Victoria Miro presentsApple Bombs, an exhibition of new paintings by the Copenhagen-based artist John Kørner, which opens at the Mayfair gallery on 8 April.
Painting, for Kørner, serves the unambiguous, if impalpable, function of exercising the imagination much in the same way as a bicycle stretches out the legs. In this exhibition, aspects of contemporary geopolitics including imbalances of wealth and the displacement of populations are obliquely problematised. Rather than predetermined allegorical narratives, the paintings in Apple Bombs present a constellation of seemingly incongruous pictorial elements in which the viewer is caught up, setting in motion dialogues concerning wellbeing, human relationships, consumption and survival.
Last year, for their annual exhibition, the UCL Art Society, put on a fantastic show entitled ‘Escape,’ which left ArtAttack impressed and inspired. So with this year’s show, ‘Metamorphosis,’ just a few days away, we jumped on the opportunity to interview exhibition director’s Olivia Bladen (ArtAttack’s own!) and Alice Procter to gain some insight into the curatorial process and what we can expect from this exciting emerging art exhibition.
ArtAttack: So ‘Metamorphosis’ is the theme for this year’s show. Can you tell me how this idea came about and what it means to you?
Alice Procter: As strange as it sounds… We were eating gnocchi in a park last summer, throwing words at each other in the hope that something would stick. I don’t remember who said Metamorphosis first, but it just made so much sense. We wanted something open, that anyone could look at and say, ‘okay, how can I relate this to my work?’, because every artist is always making a change or transforming something. It felt like a way of encouraging our members to step back and look at the process behind their work.
Olivia Bladen: We went through a long list of words it could be! Previous exhibitions had names such as Alchemy and Escape, and we wanted to keep the theme true to those vibes; something that was open enough to be accessible to anyone, but would still provide direction. As the curators, it helps to have a unifying aspect, obviously. But as Alice said, the process of change is inherently an artistic one, so none of the submissions felt really out of place.
Nine months after Los Angeles’ newest contemporary art museum opened to overwhelming crowds, The Broad’s first special exhibition will debut in June with a comprehensive survey of the work of artist Cindy Sherman.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #92, 1981
Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life is the first major museum show of Sherman’s work in Los Angeles in nearly 20 years, and the exhibition will fill The Broad’s first-floor galleries with close to 120 works drawn primarily from the Broad collection.
When I think of my hometown, Los Angeles, California, palm trees, expansive beaches and rainbow sunsets come to mind. I start to crave In n’Out Burger, hot pilates and early morning hikes in Runyon Canyon, $20 Juice Served Here smoothies (worth it, I swear) and the ever perfect ‘Trust Me’ menu at Sugarfish. I think of lazy strolls on Abbot Kinney, movie premieres taking over Hollywood Boulevard, hip hop nights at the club and performers on the Venice boardwalk. What I do not think of however, is art.
Now, before you go telling me how LA has a “killer art scene,” yes, of course I realize there is art in LA. From street art on every major boulevard, to Renaissance masterpieces at the Getty, and gallery private views with drinks flowing almost every weekend, by no stretch of the imagination is the City of Angels not a City of Art as well. However, living in London currently and having lived in New York, I never thought of my city as quite up to par with my adopted homes art-wise, at least not until The Broad.
The Broad, exterior
The Broad has changed everything.
Marketed, quite accurately, as ‘LA’s new contemporary art museum,’ the building, by design firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is a piece of art in itself gracing the skyline of Downtown LA. Inside, the vast-beyond-comprehenstion postwar and contemporary collection of philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad awaits. Just to be transparent, that’s 2,000 works of art collected over the course of 50 years, and including the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cy Twombly, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami, Ed Ruscha, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman and Christopher Wool, to name but a few.
The Vauxhall Art Car boot Fair parked up in Margate last Sunday, 30 September, dispersing works of art to both the local and visiting masses.
A woman in costume speaks through a loud hailer during the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair at Turner Contemporary in Margate, Kent | Anthony Devlin/PA Wire
It’s no surprise that the fair had such a high turnout, as collectors and art enthusiasts alike descended on Turner Contemporary’s car park, eyeing the chance to buy art directly from renowned artists, such as Tracey Emin, Sir Peter Blake, Mat Collishaw, Keith Coventry and Polly Morgan. It was also a great opportunity to discover works by local Margate based artists such as Heidi Plant and Charlie Evaristo-Boyce among others (both part of Margate contemporary arts organisation RESORT).
In honour of the release of a new Dotmaster print entitled ‘Indigo Gets Up,’ Imitate Modern presents the famed London street artist live painting with a side of juice to boot! You heard us, this Saturday, 15th August, as part of Seven Dials juicery, Lab Organic‘s, ‘Spotlight Music, Comedy and Art Festival,’ you can catch The Dotmaster in the flesh doing what he does best!
The work itself, ‘Indigo Gets Up,’ which will be both live painted and sold as prints, is part of the artist’s ‘Rude Kids‘ series. The gallery explains the concept best: “The characters in the ‘Rude Kids‘ series are…simply too nice to ‘flip the bird’ or vandalise your walls. With teenage years looming, for now, these kids are still too sweet and without the angst to convincingly pull it off. The series captures these kids while they’re still just ‘rude kids.'” In other words, Dotmaster is giving us a taste of some rude boys and girls in the making!
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