Drawing Biennial 2017 at the Drawing Room

Where can you find Anthony Gormley next to Grayson Perry and, if you are lucky, take one home for £250? The Drawing Biennial 2017, which brings together a multi-generational collection of 200 works on paper from notable artists. The exhibition culminates in an online auction in the exhibition’s two final weeks, available from £250 with proceeds going to support the Drawing Room’s ongoing programme.

Suzanne Treister, Death of the Internet

The gallery notes that drawing can offer a rapidity of response to contemporary concerns which can be lost in more costly productions and this is certainly in evidence in this show. But what makes this collection so exciting is that these are finished works of art in their own right and not sketches or creative stepping stones to other work. Some use the practice of mark-making, whether digital prints to graphite on paper, to explore the politics of everyday graphic design, texts and slogans (Amalia Pica) while others exploit the medium to explore wit, abreaction and figuration.

Contributors include Jonathan Allen, ruby onyinyechi amanze, Art & Language, Ed Atkins, Marc Bauer, Kasper Bosmans, Koen van den Broek, James Capper, Nidhal Chamekh, Milano Chow, Steven Claydon, Ronald Cornelissen, Angela de la Cruz, Richard Deacon, Nicolas Desayes, Mark Dion, Marcel van Eeden, Ed Fornieles, Richard Forster, Margarita Gluzberg, Antony Gormley, Lubaina Himid, Karl Holmqvist, Donna Huddleston, Rachel Howard, Chantal Joffe, Peter Jones, Michael Landy, Brit Meyer, Julian Opie, Cornelia Parker, Eddie Peake, Simon Periton, Grayson Perry, Amalia Pica, Yelena Popova, Matt Saunders, Massinissa Selmani, John Smith, Emma Talbot, Suzanne Treister, Nicola Tyson, Frances Upritchard, Marcus Vater, Julie Verhoeven, Mark Wallinger, Claudia Wieser and Rose Wylie.

#drawingb2017

For more details: https://drawingroom.org.uk/drawingbiennial2017

Exhibition: 2 March – 26 April

Online Auction: 12 – 26 April

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An Artist With No Labels: Gee Vaucher at Firstsite

Firstsite, Colchester is presenting the first ever survey show of work by renowned British artist, Gee Vaucher to be mounted in the UK. Gee Vaucher: Introspective brings together over 200 works by Vaucher, some of which have never been seen publicly before, and will present a truly comprehensive overview of her 50-year artistic career (running from 12 November, 2016 – 19 February, 2017).

Whilst Vaucher’s oeuvre is no doubt politically charged, the artist rejects any form of label to be placed on her views or her work. This non-conformist mentality is one of the aspects we feel makes Vaucher’s artwork all the more interesting and powerful. Whilst we don’t want to name any names, her aesthetic feels to be informed by Surrealism, Pop Art and Dada, blended with the DIY immediacy of punk.

Inside Poster for Crass single, Bloody Revolutions, 1980, gouache c. Gee Vaucher, Courtesy Firstsite

Keith Coventry: ‘White Black Gold’

Keith Coventry‘s latest exhibition at the Pace Gallery in London, ‘White Black Gold,’ will be on view at the ground floor galleries of 6 Burlington Gardens until 28 May 2016.

The artist archly monumentalises the bleak debris of our cultural landscape with an exhibition which ‘ennobles the ignoble’.

Destroyed Shop Window (2016), Bronze

McDonalds ‘Golden Arches’ are now a well-worn emblem of late capitalism, so programmed into the popular imagination, that Coventry need only depict a colorless fragment of the golden ‘M’ for his audience to be bombarded with a litany of red, yellow and white memories – of bombastic adverts, Happy Meals and any host of relatable motifs that have come to represent 20^th Century American capitalism.

An exploration of Science through Art – ArtAttack Interviews David Cheeseman

In anticipation of his upcoming exhibition, Slime Mould Logic, at Tintype Gallery, ArtAttack had the chance to speak with British artist, David Cheeseman.

Cheeseman, born in 1960, brings a fascination for nature and science to his work and was awarded the Gulbenkian Rome Scholarship in Sculpture as well as the The Henry Moore Fellow in Sculpture at Coventry University. Last year he completed a residency at The Lydney Park Estate in association with Matt’s Gallery London and also presented a Fig.2 at the ICA in collaboration with Ole Hagan and astrophysicist Roberto Trotta.

Cheeseman’s prestigious education includes studying painting at Maidstone School of Art and sculpture at the Royal College of Art (RCA). This new show, opening 19th May at Tintype, presents a series of innovative sculptures inspired by one of nature’s true wonders: slime mould.

Slime mould is a generic name for organisms that superficially resemble funghi. The incredible element is that they are able to navigate towards foods or hosts almost as if they have an emergent intelligence.

David Cheeseman, Slime Mould Logic, 2016. c. David Cheeseman. Courtesy of the artist and Tintype.

Yayoi Kusama Comes to London! An immersive exhibition at Victoria Miro.

Victoria Miro presents a new exhibition by Yayoi Kusama. Spanning the gallery’s three locations and waterside garden, the exhibition features new paintings, pumpkin sculptures, and mirror rooms, all made especially for this presentation.

MY HEART’S ABODE, 2016.

This is the artist’s most extensive exhibition at the gallery to date, and it is the first time mirror rooms have gone on view in London since Kusama’s major retrospective at Tate Modern in 2012.

‘Beyond Borders’ Unicef’s Next Generation London Art Week @ Blain|Southern

ArtAttack is proud to be showcasing, Beyond Borders, an exhibition and auction in aid of Unicef’s Children of Syria Emergency Appeal.

Hosted by Blain|Southern, one of London’s foremost contemporary art galleries, the exhibition and auction will take place the week commencing 16 May coinciding with Art16 and Photo London.

Organized by Unicef’s Next Generation London  – a group of young professionals who commit their time and resources to support Unicef’s work –  the exhibition will culminate in a live auction at the gallery with pre-bidding online powered by Paddle8, and a full showcase of works available to preview on ArtAttack’s Curated Art Page (with the option to also donate towards the cause). All of the proceeds from the event will go towards Unicef’s Children of Syria Emergency Appeal.

Exhibition Alert: Georg Baselitz, Wir fahren aus, at White Cube Bermondsey

White Cube Bermondsey will present a major exhibition of works by Georg Baselitz, including ‘new large-scale paintings, sculpture and works on paper.’

Georg Baselitz, Oh, rose, oh rose, (Ach, rosa, ach rosa), 2015 | © Georg Baselitz. Photo © Jochen Littkemann Courtesy White Cube

The exhibition draws together two strands within the artist’s practice: portraiture and the process of ‘remixing’, in which images are repeated and reinterpreted over time using different techniques and mediums.

Beyond TOWIE: Focal Point Gallery presents Radical Essex & ‘The Peculiar People’

To launch Focal Point Gallery‘s upcoming series of events and exhibitions, Radical Essex, a project that will re-examine the history of Essex in relation to radicalism in thought, lifestyle, politics and architecture, the gallery presents ‘The Peculiar People.’

The show, which traces the history of ideological and social-political communal living experiments throughout the 20th Century to the present day, opens today, 19th April and features an extensive archival display speculating on alternative living experiments from the late 1800s to the 1980s, alongside visual art, architecture, design and literature that relate to these counter-cultural histories.

To get an inside look into the exhibition, as well as the greater Radical Essex project, ArtAttack spoke with Focal Point Gallery director, Joe Hill.

Silver End bus. Courtesy Braintree District Museum

A Classic Goes Contemporary: ‘Botticelli Reimagined’ at the V&A

Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in ‘Dr. No’, 1962, Directed by Terence Young

What does a Bond girl have to do with a Botticelli? Quite a lot, actually. This is what I realise at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s ‘Botticelli Reimagined’ exhibition, almost as soon as I walk through the door. A large screen is playing a scene from the 1964 Bond film Dr. No, in which Ursula Andress (as the dubiously named ‘Honey Ryder’) emerges from the sea, in the little white number that is now one of the most famous bikinis of all time. Why on earth are we looking at this? Where is the obligatory timeline of Sandro Botticelli’s life, giving us the overview of his developing career, and leading us towards the paintings recognised as the works of one of the greatest Renaissance painters of all time?
It shouldn’t be that unusual to find a reference to a blockbuster film in an art exhibition. We know that popular culture and ‘high’ art aren’t incompatible – that’s what Pop Art was all about, after all. But that’s Pop Art. This is an exhibition about the Renaissance, and Botticelli’s influence on other artists since that time – even if one of them was the ultimate Pop Artist, Andy Warhol – so why not begin at the beginning? Though Honey Ryder does look quite a bit like the Birth of Venus (1482-1485), it feels unusual that she is our mediating guide (along with Uma Thurman, shown on the same screen as Venus in the 1988 film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) through this trajectory. There is something to be said for the fact Honey Ryder belonged to a moment in history often referred to as the ‘birth of the sexual revolution’ – but isn’t this quite a tenuous link to Venus’ titular birth?

 

Sandro Botticelli, ‘The Birth of Venus’, 1482-85