Sean Burns profiles the work of Chester Tenneson as part of our series of texts on artists participating in PIVOT, the inaugural artist development programme in the North West of England. PIVOT is delivered in partnership with Bluecoat, Liverpool and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.
Hettie Judah profiles the work of Manchester-based artist Bridget O'Gorman in the first in our series of texts on artists participating in PIVOT, the inaugural artist development programme in the North West of England. PIVOT is delivered in partnership with Bluecoat, Liverpool and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.
Abingdon Studios, 14 Abingdon Street, Blackpool FY1 1DE
Exposed pipes from the building’s radiators lead the visitor from the entrance, weaving upstairs and through walls to ‘Slot’, the first solo presentation by artist Rafał Zajko in the North of England, comprised of five wall-based sculptures and accompanying hand-painted murals. Review by Ryan Kearney
The Modern Institute, 14-20 Osborne Street, Glasgow G1 5QN
After a fifteen-year commitment to ceramic sculpture, the New-York based British artist, Jesse Wine, has returned to an overarching concern with motion, composition and stasis, where the conviction found in his earlier works is overturned to make space for reflection. Segregated by bright curtains, spread around the Modern Institute, ‘Carve a Hole in The Rain for Yer’ invites a pause stirred by isolation and confinement. With this note of incompletion and self-questioning comes a distancing from the sculptural subject and a closer contemplation on the process of sculpture. Review by Elaine YJ Zheng
HS Projects, 5 Howick Place, Westminster, London SW1P 1BH
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
Joya AiR, Parque Natural Sierra María-Los Vélez, Andalucia, Spain
Growing up on the Isle of Wight, Simon Linington was fascinated by the different coloured sands that made up the cliffs near his childhood home at Alum Bay. Here, new colourful strata would sometimes be dramatically revealed when parts of the cliff-face crumbled due to erosion. As a child, he would fill small glass bottles with layers of the sand, producing the typical tourist souvenirs that are still sold in the area today. These early experiences led Linington to an understanding of material and place as inseparably linked. Review by Anna Souter
Bobinska Brownlee New River, Canonbury Street, London, N1 2US
‘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
Hauser & Wirth, London
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
NTS Radio
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
PM/AM, 50 Golborne Road, London W10 5PR
‘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.
Bosse & Baum, Studio BGC&D, Bussey Building, 133 Rye Ln, London SE15 4ST
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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
Tate Britain, Millbank, Westminster, London SW1P 4RG
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
NiCOLETTi Contemporary, 12A Vyner St, London E2 9DG
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
Korean Cultural Centre UK, Grand Buildings, 1-3 Strand, London WC2N 5BW
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
