In our digital age art and tech have become more and more united, providing a variety of online opportunities to bring art to a wider audience. Sedition is a leading online platform where artists display and sell their art in digital format for connected screens and devices.
Sedition now presents Art Stream, a new service that gives subscribers unlimited access to a selection of contemporary works by world renowned artists including Tracey Emin, Mat Collishaw, Elmgreen & Dragset and Jenny Holzer. Art Stream features twelve artworks at any one time that are updated weekly, allowing subscribers to experience high-definition art on their screens in their home and on the go. Subscribers will also have access to exclusive offers to purchase the artworks at favourable prices.
The MASK PRIZE is an annual competition for young people under the age of 25 living in Africa and its Diasporas. Predominantly engaging schools in Kenya, the prize is now in its third year and challenges the creative skills of children, teenagers and young adults from the continent to think about ways of celebrating, imagining and reflecting on the places they live in and the people they live with.
The Winter Group Show is now on at Loughran Gallery on Cadogan Gardens throughout the Christmas period; introducing Parisian artists Frédérique Morrel and Corinne Dalle Ore, alongside other represented artists Piers Bourke, Nick Jeffrey, Dale vN Marshall, Dave White and Jessica Zoob.
Initially a roaming gallery existing through energetic bursts of pop-up shows featuring a variety of artists across London and the UK, Loughran Gallery has via a longer residential spell at Belgravia’s Motcomb Street, and now the bright, industrial space of 43 Cadogan Gardens in Chelsea, transitioned into a gallery with a defined and established rosta of artists.
The artists selected for the group show have been chosen for the flurry and excitement they bring to the gallery. I had the chance to speak to gallerist Juliette Loughran, as well as artists Piers Bourke and Frédérique Morrel.
It’s not often one sees an artwork that is truly unlike any art one has ever experienced in the past, but I can say with certainty that such was the case for me with William Kentridge: More Sweetly Play the Dance at Marian Goodman, London. In fact, the work from which the exhibition borrows its’ title, an 8-screen film piece described by the gallery as ‘dance macabre,’ is perhaps the most inspiring work of art I’ve ever seen, and one that has pleasantly haunted me in the two weeks since I visited the show.
The experience goes something like this: After admiring a series of stunning, mostly black and white, paintings downstairs, which blend Chinese cultural artifacts with images of flowers painted on found paper swimming in Chinese characters, you enter a room, which introduces you to Kentridge’s video art.
The upcoming exhibition Painkillers at l’étrangère brings into conversation new and existing sculptural works by the renowned Polish artist, Joanna Rajkowska.
Noted for her ambitious interventions in public space, as well as her objects, films, photography, installations and ephemeral actions, Rajkowska’s practice interrogates individual and collective bodies as politicised sites of historical, ideological and psychological conflict. For her inaugural exhibition at l’étrangère, Rajkowska unites two object-based series under the rubric, Painkillers, in order to explore the at times uncomfortable connections between modern warfare, healing systems and the practices of Western science.
I had the chance to talk to Joanna about both her artistic practice and forthcoming exhibition.
The last day of August not only marked a day off work, another rainy London Monday and the end of summer 2015, but also the night that ArtAttack finally visited Banksy’s Dismaland Bemusement Park.
For those who don’t know, Dismaland is the infamous street artist’s latest project, an exhibition he’s curated that will be on view at the old Tropicana pool in Weston-Super-Mare for the next 5 weeks. As the name implies, this show takes the familiar theme park concept, and turns it upside down; Instead of a world where we can escape reality like its’ namesake, Disneyland, Dismaland sort of rubs reality in our face. It forces us to stop pretending the problems around us are not our problems and makes us reflect upon the consequences of inaction and indifference to global issues.
Dismaland Bemusement Park, Weston-Super-Mare, 2015
It’s officially my favourite time of year: degree show season! And after kicking it off with a major bang at the fantastic Slade School BA/BFA show, I was anticipating a killer performance from Central Saint Martins BA and MA students too, who’s exhibition I had briefly previewed when I attended their Foundation Show. What can I say? I was not wrong. My visit last evening exceeded my expectations with innovative and fun works that really put the joy back in art.
From felted dogs humping in discreet corners, to a bathtub turned garden and replicated airline cabin complete with a not-so-typical safety video, I don’t think I’d be exaggerating to say that this show has it all, including some stunning painting and touching installation to boot. Furthermore, it is clear the students this year did not shy away from risk, but rather embraced it wholeheartedly. This fearlessness is obvious in the work and makes for a compelling, innovative and thrilling few hours of art.
Artwork by Emma Burns, 2015Ben Cooper Walker, ‘Melon,’ 2015Sarah Crew, ‘Hilang Airways,’ 2015
When art aficionado, businesswoman, and philanthropist Feroze Gujral – who is of Indian, Arab, and British origins – visited the Venice Biennale in 2013, she noticed there was neither an Indian nor a Pakistani pavilion. With great experience sustaining large-scale arts projects via the Gujral Art Foundation, she decided to change that, and selected internationally recognised artists, Shilpa Gupta (India) and Rashid Rana (Pakistan), to collaborate on ‘My East is Your West.’ The project isan official Collateral Event of the 56th Venice Biennale, and unites at the Biennale for the first time the historically conflicting nations of India and Pakistan. Rana and Gupta have previously collaborated on the cross-border project ‘Aar Paar’, in which artists from Mumbai and Karachi each created public works in the other’s territories.
On view in Venice, Shilpa Gupta’s work, characteristically both poetic and direct in its delivery, reflects on her own experience visiting the borders of Mumbai, Bangladesh and Kashmir, which are partly controlled by India and partly by Pakistan. As a central focus of the work, she stages a performance wherein an actor diligently works away at a crafts table in a dramatically lit red room. Without acknowledging the presence of visitors, the actor traces a shape on carbon paper that rests on a pile of cloth. The cloth itself is significant, measuring the width of a sari and one-thousandth the length of the 3,400km security barrier, the longest in the world, that India is currently building along its’ perimeter with neighbouring Bangladesh. Although open-ended, the piece seemingly alludes to the vast and somewhat arbitrary effort of retaining distance through the gesture of drawing borders.
artattackapp.wordpress.com 