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Text by Bethany Rex
There are a lot of projects that get the go-ahead in the name of regeneration, and the savagely debated Jerwood Gallery in Hastings is no exception. There’s a whole website devoted to the ‘Say No to Jerwood on The Stade‘ (an area next to the fish market) campaign but one only has look East for two shining examples of cultural regeneration come good; the hugely successful Folkestone Triennial and the celebrated Turner Contemporary in Margate.
Text by Matt Swain
Dan Flavin (1933-1996) was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from fluorescent light fixtures. His early work focused upon drawings and paintings influenced by Abstract Expressionism but the subsequent focus of his work was an exploration of the artistic possibilities of fluorescent light, limiting his possibilities by restricting his materials to commercially available tubing in standard sizes, shapes and colours.
Text by Ruby Beesley
La Coquille et le clergyman – Imogen Heap and The Holst Singers
Oracles and Step Onto the Ground, Dear Brother! – Ana Silvera and The Estonian Television Girls Choir
Now in its second year after a successful launch in 2010, the Roundhouse’s Reverb Festival aims to dismantle the stuffy, jargon-loaded image of classical music. While commercially the past decade has seen our musicians take a battering, creatively it’s an exciting time for contemporary music with tastes broadening, genres metamorphosing and live performances defying the rough waters experienced by the rest of the industry. And why shouldn’t classical music experience the same resurgence?
Richardson has been inspired by the multiple facets of Hollywood life. In his latest show,TERRYWOOD, he unveils a series of images of the famous city, as seen through his eyes. Terryworld meets Hollywood, as the local characters, familiar landscapes, and architectural details verge on a new identity.
Text by Bethany Rex
How do ideas of nihilism, darkness, subjectivity and abjection play out in experimental music, performance art, supernatural horror; in neuroscience or philosophy? Or: how can you trust what you think or feel? A Special Form of Darkness is an open, convivial music/performance/ideas hybrid – a cross between a festival, magazine and discussion.
Text by Travis Riley
You wouldn’t be to blame if you assumed the large blue banner above the Hayward entrance, proclaiming “art exhibition”, were a David Shrigley piece. It has the immediacy and humour of Shrigley’s work, and none of the seriousness that has in recent years come to represent Jeremy Deller.
Text by Liz Buckley
Cotton. You’re probably wearing it now. You probably sleep on it every night. The sheer abundance of this material all around us means it usually remains ignored and under-appreciated. The cotton industry at one point had its largest export centres in places far and wide; India, and closer to home, Lancashire. The new exhibition at Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery is a celebration of all things cotton, including both traditional and contemporary uses, mixed media pieces and installations, but most of all a well deserved celebration of the stuff. Cotton: Global Threads is an exhibition designed to amalgamate the cultural diversities of these fine threads and fabrics in a showcase of international talent and multiplicity.
Text by Bethany Rex
Short & Sweet is an acclaimed, travelling short-film event series – a unique, international community of film lovers who father for lively events of short films and socialising. This winter Short & Sweet returns to London.
Aesthetica spoke to Jack Robinson, London Coordinator of Short and Sweet, to find out more:
‘Celebration (Cyprus Street)’, Melanie Manchot, 2010 (Excerpt) from Film and Video Umbrella on Vimeo.
Canary Wharf Screen is an innovative new motion picture screening programme that will launch at Canary Wharf Tube station at the beginning of next month. The project has been initiated and presented by Art on the Underground and will show some of the best artists’ moving image, chosen by four of the UK’s leading film organisations and institutions, including new digital commissions and rarely seen films from the last century.
Text by Travis Riley
Lynda Benglis’ name has taken on mythical connotations in the art world. Her provocative photographic spread in Artforum in 1974, in which she appeared oiled and naked, brandishing a dildo, and sporting a “macherin”’ pose (Benglis’ own term implying a female form of “machismo”) sparked controversy at the time, and has subsequently been awarded verbal accolades by countless artists, not least Cindy Sherman and Vito Acconci.
Text by Franziska Knupper
Campbell’s soup cans, exclamation marks, kissing couples. Warhol, Basquiat, Clemente. The works of three legendary artists are currently being displayed at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn. Under the title Ménage à Trois the museum presents the artists’ fascinating collaborations during New York’s thriving art scene of the 1980s; how they inspired one another and contributed to each other’s work or, as Andy Warhol himself put it: “One’s a company, two’s a crowd, three’s a party.”
Text by Daniel Potts
Katie Mitchell’s acclaimed video installation arrived in Leeds on 14th February, and just as the carousel in the city’s Valentine’s Fair rotates and undulates carrying apparently happy lovers of all ages, Mitchell reminds us of an obverse mental maelstrom. The vehicle is Ophelia – Hamlet’s spurned lover – in her “mad scene”, which is experienced by the visitor five times at once through the interpretive prisms of Brecht, Artaud, Brook, Grotowski and Stanislavski.