Viewing articles from 2018/11

Auto Italia, 44 Bonner Road, London E2 9JS

Gran Fury: Read My Lips

Kissing Doesn't Kill, Gran Fury, 1990, vinyl wall poster

‘Read My Lips’ is a powerful retrospective of agitprop collective Gran Fury, an autonomous unit stemming from the New York caucus of radical international direct action group ‘AIDs Coalition To Unleash Power’ or ACT UP. Review by Sophie Risner

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Austrian Cultural Forum, 28 Rutland Gate, Knightsbridge, London SW7 1PQ

Newstalgia

Elisabeth Molin, Ate Chocolate, (edible monuments) 2018

‘Newstalgia’ is shifting common ways of memorialisation into question. It does this through exposing attempts to activate social and cultural habits that remember and question contemporary ways to fulfil civil duties – to re-evaluate economic, cultural and societal operations. Review by Alexandra Gamrot

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Assembly Point, 49 Staffordshire Street, London SE15 5TJ

Vanessa Billy: Future Perfect

Vanessa Billy, Future Perfect, installation view

Post-apocalyptic in tone, this set of interconnected works further develops themes of nature and transformation, concerns at the core of Billy’s practice. Consisting of new pieces and site specific interventions, the exhibition speculates on a future where science has radical consequences on the environment and living species within it.

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Plymouth College of Art, Tavistock Pl, Plymouth PL4 8AT

Simon Bayliss: Meditations in an Emergency

Simon Bayliss: Meditations in an Emergency installation view

Simon Bayliss’ exhibition, Meditations in an Emergency, is an exhibition of multitudes, crossing from pottery and electronic music to watercolour landscapes, poetry and performative film. The show by is a marriage of the seemingly incongruous, such as the neon sign alternating SIMON BAYLISS / SIN ON GAY BLISS reflecting on the glazing of his pottery. It is a joining, as the words inscribed on the pot reads, of ‘high and low with one another’. Review by Eva Szwarc

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Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Military Rd, Kilmainham, Dublin 8, Ireland

Wolfgang Tillmans: Rebuilding the Future

Wolfgang Tillmans, Rebuilding the Future, 26 October 2018 – 17 February 2019, Installation view IMMA, Dublin, 2018

Tillmans’ selection and presentation of his work is unique to each setting and here we see the choice to present, for the first time in a number of years, the early-career hospital operating theatre ‘I’ and ‘II’ from 1994, in the setting of a former hospital; indicating the work’s sensitivity and ability to respond to its environment and shape the narrative. Review by Aidan Kelly Murphy

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South London Gallery, 65-67 Peckham Rd, London SE5 8UH

KNOCK KNOCK: Humour in Contemporary Art

Installation view of KNOCK KNOCK at South London Gallery (22 September - 18 November 2018) Pictured: She (2017) and KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN (2018) by Danielle Dean

Despite the show’s title, which has been taken from Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Knock, Knock Poster’ (1976) and which appears in the main gallery, the exhibition refuses the monotony of formulaic joke-telling and instead employs irony and cynicism to create moments of discomfort and menace. Review by Olivia Aherne

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Campoli Presti, 223 Cambridge Heath Rd, London E2 0EL

Rochelle Feinstein: Rainbow Room / The Year in Hate

Rochelle Feinstein, Rainbow Room (diptych), 2018. Diptych, Acrylic, embroidery and collage on canvas

Bringing together a new body of work created this past year, the exhibition makes two opposing propositions, each one presented in one of the gallery’s two rooms. The propositions are based two formal devices: the rainbow and the calendar. Review by Edmée Lepercq

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Humber Street Gallery, 64 Humber St, Hull HU1 1TU

Jamie Reid: XXXXX: Fifty Years of Subversion and the Spirit

Jamie Reid: XXXXX: Fifty Years of Subversion and the Spirit installation view

Raised as a socialist and a druid and initiated into political activism at a young age, Jamie Reid blames his parents for his rebellious streak; which at the age of 71, shows no sign of abating. The self-described anarchist uses iconoclastic collages and seditious ransom note-style idioms to marshal a cultural insurgence against the status quo; while his kaleidoscopic paintings reject materialism and individualism through a meditative connection with nature. Review by Christopher Little

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LADA

LADA Screens - Instant Dissidence

Instant Dissidence/Rita Marcalo’s One Last Dance – An Chéad Damhsa, a perambulating dance taking place between Guildford (the place Rita lived in when she arrived in the UK as an Erasmus student in 1994) and Cloughjordan (the rural Irish village that she is moving to post-Brexit).

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Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, Via Chiese, 2, 20126 Milano MI, Italy

Mario Merz: Igloos

Mario Merz, "Igloos", exhibition view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2018

Curated by Vicente Todolí, Pirelli HangarBicocca Milan is currently presenting the iconic Igloos of Mario Merz (1925–2003) - a key figure of Arte Povera, and considered to be one of the most important post-war Italian artists; the exhibition brings together his most iconic oeuvre of work, the igloos, which date from 1968 until the end of the artist’s life. Review by Paul Black

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Blain|Southern, 4 Hanover Square, London W1S 1BP

Sean Scully: Uninsideout

Sean Scully, What Makes Us, 2017

The show provides an interesting point of entry to the work of this Irish-born American-based painter. Split across two rooms, ‘Uninsideout’ asks us to focus on the musicality of Scully’s work; the artist is quoted as saying ‘one stripe is a note, many are a chord, all are played by hand.’ Review by Clare Robson

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