Viewing articles from 2019/04

Fabrica, 40 Duke Street, Brighton, BN1 1AG

Serge Attukwei Clottey: Current Affairs

Serge Attukwei Clottey: Current Affairs, Fabrica, 18th April - 27th May 2019

On one of the hundreds of yellow plastic segments cut and woven together to form Serge Attukwei Clottey’s monumental tapestry work, someone has written in black marker, so small you might miss it amongst the waves of bright colour, “Exodus 17”. It’s unclear if the scribbled allusion has been added by the artist or whether it remains from the material’s previous life as a jerry can, used to carry cooking oil and then water in drought-hit areas of Ghana. Review by Adam Heardman

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17-19 Triton Street, Regents Place

CLIMATE: CHANGING OUR CULTURE, RESTORING OUR ENVIRONMENT

PANEL: Sol Bailey-Barker, Nissa Nishikawa, Daniel Hudson, Extinction Rebellion & Colin Tudge. Chaired by Gabriella Sonabend. A panel discussion organised as part of exhibition 'Sisyphus in Retrograde' at 17-19 Triton Street, Regents Place, London until May 4th 2019.

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LADA

LADA Screens: Katherine Araniello

A compilation of greatest hits by the extraordinary artist Katherine Araniello who died in February 2019. Katherine’s work used performance, video and subversive humour in response to the mundane, social awkwardness and the negative representation of disability.

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Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET

Geta Brătescu: The Power of the Line

Geta Brătescu, Jocul formelor (Game of Forms), 2010, Collage, drawing on paper, 4 parts, 45 x 60 cm

Hauser & Wirth, working closely with the artist before her death and with Ivan Gallery, has put together a museum-quality exhibition of this remarkable artist’s work. The show draws together pieces from the last decade, a period in which Brătescu’s practice focused on working with the line as a structuring principle. Review by Anna Souter

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Hauser & Wirth, Durslade Farm Dropping Lane, Bruton Somerset BA10 0NL

Matthew Day Jackson: Pathetic Fallacy

Installation view, Matthew Day Jackson, Pathetic Fallacy, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2019

“Our engagement with nature, to occupy it and to flatten it to a certain extent … That’s the beginning point,” says artist Matthew Day Jackson on his exhibition ‘Pathetic Fallacy’, the result of a months’ residency in Somerset. During his time in England, the American artist had what he described as a mind-blowing experience of the countryside and kept thinking about how space was organised around the human body, nature, architecture and sculpture. Review by Gulnaz Can

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Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham, NG1 2GB

Elizabeth Price: FELT TIP

Elizabeth Price, KOHL (still), 2018

Elizabeth Price’s solo show at Nottingham Contemporary brings together three new works. Each departs from a moment in late 20th century British history: a period marked by the collapse of the organized Left, the systematic dismantling of union power, and the programmatic reconstitution of the working class. Review by Hugh Nicholson

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Lévy Gorvy, 22 Old Bond St, Mayfair, London W1S 4PY

FOCUS: Agnes Martin

FOCUS: Agnes Martin. Installation view, Levy Gorvy, London, 2019.

This is an artist who spent her life in the pursuit of abstract painting: grids and stripes, minimal yet expressive abstractions, imperfect horizontal lines in soft, pastel shades and faint, pencil-drawn grids. A similarly meditative, light-bathed atmosphere pervades the film, and it is a revelation to see Martin’s artistic vision realised in the bread-and-butter reality of the physical landscape. Review by Clare Robson

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Kadist, 19bis/21 rue des Trois Frères, Paris, 75018, France

Affective Utopia

Reynier Leyva Novo, A Thousand and One Times Revolution, 2009-2018, exhibition view Affective Utopia, KADIST, Paris.

Imagining utopia seems to have become the principal task of artists as of late, any speculative, social practice is quickly branded as such. So much so that the title of Kadist’s latest exhibition ‘Affective Utopia’ almost washes past unnoticed. Review by Jessica Saxby

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Locks Gallery, 600 S Washington Square, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA

Sarah McEneaney: Callowhill

Studio

Sarah McEneaney’s painting technique is deceptively simple, reminiscent almost of folk art in its deliberate flatness, bright colours, elevated viewpoint, and attention to surface detail. Review by Deborah Krieger

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FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L1 4DQ

Ericka Beckman & Marianna Simnett

Marianna Simnett films (Blood and The Udder)

Ericka Beckman and Marianna Simnett show the human female to be a rebellious creature, a feisty character, courageously challenging the dogma and stereotypical norms of her world. However, they do this in very contrasting ways and herein lies the intrinsic value of this exhibition. Review by Samantha Browne

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Jerwood Visual Arts, Jerwood Space, 171 Union Street, Bankside, London SE1 0LN

Jerwood/FVU Awards 2019: Going, Gone: Webb-Ellis, Richard Whitby

The Lost Ones by Richard Whitby as part of Jerwood / FVU Awards 2019: Going, Gone exhibition at Jerwood Space

‘Going, Gone’ is the latest installment of the Jerwood/FVU Awards, and brings us two newly-commissioned films by winning artists Richard Whitby and Webb-Ellis. This year’s work ‘takes Britain’s declared exit from the European Union as a starting point for reflection on other collective experiences of transition and loss. Review by Jack Head

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White Cube Bermondsey, 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3TQ

Tracey Emin A Fortnight of Tears

Tracey Emin, A Fortnight of Tears, White Cube Bermondsey, 6 February - 7 April 2019

The paintings in this exhibition splatter the flesh, blood and mucus palettes of Francis Bacon and Cy Twombly across Egon Schiele’s warped technical accuracy of human anatomy. It’s some of the best painting Emin has done for years and is enough to carry the less potent parts of the exhibition. The neon and the selfies seem to blare some loud but ineloquent kind of intimacy at you, and don’t come near the compositional mastery of the paintings and sculptures. Review by Adam Heardman

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Richard Saltoun Gallery, 41 Dover St, Mayfair, London W1S 4NS

Rose English: Form, Feminisms, Femininities

Rose English, Plato's Chair, Vancouver, 1983, Gelatin silver print, 69 x 69 cm

Two lovers lie in bed sleeping. Their duvet is a ploughed field, fabric folds replaced with the undulating peaks and troughs of soil furrows. An air of the uncanny pervades ‘Bed in Field’ (1971), a series of photographs of British performance artist Rose English and her partner of the time tucked into a pastoral landscape. Review by Lotte Johnson

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