timely solo show at Ikon. The Czech artist is internationally acclaimed for his mechanical sculptures, made from electronic waste, which critique hyper-capitalist systems, especially with respect to ecological concerns. Review by Ruth Millington

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Jerwood Arts, 171 Union Street, London SE1 0LN

Jerwood/FVU Awards 2020: Interview with Reman Sadani

As Reman Sadani's film 'Walkout 1' premieres at Jerwood Arts, Anneka French sat down with the artist, one of the winners of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2020, to discuss her new work and the impact the award has had upon her practice. Interview by Anneka French

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Jerwood Arts, 171 Union Street, London SE1 0LN

Jerwood/FVU Awards 2020: Interview with Guy Oliver

Ahead of the presentation of his newly commissioned film, 'You Know Nothing of My Work', at Jerwood Arts this autumn, Anneka French sat down with artist Guy Oliver—one of the recipients of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2020. Interview by Anneka French

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Castor, Enclave 1, 50 Resolution Way, London SE8 4AL

Interview with Grace Woodcock

If you’ve managed to envisage telepathy and sleeplessness, then you’re some way to grasping the substance of my recent conversation with Grace Woodcock. We discussed her retro futuristic solo exhibition at Castor gallery in London, through the lens of Octavia Butler’s equally fascinating and terrifying sci-fi novel ‘Mind of My Mind’ (1977). The book tracks a young, poor and mixed race woman called Mary who goes through a dramatic transition from “latent” to “active”. She supplants her trans-racial, trans-gender breeder Doro by creating a super-race of telepaths, all connected through a universal pattern. Interview by Jillian Knipe

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Nida Art Colony, E. A. Jonušo g. 3, 93127, Lithuania

Liu Chuang: Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities

Some Baltic mythology to start. Neringa is a young giant from Lithuanian folklore, pure of heart and altruistic. One day Neringa was playing on the Baltic Sea coast when a storm hit, and the giantess piled up sand to protect the land—an area now known as the Curonian Spit. This sand-dune spit is divided in half between Lithuania and Russia, by way of Kaliningrad. At one of the widest points sits the Lithuanian town of Nida and, while the entire strip of land has a notable and twisting history, it’s Nida that stands out as one of the most interesting locales. Review by Tom Mouna

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Soft Opening, 6 Minerva St, London E2 9EH

Olivia Erlanger: Home is a Body

At Soft Opening, contained within five large polystyrene and plexiglass eyes — their slightly warped corneas protruding from the walls — Erlanger presents a collection of domestic rooms, modelled precisely in miniature: a bedroom, garage/gym, living room, bathroom and garden. The white picket fences and floral bedspreads evoke an image of suburban life that those of us who grew up outside of America will recognise largely through its ubiquity in the fictional worlds of Hollywood films. Review by Amy Jones

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Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Dryden St, Nottingham NG1 4GG

Sophie Cundale: The Near Room

Sophie Cundale’s new film commission ‘The Near Room’ (2020) is an absurd psychological melodrama about loss and the aftermath. The film as a whole asks, but doesn’t answer the question of how we make sense of experiences in flux, like ecstasy or crisis. In unfathomable times, when death feels closer to life than ever, this film is an unsettling watch. Review by Andrew Price

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