Viewing articles from 2020/03

Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, St James's, New Cross, London SE14 6AD

Transparent Things

Installation view of Transparent Things (2020), at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London

It’s not uncommon for art or exhibitions to draw upon philosophical or literary sources for inspiration. The 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2015 staged daily readings of Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’ (1867); the seed for Cally Spooner’s performance at the New Museum, New York in 2016 ‘On False Tears and Outsourcing’ was a scene from Flaubert’s ‘Madame Bovary’ (1856); and Tai Shani’s presentation at the 2019 Turner Prize was based on a 1405 text by poet Christine de Pizan. Review by Kirsty White

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narrative projects, 110 New Cavendish Street, Fitzrovia, London W1W 6XR

Rachel Lowe: SPLIT

Rachel Lowe, Split, 2020, 4 channel video projection, sound

Eighty black and white slides, created from found photographs of assorted different women, are projected chronologically so as to suggest the life of one individual woman. Having removed the central section, where the female subject should be, from each photograph, the re-assembled images now possess a vertical seam running down their centres. The physical incision enacted upon the images does not remove the woman's presence entirely, leaving the fictional "Elizabeth" of the title, somehow present and absent at the same time. Find out more about Rachel Lowe: SPLIT at narrative projects.

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Collective, City Observatory, 38 Calton Hill, Edinburgh EH7 5AA

Julijonas Urbonas: Planet of People

A Planet of People, Collective, 2020

Julijonas Urbonas is an artist, a designer, the former head of an amusement park, a researcher, and the founder of the Lithuanian Space Agency - an organisation dedicated to the investigation of imaginary celestial architectural projects. For his exhibition at Collective, Urbonas has created a new iteration of ‘Planet of People’: an evolving participatory installation that explores what would happen if, instead of humans colonising existing planets, there was a planet made entirely of human bodies. Review by Clare Robson

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BALTIC, Gateshead NE8 3BA

Animalesque / Art Across Species and Beings

Amalia Pica, Yerkish, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Herald Street Gallery. Animalesque / Art Across Species and Beings, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art 2019.

The curator of the show, Filipa Ramos, says that the starting point is Deleuze’s text 'Becoming-Animal', but it goes beyond the theory. Deleuze, while writing about Francis Bacon, states that between human and animal, there is a deep identity, a zone of indiscernibility, that is more profound than any sentimental identification. Review by Gulnaz Can

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Mother’s Tankstation, 31-43 Watling St, Usher's Island, The Liberties, Dublin 8, D08 NP48, Ireland

Niamh O’Malley: Placeholder

Park shapes

The first work you encounter on entering mother’s tankstation to see Niamh O’Malley’s ‘Placeholder’ is ‘Gather’ (2019), a balance of strength and delicacy with its coloured glass cuboids that are pierced and supported by a steel bar. This is the only ‘old’ work in this new exhibition and it is hardly old at all having been shown late last year in O’Malley’s ‘handle’ in Dublin’s RHA. Review by Aidan Kelly Murphy

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Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, Seattle, WA 98104, USA

Agnieszka Polska: Love Bite

What the Sun Has Seen (still)

What if the sun spoke back to the world? Agnieszka Polska’s videos ‘The New Sun’ and ‘What the Sun Has Seen’ (both 2017) conjure this ecological encounter at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, exhibited for the first time in the U.S. in the exhibition ‘Love Bite’ and curated by Amanda Donnan. Review by Laurel V. McLaughlin

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ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

Cameron Rowland: 3 & 4 Will. IV c.73

Caption information below

Cameron Rowland’s first solo exhibition in the UK, ‘3 & 4 Will. IV c.73’, uses the provenance of objects, language, and laws, to underscore the artist’s research into the afterlife of slavery. Making various references to cultural theorists such as Saudiya Hartman, the work supports the contention that the abolition of slavery was a nonevent. Review by Sarah Hughes

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15th Fotonoviembre International Photography Festival, TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes and other venues

Myths Of the Near Future

Ann Lislegaard, Installation View ENTANGLEMENT, TEA Tenerife

‘Myths of the Near Future’ was the chosen theme and title of the 15th Fotonoviembre International Photography Festival directed by Laura Vallés and held at TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes and various other art venues in the Canary Islands. From the outset, the ambition was to reach out beyond the confines of photography in order to rethink the theory of the image and its limits, the places where it rubs up against other disciplines of knowledge like philosophy, sociology and anthropology. Review by Néstor Delgado Morales

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Charleston House, Firle, Lewes East Sussex BN8 6LL

Shani Rhys James: tea on the sofa, blood on the carpet

Shani Rhys James: tea on the sofa, blood on the carpet, Charleston, 1 February - 19 April 2020

Welsh artist Shani Rhys James’ portraits are brutally honest and emotionally charged. Many of the paintings in the exhibition draw on Rhys James’ childhood memories or explore her uneasy relationship with her mother. In ‘Blue Top’ (2013), the woman is depicted in early middle age, looming large above her small daughter, while in ‘Glass of Water’ (2017), she lies hunched against her pillows after suffering a stroke late in life. In both large paintings, the woman’s dark eyes stare out from the canvas – pupils which, on closer inspection, resolve from black into impasto swirls of purple, blue and green. Review by Anna Souter

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John Hansard Gallery, 142-144 Above Bar St, Southampton SO14 7DU

Larry Achiampong: When the Sky Falls

Larry Achiampong, When the Sky Falls, installation image, John Hansard Gallery, 2020.

‘When the Sky Falls’ presents works that explores the concept of Sanko-time, a term coined by Achiampong that is taken from the Ashanti word ‘sankofa’. ‘Sankofa’ is associated with the proverb: "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” Achiampong’s work is centred on such revisitations, using moments in his past to reflect upon the realities faced by African diasporic communities as a result of colonialism and its enduring legacies. Review by William Rees

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The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

Gabriel Kuri: spending static to save gas

spending static to save gas, 2020, installation view

There is a comforting routine to visiting exhibitions in Dublin’s Douglas Hyde Gallery - you enter the foyer and walk past the main desk to the top of the staircase, which gives a sweeping preview of the work as you descend into the gallery’s main space, your foot hitting the same spot each time. This comfort has been removed by Gabriel Kuri’s radical structural intervention ‘spending static to save gas’ (2020), featured in his exhibition of the same name. Review by Aidan Kelly Murphy

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Stills: Centre for Photography, 23 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 1BP

Women Photographers from The AmberSide Collection

Women Photographers from The AmberSide Collection at Stills: Centre for Photography.

This exhibition brings together works from The AmberSide Collection, works made and gathered by a collective originally born in London over 50 years ago and based in Newcastle since the late 1970s. Since then, the group has charted documentary photography in the United Kingdom and further afield, through their own photography or through work acquired, with a focus on images highlighting socio-political situations. These range from depicting the council estates of the North East to wider global scenes, always from a left leaning stance. Review by Nicola Jeffs

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