Viewing articles tagged with 'Virtual Reality'

The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, London WC2N 5DN

Backlit: On Visiting The National Gallery, London from Home

Since the lockdown announcement on the 23rd March, galleries and museums across the UK have been emphasising the scope and availability of their digital collections, encouraging the public to engage with high-resolution reproductions of their artefacts online. Considering the work of art in the age of digital reproduction may not be a new phenomenon. And yet, the enthusiasm with which many institutions have been vocalising the accessibility of their archives on the Internet raises the volume on several important questions regarding the significance, if any, of the artwork as a physical, encounterable object, and the responsibility of museums to ensure that their collections are available online. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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

David Blandy: How to Fly | How to Live

The current Covid-19 pandemic has thrown the art world into a fight for relevancy that, as galleries and museums have had to close their doors, reveals the limits of their techie expertise. Many face new challenges, but the technophilic, literate, and adept are of course out there. David Blandy is one such case, and two new video works by Blandy, commissioned by John Hansard Gallery, reflect on the current crisis. Review by Stan Portus

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Lundahl & Seitl, online

Symphony of a Missing Room

The app 'Symphony of a Missing Room' attempts to frame the museum as a site of collective imagination, a palimpsest that stores the voices of its visitors past and present. Based on a guided tour artists Lundahl & Seitl have been staging in galleries for the past 10 years, it allows you to participate in an immersive artwork at home with a friend. Review by Kirsty White

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New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Blvd, Nottingham NG7 6BE

Shezad Dawood: Encroachments

Shezad Dawood’s exhibition is overrun with multi-coloured terrazzo. The walls are plastered with garish speckles, which seep into paintings, prints, plinths and even the exhibition guide. The terrazzo, designed by Dawood, gives the display a Pop-y veneer, strengthened by visual allusions to Robert Rauschenberg’s collages and Andy Warhol’s silkscreens, as well as tributes to the arcade game, Space Invaders. Review by Julia Schouten

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Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, 5-9 Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland

Tai Shani: Tragodía

Blue is the first thing that greets you at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. An inviting blue covers the gallery’s exterior windows, providing privacy to those inside. Beyond the blue, as it does on the visible spectrum of light, lies violet. This warm shade of lavender wraps itself around the internal walls and dominates the gallery floor via a large and continuous sculpture in the same hue. Beyond violet on the visible spectrum lies ultraviolet, the invisible, the mystical. In Tai Shani’s ‘Tragodía’ this movement through colour is represented by a virtual reality play which requires special eyewear to view. Review by Aidan Kelly Murphy

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Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W 17th St, New York, NY 10011, USA

A Lost Future

Currently at the Rubin Museum, New York, is A Lost Future, a yearlong exhibition on view through January 28th, 2019, showcasing explorations of the future, a theme that in this context is applied specifically to Bengal and South Asia by Shezad Dawood, Matti Braun, and the Otolith. Review by Louis Soulard

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Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014

Whitney Biennial 2017

The 78th instalment of the Whitney Biennial for 2017 - which always aims for the zeitgeist and the seminal - opens at a time of crisis not only in the United States, but around the world. Review by Arthur Ivan Bravo

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Basement Roma, Via Nicola Ricciotti 4, 00195 Rome

Ed Fornieles: Truth Table

In Truth Table, Ed Fornieles converts the gallery into the provider of an experience: a new VR product that allows the viewer to occupy a changing host of bodies as they engage in a chain of sexual interactions.

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Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Chausseestrasse 128/129, 10115 Berlin

Halil Altındere: Space Refugee

In light of European defence against immigrants, Halil Altındere proposes - at some ironic distance - to use the cosmic space as a haven for refugees. This vision of a life in space for the refugees is illustrated with specially designed spacesuits from a fictitious “Palmyra”-space mission, a planetary rover and a virtual reality video.

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Phoenix, 4 Midland Street, Leicester, LE1 1TG

Kitty Clark: Mr. Nobody

Kitty Clark presents an oculus rift virtual reality experience at the centre of a series of sculptures and projection works. Mr. Nobody, the central figure in the installation, suffers from Technostress, a term coined to describe the negative psychological relationship between people and new technologies.

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