Aeschylia Festival 2017, Eleusis, Athens

Danae Stratou: Upon the earth and under the clouds

Upon the earth and under the clouds (2017)

The major installation work, Upon the earth and under the clouds, by Greek artist Danae Stratou at the site of the Old Oil Mill in Eleusis, a major industrial town 11 miles northwest of central Athens which will be the European Capital of Culture 2021, takes visitors on a journey of multiple dimensions. Heavily charged by its ancient past revolving around the practices of Eleusinian Mysteries, a series of significant yet secret rituals and ceremonies known all across the ancient Greek and Roman world, the small town triggered the artist’s imagination and played host to a distinctive visual vocabulary. Review by Dr Kostas Prapoglou

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Tyneside Cinema, 10 Pilgrim Street, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6QG

Andrea Luka Zimmerman: Civil Rites

Film Still, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Civil Rites

At its core, this is a film about the citizens of Newcastle and their indefatigable spirit of resistance, as it’s expressed itself over centuries. It takes us on a journey through a series of simply and beautifully composed shots of prosaic city spots that have also, at some historical moment, witnessed extraordinary acts of protest. Review by Helena Haimes

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Stuart Shave/Modern Art. 4-8 Helmet Row, London EC1V 3QJ

David Noonan: A Dark and Quiet Place

David Noonan, exhibition view, Modern Art, Vyner Street, London,

In the current political climate, few things seem more appealing that a quiet, dark room where one can shut out the world. Perhaps it is this escapist fantasy, then, that is the drive behind David Noonan’s new exhibition at Stuart Shave/Modern art entitled ‘A Dark and Quiet Place’. Review by Amy Jones

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Access Gallery, 222 E Georgia St, Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z7

Some Spontaneous Particulars: Vanessa Brown, Heide Hinrichs, Kathleen Ritter

Some Spontaneous Particulars,  Installation view

Some Spontaneous Particulars presents never-before exhibited work by three artists whose research-based practices have drawn them to the work of historical women artists Marianne Brandt (for Brown), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (for Hinrichs) and Mina Loy (for Ritter), whose own production and memory has been overlooked or stifled within the art historical canon.

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Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG

They Are Here: 40 Temps, 8 Days

Temps, 8 Days - Day 8: Reflecting on Life

For their new performance 40 Temps, 8 Days, artist collective They Are Here employed forty temp workers at an hourly rate of £10.50 to do activities normally done in one’s spare time.

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Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX

Leonor Antunes: the frisson of the togetherness

Installation view at the Whitechapel Gallery, Leonor Antunes: the frisson of the togetherness, Gallery 2

The installation invites viewers to navigate the gallery’s history without words but through the fully accessible, the common and even the residual, giving the latter a value. Review by Rafael Barber Cortell

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Pool of Plenty, Galerie de l’UQAM
Judith-Jasmin Pavilion, Room J-R120 1400 Berri Street, Montréal

Pool of Plenty: Michelle Bui

Beadgame

Pool of Plenty is an exhibition that brings together photographic work that transcends the decorative and ornamental language of advertising in a détournement that makes use of touch and smell to surpass mere visual spectacle. In this solo show, the artist engages with a rediscovery of objects, materials, food items and plants that make our environment.

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Pace Gallery, 510 West 25th Street, New York NY 10001

Elizabeth Murray: Painting in the ‘80s

Installation view of Elizabeth Murray: Painting in the '80s 510 West 25th Street, New York

In the 1980s a new generation of painters had broken through. The pieces were big, the personas even bigger. Names like Fischl, Salle, and Schnabel became not just salient, but sexy. While this landscape hardly embraced women participants, innovators like Elizabeth Murray, the subject of an excellent retrospective currently on display at Pace’s 25th St. location in Chelsea, transcended dismissal through persistence.

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Barbican Centre, Silk St, London EC2Y 8DS

John Akomfrah: Purple

John Akomfrah: Purple. The Curve, Barbican

Throughout the five movements and epilogue of ‘Purple’, which follow a loose narrative arc beginning at birth and ending with death, and simultaneously show technological progressions from steam engines to artificial intelligence, the screens loop disparate imagery together creating a lyrical essayism. Review by Stan Portus

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Galerie Fons Welters, Bloemstraat 140-C, 1016 LJ Amsterdam, Netherlands

Evelyn Taocheng Wang: Four Season of Women Tragedy

Four Season of Women Tragedy at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, installation view

Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s second solo show at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, flaunts references to Wang’s wardrobe of Agnès B. clothing, her background in traditional Chinese painting techniques, her daily life in Rotterdam and Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel 'To the Lighthouse' which Wang uses to draw comparisons between her life and the novel’s main character, Lily Briscoe, who questions her identity in relation to her parents and gendered conventions. Review by Helena Julian

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The Sunday Painter, 117-119 South Lambeth Road, London SW8 1XA

Beatriz Olabarrieta: The only way out is in

Beatriz Olabarrieta, The only way out is in, installation view, The Sunday Painter, 2017

In the first instance Beatriz Olabarrieta's artwork is crooked. Like an oversized yoga mat, 'Open relationship (almost failing red)' (2017) is placed askew of the demarcation grooves set by the floorboards. Only just slightly, which gives it a sense of the accidental. The temptation is to correct its placement, though of course the work remains untouched and introduces an exhibition teasingly just short of the definable and the ideal. Review by Jillian Knipe

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V-A-C Collection, Palazzo delle Zattere, Dorsoduro 1401, Venice

The Electric Comma: V-A-C Collection

Installation view, The Electric Comma

Taking its title from Shannon Ebner’s installation The Electric Comma, the exhibition focuses on shifts in language, perception and understanding in the age of artificial intelligence. Through varied practices and from different backgrounds, participating artists deal with the negotiations between the conscious mind and today’s pervasive learning machine, imagining pathways of exchange between human and nonhuman, ranging from the poetic and intuitive to the algorithmical and analytical.

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Turner Contemporary, Rendezvous, Margate CT9 1HG

Hans Arp: The Poetry of Forms

Installation view of Jean Arp: The Poetry of Forms at Turner Contemporary, Margate. 13 October 2017 - 14 January 2018.

In the first exhibition of Arp’s work in the UK since his death in 1966, Turner Contemporary exhibits a selective retrospective of the multi-linguist’s works and ideas spanning from early Dadaist pieces such as the poem ‘Kaspar ist tot’ to the sculpture, ‘Étoile’, a hollow melting star that marks his grave in Locarno. Review by Evie Ward

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