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Risk & Experimentation in Video Art: Project 35, Gertrude Contemporary, Fitzroy, Australia.

Text by Emily Bour

Melbourne’s icy months present the perfect occasion to nestle in the dark and spend some quality time with Project 35. The new travelling exhibition is a video show, selected by 35 international curators, set up by the Independent Curators International (ICI) to celebrate their 35th Anniversary. ICI is a New York-based organisation, and as the name suggests, they are committed to promoting an international network for curators, having set up over 116 travelling exhibitions in 23 countries.

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TEST Presents…The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Town Hall Hotel, London.

Text by Emily Sack

TEST Presents… provides Londoners with a different take on an art event. The online fashion, photography, and film magazine provides monthly screenings of films. The TEST team invites a local artist to select a film to share with the audience that has been influential in some way to their career, aesthetic or philosophy, and for the second event this summer, artist Julie Verhoeven selected The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972). Verhoeven, after struggling to find an adequate term to describe how the film influenced her life, stated the film leaves her emotionally drained although it is a “super duper movie.”

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Literary Art: Covergence, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast.

Text by Angela Darby

Literature has long been an essential driving force behind many contemporary visual artists’ practice. The exhibition Convergence at Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast seeks to illustrate the symbiotic relationship between the two. Curators Chista-Maria Lerm Hayes, a lecturer at The University of Ulster and Peter Richards, Director of The GT Gallery have set out to ‘dispel the Modernist myth that artists needed to serve writers, that they were feeding the tribute industry, or lacked in rigour.’ Their strong selection of international and regional artists effectively supports the exhibition’s objectives.

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Three-Dimensional Bibliography: The Book on Books on Artists’ Books, Bloomberg Space, London.

Text by Lara Cory

Arnaud Desjardin is a French-born, London artist and author of catalogue: The Everyday Press (2011) and Business as Usual (2010). He is also the founder of The Everyday Press, publishing the work of visual artists as printed matter since 2007. Desjardin’s latest installation The Book on Books on Artists’ Books is showing in The Bloomberg Space as Comma 38, and nears the end of the gallery’s current series of exhibitions called Comma.

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Performative Landscapes: Shaun Gladwell: Stereo Sequences, ACMI, Melbourne.

Text by Emily Bour

Arriving at Shaun Gladwell’s Stereo Sequences exhibition, currently showing at the Australian Center for the Moving Image in Melbourne (ACMI), one is greeted at the top of the stairs by the large-scale video work Pataphysical Man (2005). The image of the shirtless, helmet-wearing man spinning gracefully from the ceiling is, of course, upside down, but the cumulative effect is hypnotic. Such is the appetiser for the works that await visitors below.

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Multi Sensory Experiences: InTransit Festival, 22-31 July, London.

Text by Nathan Breeze

Built in 1962 by the Architects Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall and Partners, The Commonwealth Institute, characterised by a distinctive parabolic copper roof, became a prominent centre of education comprising of permanent exhibitions, a dedicated library and played host to special events. Forty years later, as popularity waned and its funding was cut, the Institute closed with the collection disbanded across various other cultural organisations.

Scratch-and-Sniff: Celebrating the 2011 Vice Photo Issue

This July, VICE has surpassed itself. As the self-proclaimed coolest magazine in the world, Volume 18 Number 7 is a visually stunning compendium of photography by Terry Richardson, Richard Kern, Mick Rock, Martin Parr, Peter Sutherland, Jim Mangan, Jennifer Osborne, Danielle Levitt and many more.

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1986 Chernobyl: Jane and Louise Wilson, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton.

Jane and Louise Wilson were born in Newcastle and currently live and work in London. Using film, photography and sculpture, the Wilsons have created a series of internationally acclaimed, highly theatrical and atmospheric installations that investigate the darker side of human experience. They first began working together in 1989 and have since been fascinated by institutional architecture and the power of the unconscious mind, creating a body of work which probes collective anxieties and phobias, arouses unwanted memories and reveals things which are usually repressed.

Urban Pagan – Kid Acne: Kill Your Darlings, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield.

Kill Your Darlings is Kid Acne’s (b.1978) first solo exhibition in Sheffield, where he has lived and works for the last 15 years. Kid Acne has exhibited widely, both in the UK and internationally, including StolenSpace, London, Iguapop, Barcelona, Spain, Myymälä 2, Helsinki, Finland, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Western Australia, and Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, New York, USA. His latest exhibition, opening at Millennium Gallery on the 21 July, Kill Your Darlings will feature work from throughout Kid Acne’s career alongside a series of new commissions.

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Call for Entries: Aesthetica Creative Works Competition

The Aesthetica Creative Works Competition is open for entries! With categories for artwork, poetry and short fiction, the Creative Works Competition provides a great opportunity for artists and writers from a range of disciplines to showcase their work to a wider audience and nurture their reputations on an international scale.

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Heather Ross: Constants in Practice, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.

Review by Colin Herd

In July 2010, the painter Heather Ross (b.1983) won the Alastair Salvesen Travel Scholarship, a funding opportunity aimed at young artists who have recently made the transition from studying in college to working as an artist. The award enabled Ross to embark on a three-month study/research trip, visiting many contrasting locations in Japan, including Tokyo, Hakone, Kamakura, Beppu, Hiroshima and Kyoto. The work she produced resulting from the trip currently forms a small but densely-packed exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy.

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Challenging Perception: René Magritte: The Pleasure Principle, Tate Liverpool.

Review by Kenn Taylor

The imagery of Belgian surrealist René Magritte has long become a part of popular culture. More importantly than that though, he can be said to be one of the artists who has had the most profound effect on how we perceive the world, his pioneering vision in painting expanding our capacity for what could be visually possible. This large retrospective at Tate Liverpool, the biggest in the UK since the 1980s, takes a thematic approach, split into sections that look at Magritte’s key preoccupations and the compositional and conceptual devices he used throughout his work.