Viewing articles tagged with 'London'

HS Projects, 5 Howick Place, Westminster, London SW1P 1BH

Permindar Kaur: Home

Permindar Kaur’s exhibitions often create feelings of anxiety. Cuddly toys and nursery room furniture would be given abject twists, kid’s dolls and clothes sporting metal claws or daggers and razor wire cribs would speak to the most Freudian nightmares of threat in the domestic family space. The impact of Kaur’s installations is heightened by having the secluded scenes of English family life played out in an institutional gallery setting, with the subsequent unsettling collision of public and private arenas. Review by Piers Masterson

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Makina Books, London

Rebecca Tamás: Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman

Last summer, ‘Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman’ by the poet Rebecca Tamás had a swarm of anticipation around it. Her poetry collection ‘WITCH’ (2019) and her co- editorial role in ‘Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry’ (2018) had already established the York St John University lecturer as a critically acclaimed writer, crafting a world of linguistic ritual and transformation around her. With these successes behind her, people were buzzing to read Tamás’ five new short prose essays. Through literary strangeness and its many mystic references, the book presents alternative modes of thinking—ways for us to feel reconnected with each other and the plains, wildflowers, seas and forests around us. While this book does, to some extent, hold a place in my heart specifically connected to the hotly political and momentous summer of 2020, it also marks a new standard for arts, literature and contemporary thought, which promotes a more inclusive future. Review by Nina Hanz

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Bobinska Brownlee New River, Canonbury Street, London, N1 2US

Interview with Rae Hicks

‘Anomaly’ expands and builds on Hicks’ previous preoccupation with the everyday, which he suggests has taken on a different tone since lockdown. His paintings (made in lockdown one) and sculptures (made in lockdown two), feature the same symbols over and over: sun, sky, pylons and city. But the works feel as if they are reiterating a new kind of feeling. There is a suggestion that these idealised structures and symbols around us are in fact what leads us to being susceptible to conspiracy theories; the tight order of our surroundings are settings ripe for myth and ignorance. Interview by Alexander Harding

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Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, St. James's, London SW1Y 5AH

Interview with Eve Stainton

Eve Stainton’s dance performances transport audiences to brilliantly enigmatic, sensorial worlds. Anyone lucky enough to have caught ‘Rubby Sucky Forge’ at The Place, London in Autumn 2020 will have experienced a much needed detour from reality—three dancers melting, sparring and succumbing to each other in a futuristic stage ecology of metal and slippery projected visuals.Eve’s upcoming performance ‘Dykegeist’ at the ICA is sure to be just as estranging and endearing. Interview with Louisa Doyle

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Hauser & Wirth, London

Charles Gaines: Multiples of Nature, Trees and Faces

Charles Gaines is a Los Angeles based artist and lecturer who applies systematic and rule-based methods to his unique artistic practice. Gaines’ first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom is currently on view at Hauser & Wirth in London. Due to the ongoing global crisis, Gaines’ show is limited to online viewing. However, it should not be overlooked, as it confronts ideas of race and identity, and raises questions surrounding representation. Across Hauser & Wirth’s galleries on Savile Row are continuations of two ongoing series: ’Numbers & Faces: MultiRacial/Ethnic Combination Series 1’ (1978-) and ‘Numbers & Trees: London Series 1’ (1986-). Gaines’ artistic approach sees systematic colouring combined with overlapping images within a sequenced grid. Review by Sheena Carrington

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NTS Radio

Open Deck x Dead Yard

I put on NTS Radio at 2 pm, sat alone on a quiet, cold, Saturday afternoon in lockdown, and just listened. I was welcomed to the ‘Tough Matter’ Radio show by Sheffield-based artist and DJ Ashley Holmes in a sombre tone. A melancholic improvised horn-duet by Simon O’Dwyer and Malachy called ‘River Erne’ played in tandem, creating a sacred atmosphere. Holmes explained, this show is an iteration of his ongoing project ‘Open Deck,’ where people are invited to share a piece of music or sound recordings as a means of collective reflection. Review by Laura O'Leary

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PM/AM, 50 Golborne Road, London W10 5PR

06

‘06’ is a both an online and physical exhibition, envisioned by the gallery PM/AM, as “a collective status check, a unique opportunity for self-assessment” that came together after the gallery set up a discussion between several artists, offering a form of exchange to collectively examine how the pandemic was impacting their daily lives. But rather than positioning the exhibition as a response to Covid-19, the discussions became a mediation on this new collective moment of re-evaluation.

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Bosse & Baum, Studio BGC&D, Bussey Building, 133 Rye Ln, London SE15 4ST

Miriam Austin: Andesite

In her show ‘Andesite’ at Bosse & Baum (her third with the gallery), Miriam Austin grapples with both her coloniser ancestry and her desire to expose and challenge the damage wreaked on the landscape by colonial extractivist systems. Born out of an extensive body of research and experimentation, this exhibition imaginatively inhabits both the mythical subterranean realm of Selvaga and the New Zealand landscapes ravished by colonial settlement. Review by Anna Souter

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Maureen Paley, 60 Three Colts Ln, London E2 6GQ

Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Once Removed

Abu Hamdan’s film ‘Once Removed’ (2019) suggests the experience of transgenerational memory might be employed as a method of re-processing history and gathering together fragments of the obscured past through a more empathetic lens. Presented as a split screen video where the artist and his interviewee converse as silhouettes in front of two large projections, this work exists on multiple levels. Review by Gabriella Sonabend

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Tate Britain, Millbank, Westminster, London SW1P 4RG

Chila Kumari Singh Burman: Tate Britain Winter Commission 2020

The statue of Britannia that sits atop Sidney Smith’s incomplete 1897 pediment of Tate Britain’s portico has been transformed by Chila Burman for the annual Winter Commission into an avatar of Kali, the voluptuous Indian god of death. Burman delivers some much needed jollity by converting the austere Imperial iconography of the Millbank frontage into a pantheon of her trademark warrior queens. Tate’s comparatively meagre sculptures of a lion and unicorn that flank Britannia are usurped by Burman’s neon figures of Lakshmi and Ganesh−the gods of plenitude and Diwali−who welcome us from the top of the stairs. Review by Piers Masterson

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NiCOLETTi Contemporary, 12A Vyner St, London E2 9DG

Tyler Eash: Loreum

NiCOLETTi re-opened its doors to the public in early December, continuing its programme with ‘Loreum’, an exhibition by American artist Tyler Eash. Having completed an MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London last year, Eash now lives and works in Mexico. His practice encompasses film, painting, sculpture, writing and sound art as a means to disclose thoughts on having, and holding onto, an identity. These works are unapologetically jumbled, or topsy-turvy, as if badly downloaded from the internet, becoming more encrypted as they travel through digital space and enter into the physical world. Perhaps more plausibly, these works in painting, sculpture, film and photography are a figuring of things that Eash has encountered on the internet, in his mind’s eye and in daily life. Review by Olivia Fletcher

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Korean Cultural Centre UK, Grand Buildings, 1-3 Strand, London WC2N 5BW

Jewyo Rhii: Love Your Depot_LDN

The fact that Jewyo Rhii’s exhibition has only been intermittently open to the public due to COVID restrictions seems appropriate for the Korean born artist whose show focuses on the moment of transition between the private and public spaces of the gallery. The conundrum of transposing the meaning or value of an artwork from the private spaces where it is produced to the public arena of the gallery is a main theme of Jewyo Rhii’s work. For ‘Love Your Depot_LDN’, the artist has converted the Korean Cultural Centre’s white-walled space into a functional art store, complete with modular storage racks and packing crates that mimic the interstitial space in which her work can spend so much of its time. Review by Piers Masterson

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PUBLIC Gallery, 91 Middlesex St, Spitalfields, London E1 7DA

Interview with Cathrin Hoffmann: IT STILL SMELLS OF NOTHING

German artist, Cathrin Hoffmann, makes paintings of the contemporary individual; alienated, caught up in the temporary pleasures and quick fixes of our techno-capitalist reality. The paintings in her recent exhibition 'IT STILL SMELLS OF NOTHING' at Public Gallery in London are filled with such lonesome individuals, twisting and folding into themselves. Their exposed, blemished flesh is compartmentalised into exaggerated body parts, organised into various suggestive poses. Interview by Sonja Teszler

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Chisenhale Gallery, 64 Chisenhale Rd, Bow, London E3 5QZ

Thao Nguyen Phan: Becoming Alluvium

Thao Nguyen Phan’s film ‘Becoming Alluvium’ (2019) is caught in the crosscurrents of serenity and ferocity, beauty and harsh reality. In this video work, Phan’s ongoing research surrounding the Mekong River is experienced through fictional narratives, woven together with themes of local folklore, ecological concern, South East Asian industrialisation and the fanning Mekong River itself. Alive and lively, this mineral-stained river is shot from the shoreline, from above and from the water, creating a poetic language that envelopes the audience, sweeping us away for the sixteen minutes of the film’s duration. Review by Nina Hanz

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