– LOVED
– LOATHED
– 25 SECONDS
– LIFE IS ART IS LIFE PART 2
– ALBERT OEHLEN AT THE WHITECHAPEL
– 2 EAST LONDON GALLERIES
– NEWS
– CURATOR PROFILE: SHAI OHAYON
– SOME THINGS TO CHECK OUT IN LONDON
– LONDON PLAYLIST
– ONE TO GOOGLE
– TALK TO US
– AND FINALLY…
Hello from London!
Welcome to View on Art - the collector’s newsletter.
This month comes to you from a very condensed three days in London.
We loved, we loathed
We went to Tate Modern, the Serpentine Gallery, the Whitechapel.
We suggest places to go, things to do in London
We look at the Sultan’s Elephant (for anyone who hasn’t seen it)
We recommend some hot UK artists.
We profile a London based Canadian curator - Shai Ohayon
Also..we have an announcement!
This letter goes to over 200 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!
With very best wishes, Andrea
LOVED
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1. The New Media works at Sublime Embrace: experiencing consciousness in contemporary art. The exhibition, at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, outside of Toronto, was curated by Shirley Madill. There were some extraordinary works in the show - I thought the best was the New Media room, with a fantastic octagonal screening installation by David Rokeby called Gathering, which was originally created for the 26th Bienal de Sao Paolo. The piece comprised a surveillance camera used to capture and isolate human activity in a separate location then each image was sorted by colour and shape and projected to create the effect of a constantly moving watercolour painting. Precious the I by Tony Oursler sat on the floor next to it, a green blob-face projected on to a ceramic oval. Across the room was Bill Viola ’s Becoming Light, a video of two bodies being submerged into the depths of water.
The most spectacular of all was David Hoffos’ work Scenes from the House Dream. A multimedia installation, it evolved from the artist’s own dream about a house and his discovery that a “house†is a common dream motif. The effect was kind of Alice in Wonderland, the viewer peering into small scale versions of large rooms, and confronted with a surprisingly realistic hologram of a girl sitting on the floor in one corner.
The project will result in fifteen to twenty small installations, to be displayed together to tell a unified story in 2007. Phase 4 recently opened on March 31 at Trepanier Baer in Calgary. The installation in Sublime Embrace is a combination of scenes from Phases 2 and 3.
David Hoffos at Trepanier Baer
2. The Robert Longo piece in the same exhibition. Titled Dumb Running, from 1988, this piece was gold leaf on steel, with motor and timer. A large formalist work consisting of steel cylinders covered in gold that periodically move is a comment on sculpture. According to the exhibition text, the piece “echoes the work of such minimalists as Donald Judd..and its title cancels out the old order, establishing a new one where contrary and exclusive features inhabit the same space promoting a form of dissonance and collision.â€
Art Gallery of Hamilton
3. The Gibraltar Point Open Studios. Toronto Island hosts an annual artist residency, courtesy of Artscape. I hadn’t known about it at the time, but the facilities seem both simple and quite idyllic. At the back of the island, the grouping of small buildings gives the feeling of a small, secluded community, looking out over the lake towards the US, and yet a 15 minute ferry ride from downtown Toronto.
The 11 artists at this year’s residency included a poet, a composer, visual artists, writers and a playwright. They were from London, the Netherlands, Wisconsin, Victoria BC and New York among other places. Best, I thought, were the Danish, London-based artist Tine Bech, whose balloon sound sculptures floated seductively around her studio and Christopher Butterfield, a composer from Victoria who had created a fantastic installation of musical scores covering the walls, along with a sound recording. I liked Ray Hsu’s poetry, too.
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4. Maia Ustad at Prefix institute of Contemporary Art. Toronto curator Rhonda Corvese organized this excellent exhibition by the Norwegian artist. The piece is essentially a wall of old radios stacked on top of one another from which electronically treated sounds are emitted. The sounds are reminiscent of a time gone by, including radio- buzz, static interference, Morse code and fragments of speech. At times, the sounds form a wave of sound that runs the length of the wall, enveloping the viewer. Would be good with a Jed Lind sculpture.
5. The only video piece in the Thomas Demand exhibition at the Serpentine. A videotape made, as with all of Demand’s work, from cardboard, winds slowly. It is an illusion, of course, the image is actually a series of stills jerking slightly to suggest movement. The projector is visible on the opposite wall, further enhancing the illusion. The interplay between the real projector and the cardboard film reels created a wonderful tension. It would work nicely beside a Rodney Graham film piece.
As for the photographs, they are good but I think perhaps best seen in the context of a curated group exhibit, because Demand’s work is also at one level about the truth of photography. It is therefore useful to create a dialogue with other works. Maybe the curators realized that and the heavy ivy-printed wallpaper on the walls was meant to compensate, or something.
Thomas Demand at the Serpentine Gallery
LOATHED
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1. How few people came from Toronto to the opening on June 8 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Regional galleries are doing some of the most interesting and original work - it would be great to see a bigger turnout to openings at the always good and interesting Oakville Galleries and Hamilton Art Gallery.
3. As much as I hate to say it, I was disappointed with this year’s Serpentine Pavilion by Rem Koolhaas. It was ok, but unfortunately much more rigid than the drawings and press release led everyone to believe. At the opening, most people I spoke with were of the same opinion. And the interior was quite rigid as well, with gaps on each of the four sides that create a breeze throughout the space, and a frame of unfortunate blue ivy- print wallpaper by Thomas Demand, whose show was on in the gallery.
2. The Clive Murphy/Nobuyuki Takahashi show at Mercer Union in Toronto. Actually it wasn’t even that I loathed it, it was just that when I went the gallery was empty, no one to explain the work, too few instructions on how to operate an obviously interactive art work by Takahashi. And it was too hot to consider clambering onto Murphy’s black plastic bouncy castle for some kind of art experience. I’m sure it was much better at the opening.
4. How long it takes to get anywhere in London. Tube delays. Heat. Ugh.
Mercer Union
25 SECONDS
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I was asked by curator Rhonda Corvese to be a part of 25sec. Toronto, a project by Berlin-based artists Andreas Schimanski and Angelika Middendorf. About 60 people working in the art world, including curators, collectors, gallery owners, writers and artists each gave a 25 second statement outlining their professional goals in relation to Toronto and the art world in general. Toronto is the second city, after Berlin, to have hosted this “video portrait†and there has now been interest from curators in Russia and China. The final statements will be edited together into a video and screened at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art next year, after which it will likely travel to other countries.
This kind of participatory endeavor is particularly useful for less established, upcoming art scenes - it gets the art world really focused on what it wishes to accomplish. It will be interesting to hear what people have to say, but for what it’s worth, I spoke about my desire to foster a competitive energy among artists in the city, to encourage a high standard of contemporary art in Toronto and Canada and to be instrumental in promoting Canadian art to the international community. Finally, I said that I wanted to encourage a view of criticism as relevant and helpful.
Look out for my upcoming text on the project’s website:
25 Sec.
LIFE IS ART IS LIFE PART 2
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Puppets seem to be everywhere these days. Two examples to consider:
1. In his show that just opened at the Tate Modern, Pierre Huyghe was screening This is not a time for dreaming, a tale of two stories told as a brilliantly produced puppet show. Revolving around Le Corbusier’s ill-fated commission by Harvard University for a visual arts department in 1959 which was eventually completed after his death, the second story weaves the artist’s own experience into the plot, when he was invited to create a work that would celebrate the same building’s 40th anniversary. The dean of deans, Mr. Harvard, floats around as a black, insect-like doom figure.
Read the real story here
2. The Sultan’s Elephant was a performance art piece that took place on the streets of London this past May. An enormous wooden elephant is operated by over ten puppeteers using hydraulics and motors. There are other characters including a surprising “little†girl. The figures are magical, manipulated to wonderful, Lilliputian effect by comparatively pint-sized people. The show is created by French company Royal de Luxe.
Check it out here:
The Sultan’s Elephant - Little Girl
And here:
Sultan’s elephant:
Marshall McLuhan said, “As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.â€
Every act is creative, and if you believe some Indian philosophies, every act is predetermined. Creativity is therefore subjective - how can we know if we are being creative or merely following a pre-determined path, going about like so many puppets on strings? Now that the line between art and life has been well and truly blurred, the question is what is the future of art? Technology? Spirituality?
Generosity has begun to make itself felt in art, with people like Rirkrit Tiravanija cooking and feeding people in his artworks, which also of course has to do with the continued breaking down of barriers between art and life.
Drinks with Tino at the Drake Hotel in Toronto on July 7, 6- 8 pm, where London-born artist Tino Sehgal gives his time to whoever wants to drop in and have a chat. Look out for his performance piece Kiss on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario, July 9 - August 20.
And generosity is in the air - as seen on a recent cover of the Economist with the headline “Billanthropy.â€
Drinks with Tino:
ALBERT OEHLEN AT THE WHITECHAPEL
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The large paintings were very 1980s and looked like a kind of throwback to a bygone era (Schnabel, Salle etc.) Upstairs, after a gallery of small, smart collages, were two grey paintings that were superb. They appeared to have been painted and then blurred overtop, so that something strange and deliberate was partially visible under the blurred grey paint. It was as if the artist was stating his uncertainty. It seemed like a deliberate move by an uncertain artist.
There was also a disturbing painting of a black painted, leotard-clad body stretching across a canvas, upon which had been pasted a giant blowup head of Chucky, the horror doll. I can’t get it out of my head. It would be great hanging beside a Douglas Gordon.
Whitechapel Gallery
2 EAST LONDON GALLERIES
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I ran around to a few East London galleries this afternoon - saw a great show at Counter Gallery on Charlotte Road, near Old Street. It was called Toutes Compositions Florales and was the kind of small, tight group show that Jessica Bradley puts on.
Best were a hand coloured etching by David Thorpe called The Kingdom Spear, Le langage des fleurs by Peter Peri, a detailed, antique looking pencil drawing and a pastel sculpture by Rebecca Warren in extremely delicate unfired clay called Beau.
Counter Gallery
Also dropped into a lovely small gallery called Museum 52 on Redchurch Street, near Brick Lane. There was a show of paintings by a Chinese artist called Ji Wenyu. Not my cup of tea, they were a blend of Chinese folklore with kitsch.
The large scale oil on canvas works were well painted and spectacularly coloured in colour combinations reminiscent of the Chinese opera. Fun.
Museum 52
NEWS
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1. This newsletter is soon to become a website - View on Canadian Art - a comprehensive window onto Canada’s contemporary art scene, from coast to coast. It will be a valuable resource for anyone looking for an art tour of one of Canada’s major cities, or for Canadians looking to find out what’s happening across the country.
Look out for it in the next month or so.
2. The gallery space at Toronto’s private member’s club The Spoke will now be managed and operated by Tatar Gallery. The Tatar Gallery first opened in Toronto in 1996 and has since provided a venue for Canadian and international artists working in all media. Its most recent project was Could Have Been the Weather, an exhibition of photography and new media curated by Christopher Eamon, curator of the Kramlich Collection.
The Tatar Gallery’s programming will begin at The Spoke Club in the fall of 2006 with Vancouver painter George Vergette and Jerwood Prize winning photographer, London-based Veronica Bailey.
Tatar Gallery
CURATOR PROFILE: SHAI OHAYON
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I met up with Shai at Bethnal Green tube and we walked over to MOT gallery nearby, to see and document a show titled The ‘Real’ Canadian that he had curated there. On view was work by three young artists, Robert Waters, Jason Kronenwald and Elizabeth Fearon.
Robert Waters makes delicate wall works by covering an area in strips of shiny brown packing tape, and delicately cutting out images to make modern silhouettes. Very nice work. He’s represented by P/M Gallery in Toronto.
In November Shai will curate a complimentary exhibition of British artists in Toronto at P/M Gallery, including work by Shez Dawood, Ami Clark, Simona Brinkman, Nicola Symes, Louise Harris and Paulmart.
Shai is from Toronto and has been living in London for the past 5 1/2 years. Teaching and curating, he is now curator of new contemporary galleries at the Fulham Palace, a medieval palace once home to the Bishop of London.
MOT
SOME THINGS TO CHECK OUT IN LONDON
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EAT at Yauatcha in Soho for excellent dimsum and cocktails.
Yauatcha
BUY the artist multiples and artist books section in the Tate Modern gift shop.
INDULGE in a manicure - every department store on Oxford Street has a nail salon inside.
SHOP on the high street. Best is Reiss - and Topshop, of course.
RELAX! - Buy a bottle of champagne and drink it in Queen Mary’s Rose Garden in Regent’s Park.
Queen Mary’s Gardens
LONDON PLAYLIST
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Someone made this brilliant punk/ska playlist for me, perfect for walking the streets of London. And you can have a vaguely Janet Cardiff-like experience, knowing that I’ve listened to the same soundtrack a few weeks earlier.
Suspect Device by Stiff Little Fingers, In the City by The Jam, Paranoid by Black Sabbath, I’m an Upstart by Angelic Upstarts, Idle Gossip by Toy Dolls,
How Soon is Now by The Smiths, Pump it Up by Elvis Costello, King Rocker by Generation X, Same Old Thing by The Streets, Pressure Drop by The Clash,
Too Much Pressure by The Selecter, Fighting in the Streets by Cockney Rejects, Big A, Little A by Crass, No Mercy for You by The Business, Vive La Revolution by The Addicts,
Pretty Vacant by Sex Pistols, The Same Thing by UK Subs, I Turned out a Punk by Big Audio Dynamite, Baggy Trousers by Madness, From the Pubs by Peter & the Test Tube Babies,
Big Five by Judge Dread, Hundred Mile High City by Ocean Colour Scene, Hurry Up Harry by Sham 69, I Can’t Explain by The Who, I Predict a Riot by Kaiser Chiefs,
Nite Club by The Specials, Plastic Gangster by 4 Skins, Police on my Back by The Clash, Skinhead Girl by Bad Manners, Something Else by Sid Vicious,
Streets of London by Anti-Nowhere League, Sunny Side of the Street by The Pogues, The Ace of Spades by Motorhead, What do I get by Buzzcocks, You Really Got Me by The Kinks.
Thank you Dan Springer for your musical taste.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...