Young Art Star Emily Mulenga on Show at Firstsite, Colchester

Taking Up Space, the debut solo exhibition by the emerging British artist Emily Mulenga at Firstsite, Colchester, features a series of Mulenga’s video works as well animated GIFS and personalised emojis – or in the artist’s terms – MulengaMojis.

Emily Mulenga, 4 Survival 4 Pleasure (still image), 2, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

Mulenga uses her own image within her work to assert ownership over the way it is viewed online. Through her works, Mulenga positions her filmed self or animated avatar in vivid virtual environments. The title of the exhibition, Taking Up Space, refers to the way in which the physical or digital body can be a productive and positive site of artistic investigation.

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‘An elegant dance’ between poetry and art: Robert Perkins’s ‘The Written Image’

Thursday 24th May sees the opening of Robert Perkins: The Written Image at Benjamin Spademan Rare Books, the first of a two-part exhibition of the American artist’s 45-year collaboration with poets.

From Seamus Heaney to Allen Ginsberg, Perkins has worked with the best of the best when it comes to the world of poetry. In fact, his journey began back in the 1970’s when he was a student at Harvard University and took poet, Elizabeth Bishop’s creative writing seminar. Perkins explains that when he told Bishop that he’d always wanted to be an artist, she wrote out a copy of her poem The Fish and asked him to illustrate it.

This assignment launched The Written Image, which Perkins describes as ‘self-portraits of the poet in the moment.’ To begin a work, he takes the poet’s hand-written text and then melds it with his own imagery, thus constructing a visual representation around the words.

Robert Perkins, Jon Galassi, Knot, 2000 © Robert Perkins. Courtesy the Artist and Benjamin Spademan Rare Books. Photo by Louie Fasciolo

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

‘I feel it is essential for art to take on serious issues and to reflect our societies and the issues of the day’ – ArtAttack Interview Graeme Messer

ArtAttack first came upon artist Graeme Messer‘s work at this year’s The Other Art Fair in London. We were drawn in by his witty and unique mirror works made for the fair and knew instantly this was an artist we wanted to watch.

After requesting to interview him for this very blog, Graeme let us know about a special project close to his heart; We R is an upcoming art exhibition exploring the meaning of LGBT identity and celebrating difference. Launching during Pride Week London, the show at Espacio Gallery will include nineteen artists from all different cultures and nationalities contributing to a really authentic representation of the diversity and fullness of the LGBT community.

The goal is to to reach out to the many people who find it difficult to be their true selves and to challenge viewers to believe and remember that being different is an inalienable right.

In the words of exhibition curators, Bettina Stuurman and Joao Trindade, ‘We always talk about equality and whilst it may be important to have have the same rights, we really wanted to show how you must celebrate difference. We are proud of this collection which reminds us to think about the present representation of the LGBT community. We want people to leave the exhibition feeling positive, excited and remembering their own unique nature – and this is what we hope the art has captured.’

We decided to chat with Graeme about We R as a preview for our readers to this sure-to-be powerful and moving exhibition.

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.

‘Daydreaming is really underrated’ – ArtAttack interviews the duo behind ‘Flood House’

This Saturday, 30th April, sees the launch of another event in the Radical Essex programme, ‘Flood House,’ an architectural design project conceived by Matthew Butcher with accompanying events/commissions curated by Jes Fernie in collaboration with Focal Point Gallery. 

The structure itself is an investigation into the living conditions of the seasonally flooded landscape it will inhabit, a floating collaboration of art and architecture that is both a projected dwelling for a floating habitat, as well as a labaratory to monitor local environmental conditions.

The exciting commissions to be presented include an artwork by Ruth Ewan entitled ‘All Distinctions Levelled,’ which is a weathervane attached to the ‘Flood House’ itself.

ArtAttack had the chance to speak with both designer, Matthew, and curator, Jes, to get some more insight into this exciting and evocative project.

Photo Brotherton-Lock

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.