Online, Big Screen Southend and Focal Point Gallery, Elmer Ave, Southend-on-Sea SS1 1NB
Effective dreams are dreams that can change the world. ‘To Dream Effectively’ at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea is a group show based upon the writing of Ursula K. Le Guin, bringing together alternative narratives for the future of our planet, both online, within the gallery, and upon Big Screen Southend. Review by Elliot Warren Gibbons
Parafin, 18 Woodstock St, Mayfair, London W1C 2AL
‘Points of View’ brings together rarely seen photographs, sculpture, installation and works on paper from the late 1960s and early 1970s by pioneering Land and Conceptual artist Nancy Holt, which show the formation of her visual lexicon. This compact exhibition, Holt’s second at Parafin, explores her interest in language, perception and our relationship to the environment. It signals a renewed interest in the artist’s work, ahead of two forthcoming large-scale European shows, and asks questions which feel especially prescient over four decades later, at a moment in which we are acutely aware of our surrounding landscape. Review by Grace Storey
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, NE8 3BA
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There is a distortion of time in BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; a strange anomaly in the fabric of space. Curious works are in the gallery, they could be from a bygone age, a distant future or a parallel world. In a way, each is true; they are birthed from the mind of Pakistani-American artist Huma Bhabha, whose imagination traverses time, space and genre. Review by Christopher Little
Online
The Plicnik Space Initiative, a new artistic venture founded by Amelie Mckee and Melle Nieling, hosts its inaugural exhibition aboard the D02.2, a fictional spacecraft of massive proportions, with a mission to explore the boundary between physical and virtual space. As museums and galleries across the globe face uncertain futures in the wake of the pandemic, the show interrogates the parameters of digital curation, inviting imaginative responses to a range of pressing questions concerning art and the environment, technology, and commerce. Review by Rowland Bagnall
Marseille, France
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‘Roots to Routes’ is a collaboration between artists, curators and non-profit organisations from the city of Marseille and the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). The project invites strangers to encounter the unfamiliar within the urban environment, while exploring concepts of ‘home’, ‘belonging’ and ‘identity’. Distinguishing itself among the 85 projects of ‘Les Parallèles du Sud’- ‘Roots to Routes’ acts like a second festival nestled within ‘Manifesta’. The programme can be seen as two branches - one concerned with the life of the senses, the other, inherited experience. These are united by ‘Same door different street’, a duo exhibition by Evita Vasiljeva (LV) and Antoine Nessi (FR) - and the first part of the programme to open. Review by Rebecca Larkin
Online
The six shortlisted works for the 2020 Film London Jarman Award are thought-provoking, exquisitely produced films that are markedly diverse and address concerns, in different documentary-style formats, that are at the forefront of social consciousness. They showcase the best in contemporary artists’ filmmaking and are being taken on a virtual tour to venues across the UK from 24 September to 19 November 2020. A prominent theme in the shortlist concerns archaeology, made manifest in the evaluation of the past or the uncovering of layers. Review by Rina Arya
Collezione Maramotti, RVia Fratelli Cervi, 66, 42124 Reggio Emilia RE, Italy
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
Forma Arts and Media, Peveril House, London, SE1 4TD
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
Prototype Publishing
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
Towner Eastbourne, Devonshire Park College Road Eastbourne BN21 4JJ
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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
Gagosian, 22 Anapiron Polemou Street, Athina 115 21, Greece
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
Online
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.
Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB
‘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
Ikon, 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, Birmingham B1 2HS
‘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
