Maestro Arts in collaboration with Shapero Modern are delighted to bring you Dutch architect and artist, Jan Hendrix’s, first UK solo exhibition BOOK VI: Heaney Hendrix. The exhibition will showcase the artist’s most recent working partnership with renowned Irish poet, playwright and translator, Seamus Heaney.
If you ask me, there is nothing that rings in the holiday season more than brightly coloured things that shine. From tree ornaments to jewels to candlelight, Christmas is all about the sparkle, so now that it’s almost December I’d suggest running not walking to Tristan Hoare for their latest exhibition Cell-(estial), a collection of enchanting work by French-born Lebanese artist Flavie Audi.
Audi is best known for her mouthwateringly beautiful gem-like glass sculptures, but for this exhibition she also includes photography and film as a means to investigate the points at which the natural and artificial worlds meet.
Glass is a naturally occurring, organic material, yet through its modern usage in mobile and TV screens it has taken on technological significance – as an interface through which real and virtual worlds are mediated – and it is this collision of realities that is at the heart of Audi’s practice. To explore how these realms interact, the show has been divided into two distinct installations, one representing the physical, the other digital, chaotic nature placed alongside the rational and man-made.
We are delighted to have had the opportunity to speak with Audi about this exhibition and her general practise.
Have a read below and then as previously mentioned, get to the gallery immediately!
2nd December marks the opening of the much anticipated, 4th annual Colombo Art Biennale (CAB), the world’s largest and most significant celebration of contemporary South Asian art and culture.
Attracting over 2,500 visitors in its last edition, this year’s CAB, which is themed ‘Conceiving Space’ is curated by Alnoor Mitha and seeks to reimagine traditional concepts of the ‘spatial’ in relation to boundaries and engagement. It will focus on emerging talent, including over 60 international and local artists, among them Faiza Butt (UK/Pakistan), Cristina Rodrigues (Portuguese) and Chila Kumari Burman (British/Asian).
The event itself, was founded by gallerist and cultural ambassador Annoushka Hempel in 2009, its mission being to raise the profile of artists in this fast developing market. We are so happy to have had the opportunity so speak with Annoushka about the upcoming edition and to have her insight on what is certain to be among the top cultural experiences of the year!
Coming soon to Hoxton Gallery is Unseen Paintings, 1954-1960, a thrilling survey of works in oil by the late British artist Keith Cunningham.
This will be one those exhibitions where perhaps the story is just as fascinating as the works themselves. Keith Cunningham was one of the most promising artists of the 1950’s, graduating from the Royal College of Art, studying alongside Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, even being approached by Beaux Arts Gallery and showing work with the prestigious London Group. For all intensive purposes, Cunningham was going to “make it.”
British painter, Danny Rolph, comes to London with East Central thanks to CNB Gallery this September. The exhibition is made up of four large-scale paintings, all of which have been inspired by the areas of London in which Danny grew up, namely EC1, EC2, EC3 and EC4. As a child he would stand in the kitchen of his parents’ high rise flat just off the City Road staring at the city below, and in these works, which unite painting with collage, he has recreated those memories in abstract forms.
Of the works, he says: ‘I grew up in the sky, one hundred foot above City Road. The view from our kitchen window contained sunset and sunrises of the type that Tiepolo imagines populated by architectural silhouettes of St Paul’s, the Old Bailey and the Post Office Tower.’
‘…At the National College of Arts (NCA), we imagine a world. Not one world, but many. One for each of us, one from each of us, with these we write the autobiographies of our times, in objects, in lines, in mortar, and in perishable clay. In tracing ourselves, we leave traces. These are the traces that make our cities. Turn us inside out like pillowcases with that remembered smell, like shed skins. These are the traces that populate our nights, and from these traces we dare to dream again…’ – Excerpts from NCA teacher-students conversations
The National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan is a global centre for creativity, talent and artistic tradition. Originally founded as The Mayo School of Art in 1875, and rebranded the NCA in 1958, debate and discourse are encouraged amongst the students and faculty here, and this leads to a culture of understanding, individuality and tolerance. The art that comes out of this incredible place is some of the best in the world, the training exceptional and the diversity of the students in background, identity, ideology and language a major strength.
Teachers at the NCA nurture and push their students so that each one rightfully values his and her creative ideas and pushes their artistic practice to reach its height.
All this happens in a country who’s value is often overlooked by the international community; a country who’s goodness is glossed over for its’ bureaucratic corruption and troubled political history. It is easy to forget, if your only connection to Pakistan is watching the news, that this country, one of the cradles of civilisation, actually has an astonishing cultural and artistic history practically unmatched in the world. The NCA connects all their students with this rich history, as we hope the following interviews will connect our readers with it as well.
We are honoured to have had the chance to speak with three outstanding female NCA alumna, Class of 2016, Amani Iqbal, Sameen Agha and Komal Tufail, about their time at this esteemed institution, their artistic practice and their future goals within the art world. Suffice to say, these are powerhouse women and we can’t wait to see what incredible strides they take!
Jealous Gallery is delighted to be working alongside Latino Life, the UK’s leading Latin Culture Magazine, as part of this summer’s Crouch End Festival 2016. There will be an extensive number of artists exhibiting their work at the gallery with a diverse range of mediums and styles to attract all.
The exhibition, which shares a name with the magazine, will present original pieces from established artists Silvina Soria, Sonia Ciruelo and Alex Vargas, forming a vibrant collection of mixed media work ranging from iron wire sculpture, collage on canvas and photographic prints of manipulated digital photography accompanied by video performance. Coinciding with Crouch End Festival, which runs from 10 to 19 June, the group show will celebrate bursting creativity and talent within the Latino community.
In this unique interview, we were lucky enough to be able to speak to all three artists presenting in the exhibition.
THE ARTISTS:
SILVINA SORIA – Soria is an Argentine Sculptor who works with different materials, each of them exploring the diverse particularities of the three dimensions. Searching for the subtlety in sculpture led her to work the line in the space, with iron and wire. In 2009 she was invited to participate in an Artists Residence in Paris where she worked during three months on a wire drawings series in between the two and three dimensions. The theme of movement, flowing, the transformation inherent in the passage of time lies beneath all her work, enriched by the experience of travelling.
ArtAttack: How did you become involved with the ‘Latino Life’ exhibition? Is there anything in particular that drew you to the project?
Silvina Soria: I was invited to participate as one of the Latino-American artists living in London.
ArtAttack is thrilled to be collaborating with Rosie Osborne, founder of one of our favourite blogs, Free Spirits. This creative hub is home to countless fascinating and inspiring interviews with some of the art world’s most interesting minds and we are so happy to be able to share a few of them with you!
For our first of Rosie’s interviews, meet Nicolas Hugo, young Parisian gallerist and champion of emerging artists…
Nicolas Hugo founded his own art gallery in Paris in 2012, at the age of 23. More than three years on and 20 exhibitions later, he represents young, emerging artists from all over the world and is a rising star on the art scene. During his sell-out first exhibition, ‘I Ran with Iran’, which showcased works by young Iranian artists, his energy and initiative sparked a frenzy of press interest. Since then, he continues to innovate. His shows now demand a larger space and there are plans for a third international pop-up gallery, in London this year. In our interview, we discuss his childhood inspirations, his mission to break the mould, and the power of the sharing economy in the art world.
Nicolas Hugo in his home. Photo by Rosie Osborne.Shapero Modern proudly presents Encyclopaedia, an exhibition of pen and ink drawings by acclaimed Moscow-based artist Amanita.
The work on view is comprised of five series, ComMOONism, Revolution, Eastern Calendar and Oil and Barrels, all of which date from the period 2011 to 2016. Each series reveals the artist’s highly idiosyncratic engagement with the world, which is simultaneously fantastical, surreal and darkly satirical.
While political themes clearly come through in his work, Amanita is not a political artist. His drawings are wry, crackling with visual jokes and mercurial connections and associations, as well as flashes of surrealism.
Says exhibition curator Sasha Markvo: ‘Amanita is an artist of exceptional gifts and imagination, and I’m delighted and privileged to present the first survey of his pen and ink drawings in London. While Russian influences are evident in all his work, so to are European and Asiatic which lends it a universal quality. His is a unique talent, one that provokes and delights in equal measure.’
ArtAttack had the chance to speak with Amanita on his artistic history and practice.
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