Aesthetica Magazine Issue 73

Aesthetica

THE ART & CULTURE MAGAZINE

www.aestheticamagazine.com

Issue 73 October / November 2016

CYCLICAL INSTALLATION

TOWARDS HYPER-REALITY

Interrogating geopolitics through Thomas Struth’s instinctive worlds

Tatsuo Miyajima’s numerical LEDs demonstrate existential suspension

Digital pioneer Björk introduces new dimensions for audience interaction

9 771743 271064

UK £4.95 Europe €9.99 USA $13.49

DYNAMIC COMPOSITION

RIBA Stirling Prize traces 20 years of ingenuity in a new compendium

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ENDURING FOUNDATIONS

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Welcome Editor’s Note

On the Cover Joshua Jordan is an American fashion photographer who executes cinematic shoots with structural consideration.

The images reference dream-like flashbacks to retro culture, film-noir and Hollywood-esque characters.

Natural tones are projected with subtle glamour, and contemporary models are transposed with vintage imagination. www.studiojordan.com (p. 118).

Predictability is an interesting concept. On the one hand it means that things can happen in a regular and orderly fashion, creating reliability from which systems and routines are formed. It would be pretty difficult to get through a 24-hour period with complete randomness. However, it’s also important to deviate from the ordinary. This edition pays homage to that notion. It’s only through innovation that we can move forward. In the current times – both politically and economically – I find great comfort in constant movement; semi-permanence means that change is always on the horizon.

Inside this issue we look at the impact technology has on our lives; see for example Tatsuo Miyajima’s show at MCA Australia. One of Japan’s leading contemporary artists and is best known for his immersive sculptures and installations, Miyajima focuses on the passing of time and the cycle of life and death. He reminds us of our position in the universe and the temporality of life. Similarly Björk Digital is currently on at Somerset House, displaying an artist who needs no introduction as a true pioneer. This survey event comments on the crossover between art, music and electronic advancements. Meanwhile, Thomas Struth: Nature & Politics opens at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, examining how we interact with our environment and how human ambition has physically shaped the world in which we live. We also look at 20 years of the RIBA Stirling Prize, charting how all the winning buildings have encouraged new ways of living and working. The text reminds us just how much the built world influences the quotidian.

In photography we present a range of seven photographic practices including Sebastian Weiss, Mária Švarbová, Natalia Evelyn Bencicova, Aurélien Villette and Ben Thomas, who negotiate the boundaries of the natural and the man-made world. Joshua Jordan, our cover photographer, captures retrospective moments. Finally, Chiharu Shiota offers the last words on the power of memory. Moving between technology, urbanisation and organic landscapes, this issue highlights what it means to live in today’s world.

Cover Image: Photography: Joshua Jordan.

Cherie Federico

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News 14 Constructing Power and Identity Monica Bonvicini encodes simple structures with complex dialogues in her first UK survey at Baltic.

16 Choreography of Interior Space As recipient of this year’s Hyundai Commission, Philippe Parreno fills Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

18 Charting a Century of Perceptions An ambitious exhibition at the Whitney Museum, New York, seeks new moving image experiences.

15 Capturing the Fourth Dimension Ultra-long-exposure shots by Hiroshi Sugimoto capture ruin and the transience of human artefacts.

17 Intersecting Temporal Boundaries MCA Chicago assembles the immersive works of Diana Thater and creates panoramic landscapes.

19 Undermining Sensory Conclusions Žilvinas Kempinas confounds audiences at Ikon Gallery through shifting viewpoints and illusion.

22 Enduring Foundations A new text from Merrell Publishers compiles all winners and shortlisted buildings from the RIBA Stirling Prize, showcasing 20 years of innovation.

52 Cyclical Installation As part of the 2016-2017 Sydney International Art Series, MCA Australia hosts a major survey of conceptual performance artist Tatsuo Miyajima.

76 Modern Frameworks German-born Sebastian Weiss cuts up piercingly blue skylines with solid grey geometry, depicting an interaction of forms, materials and structures.

28 Concrete Abstraction Australian photographer Ben Thomas transposes the recognisable environments of contemporary society into artifice by using enhanced palettes.

58 Visceral Uniformity Figures within Natalia Evelyn Bencicova’s images are at once mechanistic and melancholy, evoking an unsettling world of concrete versus organic.

88 Pseudo Americana Tom Blachford’s photography fluctuates between reality and fantasy; his attention to lighting offers an uncanny atmosphere to immaculate locations.

40 Archaic Dereliction Removing architectural systems from their former prestige, Aurélien Villette revels in a new state of aestheticised corrosion and human abandonment.

70 Towards Hyper-Reality Björk pushes into new technological territories at Somerset House, London, blurring lines between art and music whilst undermining consciousness.

100 Dynamic Composition High Museum explores the investigative legacy of Thomas Struth, who interrogates the changing notions of geopolitics and fabricated landscapes.

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Music

131 Poignant Social Commentary Auto-biographical film from screenwriter Nick Moorcroft, Urban Hymn, uses the unforgettable events of one night to expose unguided youths.

134 Unexpected Nordic Electronica Oslo-based duo Apothek release their self-titled album that merges polar opposite ideas and, as a result, combines acoustic with mechanic styles.

135 Coming of Age Anthems Julia Jacklin’s album Don’t Let The Kids Win is an atmospheric, mid-tempo, folk-tinged debut that highlights the intimate nature of adolescence.

Performance

Last Words

Regulars

138 Ethereal Movements Returning to Sadler’s Wells in 2016, TAO Dance Theatre test the possibilities of their own bodies as existential conduits for past, present and future.

140 Chiharu Shiota Blain Southern gallery, Berlin, hosts the artist’s site-specific installation that utilises interweaving threads for both metaphor and new perspectives.

20 10 to See 128 Exhibitions 133 Films 137 Music

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The Aesthetica Team: Managing Director/Editor: Cherie Federico Production Director: Dale Donley Advertising Coordinator: Jeremy Appleyard Marketing Coordinator: Alexandra Beresford Designer: Rob Cheung Editorial Assistant: Kate Simpson Administrator: Cassandra Weston Artists’ Directory Coordinator: Katherine Smira Technical Administrator: Alex Tobin Staff Writer: David Martin Festival Assistant: Eleanor Turner

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Contributors: Matilda Bathurst, Ruby Beesley, Ginevra Bria, Kyle Bryony, Bryony Byrne, Grace Caffyn, Polly Checkland, Niamh Coghlan, Mira Dayal, Tony Earnshaw, Anna Feintuck, Colin Herd, Chloe Hodge, Selina Oakes, Regina Papachlimitzou, Charlotte R.A., Paul Risker, Sara Sweet, Matt Swain, Beth Webb.

ISSN 1743-2715.

Art

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143 Live on Stage 145 Books 152 Directory 162 Last Words

Artists’ Directory Enquiries: Katherine Smira (0044) (0)844 568 2001 katherine@aestheticamagazine.com

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All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without permission from the publisher.

Published by Cherie Federico and Dale Donley.

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Monica Bonvicini, Light Me Black, 2009. © VG Bild-Kunst. Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago.

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Constructing Power and Identity MONICA BONVICINI The erotic aspects of architecture and the ways in which the built environment encodes a complex dialogue of power, gender and control have been a constant source of ideas for Monica Bonvicini (b. 1965). 20 years of her creative output across installation, sculpture, drawing and film, now takes over two floors at Baltic in this first UK survey of an artist drawn to examine the dualities of construction and destruction, and who takes inspiration from the worlds – and the materials – of fetishism and S&M. Exploring how the spaces we inhabit condition and control us is a concern running throughout the artist’s practice. She considers both architecture and the art world to be expressions of the ideologies of power and is determined to reveal this.

Venice-born and now based in Berlin, Bonvicini is perhaps best known for her one-way mirrored glass lavatory outside the Tate Britain, Don’t Miss A Sec’. (2004) – whose construction references Mies van der Rohe, Dan Graham and the design of Apple’s technology stores – and her light installation RUN in the London Olympic Park. She won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 1999, and the National Gallery Prize for Young Art in Berlin in 2005. Notable public works can also be seen at the Istanbul Modern Art Museum, Turkey, and the Oslo Opera House in Norway, where her steel and glass installation She Lies floats on the fjord, rising 12m above the water and moving with the tide and wind, implying

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the presence of an iceberg. Her work has featured in many “Exploring how the prominent biennials, including Berlin, Paris, Istanbul, spaces we inhabit Gwangju, New Orleans, and Venice on five occasions. control us is a concern Curated by Laurence Sillars, this exhibition presents a running throughout critical appraisal of 20 years of the artist’s multifaceted the artist’s practice. creative practice, revealing a body of work that questions She considers both the meaning of making art itself. On the first floor, Bonvicini architecture and challenges the limits of freedom and the ambiguities of the art world to be language, whilst also demonstrating the sense of humour expressions of the and ambiguity which is prominent across her entire oeuvre. ideologies of power A signature piece here is Light Me Black (2009) – a cluster of and is determined fluorescent light tubes, which sees the artist responding both to reveal this.” to modernism and to Renzo Piano’s description of buildings as “temples of light.” The second floor of the show unveils a selection of new works specially commissioned for Baltic.

Dry-humoured, direct, and imbued with historical, political and social references, Bonvicini makes a critical connection with the exhibition site, through the materials that comprise it, and the roles of spectator and creator.

This approach, which has been at the core of the artist‘s production since her first solo exhibition at the California Institute of the Arts in 1991, has formally evolved over the Baltic, Gateshead. years, whilst betraying neither the original analytical force 18 November - 26 February. behind it, nor the desire to challenge both the viewer’s perspective and the prevailing cultural conventions. www.balticmill.com

Capturing the Fourth Dimension HIROSHI SUGIMOTO: REMAINS TO BE SEEN

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Paramount Theater, Newark, 2015. © Hiroshi Sugimoto. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Time – and the possibilities of capturing the most elusive Beach (1959), the post-apocalyptic film directed by Stanley “He condenses entire and enigmatic of dimensions as a single, static image – is Earl Kramer. With an exposure time of 134 minutes, each films into single the subject of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work; his trademark large- resulting image the movie is seen only as a glowing white images by using exposures that equal format, ultra-long-exposure shots evoke both the passing of rectangle that appears suspended in space.

Sugimoto’s fascination with time extends to trying to the running time events and the transience of human artefacts.

A life-long fascination with cinemas and film projection led imagine its ultimate limits. He recently commented: “I feel of the feature. This Sugimoto to begin his Theaters series of images featuring that I’m in a very interesting position, where I’m standing back has developed into movie houses in the 1970s. He condenses entire films into to look at this change, at this moment in history of human a pre-occupation single images by using exposures that equal the running beings … I want to witness how this big story of humans ends. with cinemas that time of the feature. Gradually this has developed into a It may keep running, or there might be a turning point. I don’t have fallen into disrepair and ruin.” pre-occupation with cinemas that have fallen into disrepair know whether the future or 2018 exists or not.”

As an artist he is deeply influenced by the writings and works and ruin – the architectural surroundings now speaking eloquently of the days and years that have passed. In of Marcel Duchamp as well as the Dadaist and Surrealist these images the film projector provides the sole source of movements as a whole. Sugimoto is also an accomplished lighting; the bright screen in the centre of the composition architect, running his own practice in Tokyo. This feeds into makes hints as to the architecture of the space whilst the his involvement in planning the settings for his exhibitions.

In a number of Sugimoto’s major exhibitions from the empty seats are the only other subjects that register.

Now, Fraenkel Gallery presents the first exhibition focused past 10 years, such as The History of History (Japan Society, on these abandoned movie house photographs: Remains to New York and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC) Be Seen is a poetic study of neglect and ruin. When shooting and Aujourd’hui, le monde est mort [Lost Human Genetic in abandoned picture houses the artist has personally Archive] (Palais de Tokyo, Paris), the artist has placed his Fraenkel Gallery, chosen the films, often installing his own curtain on the work in a sweeping temporal context that extends from San Francisco. stage or proscenium as a surface to project the film onto ancient history to the end of time. Sugimoto’s image Boden Until 22 October. if no viable screen remains. At the Paramount Theater in Sea, Uttwil (1993) reached a new audience in 2009 when U2 Newark, New Jersey, for example, Sugimoto projected On the chose it as the cover for their album No Line On The Horizon. www.fraenkelgallery.com

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Philippe Parreno, Speech Bubbles (Black), 2009. Unique black helium balloons in mylar, variable dimensions.

Installation view: Solo show at the Kunsthalle Zürich, 9 May - 16 August 2009. © Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zürich / Kunsthalle Zürich.

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Choreography of Interior Space PHILIPPE PARRENO The latest artist to take on the imposing space of the Tate ing into question the whole idea of sole authorship. Nota- “Parreno sees his role Modern Turbine Hall, and whose finished installation is to be bly, he co-directed the 2006 feature-length documentary, as creating a mise en unveiled to the public this month, brings an impressive track Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, alongside the Scottish artist scène, through which record of taking viewers on an immersive, choreographed Douglas Gordon. The film tracks French football legend Zin- a series of events journey that redefines the whole idea of the gallery exhibition. edine Zidane throughout a match, using 17 different camera unfold. By creating Philippe Parreno sees his role as creating a mise en scène, angles, whilst subtitles present the player’s thoughts, and the these kaleidoscopic through which a series of events unfold. By creating these ka- images combine with an emotive soundtrack that was written environments, he treats his exhibitions leidoscopic environments, he treats his exhibitions as one co- and performed by the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai. herent whole rather than a series of objects within a space. As Recently he presented a vast installation H{N)Y P N(Y}OSIS as one coherent the recipient of this year’s Hyundai Commission – a series of at Park Avenue Armory, New York (2015), which fused film, whole rather than site-specific installations made possible by a long-term part- light, sound and performance to create a dramatic sensory a series of objects nership between Tate and Hyundai Motor, a relationship now journey. At the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2013 he was the within a space.” confirmed to run until 2025 – Parreno adds to the catalogue first artist to occupy the entirety of the gallery’s expanded of artists who have reimagined the vast industrial space and space of 22,000 square metres. A recurring trademark is helped transform public perceptions of contemporary art. his series of Marquees, like those found over cinema and Chris Dercon, Director, Tate Modern notes: “Throughout his theatre entrances, whose neon displays often react to the career Parreno has sought to transform how art can work, music and video elements of the exhibition. His video works and his desire to create immersive experiences makes him include Marilyn (2012), which summons the ghost of Marilyn the perfect choice for the Turbine Hall at Tate.”

Monroe in a séance in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in The artist, who lives and works in Paris, considers himself New York where she once lived, using techniques including a firmly in a tradition of collaborative work across cultural dis- computer reconstruction of the doomed star’s voice. ciplines. His projects, which explore the borders between realParreno is represented in major museum collections, Tate Modern, London. ity and fiction, span film, video, sound, writing, drawing and including Tate; MoMA, New York; and the Centre Pompidou. 4 October - 2 April. information technology, and emphasise working with other He has participated in multiple Venice Biennales since the artists, architects, musicians, writers and scientists, throw- early 1990s and recently exhibited at HangarBicocca, Milan. www.tate.org.uk

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Intersecting Temporal Boundaries DIANA THATER: THE SYMPATHETIC IMAGINATION sonar and sight. The intersection of film and video with “My work is a longinstallation practices in Thater’s work – allowing her creations term project. I have to break out of the video rectangle and often incorporate dedicated my life viewers’ bodies – is one of the artist’s major contributions to as an artist to the her field: one that is at the heart of this show, co-curated by examination and Lynne Cooke of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, observation of the and Christine Y Kim of Los Angeles County Museum of Art. many kinds of MCA’s comprehensive survey includes Thater’s exploration relationships of wildlife in the abandoned, post-human “Zone of humans have Alienation” around the radioactive disaster site of Chernobyl, constructed reflecting her fascination with the tension between the tamed with animals.” and the wild. Also featuring is her recent piece Life is a TimeBased Medium (2015) in which the architecture of the gallery setting converges with the pillars and pavilions of the Galtaji Temple in Jaipur, India. The temple – situated in a mountain pass – has been a Hindu pilgrimage site for many centuries, though much of the present complex of temples built in pink stone dates from the 18th century. One of the constructions has become known as the “Monkey Temple” as it is now home to a large tribe of rhesus macaques. Thater projects an immersive environment depicting the monkeys in their own architectural habitat, superimposed on the exhibition MCA Chicago. space. Early pieces are also presented here including Oo Fifi, 29 October - 8 January.

Five Days in Claude Monet’s Gardens (1992), which breaks film footage down into the primary colours of video (RGB). www.mcachicago.org

Diana Thater, Untitled Videowall (Butterflies), 2008. Installation view, 1301PE, Los Angeles, 2008. © Diana Thater. Photo: © Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy of 1301PE, Los Angeles.

MCA Chicago draws together a series of immersive film and video installations created by Diana Thater which imagine the subjective experiences of animals in their natural habitats by a process of pushing these media to their limits.

Years of experience in filming animals, both in the wild and in captivity, have led Thater to her key themes of environmentalism and conservation. She states that “my work is a long-term project. I have dedicated my life as an artist to the examination and observation of the many kinds of relationships humans have constructed with animals.”

Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including literature, mathematics, chess and sociology, the American artist makes evocative and sometimes near-abstract works that interact with their surroundings to create an intricate relationship between their temporal and spatial aspects. She frequently transforms exhibition venues into a hybrid space that lies somewhere between sculpture and architecture, using colour and light, whilst the whole experience takes reference points from panoramic landscape painting. She believes film and video are not entirely narrative media, and that abstraction can and does exist in representational moving images.

Amongst the pieces presented here is Delphine (1999) in which LED lights activate the space whilst projected film and video footage of dolphins simulates the animals’ underwater environment – including the ways they perceive it through

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Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun, 2015. Video, color, sound; 21 min., looped; with environment, dimensions variable.

Collection of the artist; courtesy of Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. Installation view, German Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale, 2015.

Photo: Manuel Reinartz; image courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.

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Charting a Century of Perceptions DREAMLANDS: IMMERSIVE CINEMA AND ART The Whitney mounts the most technically complex project music is created in response to colour.

“Artists have Organised into three sections, the exhibition first highlights dismantled the since the move to its new building with a journey through more than a century of cinematic innovators. Inspired by pioneers from 1905 to the 1930s, whose early uses of most fundamental horror fantasy writer HP Lovecraft, the show’s title evokes sweeping shots, abstraction and kaleidoscopic colour began conventions of the idea of an alternate fictional dimension, whose terrain to reinvent the conventions of “watching” and define a cinema to create new of cities, forests, mountains and underworld can be visited distinctly cinematic space. The German innovators featured experiences of the only through dreams. The ambitious presentation will fill here include the dancing figures of Oskar Schlemmer’s moving image. The the entirety of the Whitney’s 18,000-square-feet fifth-floor Triadic Ballet (1922) and the abstract and intoxicating forms works presented use colour, touch, music, galleries and embraces techniques that range from hand- created by Oskar Fischinger for Raumlichtkunst (1926).

Audiences visit an era from the 1940s to the 1980s, spectacle, light and painted film to the latest in digital image manipulation.

Dreamlands focuses on the ways in which, throughout the beginning with Disney’s fusion of music and image in darkness to confound history of the medium, artists have dismantled the most Fantasia – but the mood soon shifts as the utopian hopes expectations.” fundamental conventions of cinema – screen, projection, of the post-war era are replaced by the fears of the atomic darkness – to create new experiences of the moving image. age. Bruce Conner’s Crossroads (1976) compiled from The works and installations presented use colour, touch, government footage of nuclear bomb tests, and the music, spectacle, light and darkness to confound expectations, experimental installations of Jud Yalkut and Anthony McCall, whether flattening space through animation and abstraction, demonstrate a prevailing mood that feeds into the dystopian or heightening the illusion of three dimensions. Though science fiction world developed in Blade Runner.

The final section, from the 1990s to the present day, sees the primarily featuring American artists and filmmakers, the show also includes a selection of German artists of the 1920s digital and real worlds fuse, with virtual spaces, touchscreens who had a significant influence on the evolution of American and manipulation of images. In Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Whitney Museum of cinema. Visitors can walk through projection beams, explore DiNA, Tilda Swinton plays an artificial intelligence who American Art, New York. virtual reality using Oculus Rifts, see the conceptual artwork can interact with viewers, whilst in Ian Cheng’s simulations, 28 October - 5 February. for Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940) and Ridley Scott’s Blade human involvement is not even necessary as his chat bots Runner (1982), and enter a synesthetic environment wherein interact with each other to create an evolving narrative. www.whitney.org

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Undermining Sensory Conclusions ŽILVINAS KEMPINAS Alongside White Noise are seven pieces from the Illuminator “Videotape is a (2015) series. From a distance they resemble a full moon – a container of visual bright sphere in a dark sky – but are illuminated circles of information, a data the flat, rough wall. Bearings (2015) is a floor-based, black carrier, but you can box-like object with thousands of small steel bearings laid perceive it like an down in oil on its surface. At first they appear static, but abstract line. It is a when analysed in further detail it becomes apparent that the mass-produced banal bearings are slowly moving, one by one, rearranging and re- industrial material, positioning themselves into an infinite “drawing in progress.” but it can appear The idea of drawing as a record of a physical movement sensual and seductive.” through a three-dimensional space is also the subject of a new series on paper – employing traditional materials combined with a non-traditional way of drawing: using a street bicycle as the line-making device. Speed, gravity, space, equilibrium, painterly accidents, mechanical vehicle movements and the control of the artist all come in to play.

The theme of movement continues in a new installation created specifically for the Ikon show. Featuring an upsidedown video projection of a ride through a forested landscape and a mass of metal rods painted white and arranged on a high-gloss black floor, the combination results in a controlled environment that is immediately disorienting. Ikon, Birmingham.

However, as with the Illuminator works and White Noise, the Until 27 November. illusion is dispelled by careful scrutiny. Kempinas’s aesthetic games create a unity amongst the diverse works presented. www.ikon-gallery.org

Žilvinas Kempinas, Bearings, 2015 (steel, aluminium, mineral oil, motor, magnets) and Verticals, 2015 (magnetic tape, magnets).

Installation view at Galleria Leme, Sao Paulo 2015. Courtesy of the artist, Galeria Leme, Sao Paulo and Galerija Vartai, Vilnius.

Once ubiquitous, but now on the verge of obsolescence, videotape is the signature material in the installations of Lithuanian artist Žilvinas Kempinas. The artist, who generally works with everyday materials, is drawn to the idea of this inexpensive substance both by its function as an abstraction of moving images but also by its basic physical properties.

“It’s a container of visual information, a data carrier, but you can perceive it like an abstract line. It is a mass-produced banal industrial material, but it can appear sensual and seductive at the same time,” says the New York-based artist.

For his show at Ikon, Kempinas presents series of installations, with the centrepiece being White Noise (2007).

Comprising numerous lengths of unwound videotape which are stretched horizontally wall-to-wall and agitated by ventilator fans, it suggests the sound of static from a vast untuned television screen. The sound of the fans and fluttering tape heightens an illusion which is ultimately undermined upon closer inspection. Such tension between first impression and reality is another signature of Kempinas’s work.

The exhibition as a whole makes use of elemental phenomena such as light and the circulation of air, with an emphasis on movement – whether that of the visitors or of the kinetic works on display. Again, the pieces exploit dramatic changes that can be revealed through a simple shift of viewpoint, confounding the viewers’ first impressions.

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1. Taryn Simon, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, 2007. Image courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. 2. Viktor&Rolf, Van Gogh Girls, 2015. Haute Couture Spring/Summer. The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined. © Team Peter Stigter. 3. Lilly Reich. Women’s Fashion Exhibition, Berlin, Germany. View of the Velvet and Silk Café. 1927. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mies van der Rohe Archive, gift of the architect.

4. Blow Up, 1966. © MGM / THE KOBAL COLLECTION. 5. Simon Norfolk, Burnt filing cabinets, Iraqi National Archives, Baghdad, April, 2003. © Simon Norfolk. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery.

10 to See RECOMMENDED EXHIBITIONS THIS SEASON

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Taryn Simon

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark 29 October - 15 January www.en.louisiana.dk

With the series An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Taryn Simon presents photographs of places inaccessible to the general public. Subjects include radioactive waste sunk in water, an issue of Playboy Magazine in Braille, the cage in which a prisoner on Death Row can move around out of doors, a living HIV virus and an inbred albino tiger.

Presented as part of the Louisiana One Work series.

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The Vulgar

Barbican, London 13 October - 5 February www.barbican.org.uk

The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined addresses the controversial but compelling subject of taste, questioning notions of vulgarity, whilst revelling in its excesses. The show invites the visitor to think again about what makes something “vulgar.” With items from the Renaissance to the present day, this exhibition includes the work of Walter van Beirendonck, Manolo Blahnik, Miuccia Prada, Louis Vuitton and Vivienne Westwood.

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How Should We Live?

MoMA, New York 1 October - 23 April www.moma.org

Subtitled Propositions for the Modern Interior, MoMA explores the various creative partnerships and processes that have shaped our homes and work environments. It will feature interior spaces from the 1920s to the 1950s, considering the design elements and social and political context. Noted partnerships featured include Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe, and Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier.

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You Say You Want a Revolution?

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Image As Question

V&A, London Until 26 February www.vam.ac.uk

Michael Hoppen Gallery, London Until 26 November michaelhoppengallery.com

In You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966 –1970, the V&A considers how the upheavals of the late 1960s can still be felt today, from civil rights to environmentalism and neoliberal politics our world bears the stamp of those revolutionary years.

Featured objects include a moon rock on loan from NASA and shards from Jimi Hendrix’s guitar.

Embedded within the photographic medium is the idea of evidence, of it being, on some level, documentary proof. The Michael Hoppen Gallery presents a fascinating selection of pictures, whose original context is long past, turning them into a source of new questions.

The images range from the events of 9/11 to source material for the canvases of Francis Bacon.

6. Ulay, S’ he, 1973-74. 8.5 x 10.8 cm. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016. Courtesy of Ulay Foundation, 2016. 7. Gillian Hyland, Look Away, 2014. Courtesy of Flux Exhibition. 8. Zhang Jingna, Motherland Chronicles – Winter’s Rose. 9. James Richards, Radio at Night, 2015. Courtesy of the artist. 10. Anna Maria Maiolino, São 8 [They Are Eight], 1993. Moulded cement with pigment. 100 x 125 x 13 cm.

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Ulay

Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 13 October - 8 January www.schirn.de

Frank Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay, was born in 1943, and his life has been inseparable from his art. Fascinated with transformation, he constantly creates new identities, with photography as the main tool and his body as the subject. Schirn brings together a lifetime of performance photography and body art, from Polaroids to digital images, and including many works never seen in public.

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F lux

The Old Truman Brewery, London 2-6 November www.fluxexhibition.com

The third edition of Flux continues the tradition of being an alternative way to encounter new creative talent, in a carefully curated showcase of emerging painters and sculptors, presented alongside sitespecific installations and live musical performances.

The event is curated by Flux founder Lisa Gray and features a diverse group of 140 artists, including Gillian Hyland, Darren Baker and Tomas Harker.

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Berlin Foto Biennale

Palazzo Italia, Berlin 6 October - 30 October www.berlinfotobiennale.com

This year’s Biennale is a truly global survey of modern photography featuring 1,230 images by 446 contemporary artists from 41 countries, including the USA, China, Senegal and Mexico. Celebrated Magnum photographer Steve McCurry is this year’s special guest and the 2016 Emerging Talent exhibitor is Yusuke Suzuki, with her studies of the refugee crisis on Lesbos and the chaos in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

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James Richards

ICA, London Until 13 November www.ica.org.uk

Taking his video Radio at Night (2015) as a starting point, James Richards will present three new physically distinct but conceptually connected pieces, which continue his ongoing exploration of collage, installation and sound works across the ICA’s Lower and Upper Galleries. The Welsh artist, currently based in Berlin, aims to create echoes and reflections between the works, throughout the exhibition space.

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Anna Maria Maiolino

Hauser &Wirth, Zürich 12 October - 23 December www.hauserwirth.com

Hauser & Wirth displays a selection of new and recent work by one of Brazil’s most significant contemporary artists, Anna Maria Maiolino.

Through fragmentation and abstraction, the artist’s surfaces become rich with metaphor, alluding to and questioning language, sexuality, desire and the unconscious. Amongst the new sculptural pieces here, there is a large work in Raku ceramic from the Rolinhos Na Horizontal series.

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Enduring Foundations RIBA STIRLING PRIZE WRITTEN BY TONY CHAPMAN, A NEW TITLE INCLUDES EVERY WINNER OVER THE LAST 20 YEARS, HIGHLIGHTING HOW BUILDINGS MUST MOVE BEYOND FUNCTIONALITY.

“Uniqueness,” observes Tony Chapman, Head of Awards at an elusive concept: it’s not synonymous with innovation, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and author of The although originality and evidence of an innovative approach RIBA Stirling Prize: 20, “interests people.” Indeed, even are also core criteria for selecting the chosen works.

Yet having an impact on other buildings requires more: a cursory glance over the Stirling shortlisted and prizewinning buildings from the 20 years since its inception would while Chapman is keen to point out that “architecture is a certainly reveal a smorgasbord of unique works: from those practical art” and therefore “buildings have to work”, he’s skyline-defining household names such as the iconic Shard also quick to highlight the fact that for a building to win the and the Gherkin in London to the heritage regeneration Stirling, it needs to go “beyond mere functionality.”

Leafing through The RIBA Stirling Prize: 20, it’s not long success stories such as Astley Castle, or the harbingers of before you encounter a building that does just that. There are urban regeneration like the Gateshead Millennium Bridge.

Winning the Stirling Prize is largely about making it some truly dramatic examples in the collection, for instance through a very long and exhaustive process of elimination the American Air Museum with its soaring displays, or the which includes the criteria of having won both the regional sweeping landscape which was created by Zaha Hadid for award and the national award. An initial longlist of roughly MAXXI. Such works attest to what the book calls “the power 500 entries (the number fluctuates considerably, Chapman of architecture to shape our experience”. By at once subtly notes, depending on the economic climate) is gradually and guiding the movement of visitors and encouraging a spirit of exploration, Stirling Prize winners integrate the functionality painstakingly whittled down to a final shortlist of six.

At the inception of the prize – and for the first few years of of a space with the experience of the entire building.

In the text, Chapman mentions that “the challenge of how its existence – there used to be a system of categories: but this was quickly abandoned because the organisers felt that to be resolutely of the present age whilst simultaneously it was skewing the judging process. “We couldn’t guarantee embracing the past is one of the most complex problems these were the best six buildings,” Chapman recalls, that architects have had to face throughout history.” So how adding that the decision was ultimately made to “compare does competing for the Stirling Prize encourage clients and everything them all with each other and choose the best six.” architects to not just be of the present but also to usher in One-on-one comparison of such diversity is, without a the future? “Buildings,” Chapman declares, “should last. doubt, a complex and nuanced task. The Stirling Prize being There are some specific structures that are intended to be “the culmination of the RIBA Awards” means the over-arching temporary and are therefore exempt from that exhortation, aim is to award the building that “[has] had the most influence but I think it’s really important that we do build for posterity, on architecture” in the year in question. Influence is of course where appropriate.” Preparing for future change by including

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Museum of Modern Literature, Germany. David Chipperfield Architects. Photo: Christian Richters.

“The architects chose to literalise the concept of transparency in the administering of justice, by using glass in a building that would traditionally have been built as a fortress: awe-inspiring and opaque.”

Previous Page: Accordia, Cambridge.

Architect: Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Maccreanor Lavington and Alison Brooks Architects.

Photo: Tim Crocker.

Left: Maggie’s London, Charing Cross Hospital. Architect: Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners.

Photo: Richard Bryant / Arcaid.

adaptability in the plans is one of the ways that building for the future can be achieved; and, as Chapman admits, “something that is adaptable takes a lot more thought.”

Another aspect of contemporary building is to recover and breathe new life into the past. Several of the examples in the book integrate past and present, in the form of existing structures being enveloped in (or enveloping) new buildings, such as the Magna Science Adventure Centre re-purposing a former steelworks in Rotherham, Yorkshire. A dramatic example of this is the regeneration of Astley Castle to become a holiday home: a surprising but well-deserving winner.

Love and care of historic architecture has long been part of the fabric of British national identity, ever since the Ancient Monuments Board for England came together in 1913 to ensure the survival and preservation of nationally important monuments, which soon extended to include the protection and conservation of all nationally important built heritage.

The prevailing issue is that not all nationally important historic architecture will attract the same number of visits as Stonehenge or Tintagel. Presently there are “all sorts of listing processes and barriers to redeveloping and knocking down old buildings,” which means that finding creative ways to re-use old buildings and ruined structures is becoming of paramount importance. Whilst public opinion might often reject the idea of modernising interventions in these heritage sites, the question remains: what is the point of having unused and unvisited ruins dotted around the country?

Astley Castle is an interesting case of a historic building that, as Chapman puts it, “wasn’t considered that important; it was not that well known.” Its thoughtful yet confident regeneration by Witherford Watson Mann architects has

shown the public a working way forward in the marriage of old and new, and has created huge interest. Awarding Astley Castle the Stirling Prize has gone some way towards highlighting – and changing public perceptions of – the linking of historical and contemporary architecture.

This meeting of past and present is one recurring aspect of the Stirling award-winning and shortlisted architectural projects. Another aspect is the meeting of inner and outer, the opening up of space and the creating of opportunities for movement between the building itself and the world around it. “Architecture,” the judges of the 2002 Stirling Prize noted, “is about the enclosure of space” – in addition, Chapman observes that the “merging of inside and out is [also] considered important in all great architecture.”

Manchester Civil Justice Centre, which was shortlisted for the 2008 prize, incorporates elements that enable transparency, apparent both from the outside in and from the inside out: it allows citizens who walk past to catch a glimpse of the workings of the civil court buildings inside it, and at the same time gives people who have presented themselves to the court a glimpse of the outside world beyond its walls.

Denton Corker Marshall architects chose to literalise the concept of transparency in the administering of justice by using glass in a building that would traditionally have been built as a fortress: awe-inspiring and opaque, a structure designed to create dread in the hearts of those who choose to break the law, whilst re-affirming its seriousness as a centre of the justice system. “[Denton Corker Marshall] turn that on its head,” Chapman observes, and it was that “highly unusual [approach that] made us put it on the shortlist.”

When it comes to great architecture, there should not be

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London Aquatics Centre. Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects. Photo: Hufton + Crow.

any hard and fast boundaries between inside and out: instead, aren’t I ugly?’ It’s got to say ‘Look at me, aren’t I beautiful?’”

Different architectural approaches might help a building “there should be an element of the outside coming in and the inside coming out, as it were.” Maggie’s House in London and to draw attention to itself, but its beauty has to be more Lanarkshire are at the same time set apart from the outside than skin-deep. Chapman juxtaposes billboard architecture world and yet integrated in it – they are constructions in – which is just something that is attached to a building that which an element of transparency is brought into the design says “Here, look at me”, but when you look deeper you find that there’s nothing else worth looking at – with buildings in order to encourage people to enter the building.

Maggie’s Centres are places of refuge and healing for like the Shard. Although it is a look-at-me building, the Shard people diagnosed with cancer. Sufferers are obviously in was designed in such a way that “the more you look at it, the a state of high anxiety and if they go to a Maggie’s Centre, more complex it is, and the more there is to see and enjoy.”

There is certainly something to be said about architecture they’ve probably only recently been diagnosed with cancer.

They might have heard or been recommended to go to this that doesn’t slavishly adhere to its context. If all buildings venue where they can meet therapists and other sufferers. were to seamlessly integrate with one another, our cities The aim of creating a welcoming and transparent space is would end up looking bland and boring. However, great partly to offer these new arrivals a glimpse of the cosiness architecture often brings an element of weaving together, of that awaits them in the centre: people talking over a cup of bridging the gaps, both metaphorically and literally.

The RIBA Stirling Prize: 20 gorgeously illustrates the way tea, having a laugh, relaxing in each other’s presence.

However, a balance must be struck: people who use that architecture spans life. “We are all aware,” Chapman Maggie’s Centres “do not want to feel that they’re on show,” muses, “as we walk around a city that some buildings interest as Chapman puts it. It is important for people who use or us and some don’t. The more people find out about why a might use them to have the opportunity for quiet reflection building is good and why a building is bad the greater our and to enjoy one’s own space and privacy. “The solution appreciation and understanding of where we live.”

Encompassing the buildings in which we dwell and study; usually opted for,” Chapman notes, “is to carry out a lot of the rooms for work, enjoying music, spending our leisure planting to ensure that there’s shade from prying eyes.”

For Chapman, the best examples of architecture both make time; the places in which we receive terrible news or begin to a distinctive mark on the skyline they are added to and face it; the bridges to cross; the stations to travel through, the integrate themselves into the fabric of the surrounding area. Stirling Prize carefully selects works for their achievement in Considering the fact that the Stirling Prize is awarded to one bringing the importance of architecture into the spotlight. An outstanding building, it’s not surprising that the winner does invaluable insight into the judging process, The RIBA Stirling just that: stand out. He adds: “Of course, if art is going to draw Prize: 20 celebrates the structures that have made a lasting attention to itself, it has to be good. It never says ‘Look at me, impact on architecture and the way we perceive it.

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Right: 5 Aldermanbury Square, London.

Architect: Eric Parry Architects.

Photo: Timothy Soar.

Words Regina Papachlimitzou

The RIBA Stirling Prize: 20.

Merrell Publishers. www.merrellpublishers.com

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art

Concrete Abstraction Ben Thomas

Australian artist Ben Thomas (b. 1981) focuses on urban spaces. Having experimented in his earlier practice with techniques including tilt-shift and kaleidoscopes, the featured series Chroma I (2015) and Chroma II (2016) decode cities, highlighting colour and tonal flatness. Locations including Melbourne, New York, London and Florence are depicted within a surreal plane wherein everyday palettes are enhanced into ostensible brilliance.

Block colours and smoothed shadows transpose the recognisable environments of contemporary society into artifice, whilst luminous aquamarine skies and pastel yellow concrete introduce the shapes of buildings into plastic worlds. By intensifying colours and distorting the boundaries between reality and abstraction, Thomas poses questions about how society defines the places in which we live: how far do we have to digitalise our surroundings until they are noticeably unnatural? www.benthomas.net.au.

Ben Thomas, Crown, 2016.

New York.

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Ben Thomas, Youth, 2015. Florence.

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Ben Thomas, Ills, 2016. New York.

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Ben Thomas, Tones, 2016. New York.

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Ben Thomas, Yellow Cab Army, 2016. Melbourne.

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Ben Thomas, Tip, 2016. London.

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Ben Thomas, Paul’s Daughter, 2016. Coney Island.

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art

Archaic Dereliction Aurélien Villette

Aurélien Villette (b. 1982) is a Parisian photographer fuelled by a desire to travel.

Bringing to view more than 30 countries, the works are shaped by the artist’s perception of civilisation and the indications of cultural movement through architectural construction.

Extravagant and palatial buildings are captured within the context of specific lenses: the shots of dilapidated staircases and isolated, concrete networks remove them from their former prestige into a new state of aestheticised corrosion. The images find beauty in symmetry, be it in the repeated shapes of man-made superstructures or the timeless notion of degeneration and eventual renewal. Ornate bannisters and pastel-coloured walls are held within a moment, as if untouched by anyone or anything other than natural daylight. In this way Villette is at once invisible from the frames but also glaringly evident – present to immortalise a state of disrepair years on. www.adonis-photografic.com.

Aurélien Villette, Verticalité, Poland.

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AurĂŠlien Villette, VerticalitĂŠ, Hotel, Georgia.

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AurĂŠlien Villette, Structures et destructures hypostyle, Italia.

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AurĂŠlien Villette, Dogma, Soviet monument, Bulgaria.

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AurĂŠlien Villette, VerticalitĂŠ, Germany.

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AurĂŠlien Villette, Dogma, Maison du parti, Georgia.

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Cyclical Installation Tatsuo Miyajima INCLUDED IN THE 2016-2017 SYDNEY INTERNATIONAL ART SERIES, MCA AUSTRALIA LAUNCHES THE ARTIST’S FIRST MAJOR LIFE SURVEY WITHIN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.

In Buddhist philosophy the human life cycle is interpreted as a perpetual repetition of life and death, with death not an end point but a deep sleep between one life and the next – a short period of darkness. The length of these resting periods is unique to the individual – each of us possessing our own innate rhythm. As every life is different, so is every death.

One of Japan’s leading contemporary artists, Tatsuo Miyajima is fascinated by this infinite pattern, or in his words a “solemn drama performed for hundreds and thousands of years by each and every man,” which he represents through one of the most ordinary objects in contemporary life: the digital LED counter. He refers to these numerical displays as “counter gadgets” – the very same as are used in digital watches, microwave oven timers, train or bus station timetable displays, a multitude of everyday objects – and he has used them consistently in his work since the late 1980s.

However, where each individual digit on your watch will flash through 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, Miyajima’s stop short at 9 and return to 1, avoiding the finality of the number zero, which for Miyajima represents a final death. Over the past 30 years, his “counter gadgets” have been presented in grids, towers and complex circuits, even projected across the entire façade of the iconic 490-metre-high ICC building on Hong Kong’s Kowloon harbour-front, broadcasting Miyajima’s own three over-riding concepts across the whole of the cityscape: Keep Changing; Connect with Everything; Continue Forever.

Opening this year at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Miyajima’s first major retrospective takes the second of these major themes as its namesake, Connect with Everything,

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with the artist explaining: “Everything interacts with each other. Nothing is independent. Therefore, art should be positively engaged with anything, and represent this in its own ways. Art has long been isolated from the real world, and spoiled within its own framework of the art world.

“That was a survival guide for art. It created a tiny paradise, and protected itself from any danger by dissociating itself from the real world. However, such a closed environment would terminate art eventually, as intermarriage tends to have a less competitive result in the reproduction process.

Art should interact with any kind of things. Only then can it obtain the power that is needed to give people courage.”

Used in sculptural pieces, room-sized environments, drawings and paintings, performance, artist sketchbooks, LED sample models and documentary film, Miyajima’s electronic counter gadgets draw together a single conversation about the nature of time, renewal and questions of mortality. Still, he has not always communicated through this medium. MCA Chief Curator Rachel Kent has followed the artist since his survey exhibition, Big Time, at London’s Hayward Gallery in 1996 – an exhibition that she can “still visualise” – and notes that today Miyajima’s light-based pieces “perform in lieu of him” – the artist originally specialised in performance.

Graduating from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1986, his early work was particularly influenced by the practices of seminal European artists Joseph Beuys and Allan Kaprow, with Miyajima naming his own performance pieces “actions for society” inspired by the Happenings popularised throughout the 1960s. The “Happening”

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Tatsuo Miyajima, Counter Void, 2003. White neon, film glass, aluminium, electric wire, IC, time control program.

Collection of TV Asahi Corporation. Image courtesy of the artist, TV Asahi Corporation and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE. Photo: Kunihiko Katsumata.

“As the exhibition at the MCA portrays, Miyajima has come full circle and returned to performance, with his most recent works combining the symbolism of the counter with a new expression of his prevailing interest in human action.”

Previous Page: Tatsuo Miyajima, Diamond in You No. 1, 2010.

LED, IC, electric wire, stainless mirror, iron. The Collection of John and Amy Phelan. Image courtesy of the artist and Buchmann Galerie. Photo: HG Gaul.

Left: Tatsuo Miyajima, Pile Up Life No. 2, 2009.

Waterproof LED, fibre-reinforced plastics, electric wire, transformer Image courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery. Photo: Ken Adlard.

continues to persist in the contemporary scene as a planned multidisciplinary action which allows room for improvisation and audience reaction. The term was first coined in 1957

by Allan Kaprow, an American painter and performance art pioneer, as “a game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing.” The audience can be knowing or unknowing, with passers-by finding themselves drawn into the “game” as the Happening erases the presence of a divide between artwork and viewer.

Although Kaprow first announced the concept of the Happening to key players in the American avant-garde during an art picnic at George Segal’s farm in New Jersey, several years earlier Happenings were already in full swing on the other side of the world, in Miyajima’s native Japan.

With its three traditional theatrical genres – Kabuki, Noh and Banraku – Japan has a long history of dramatic, musical performance, which entered the political arena after the Second World War as Butoh or “dance of utter darkness”, devised to theatrically come to terms with Japan’s post-war devastation. This was then taken on by the Gutai – Japan’s first radical post-war artistic group – whose members performed acts such as painting with their bare feet, flailing in heaps of building clay and running through layers of paper. The Gutai’s first true Happening could be seen as their Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Midsummer Burning Sun of 1955, whereby a site-specific installation was set up in a rural pine grove in Osaka, with the reactions of visitors forming part of the work.

For the Gutai’s 1955 Happening, participation was voluntary and wilful; however, 25 years later Miyajima pushed performance art in Japan to another level, drawing

an unknowing audience into the avant-garde in a series of works which took the Happening to the streets, interrogating innocent bystanders. Between 1981 and 1983 Miyajima enacted a series titled NA.AR. (Voice), NA.AR (Human Stone) and NA.AR (Rain) across Japan. The first of these works saw the artist emit a scream as he walked through the crowded scramble of Tokyo’s famous Shibuya crossing; for the second, Miyajima squatted motionless in the midst of the flow of city pedestrians; and for (Rain) Miyajima would lie in the middle of a road during a downpour to leave a dry human trace.

These works demonstrated the beginning of a preoccupation with human relationships at a time before the artist’s discovery of the technological counter gadget. Now, as the exhibition at the MCA portrays, Miyajima has come full circle and returned to performance, with his most recent works combining the symbolism of the counter with a new expression of his prevailing interest in human action.

Exhibited at the MCA is a video recording of Miyajima’s most recent performance work Counter Voice in the Water at Fukushima (2014). Suited, with the shoreline Fukushima nuclear plant behind him and standing in front of a clear bowl filled with seawater, Miyajima aggressively counts down from 9 to 1. When he reaches 0, he inhales, holds his breath and plunges his face into the bowl. The artist repeats this time and time again until he is drenched in seawater taken directly from the site of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster; although Miyajima avoids mouthing the death number, zero, his repetitive ducking is an even more distressing sight.

As MCA curator, Kent explains “death and mourning are central to the work of Miyajima”, best expressed in this new exhibition with works that include “a series of floor-based

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Tatsuo Miyajima, Moon in the Ground No. 2, 2015. LED, IC, electric wire, stainless steel. Image courtesy of the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE.

sculptures studded with tiny LEDs to memorialise the natural disasters which have hit Asia over the last 20 years”, a 2008 work titled Counter Coal and Miyajima’s best-known work, Mega Death (1999). The former of these works was commissioned by the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen – a gallery set in one of Germany’s coalmining regions – and appears as a huge mound of black coal, interspersed with red diodes, which is encircled by another part of the commission – Time Train to the Holocaust (2008). Here a toy train hauls carts of tiny blue counter gadgets as it moves around the installation, which, according to Kent, serves to remind the viewer of Germany’s enormous “railway system, which was built for coal but also took a vast number of humans to their death.”

This work follows a very similar thought process as Mega Death, an enormous room-scale installation of twinkling blue LEDs, each representative of one human life and set to blink at intervals, momentarily immersing the audience in complete darkness. The work was first exhibited to represent Japan at the 1999 Venice Biennale, the title deriving from Miyajima’s consideration of the 21st century as “an era of artificial Mega Death” in which he explains that “167 million human lives [have been] lost in events caused by human acts such as war, revolution and conflict.” For the artist this is an act of theft, robbing time of its role as the decider of natural events, and stealing the unique life and death rhythm of each victim. Mega Death is the only one of Miyajima’s works that sets viewers in complete darkness, portraying the “terror of suspension” between life and passing over to the next stage when the fundamental patterns are disrupted.

Still, Miyajima’s LED works equally celebrate the precious potential of the human lifetime and the innate beauty of

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natural expectancy and death-time. Connect with Everything is an entirely immersive exhibition which has transformed an area of over 140,000 square feet of the MCA into a twinkling cosmos of blue, green, white and red diodes: projected onto the floor, spinning and flickering. Some galleries see children try to catch the numbers, whilst elsewhere, mirrors punctured with diodes reflect the viewer as if they have an entire solar system within their own body. Rippled like funfair mirrors or broken into shards and re-set to protrude outwards, as with Diamond In You (2013), the mirrors create symbolic associations of intricate origami or budding lotus blossoms.

Kent, who has worked with Miyajima since 2012 when the artist was included in the group exhibition devised to inaugurate Sydney’s new MCA building, Marking Time, notes that “white lotus flowers are a very important flower in Buddhism, associated with wisdom and the path to enlightenment.” One of the largest pieces in the current exhibition is 100 Time Lotus (2008): a 20-metre-long pool of water containing a hundred white underwater diodes, upon the surface of which float a hundred white lotus flowers. For the curator, this piece is positioned as a moment of meditative reflection, an “antidote or calming response to the melancholic memorial works” with the significant incorporation of the lotus – a pure white flower that grows in muddy water, rising and blooming above the murk.

Miyajima’s work is a fascinating coupling between technology and spirituality, making full use of the circuits that connect all of us and commenting on the natural cycles of time and human action, the minute counter gadget serving as a constant reminder that each of us is only one tiny glimmering light amongst a vast universe of others.

Right: Tatsuo Miyajima, Time Stalactite No.2, 2012.

LED, IC, stainless iron shaft, aluminum plate, electric wire. 214.8 x 10 x 10 cm.

Courtesy of the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE.

Words Chloe Hodge

Tatsuo Miyajima: Connect with Everything.

MCA Australia, 3 November - 5 March. www.mca.com.au

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art

Visceral Uniformity Natalia Evelyn Bencicova

Slovakian artist Natalia Evelyn Bencicova (b. 1992) works mostly in digital photography and is currently studying at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Having an interest in both individual and wider collective feelings, she conveys undercurrents of socialism in the featured series Asymptote. Within these fictional scenarios, anonymous figures create patterns of uniformity which allude to their own integration with architecture. Through stirring symmetry and cold, faded palettes, indistinguishable characters become part of the construction. Leaning across bannisters and draping themselves against walls, they create an emotional architecture in which arms and legs are at once mechanistic and melancholy. This unsettling world depicts jarring relationships between organic and concrete forms, and personal autonomy versus a community mentality; there is no conclusion in the hauntingly nostalgic imagery. www.evelynbencicova.com.

ASYMPTOTE. Photography: Evelyn Bencicova.

Video: Adam Csoka Keller.

Sound: Arielle Esther.

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ASYMPTOTE. Photography: Evelyn Bencicova.

Video: Adam Csoka Keller.

Sound: Arielle Esther.

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ASYMPTOTE. Photography: Evelyn Bencicova.

Video: Adam Csoka Keller.

Sound: Arielle Esther.

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ASYMPTOTE. Photography: Evelyn Bencicova. Video: Adam Csoka Keller. Sound: Arielle Esther.

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ASYMPTOTE. Photography: Evelyn Bencicova. Video: Adam Csoka Keller. Sound: Arielle Esther.

ASYMPTOTE. Photography: Evelyn Bencicova.

Video: Adam Csoka Keller.

Sound: Arielle Esther.

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ASYMPTOTE. Photography: Evelyn Bencicova.

Video: Adam Csoka Keller.

Sound: Arielle Esther.

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art

Towards Hyper-Reality Björk Digital SOMERSET HOUSE CONSTRUCTS A BRAND NEW WORLD FOR ARTISTIC PIONEER BJÖRK, WHOSE QUEST FOR AUDIENCE INTEGRATION VENTURES BEYOND CULTURAL PERIPHERIES.

It would be easy to pinpoint Icelandic icon Björk’s commer- definitions of what constituted art, design and interactivity.

Björk Digital takes its cue from these basic theoretical cial heyday in music as the mid-1990s and discuss her now as a digitalised visual artist, but that would be wrong as at the underpinnings, which critic Kate Linker summarised as a heart of her art is music. With nine full-length albums behind labyrinth of sensory explorations: “Space did not radiate her, and a debut at the age of 11, Björk’s practice is still irrev- from and return to the spectator who progressed through ocably defined by this particular medium. Even her award- it, but was divided into zones, their boundaries extended by winning lead role in Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (2002) sound.” The limitations of the current show are only those which the artist herself has set. Taking audience members on came about because he asked her to write the score.

A desire to connect with the audience, whether through a separate journey, the event encourages each individual to revealing lyrics or through a private recital of Stonemilker question their own cerebral stimulation in a way not provoked VR (a project using the latest in virtual reality that transports by any other musician. Using the 2015 album Vulnicura as each viewer to Iceland for a performance of the first track a springboard, it constructs a virtual blanket, wrapping its from Vulnicura), is consistently pursued through culturally viewers in a panoramic and performative experience.

The artist’s recent retrospective at MoMA, New York (2015), up-to-date approaches. This is an artist for whom innovation is the status quo rather than the exception. Björk Digital, at centred on her general career, as one would expect, whereas Somerset House, London, sheds light on her electro-video Somerset House showcases purely the new visual pieces. works that span a 24-year career, and the progressions made Despite some rather scathing reviews, it was only the lack to enter new, inconceivable theatrical dimensions. Touring on of logical curation that was ripped apart. As Guardian critic from previous destinations Tokyo and Sydney, the exhibition Jason Farago puts it: “Maybe some time in the future we will makes the English capital its base for the European premiere get an exhibition that tells the story of how a softly-spoken of the show: a one-off performance at the Royal Albert Hall. woman from one of the world’s smallest countries nurtured Les Immatériaux (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1985) an entire generation of designers, filmmakers and musicians, anticipated spectacles such as this: the immersive event and in the process made the boundary between fine art and encouraged visitors to choose their own path, navigating pop culture meaningless.” Meanwhile, this is a story which technological and cultural artefacts through the compulsory London provides one chapter for, showcasing experiments headphones and audio guide. Incorporating France’s with video, innovative apps, custom-made instruments and, Minitel system (a rudimentary precursor to the internet) above all, VR, premiered in four separate works: Stonemilker and prototype equipment that was provided by electronics (filmed in 360 degrees); Mouth Mantra (filmed internally in company Philips, the show served to undermine the rigid 360 with a specially made camera); Notget (made in VR with

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Björk performs at Carnegie Hall, New York, 14 March 2015. Photo: Santiago Felipe.

“Once again, her practice is one of diversity and multiple contemplations: she is not just destroying boundaries in the fields of art, music and technology, but equally and as importantly, the expectations of a male-dominated society.”

Previous Page: Björk, Vulnicura album art.

Left: Björk DJ’s during Björk Digital at Carriageworks, Sydney, Australia, 4 June 2016. Photo: Santiago Felipe.

a combination of data scanning, game engines and motion mainland America. Aesthetically, it appears as a shifting delicate tracing of locks of hair moving across the land mass. capture) and Quicksand (an augmented live VR recording).

Vulnicura is a personal insight into the break-up of Björk’s Scientifically speaking, the film is a real-time digital illustramarriage to the American artist Matthew Barney. Seen as a tion of our atmosphere. Both this and Mutual Core show the “heartbreak saga,” and taking its title from the Latin for “cure dramatic shift towards ecology and physical awareness, and for wounds,” the album is restlessly experimental. Björk’s technology as a tool to be utilised as an expressive medium manager argues that this is the ethos of her practice: “pop as well as a site of discourse about environmental concerns.

Björk’s mastery of art and music sets her apart from her art music at its bravest: when it embraces our day-to-day life and uses the same tools. It would be tempting to escape into contemporaries. It is attention to technicalities as well as a a cave and use old tools only, but to her, that doesn’t seem willingness to try new experimental methods which create like an option.” The record was not just groundbreaking for these groundbreaking visceral works. Her repertoire covers its autobiographical content but also for the collaboration many different genres including classical, electronica and with Andrew Huang, using total visual and audio immersion punk, and is rooted in the work of 20th century German to create an all-encompassing and imaginative environment. composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who broke down the An earlier request, Huang’s collaboration on the visuals perceivable limits of what was musically possible. for Mutual Core (2011), led to its premiere at the Museum Although the Icelandic songstress’s work is tinged by these of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The video, shot in early musical experiments, she transcends what Stockhausen Los Angeles and Iceland, examines the earth’s geology, only dreamt was possible: in effect, she is a modern-day earthquakes and the forces generated by opposing tectonic replica, using digital means in order to create visionary aural plates, translating these forces into a metaphor for those in and electrifying tracks that require the audience’s active human relationships: “Opposing forces of compression and engagement. The artist’s manager construes this journey as release, central to continent building and to human feelings, “being placed by her side as she performs and transforms are expressed sonically in the (Biophilia) app. The shifting of (in Notget), or being eleported to a windswept beach in chords in the verses and the visual patterns of the animation Iceland (in Stonemilker), or even inside her mouth ... the total were evoked by the working title for this track, organ plaid, a absorption of the self through sound and space is key.” term which describes an interwoven musical fabric.”

The culmination of all these technological, sound-making The use of new data technologies is consistently becoming and ecological concerns is represented in Biophilia, the the norm for artists such as duo Fernanda Viégas (a com- app and album created by Björk in 2011, in which her putational designer) and Martin Wattenberg (a mathemati- management postulates she uses arpeggios to express bolts cian and journalist), whose Wind Map (2012) uses interactive of lightning, and chord structures to examine tectonic plates software and illustrates the course of winds moving across whilst counterpoint represents pendulums and gravity. As

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Björk performs Quicksand during the world’s first ever 360 degree, virtual reality live stream at the Miraikan, Tokyo, Japan, 28 June 2016.

Photo: Santiago Felipe.

part of a larger educational project with the Nordic countries, song-writing and branch out into not one, but many different the software uses ten in-app experiences to explore the and inter-related forms. Since the albums from Björk’s 24relationships between compositions and natural phenomena, year career are inherently experimental, they ideally lend or, as developer Scott Snibbe says: “to just enjoy her music.” themselves to this kind of exploration of how the physical The spectacle at Somerset House mirrors the immersive manifestation of a final form might develop.

It is easy to lump the work of the Reykjavik-born icon into a qualities of the hand-held experience, and comprises not just the singular VR processes but also the design and “collaborative” attribution, but to do so undermines the core organisation of the exhibition. The installation of Black Lake of her entire oeuvre. As a woman, she has seen this practice (the 2015 collaboration with Andrew Huang), for example, of group-accreditation before, and continues to see and hear features a bespoke, cutting-edge, stereo set-up which it in relation to her own work. For a female practitioner who provides a full experience of a sound phenomenon. Two grew up in a home where patriarchy was a non-issue, it can large parallel screens are installed to mimic the canyon be a difficult matter to come to terms with. As she said in setting of the video, creating a claustrophobic space that an interview with Julia Davis in 2016: “We were in this world transports the viewer directly into the physicality of the work. where women ruled. And then as I got older I hit these walls, Whilst original in its execution, Björk Digital is but one of as a woman, or a girl, and I didn’t understand why, because a growing number of events taking as its focus the use of I was just spoilt rotten as a kid; the boundaries weren’t new technologies in art and music. For example, the 2014 there, you know? It is something I saw in foreign countries.”

London Barbican exhibition Digital Revolution paid homage Once again, her practice is one of diversity and multiple to the games, gadgets and technologies that have shaped the contemplations: she is not just destroying boundaries in last century as well as the current experiments and designs the fields of art, music and technology, but equally and as shaping our future. Whether through the use of lasers to importantly, the expectations of a male-dominated society.

It is a legacy and a phenomenon that continues to evolve cut and shape intricate 3D forms, as with Eric Standley’s work, or the use of a wall-climbing robot, the Vertwalker within this one-off spectacle at London’s neoclassical (the creation of Julian Adenauer and Michael Haas), which cultural centre, merging design, contemporary media, virtual constantly overwrites its own work, we are seeing a new post- reality and digital advancements within the arts in the hope of deconstructing the limits we set upon ourselves. modern form that has yet to be defined or categorised.

Eric Standley explained that with “every efficiency that I The extensive video mastery within this fundamental Autumn show, includes collaborations with other leaders in gain through technology, the void is immediately filled with the film and digital fields, taking into account Spike Jonze, the question, ‘Can I make it more complex?’” It is a question Michel Gondry, Nick Knight and Stéphane Sednaoui. Central that plagues not just Standley but, as we see throughout this to these partnerships is the passion to build upon Björk’s massively ground-breaking London exhibition, Björk.

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Right: Björk performs at Governors Ball, New York, 6 June 2015.

Photo: Santiago Felipe.

Words Niamh Coghlan

Björk Digital.

Somerset House, London.

Until 23 October. www.somersethouse.org.uk

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art

Modern Frameworks Sebastian Weiss

German-born Sebastian Weiss (b. 1971) lives and works in Hamburg, where, in 2013, he became a photo columnist for Architectural Digest Germany. Having studied constructional engineering at the Technical University of Dresden, and technology and design at the University of the Arts in Berlin, he has shaped a unique photographic practice over the last seven years. With a passion for concrete aesthetics and the beauty found in urban landscapes, the artist focuses on specific details in an attempt to free buildings from their spatial contexts. Each photograph is an interaction of forms, materials and structures that result in clean, flowing lines and monumental perspectives. Weiss’s brilliant blue skylines are cut up by solid grey geometry: a relationship between function and balance. Each city has its own architectural language, and the images seek to capture their syntax and stylistic edge. www.le-blanc.com.

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Sebastian Weiss, Mediterranean ZigZag, 2016.

Toulouse, France.

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Sebastian Weiss, High Noon, 2016.

Lisbon, Portugal.

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Sebastian Weiss, Waves, 2016.

La Teste-de-Buch, France.

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Sebastian Weiss, Desired Constellation, 2016.

Lisbon, Portugal.

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Sebastian Weiss, Chiesa, 2016.

Florence, Italy.

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Sebastian Weiss, Fast Forward, 2016.

Montpellier, France.

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Sebastian Weiss, The Dune, 2016.

La Teste-de-Buch, France.

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Sebastian Weiss, Daylight, 2016.

Schillig, Germany.

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Sebastian Weiss, On the Bright Side, 2016.

Milano, Italy.

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Sebastian Weiss, Spot On, 2016.

Aix en Provence, France.

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Sebastian Weiss, Flow, 2016.

Toulouse, France.

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art

Pseudo Americana Tom Blachford

Tom Blachford’s (b. 1987) photography renders functional, man-made structures into strange dreams that fluctuate between reality and fantasy. Based in Melbourne, he practises both fine art and commercial disciplines, sharing his passion for built environments. Featured in the following pages are images from his Midnight Modern (2016) series, depicting classic mid-century buildings cast under a glamorised nightfall.

Deserted houses, pools and roads are set against dusky mountains, whilst palm trees protrude from immaculate gravel lawns and spotless driveways. Lighting plays a key element in the compositions, often resembling the artificial shadows of miniature constructions, whilst distant glows offer an uncanny atmosphere to locations devoid of people. Streets are at once animate – basking in moonlight – yet at the same time lacking tell-tale signs of life that would prove the scenes real. www.midnightmodern.com.

Tom Blachford, Los Robles Pool, 2016.

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Tom Blachford, N Rose, 2016.

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Tom Blachford, S Via Las Palmas, 2013.

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Tom Blachford, Frank’s House, 2015.

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Tom Blachford, Ladera Circle, 2013.

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Tom Blachford, Yosemite, 2014.

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art

Dynamic Composition Thomas Struth HIGH MUSEUM EXPLORES THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S INVESTIGATIVE LEGACY THROUGH NEW WORKS THAT SEE COMPARISONS IN NETWORKS OF CABLES AND PATTERNS OF LIFE.

Traditionally “nature” is suggestive of wildness, and is often cityscapes, architecture, portraits and technology systems.

Given this background, it’s perhaps no surprise that erroneously contrasted with the notion of social structures and organisation. However, increasingly it is becoming the artist should be drawn to the constructed landscape apparent that the organic world reflects and is impacted by – a border zone between human activity and the natural our own governing systems. Nature & Politics, an exhibition world – which both mimics and diverts from untouched of new work by Thomas Struth at the High Museum of Art, environments. For example, in a series capturing aspects of Atlanta, searches for the intersection between these concepts. Disneyland, he appears to explore what philosopher of the Detailed and complex photographs focus on subject hyperreal Jean Baudrillard described as “a perfect model matter from nuclear research to theme park construction. It is of all the entangled orders of simulation.” The suggestion through these images that the artist demonstrates change: as here is that, in this international theme park, we lose all we increase our awareness of climate change and the impact touch of an ordered and stable external reality: it becomes of human military, industrial and commercial activity, our indivisible from simulation’s technical effects. The fantasy of Disneyland is depicted as manufactured – a plastic reality geopolitics become ever more ecologically driven.

As one of the leading artists of the Kunstakademie is shown empty, vacated by the crowds that usually pulse Düsseldorf – a group which helped elevate photography, through it. These still works eerily dissect the ways that the and which also includes Petra Wunderlich, Andreas Gursky, architecture of the park as a whole plays on human dreams, Thomas Ruff and Candida Höfer – he studied painting fears and impulses through its attractions and shops.

As Assistant Curator of the photography department, under Gerhard Richter and, after 1976, photography under the hugely influential duo of Bernd and Hilla Becher at Gregory Harris notes, Struth captures bizarre juxtapositions, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The Bechers are known such as placing the Swiss Matterhorn next to yellow for instilling their students with conceptual rigour, stylistic submarines. According to Harris, the artist is “fascinated innovation and a sense of the abstract patterns and shapes by the way that Walt Disney came up with this place from that underlie both human and built structures. They were also stories his father had told him about the 1893 Columbian strongly interested in fabricated places and the detached exposition in Chicago and also from his own trips around style known as sachlichkeit (objectivity) that appears in Europe, and how he managed to mash-up all these ideas to Industrial Façades #23 (1980). These concerns were a great make something that is physically real but at the same time influence on Struth’s early works, which featured the urban totally created out of a person’s imagination. He’s interested spaces of Japan. He has become one of the major innovators in how you can take something from the mind and manifest of his medium, using large-scale colour pieces to explore it in the physical world.” Alongside plastic snake sculptures,

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Thomas Struth, Chemistry Fume Cabinet, The University of Edinburgh, 2010. Chromogenic print, 47.4 x 65.3 inches. © Thomas Struth.

“There is a sense of awe in the pictures about how humans have been able to harness the power of the world productively.

At the same time, this is tempered with a degree of trepidation about the potential for destruction.”

Previous Page: Thomas Struth, Vehicle Assembly Building, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, 2008.

Chromogenic print, 224.3 x 178.5 cm. © Thomas Struth.

Left: Thomas Struth, Tokamak Asdex Upgrade Periphery, Max Planck IPP, Garching, 2009.

Chromogenic print, 43 x 33.8 inches. © Thomas Struth.

fairytale mountains and castles, the images often also depict mechanical knowledge to unpack them. Alike to the Disney man-made structures such as fences and walls that keep series, the complexity of the saturated technological struchumans out of this constructed space, and instead on the tures is awe-inspiring and can be intimidating. Tokamek carefully mapped out paths. Given Donald Trump’s recent Asdex Upgrade Interior 1 (2009), as an example of this, shows comments about plans to build a wall between the USA and a curving space-age style shape packed with glistening conMexico, these fantastical images are particularly resonant soles and metallic cubes, shapes and materials suggestive of where a faux and stereotypical “Wild West” landscape – any sci-fi film set. However, far from an imagined universe, complete with plastic cacti and large dusty rocks – is seen this image is of a powerful Russian thermonuclear device designed to contain and shape plasma. over the top of a fence, designed to keep the visitors out.

When the viewer learns that many of the exhibited pieces In Space Shuttle 1, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral (2008), Struth further explores images that fuel our imagina- depict experiments with nuclear fusion, the images take on a tion, giving us a back-stage view of the space industry in the more sinister or frightening quality. As Harris suggests: “there form of the underbelly of the famous spacecraft. The pristine is a sense of awe in the pictures about how humans have surface of the orbiter contrasts with the relative chaos of as- been able to harness the power of the world productively. At sorted tools and debris used in the process of its manufac- the same time, this is tempered with a degree of trepidation ture: yellow step ladders, white computer consoles and silver about the potential for destruction.” One of the fascinating winches and frames. Struth punctures the iconic image of a things is that these images carry the same objective, clear-cut shuttle launching and instead foregrounds the human and style as Cinema, Anaheim (2013), in which the auditorium’s technological endeavour that makes exploration possible. dim blue interior light and the curved ceiling designed for Given the cessation of the programme, it is uncertain whether surround sound also appear to be uncanny and hyperreal.

Another new series focuses on the conflict in Israel and this aeronautic experiment is being built or dismantled.

This interest in what humans can conceive and create is Palestine, responding to a project initiated by Frédéric also evident in photographs of mechanical sites such as re- Brenner which saw 12 artists commissioned to question search labs and robotics labs. The focus within these works is the physical and governmentally shaped landscape. These on what Harris calls “the aesthetics of innovation”: metallic works “pack in a lot of information but don’t necessarily sheens and complex arrangements of wires and tubes. These tell you what you are looking at.” For example, in Off Allabyrinthine pieces are often very difficult to make sense of: Shuhada Street 1 (2009), a street which looks abandoned the audience is confronted with the visual and textural vo- and nondescript is barricaded with barbed wire, that in cabulary of scientific endeavour without always providing are turn painted with colourful rainbow graffiti; there’s a the context. Questions arise here about how the photographs hopscotch pattern on the pavement. At the base of the wall is can stand alone as pieces to be enjoyed simply without the an assortment of painted rocks and it looks as if a fruit bowl

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Thomas Struth, Hot Rolling Mill, Thyssenkrupp Steel, Duisberg, 2010. Chromogenic print, 71.3 x 83.5 inches. © Thomas Struth.

has been upturned and its contents strewn across the street.

This used to be a major marketplace in the Palestinian city of Hebron. Located close to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, it was an important thoroughfare and produce market selling primarily fruit and vegetables. Since the mid-1990s, the market has been closed off to Palestinians by Israeli forces: all are shops closed and people are forced to enter their own homes through the back doors. Struth’s subtle and highly specific image is positioned right at the physical intersection of the problematic coexistence of Israel and Palestine.

Stylistically, the new works uphold an interest in colossal, large-scale work. Encompassing almost all of the audience’s field of vision, they become almost confrontational whilst inviting the viewer to pay close attention to the details of structures. Photography in its broadest sense becomes here a sculptural medium that demands to be explored and negotiated as physical objects with many shapes and narratives are to be found within. Semi Submersible Rig (2007) charts the monstrous form of an oil rig that is shown in comparison with a small figure who is working on something in the foreground. Confronted with the sheer and undeniable scale of this human construction, the image also provokes questions about the implications of such massive projects.

The glaringly red structure of the rig almost completely obliterates the untouched and verdant rolling hills that lie beyond, which can be seen only in snatches.

For this exhibition, the curators have also included three images from the local geographic area, two from the Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech University and one from the Georgia Aquarium. The pieces from the former provide access to a highly advanced location in which important

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scientific research is being carried out. A mathematical formula is scribbled on a board, rendered meaningless to a non-specialist in the field. However, they also show spaces that are strewn with the detritus and debris of our everyday lives – backpacks, toys, instruments and computers. It isn’t immediately clear which of the objects are used in the experiments and which are just the everyday objects belonging to the specialists. At the centre of the lab is a robot, reaffirming the photographer’s interest in artificial design but also suggesting the very human basis of these experiments.

Similarly, for the aquarium, a group of what look like school children and accompanying adults are seen marvelling against a spectacular backdrop of tropical fish. Again the notion of the hyper-real is included – the children are being presented with a simulation of life below the ocean – Struth interrogates the space where man-made concepts meet in-built human behavioural tendencies. A double frame is evoked here: the viewer observes the children watching the fish. As Harris remarks: “In recent years, the artist has been interested in human creativity and ingenuity and how those abstract ideas manifest themselves in the physical world.”

Recent theorists of posthumanism such as Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti have written of our changing idea of our species in celebrated works such as A Cyborg Manifesto, encouraging readers to challenge the boundaries between human, animal and machine. As an exhibition, Nature & Politics is not so dissimilar: containing monumental explorations into the territory where built spaces, organic matter and robotics intertwine, it suggests that the distinctions between the two pillars of the exhibition’s title collapse, and instead embarks upon a search for where they cross paths.

Right: Thomas Struth, Tokamak Asdex Upgrade Interior 1, Max Planck IPP, Garching, 2010.

Chromogenic print, 275.8 x 225 cm. © Thomas Struth.

Words Colin Herd

Thomas Struth: Nature & Politics.

16 October - 8 January. www.high.org

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art

Spatial Dimensions Mária Švarbová

Slovakia-born Mária Švarbová (b. 1988) completed her studies in conservation, restoration and archaeology before dedicating herself to photography in 2010. Since then her photographs have focused on minimalism and purity, conveying emotional messages embedded within compositions. Images from The Tribune, SWIMM, No Diving and SWIMMING POOL feature places of recreation and leisure with unsettling emptiness and static sentiments.

Still water and transfixed bodies are colour-coordinated, as if manufactured. Vintage costumes mirror red warning signs plastered onto the glossy tiled walls, which, combined with figures held mid-motion, create disconcerting images filled with an eerie despondence.

This seeming state of limbo is further exaggerated by pool-goers’ reflections in the water; their well-practised poses are devoid of sensation or human response. This chilling group of works turns familiar places of enjoyment into tonal desolation. www.mariasvarbova.com.

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Maria Svarbova, Smykacka, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, Twins, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, Zakaz Skakat, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, Sleep, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, Pool Only Swimmers, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, Beautiful Pool, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, 1,2,3, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, Bird, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, Wheel, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, Blue Love, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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Maria Svarbova, Mirror, 2016.

Photo, Art Direction: Maria Svarbova.

Styling, Costume: Martina Siranova.

Models: Veronika, Dominika, Michaela (M management), Sabina, Miska (Mix model management), Adam.

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art

Cinematic Retrospection Joshua Jordan

Joshua Jordan (b. 1960) is an American fashion photographer who executes cinematic shoots with structural consideration. Organising compositions not only with entrancing figures, he creates scenic backdrops that contain the detailed forms of shadowed railings, intricate metal doorways and marina rigging. The iconography of journeys, these lingering articles are built into the images with spatial depth and formulated lines. Featured in the following pages are photographs from a number of Jordan’s series, inspired by icons such as Jackie Onassis and Marilyn Monroe, whilst referencing dream-like flashbacks to retro culture, film-noir and Hollywood-esque characters. Manhattan, Central Park and the Hamptons provide lavish and notable locations, whilst contemporary styling is contrasted by magnetic nostalgia. Natural, earthy tones are projected with subtle glamour, and contemporary models are transposed with vintage imagination. www.studiojordan.com.

Miami Shoot originally for Be Magazine.

Photographer: Joshua Jordan.

Model: Carly Engleton @ Wilhelmina.

Hair: Rob Talty.

Makeup: Sara Glick.

Styling: Omaima Salem.

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Miami Shoot originally for Be Magazine.

Photographer: Joshua Jordan.

Model: Carly Engleton @ Wilhelmina.

Hair: Rob Talty.

Makeup: Sara Glick.

Styling: Omaima Salem.

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Miami Shoot originally for Be Magazine.

Photographer: Joshua Jordan.

Model: Carly Engleton @ Wilhelmina.

Hair: Rob Talty.

Makeup: Sara Glick.

Styling: Omaima Salem.

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Miami Shoot originally for Be Magazine. Photographer: Joshua Jordan. Model: Carly Engleton @ Wilhelmina. Hair: Rob Talty. Makeup: Sara Glick. Styling: Omaima Salem.

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Miami Shoot originally for Be Magazine. Photographer: Joshua Jordan. Model: Carly Engleton @ Wilhelmina. Hair: Rob Talty. Makeup: Sara Glick. Styling: Omaima Salem.

Miami Shoot originally for Be Magazine.

Photographer: Joshua Jordan.

Model: Carly Engleton @ Wilhelmina.

Hair: Rob Talty.

Makeup: Sara Glick.

Styling: Omaima Salem.

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1. Dorothy Cross, Doorway, 2014. Courtesy of Kerlin Gallery Dublin. 2. © Edward Burtynsky, Railcuts #13, C.N. Track, Thompson River, British Columbia, 1985. Courtesy of Flowers, London and Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto. 3. Glenn Murcutt AO and Elevli Plus, Australian Islamic Centre, 2016. Roof detail. Photo: Tobias Titz.

exhibition reviews

KALEIDOSCOPE: It’s Me to the World

Edward Burtynsky: Salt Pans and Essential Elements

Glenn Murcutt: Architecture of Faith

MODERN ART OXFORD 20 AUGUST - 17 OCTOBER

FLOWERS GALLERY, LONDON 16 SEPTEMBER - 29 OCTOBER

NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA 9 AUGUST - 19 FEBRUARY

It’s Me to the World is the fourth exhibition in Modern Art Oxford’s 50th anniversary celebration KALEIDOSCOPE, which sees the return of numerous works to the gallery. In this latest instalment, selected pieces from Richard Long, Agnes Martin and Marina Abramović explore the theme of the body and its relationship with the landscape.

Long’s Walking a Labyrinth transcribes one of this artist’s signature walks into a gallery setting, a process which lays bare the limitations of a gallery, as opposed to the great outdoors, whilst simultaneously altering visitors’ awareness of their surroundings. This installation is looked upon by Mohammed Qazim Ashfaq’s new work, SHIFT: an abstract drawing, that is directly created on the gallery wall. Its links to the landscape are only clear in its material: dense charcoal which takes on a sheen, and glints under the gallery’s skylights.

This exhibition could easily have felt piecemeal, but each work shows a unique exploration of the role of the human body in engaging with nature.

Otobong Nkanga’s Tsumeb Fragments consists of mineral remains alongside photography of Namibian mines and the artist’s proposal to reclaim these derelict areas. While this proposes a hopeful alternative to human-wrought destruction, Abramović’s Cleaning the Mirror illustrates the manner in which nature causes its own destruction.

It’s this thoughtful curation, combined with the fact that many of the works are intimately linked to Modern Art Oxford’s illustrious history, that makes It’s Me to the World an opportunity for reflection on the place of the public gallery now, and what it might become in the next 50 years.

Edward Burtynsky’s aerial photographs are After almost a decade of planning, the Australian awe-inspiringly beautiful. Capturing the scars Islamic Centre in Newport, Victoria opens towards of humanity on landscapes across the globe, the end of 2016. The building was designed ravaged plains are reduced to abstractions with by one of Australia’s most respected architects, painterly qualities. The appearance of textured Glenn Murcutt AO, in collaboration with Hakan etchings and flat, overlaid colours are revealed on Elevli of Melbourne practice Elevli Plus. The two close inspection to be make-shift roads and vast worked closely together with the Newport Islamic shimmering surfaces of the earth’s minerals.

Council with the idea of creating a contemporary Burtynsky’s latest body of work Salt Pans shows Australian mosque and Islamic centre. the salt harvesting that has sustained the Little The project has been funded and built by the Rann of Kutch in India and its indelible effects on local community as a result of consultations the landscape. Receding groundwater levels and between local leaders and Islamic architects. It declining market value have combined to make challenges perceptions of the architecture whilst this a dying way of life but, as with all of the artist’s still respecting its traditional principles. subjects, the effects on the natural world are proIn celebration of this eagerly anticipated found. To view works such as Salt Pan #20 involves building, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) a treasure hunt for a familiar reference. There are presents the exhibition, Glenn Murcutt: Architecture few discernible human traces in the images and of Faith. Curated by Ewan McEoin, the exhibition yet their subject is the work of decades of human provides insight into the endeavours of the people intervention. The series celebrates the exquisite behind the project and the design. Murcutt’s colours of nature, the steely greys, mottled incisive vision is offered to viewers through a marbling and tawny rusts of the land, which only comprehensive selection of imagery; 200 of his become visible from a great height. original sketches will be showcased alongside Salt Pans is accompanied by Essential Elements, a architectural drawings, plans, photography, scale greatest hits collection of past projects. Featuring models, building elements and footage. Viewers more of the huge landscape photographs of USA, can follow the building’s development from the China, Australia and Bangladesh, the exhibition, very first drawings to the most recent photographs. exploiting the international nature of Burtynsky’s NGV director, Tony Ellwood says: “This exhibition practice, illustrates that destruction of the natural explores the project to reveal the contribution world is endemic. Despite a vision of impending that architecture can make to a community and catastrophe and wishing to contribute to the its ability to foster intercultural understanding.” environmental agenda, the artist celebrates the Glenn Murcutt: Architecture of Faith grants viewers earth’s natural beauty. In so doing, he creates the access to the visionary thought processes that saw ultimate juxtaposition of form and content. this inventive design finally come to fruition.

Ruby Beesley

Ruby Beesley

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Sara Sweet

4. Elizabeth Price Curates at the Whitworth. Installation image. Photo: Michael Pollard. Courtesy of Whitworth.

5. Hotel Petra #6, Beirut, 2010. Epson archival inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery.

6. DanielFrota, Always and again this pathetic if (Scheerbart), 2015. Photo: Giorgio Perottino.

Elizabeth Price Curates THE WHITWORTH, MANCHESTER 10 JUNE - 30 OCTOBER

Robert Polidori: Ecophilia / Chronostasis PAUL KASMIN GALLERY, NEW YORK 8 SEPTEMBER - 15 OCTOBER

Daniel Frota: Irrealis mood FONDAZIONE SANDRETTO RE REBAUDENGO, TURIN 30 JUNE - 16 OCTOBER

The full title of this Hayward Touring exhibition is IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY. It refers to a work

by Jenny Holzer and cleverly reflects both the structure and preoccupations of the show as a whole: Turner Prize-winning artist Elizabeth Price has defined four sections in the Whitworth’s central galleries, choosing over 70 diverse pieces including photography, sculpture, installation and video that focus on sleeping, working, mourning and dancing. These verb-based categories are in dialogue throughout; in Henry Onslow Ford’s Snowdrift (1901) a woman lies ambiguously asleep, her body carved from the same marble as the snow as though she has dreamed her way into death – translating sculpture into memorial.

Price describes the curation as relying “upon the slippery, fugitive logic of dreams”; in the same way that fluid connections and tangential ideas are contained within sleep, the viewer’s associations with the works on show shift and evolve, refusing to adopt a straightforward narrative. Where the hidden body that shapes the sleeping bag in Gavin Turk’s Nomad (2002) initially appears to be sheltering, in a further room, the black of the bag echoes the mourning cloth – giving the solid bronze of the work more sinister implications.

This seemingly horizontal line of associations runs throughout the exhibition. In the final section, Dancing, it becomes animated in a series of works including the Lumière Brothers’ The Serpentine Dance (1899). This movement of a thematic thread into the piece ultimately mirrors the overall liveliness of the ideas which are at play here.

The dirt hills of India are under construction, Brazilian artist Daniel Frota’s (b. 1988) new show and like the corrugated metal sheets layered to fills The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo create local slum walls, Robert Polidori’s images Foundation with sculptures and videos which inare collaged into veritable murals. Though his terrogate the gap between history and stories. method is not explicitly detailed, the resulting In his first solo exhibition in Italy, the artist works are reminiscent of Andreas Gursky’s in their layers politically-charged materials on top of visual density and reduction of people to texture. one another, for example tempered glass on Featured work Amrut Nagar is a 180-degree brutalist concrete bases. Presented within a place view of that dirt hillside composed of four prints. of free thought and aesthetic consideration, the The eye relies on visual anchors like trees to meanings associated with the artworks are turned understand where one frame merges with the next. upside down and important questions considered; In the leftmost print, whilst the hillside collage is for example, what happens when our mental nearly seamless, the sky (arguably the simplest constructions fade? Through these compositions, element to edit) is left visibly jagged. The sky Frota focuses less on what’s “real” and more on indexes the creation of the image again in the the idea of alteration and fabrication – breaking largest panorama, 60 Feet Road; as the camera the stability of the world as we perceive it. progresses along the landscape, the sky darkens.

Following the compilation of two years of reAs is clear from the white backgrounds and search, the show demonstrates Frota’s interest in jagged edges of these images of India, Polidori “ucronia”: a crisis of modern thought deriving from is interested in surfaces and their representations. the genre of science fiction in which it is possible In this sense, the artist’s comparison of these to reinterpret an event that has happened. His photographs to cartography is quite accurate – multi-media works act upon this, reconstituting both are constructed by an outsider for his own events as conceptually fluid sculptures or film purposes and must be reduced to communicate. installations. In the same way, the chosen title, IrHotel Petra more explicitly flattens history in realis mood, references a linguistic term: a group a series capturing the eponymous structure in of verbs that allow the speaker to form sentences Beirut, damaged during the civil war. One image about things that might have happened. in particular holds the viewer’s gaze: the peeling In the wake of his interest in ucronia and this paint of the hotel wall reads as the peeling specific syntactic structure, the artist focuses on surface of the print. For the artist, these layers of events from the 20th century history of science, paint represent “subsequent labours of various architecture, literature and art, and dismisses painters” – and though his own layer is only a them as fact. Using this hypothetical language trompe l’oeil painting, Polidori certainly reframes as a thread, Frota interweaves cultures and offers the sociopolitical stakes around image making. them within a new context: as re-written narratives.

Polly Checkland Harding

Mira Dayal

Ginevra Bria

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Film still from Personal Shopper.

film

Crossing Between Dualities PERSONAL SHOPPER

“It’s evident that there are two films here – a terrifying thriller and a glamorous drama drenched in longing.

Flitting between the two, the feature just about binds them together.”

Words Beth Webb

Personal Shopper.

Icon Film Distribution. www.iconmovies.co.uk

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A film that seemingly can’t be contained, Olivier Assayas’s call of the clothes, she becomes immersed in their beauty.

Personal Shopper flirts with the fundamentals of horror A Chanel muse and the face of many a high-end campaign without fully committing, subjecting its protagonist, an off-screen, Stewart’s effortless transition into the outfits she exemplary Kristen Stewart, to loss, victimisation and the greedily selects for her employer is an intoxicating thing to allure of materialism. In its moments of horror, the feature behold, drawing the story into another realm entirely.

To disclose any further plot details would be an injustice has loss at its core. Reminiscent of The Babadook (2014) or the heart-wrenching grief that drives Don’t Look Now (1973), to the film. It’s most satisfying going in with little context the central character, reserved artist Maureen, is dealing with other than the knowledge that it was booed widely at Cannes the death of her twin brother, Lewis. A dedicated medium who – a right of passage reserved for the Pulp Fictions and shared the same heart condition that could potentially kill Irréversibles of years past, and a rocky path that nevertheless Maureen, Lewis’s beliefs remain with his sister, who insists that led to Assayas receiving Best Director at the festival.

Simultaneously, this is a huge accomplishment for Stewart his spirit has stayed behind after his abrupt departure.

The tentative moments when Maureen attempts communi- – notably eloquent in Clouds of Sils Maria, her inconsistencies cation with her brother are when the film is at both its most and signature stutter spill into her character’s frustrations. terrifying and heartbreaking. Stewart’s introverted, stern de- Purposefully shunning her boyfriend, who pleads with her meanour wavers as she calls out her brother’s name into an via Skype to join him in his travels, Maureen’s stubborn empty room, Assayas lulling us, his viewers, into moments of clench on her past leads her into murkier territory. It’s evident that there are two films here – a terrifying thriller and promise before snatching them brutally away.

Fashion forms a major component of the main character. a glamorous drama drenched in longing. Flitting between She grabs, strokes and admires garments, knowing all too the two, the feature just about binds them together.

That said, the unexpected twists and turns are what sets the well that she will never fully enjoy them as they are destined for the possession of a ruthless socialite who pays her to stay movie apart. To succumb to one of the two halves of the film in Paris – close to the scene of the trauma. Maureen appears seems like an easy way out, enforced by the star quality of to be forever in the shadow of an existence that she wants but Stewart. Assayas seems to dig his heels into both, and the can’t have. When she eventually succumbs to the forbidden result implores you to stick with it until the bitter end.

Poignant Social Commentary URBAN HYMN

lending unfaltering support to each other throughout an “You can’t just sit adolescence robbed of parents or any legitimate role models. back with a gin A gifted singer, Wright’s Jamie is torn between loyalty to her and tonic, point friend and almost certain imprisonment, and a seemingly your finger at the bright future, nudged by the help of her care worker. The film news footage and is at its best when in the company of these young allies, both say ‘lock them up.’ on the estate or heading off to the local grime nights.

It’s important to Having cast Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his first feature get to the bottom of roles, director Michael Caton-Jones has an eye for discovering why this happened young talent and saw no exception in Wright when choosing in the first place.” her to represent such a severely misunderstood minority.

“He’s the Jeremy Corbyn of directors”, says Sachs. Praising Caton-Jones’s dedication to the film, which was shot in under a month, sometimes filming 16 scenes in a day, he says that the film was always going to be skewed, channelling a sense of frustration and aimlessness through the two girls.

It’s a pity that Jamie’s enabler and the most audible voice of reason in Urban Hymn is Henderson’s tight-lipped care Words worker Kate, but she also provides the necessary gateway Beth Webb between the classes, shouting down her pompous husband.

The film drags its heels in these comfier scenes; such is the hypnotic realism the girls provide that you’d much rather be Urban Hymn. hanging out with them. Ultimately, however, this is a story In cinemas from 7 October. of recovery from a bleak and misunderstood day in British history, and for that, Urban Hymn succeeds admirably. www.bulldog-film.com

Film still from Urban Hymn. Image courtesy of Bulldog Film Distribution.

The 2011 London riots have been crying out for a silver screen treatment from the moment the dust settled. George Amponsah’s The Hard Stop (2015) was premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and concerns the Broadwater Farm Estate and the events leading to Mark Duggan’s death. Now Urban Hymn, an autobiographical film from screenwriter Nick Moorcroft, uses the unforgettable events from one angry summer’s night as a means of exposing the frustration of thousands of directionless youths.

Producer John Sachs, who had to drive to Camden amidst the chaos to retrieve his eldest daughter that night, believes the film’s balanced take on the events of 2011 is necessary.

“You can’t just sit back with a gin and tonic, point your finger at the news footage and say ‘lock them up.’ It’s important to get to the bottom of why this happened in the first place.”

The power of Moorcroft’s script, which initially drew Sachs to the project, paired with disarmingly organic central performances from relative newcomers Letitia Wright and Isabella Laughland as juveniles Jamie and Leanne, is what prevents the film from preaching. The authenticity comes from Moorcroft’s own experiences as a young criminal. “It was his mum that saved him”, explains Sachs. “Shirley (Henderson)’s character is based on her – she took him to the police station herself and that was the turning point for him.”

Urban Hymn sees Wright and Laughland play best friends,

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film reviews Girls Lost

Valley of Love

Alexandra-Therese Keining Peccadillo Pictures

Guillaume Nicloux Curzon Artificial Eye

The Lovers and the Despot Rob Cannan & Ross Adam Soda Pictures

Writer and director Alexndra-Therese Keining examines the throes of adolescence in new Swiss drama Girls Lost. Guiding audiences through the minefield of finding your identity are protagonists and childhood friends Kim, Bella and Momo, all of whom face bullying at school. Pitched within a world of teenage violence, the film presents the close-knit trio in a stance against marginalisation.

Following their unlikely encounter with a mysterious plant in their beloved retreat, a humble greenhouse, the teens find themselves temporarily transformed into the opposite sex.

Kim, Bella and Momo begin to explore teenage life from a male perspective, only to discover that their viewpoints become irreversibly changed.

Whilst Momo and Bella are quick to realise that it’s merely a façade, Kim is drawn deep into her alter-ego, which leads to an entanglement of confused sexuality after she falls for new guy Tony. Based on Jessica Schiefuer’s novel Pojkarna, Girls Lost questions the worth of gender identity when it comes to profound matters of the heart.

Valley of Love, Guillaume Nicloux’s latest film, imagines a holiday to ruin all holidays. Not only are Gérard (Gérard Depardieu) and Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) estranged lovers, unlike the other tourists in Death Valley, their trip aims to pick apart their son Michael’s suicide note – six months after his death.

Under the punishing Nevada sun, the couple follow a strict itinerary of times and places outlined by Michael, the promise being that if they tick off all the landmarks in the right order he will return to them somehow (albeit briefly).

There is a delirious quality to Nicloux’s storytelling, which unsettles the barriers between reality and artifice, past and present. Both protagonists are at home with the mixture of hotel-room boredom and searing desperation.

Meanwhile, the pair’s on-screen history (Loulou, Going Places ) and the fact that they share their characters’ names adds a further layer of intrigue to an ultimately disorientating film. It’s as claustrophobic and heated as you’d expect and leaves you guessing right until the final frame.

Woven together from interviews, archive footage and feature films, Cannan and Adam’s documentary charts the story of the kidnapping and reunification of two luminaries of the South Korean film industry, director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee, at the hands of film-mad North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.

Shin and Choi’s daringly captured recordings of Kim highlight the intimate relationship they had with the “Great Leader” and the unprecedented creative freedom that they enjoyed whilst making seven feature films on the North Korean purse.

Without fully uncovering Shin’s story (he died in 2005), the film portrays the director’s relationship with Kim as strangely affectionate and the dictator seemingly shows admiration for his captives.

As the tale is wound up with the couple’s escape, footage of hyperbolic wailing and chest-beating North Korean crowds upon Kim’s death create the most absurd moments. These scenes hammer home an important message about the world’s most secretive state: truth is stranger than fiction.

Selina Oakes

Grace Caffyn

Ruby Beesley

The Commune

Ming of Harlem

Thomas Vinterberg Curzon Artificial Eye

Phillip Warnell Soda Pictures

The Greasy Strangler

The Commune’s spatial setting is the ideal stage for Thomas Vinterberg to continue his exploration of division and unity.

It is a theme he investigated to masterful and provocative affect in The Hunt – evoking a simultaneous empathy for the community and the accused. Here he exhibits less provocative gamesmanship, offering a more emotionally passive story of husband Erik (Ulrich Thomsen) and wife Anna’s (Trine Dyrholm) decision to turn his childhood home into a commune.

Vinterberg exhibits a simple aesthetic with musical interludes that serve to capture the spirit of the film. There is a trust that the ideas behind the drama will resonate: it’s about the consequence of choices, the evolution of a marriage and the need to belong to a collective versus the human need for intimate one-on-one relationships.

The ebb and flow of Erik and Anna’s journey amidst scenes of implosion and resolution sees the celebrated filmmaker not only play the dramatist but also show an appreciation for the quieter emotional resolution of everyday lives.

The urban myth of the apartment block at Disco-fuelled debauchery 2430 Seventh Avenue – Jim Hosking’s first feature in Harlem, New York is a disturbingly unique City was that someone curio. Following the lives shared a home with a live tiger. The stranger-than- of Ronnie and his son, Brayden, this 93-minute fiction truth was that there was indeed a 400-lb rollercoaster paints an absurd picture of their oilBengal tiger (named Ming) prowling around covered and profanity-driven existence. whilst owner Antoine Yates was out. What’s more: Dressed head to toe in pink, the grotesque pair a seven-foot alligator (named Al) was there too. make their living taking people on “disco tours” of Phillip Warnell’s mix of documentary and local hotspots until one day a vivacious woman experimental art recreates the torpor of the tiger’s catches Brayden’s eye. Promising to split up the day-to-day existence, filmed on static cameras in unsettling intimacy between father and son, Janet a detailed recreation of the protagonist’s home. ruptures their relationship and accelerates the Interspersed with police audio, the audience sees frustrations of Ronnie, who must get revenge reminiscences from Yates (who was arrested by the through strangling any and all other characters, NYPD after dialling 911 as the animal chomped whilst covered in grease from the town carwash. on his leg) and a background of emergency sirens Depravity sets the scene for the mental unravreplicating the ambience of downtown Harlem. elling of the familial duo, and there’s interesting As a “message movie”, Ming of Harlem is pseudo-mania underneath the visual disgust and incoherent in its delivery. Yates, speaking a decade carnivalesque deaths. Ronnie’s fat-covered appeafter his arrest, appears genuinely bemused by tite acts as a metaphor for his psychosis and, for the reactions to his actions. He argues that Ming the climax, Brayden dips himself in a monstrous (and Al) were safer in his confined urban jungle vat of lard. Murdering his own girlfriend, he finds than in the wider world: no poachers there. solace in dysfunction and loyalty to his father.

Paul Risker

Tony Earnshaw

Jim Hosking Picturehouse

Kate Simpson

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Photo: Anne Valeur.

music

Unexpected Nordic Electronica APOTHEK

“This record is kind of the result of two very different musicians least,” says Myklebust. “People tend to give (Nordic) music “I think constantly getting to know each other in the studio,” explains Nils Martin characteristics of soaring, dark nature stuff and elves and moving and trying to define what ‘home’ Larsen, the producer half of Oslo-based duo Apothek. “When woods. I don’t think that really affects us,” says Larsen.

“It is connections to people (and time) rather than land that is shaped the lyrical we recorded the first track, Family, we’d just met and decided to see what happened if we tried to write a song together. It have shaped this record, says Myklebust: “family, loved ones, process. People tend was interesting to explore songwriting from two very different inheritance, divorce, friendship, love. Working these themes to give (Nordic) music angles; Morten (Myklebust) comes from a more traditional into lyrics involved the process of meditating on the song’s characteristics of singer-songwriter background and I’m more of a studio head.” meaning to generate a small pool of pre-planned key words, soaring, dark nature “The pair are polar opposites in a lot of ways,” says ‘Family’ is an example of that. I’d definitely thought a lot stuff and elves and Mortern, “which actually helps the creative process, I think.” about everything in that song for a while, but hearing Nils’s woods. I don’t think that really affects us.”

The sessions that followed – “intense periods of working chords for the verse allowed the lyrics to really arrive.”

It’s an approach that makes sense for Apothek – a duo together” coupled with long-distance pow-wows – produced a collection of songs. Along with Lars Horntveth (Jaga whose first stage show was semi-spontaneous, prompted into Jazzist), the pair holed up for a few months in Oslo, shaping life by friend and recent tour mate Susanne Sundfør. “As well the sessions into a cohesive, flowing whole. The resulting as being a good friend, she’s also one of our very favourite (self-titled) album is accomplished and thrilling, a body of artists. The very first time we joined her on a show was our sound both delicate and formidable, large yet intricate – first time ever playing Apothek music live; I think it was more the electronic and organic in subtle synthesis. “All over the like her pushing us to take the stuff to the stage.”

Touring together has helped to forge the pair into a working record, we had this mantra: make acoustic sounds sound duo, both personally and professionally. “You learn a lot really mechanical and mechanical sounds sound acoustic.”

“Critics in the West have a habit of trying to draw the about being around each other. You get used to that strange Words fire and ice of Nordic geography into Scandi art, but it is ecosystem [of touring life] together,” says Larsen. So where Charlotte R.A. movement and distance that have shaped this album”, says will their next adventure take them, once the album comes the pair. “More than the land, I think constantly moving and out? “We are playing a few shows around our native Norway trying to define what ‘home’ is shaped the lyrical process at first, and then we’ll go to London, Berlin and Hamburg.” www.apothekmusic.com

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Coming of Age Anthems JULIA JACKLIN

“Your mid-20s are just a pretty weird time. When your early 20s are over, and your studies are done, you’re looked at like an adult and the decisions you make are important ones.”

Words Charlotte R.A.

www.juliajacklin.com

Photo: Nick McKinlay.

Julia Jacklin grew up in the Blue Mountains, Australia – are tested in the adult world, to fade or flourish – summed up faking power chords on a red electric, emulating Josie on the title track, when Jacklin sings: “We’re gonna keep on and the Pussycats. She’s spent the last six years in Glebe, getting older / it’s gonna keep on feeling strange.”

“I think [our mid-20s] are just a pretty weird time. When Sydney, and is a now-proficient guitarist who bought her first Telecaster because of Anna Calvi. “I wanted to be her! I wrote your early 20s are over, and your studies are done, you’re looked at like an adult and the decisions you make are a song called ‘I want to be like you, Anna’, so there you go.”

Jacklin’s debut album, Don’t Let The Kids Win, is more Angel important ones, and you can’t really fuck around anymore Olsen than Calvi, though atmospheric, mid-tempo, folk- if you want to achieve anything. I think you’ve also well and tinged indie thrums with a yearning, coming-of-age ache. truly realised how much harder it is to achieve those things.

“I just really wanted to capture my early 20s in this record.” For me, the discomfort comes in waves. Sometimes I feel The majority of the tracks were written during her final year of completely grateful to be getting older, and sometimes the university, songwriting taking precedence over term papers. thought of time passing keeps me up at night. I don’t think I “Most of the music was written in my room; I live in a garage realised how much it was playing on my mind until I listened out the back of a share house. The rent is cheap and it gives to the album in full, and heard it in most of the songs.”

Some things change, others don’t. The latter includes me privacy, which is a rare treat in communal living.”

The Australian capital made her – “I’ve been a part of Jacklin’s current personal aesthetic: tartan PE-style a great music community in Sydney, made up of a lot skirts teamed with sneakers, tube socks and t-shirts. of kids all pushing each other up bit by bit” – but she’s “If you ask any of my friends, they’ll say the reason I dress itching to depart on her next tour, stints in the US and the the way I do is because I’m still wearing the same clothes UK already under her belt. “I’m really keen to go, actually. I had when I was a teenager. The current skirt-and-socks I quit my day job a little while ago, so I feel a bit strange combo was actually just the costume I wanted for my being at home.” That sense of transition, of the once familiar first music video, Pool Party (filmed at Jacklin’s high school). becoming unknown, remote, or novel, is part of the album’s I’d say, right now, my biggest, inspiration are the works of magic, a preoccupation with those spaces and instances Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjork. I just try to look like where the dreams and assumptions we nurture in our teens a subject in one of his photos every time I leave the house.”

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music reviews Jenny Hval

Chain Wallet

Hannah Peel

Blood Bitch Sacred Bones Records

Chain Wallet Jansen Plateproduksjon

Awake But Always Dreaming My Own Pleasure

Norwegian singer Jenny Hval is a force to be reckoned with, especially with the new, appropriately titled album Blood Bitch. Her creative arrangements have garnered international acclaim, notably for her interrogations of gender and sexuality. Taking a new turn in her musical career, Hval revisits her days as a black metal vocalist, focusing on lunar cycles and the darker parts of her imagination.

A conceptual and narrative-led piece of work, this set of songs follows a journey of sociointrospection through the fictitious notions of witches, dreams and “terrifying blood.” A sense of transience reigns in drony, synth-heavy tracks such as Female Vampire and Conceptual Romance.

Progressive contributions The Plague, Secret Touch and The Great Undressing are turning points of experimentation, the latter opening with an interview about the concept behind the album, which fades into a frank and unapologetic popanthem for the future, summed up by delicately sung words: “I need to keep writing because everything else is death.” www.jennyhval.com.

Norwegian lo-fi dream/ psych pop trio Chain Wallet unleashes its self-titled debut album. Bathed in joy, reflection and sorrow it is equal parts guitar, synth and reverb heavy. Across the course of the album the band explores themes of betrayal, idleness and broken dreams, lending a sense of melancholy to many of the songs, which veer between hazy, sombre shadows and glittering shafts of light.

Opening tracks Abroad and Muted Colours spring forth buoyantly with lush pop harmonies and shimmering, chiming guitar. More driven and incessant, however, is Pale Colours. Its effervescent indie groove underpins a stadium-sized melody and carries with it desolate, fractured lyrics. The song structures are consistently strong throughout and each track seems effortlessly crafted in the journey from inception to conclusion.

Chain Wallet makes a thoroughly absorbing contribution to a genre that in places draws on the past. The album manages to overcome this due to the vibrant and effusive energy that unfolds with each listen. www.soundcloud.com/chainwallet.

Awake But Always Dreaming, the second album from songstress Hannah Peel, is hard to pin down. Whilst themes of memory and family tie together these 10 songs, each is a self-contained work that’s vastly different from the next – like surfing channels on TV. Hope Lasts pulls into focus as a 1980s pop anthem bursts with syncopated drums and smiling synths. Meanwhile, cinematic eight-minute epic Foreverest collides fast, grimey glitches with Peel’s languid vocals to land somewhere between Squarepusher and Bat For Lashes.

Since her 2011 debut, The Broken Wave, the Northern Irish multi-instrumentalist has been busy collaborating. This includes working as part of The Magnetic North with Simon Tong (Gorillaz, The Verve) and Erland Cooper, who also helped produce this album. Cars In The Garden, a cover of the original by Paul Buchanan, sees Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe join the mix. It’s this kind of unusual pairing that Peel does so well.

Here, her eclecticism isn’t distracting; it’s what keeps things interesting. www.hannahpeel.com.

Kate Simpson

Matt Swain

Grace Caffyn

C Duncan

Black Angel Drifter

The Midnight Sun FatCat Records

Black Angel Drifter Bastard Recordings

sarasara amorfati One Little Indian Records

Following up a Mercury-nominated Recorded and mixed in album is no mean a lock-up in Whitstable feat; there are a during the first few myriad of pressures to deliver another critically days of 2016, the self-titled album from Black acclaimed body of work. Here, Glasgow’s multi- Angel Drifter introduces listeners to duo Robert instrumentalist and singer arrives with hazy “Hacker” Jessett and Anne Gilpin’s darker side. purpose, bathing in layered, submerged sounding Raucous and wild in both its vocals and musician harmonies as deep as the Marianas Trench.

Alan Cook’s distinctive pedal-steel guitar, the Sadly, the over-processing of the heavenly record’s tone is set by the minimalist drumming vocals lets down the natural beauty of the voice, of Taiko-trained performer Chizuru Nukui. soaring over the electronic production. The Black Angel Drifter lifts fans into a Gothic hopeful pianos of Other Side provide an earthy Western trance, packed with glimmers of mellow respite to the supreme compression of the rest yet hauntingly psychedelic moments. Consisting of the record, with an optimistic sci-fi movie of 10 tracks, the album has unruly energy: opener soundtrack feel consistently present throughout.

Skylines Change, is brought down to the slower, The intricate production would not sound out of contemplative chords and echoes of Black-Eyed place on an Air album, with songs like On Course Susan and ensuing cover of Bob Dylan’s The Man floating eagerly through spacey synthesizers and with the Long Black Coat. The tributes continue lazily reverberating vocals. Sublime title track The with the ambient closing track 24’33”, which is Midnight Sun is a real stand out as C Duncan’s intended as an homage to the late John Cage. under-water lyrics find their home effortlessly The new compilation from this theatrical hybrid among the emotive instrumentation. Equally as rock band sensually envelops its beholder in serene as it is complex, this follow-up is a sleepy, a realm of unpredictable yet eerily consoling beautiful odyssey. www.c-duncan.co.uk. acoustics. www.facebook.com/blackangeldrifter.

The debut album from s a r a s a r a is hauntingly subtle. Coproduced with Matthew Herbert, its pulsing synths and compressed digital drum tracks are married with breathy vocals. Within new depths of exciting experimentation are tracks that are difficult to be described as such – a more apt definition being 12 interlinked impressions of existence.

Slow, pitch-bending opener j u j u is a pathway into the surreal: whispered harmonies will the listener down into a dark and impressive piece of work. s s u n, s u p e r n o v a and s u c c u b u s follow with loose, velvety melodies set over the layers of throbbing beats and looping textures.

It’s easy to see the artist’s broad range of influences coming into focus especially towards the end of the record: elements of Björk, Vanessa Paradis, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and an interest in philosophy, literature and film inform the infectiously meditative l o v e and p n e u m a.

These wind-down songs create a cycle back to the beginning, all set to the rhythms of underworld electronica. www.sarasaramusic.com.

Kyle Bryony

Kate Simpson

Selina Oakes

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performance

Ethereal Movements TAO Dance Theatre THE INVENTIVE PERFORMANCE GROUP RETURN TO SADLER’S WELLS WITH AN EXPLORATION INTO THEIR OWN POTENTIAL BOTH PHYSICALLY AND EXISTENTIALLY.

Since the essence of dance lies within human movement, the like atmosphere, testing the limits of audience concentration. importance of the human body can hardly be overstated. The fluidity involved in each step also explores the rhythms However, few practitioners are as effusive about it as Tao that take place on a molecular level – ones that instil Ye. Founder of the TAO Dance Theatre, the Beijing-born development, repair and rebirth. As a consequence of choreographer understands the very nature of body as a continual exercise, the wave-like actions deplete the dancers’ “microcosm of the universe.” He talks of it as a “kaleidoscope: reserves of energy, introducing a sense of weight and the only witness of all the feelings and senses from our exhaustion to the steps that exist in that moment.

The choreographer also manifests his desire for birth to death.” He explains: “When we talk about the idea of ‘experience’, we are actually talking about the phenomenon transcendence and unveiling the true physical capability of something the body has been through.” In this way, the of the human race. There is no narrative – no character or Theatre is based upon the notion that performers contain past, development as such – instead anatomy is celebrated as a medium of visual art and the heart of memories, opportunities present and future already – without any other materials.

If Tao Ye’s veneration for the human structure runs the risk and the present. “As processes are reiterated, such repetition of appearing hyperbolic, it is worth remembering that the not only affords experience, but also dissolves the very amount of energy contained within each person runs to epic distinction between beginning and end,” says Tao Ye. Following the success of Sadler’s Wells Out of Asia season, proportions: as a species we are a mass of kinetic possibility from the cellular level upwards. It is easy to comprehend his the institution has invited TAO Dance Theatre back to showdeclaration that “when I use the human body as the only case their latest success, 8. This is the final work within the Straight Line Trilogy, and follows on from Series of Numbers. means to create my work, I actually have everything.”

A central idea from his practice is the thought that we can Each performance is titled with numerals owing to Tao Ye’s gain omniscience from our genetic make-up. Extending this scepticism about the limitations of language and the ability as a dramatic theory, if the limbs we use to express ourselves of a single word to convey the imaginative possibilities inhermean everything, then “dance is a language of divinity and ent within dance. The use of numbers, however, “signifies the the stage is like a ceremony.” It is a communication that rejection of the duality between abstract and concrete thinking. It accumulates the logic of movement and presents the transcends any verbal language – even time and space.

The natural sequences that occur within each of us on a continuity – a ritual of natural sequence.”

The device certainly lends a clean simplicity and allows daily basis – and throughout life – have since become the basis for the Theatre’s reputation. Employing repetitive and the focus to remain on the figures at the centre of the cyclical movements, the group evoke a meditative, trance- dance, especially as the titles and number of performers

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Left: Photo: Zhang Shengbin.

Right: Photo: Andreas Nilsson.

Previous Page: Photo: Marco Feklistoff.

correspond. The slow, measured and calculated addition of silhouettes offers a compelling and conceptual insight into the way extra bodies alter the flow on stage: “Number does not define the meaning of my creation, but its increase means my exploration of life is going further. Adding one more dancer adds another layer to my work.”

Straight Line Trilogy, 6, 7 and 8 orientates the dancers as expected, with equal space between them. Within this military-inspired configuration they instigate identical actions at the same tempo, moving in harmony with one another. In each piece the dancers are limited in various and different ways: “I got rid of any movement of limbs in 6, which allows the dancers to fully show the pulse of the spine as a straight line. In 7, I cut out the background music, which visualises the rhythm of breathing when dancers stretch and bend their spines. In 8, I reduced the levels by making the performers lie on the floor, transforming the medium into a two-dimensional documentary, recording the persistent fluctuations of life through their rotating and twisting spines.”

The idea of the “straight line” is a reference to the positioning on stage, but also to this central study of the backbone – a most vital structural element within our own construction. The choreographer expands on the notion as a metaphor: “It is a description of my attitude towards creation and choreography: when a straight line is extended forward, it will eventually encounter obstacles that are hard to go through. At this point you have to choose to either continue going straight or take a roundabout route. Similarly, when facing the ongoing and endless changes of the world, I need to remain committed to a path in order to keep going.”

Despite this observation, Tao Ye does not often operate

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in the realm of allegory. He is interested in the body as “The importance an element to be perceived for its optical allure – devoid lies in our response of representation, narrative or context, simply existing as to influence. This an object alone. Due to this, his oeuvre boasts a mesmeric, is the thing: choosing minimalistic style. This is only amplified by his use of light to communicate and sound design – which is particularly prevalent in 6, where with the body is the famed Swedish visual artist Ellen Ruge has designed the to embrace the inter-connective display that serves as a “shifting landscape inspiration that of light.” As a creator who translates his inspiration into the world gives physical compositions, Tao Ye says that “costume and to me.” lighting design are also part of the creation. These key elements assist me in transforming an idea into real work.”

As one of the most sought-after groups across the world, and the first Chinese dance company invited to perform at The Lincoln Center in the USA, the Theatre is committed to encouraging more contemporary dance in to its home region. Tao Ye has taught workshops at a series of schools and universities across the world including Beijing Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing Dance Academy and Taipei National University of the Arts. He is keen to help practitioners explore the potential of natural forms, just Words as he has: “I wish to establish a long-term class for dance Bryony Byrne education, helping the public to understand what we do.”

In China, a country with an ancient tradition of classical dance, it is an exciting time for contemporary forms that only TAO Dance Theatre continue to grow. The fact that this company is located within 6 and 8 as part of the this expansive region and employs native dancers has a Out of Asia season. negligible influence on what Tao Ye creates. “The importance Sadler’s Wells, London. lies in our response to influence. This is the thing: choosing 3 - 4 October. to communicate with the body is to embrace the inspiration that the world gives to me.” It is simple, but it is everything. www.sadlerswells.com.

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theatre

Live On Stage 5 RECOMMENDED PRODUCTIONS THIS SEASON

1

Villette

West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until 15 October. Based on Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, re-imagined by Linda Marshall-Griffiths. Directed by Mark Rosenblatt.

Lucy Snowe, alone and abandoned, boards a boat in search of purpose. Arriving at an archaeological site digging for the remains of the elusive Lady of Villette, she works alongside the beautiful Gin, the prying Beck, the charming Dr John and the remote Professor Paul, though Lucy remains an outsider.

Absorbed in her work to find a cure for the next pandemic to secure humanity’s future, can she open herself up to the possibility of love and put the past behind her? On the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth, West Yorkshire Playhouse celebrates her unique genius with a daring new adaptation by fellow Yorkshire writer Linda Marshall-Griffiths. Box Office: +44 (0) 113 213 7700. www.wyp.org.uk.

2

Spine Studio Theatre, Sheffield, 27 - 29 October.

Written by Clara Brennan and directed by Bethany Pitts.

From fast-rising Channel 4 playwright Clara Brennan comes the Scotsman Fringe First and Herald Angel award-winning Spine. It charts the explosive friendship between a ferocious, wise-cracking teenager and an elderly East End widow. Mischievous activist pensioner Glenda is hell-bent on leaving a political legacy and saving Amy from the Tory scrapheap because “there’s nothing more terrifying than a teenager with something to say.” In this era of damaging cuts and disillusionment, has politics forgotten people?

This hour-long monologue offers a fierce defence of libraries, community and the value of access. A compelling piece from a thrilling writer. Box Office: +44 (0) 114 249 6000. www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk.

3

A Man of Good Hope Young Vic, London, 6 October - 12 November. Based on the book by Jonny Steinberg. Adapted by Isango Ensemble and directed by Mark Dornford-May.

The true story of one refugee’s epic quest across Africa, brought to life with music from the worldrenowned Isango Ensemble. Asad is a young Somali refugee with a painful past, yet blessed with miraculously good luck and a brilliant head for business. After years in a refugee camp and then learning to hustle on the streets of Ethiopia, he sets off for the promised land of South Africa. But when he arrives, he discovers the violent reality of life in the townships – and his adventures really begin. This adaptation of Jonny Steinberg’s riveting book is told through roof-lifting songs and dance, accompanied live on the marimba. Box Office: +44 (0) 020 7922 2922. www.youngvic.org.

4

Hamilton: An American Musical The PrivateBank Theatre, Chicago, USA, until 19 March.

Book, music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Directed by Thomas Kail.

The critically-acclaimed Broadway musical makes its first transfer from New York to Chicago this autumn before it re-opens the Victoria Palace Theatre in London, England next year. The winner of 11 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, Hamilton tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s Founding Fathers. Framing the history of the USA as an immigration tale and featuring hip-hop, R&B and pop music, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is inspired by a biography by Ron Chernow. The show has received unanimous praise for re-telling the foundation of America using actors of colour. A cultural phenomenon and sell-out success. Box Office: +1 (800) 775 2000. www.hamiltonbroadway.com.

5

Come From Away Ford’s Theatre, Washington DC, USA, until 9 October. Book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein. Directed by Christopher Ashley.

On the day the world stopped, the human stories moved us all. Fresh from sold-out runs in Seattle and San Diego, this new musical tells the heart-warming true story of how a small Canadian town cared for 6,579 airline passengers stranded there on 9/11. When 38 planes were diverted to its doorstep, the town of Gander doubled in size, playing host to an international community of strangers and offering them food, shelter and friendship. Come From Away honours the better angels of our nature, revealing hope and humanity demonstrated in a time of darkness. The production marks the Ford’s debut of the Tony Award-nominated director Christopher Ashley. Box Office: +1 (202) 347-4833. www.fords.org.

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book reviews Thinking the Contemporary Landscape Christopher Girot, Dora Imhof Princeton Architectural Press

Alexander McQueen: Unseen Robert Fairer Thames & Hudson

The Public Image Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites The University of Chicago Press

Christopher Girot and Dora Imhof have collected a marvellous range of essays in this new volume on landscape architecture, which explores actual and potential responses to social and environmental change. It begins from the position that landscape is rarely a natural “untouched wilderness”, but rather it is inevitably a cultural, crafted artefact.

As the editors acknowledge, these essays pose more questions than answers. They do, however, highlight the importance of design. Charles Waldheim’s essay on landscape and urbanism draws on a range of examples, including Manhattan’s High Line – once an abandoned railway line, now a public park – to show the clear social and economic benefits of such projects.

The authors tackle broader issues, such as the tension between local and global design (James Corner), or the need for a closer relationship between theory and practice (Alessandra Ponte).

This is a useful anthology for designers and planners, as well as anyone with an interest in the making of the contemporary landscape.

Provocative, theatrical and intimately dark, Alexander McQueen was anything but a designer for the faint of heart. His boundarypushing practice – sailing close to the wind of controversy – never failed to capture the imagination of the industry and the public alike.

McQueen Unseen examines the fashion designer’s catwalks from his enfant terrible days of Nihilism and Highland Rape, through the sublime spectacle of Joan and No. 13, to the nightmarish sophistication of What a Merry Go-Round and the subversive opulence of The Horn of Plenty. The book reveals McQueen’s uncontestable genius, deftly navigating through the theatrics that accompanied his work to allow the boldness of his vision and wry sense of humour to shine through.

Robert Fairer’s photography captures this dark energy both backstage and on the catwalk, demonstrating the new type of vocabulary the designer sought to establish. Indeed, the lavish text explores McQueen’s iconoclastic relationship with the fashion industry, and the cycle of death and regeneration that pervades his collections.

We live in the public eye. In the age of Instagram and Facebook, images are our primary means of selfrepresentation and reality is mediated through photography. However, even as we consume and produce more pictures, we have become deeply suspicious of the medium – we are warned of its capacity to deceive, distract and manipulate.

In their analysis of news images, social media reporting and artists’ impressions of calamitous events, Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites chart the rise of photography as our main source of “the truth”, and the corresponding emerging phenomenon of “the self as spectacle.”

Instead of adopting the typically cynical approach, the authors argue that the problem is not the medium but our attitudes as spectators: too quick to damn bias, too slow to engage in critique. A highly individualised image can actually deepen our relationship with the truth, exposing us to different points of view and opening up the possibility of democratic communication. This book starts the conversation.

Anna Feintuck

Regina Papachlimitzou

Matilda Bathurst

Architecture and Surrealism

The Feminist AvantGarde of the 1970s

Neil Spiller Thames & Hudson

Gabriele Schor Prestel

Slim Aarons: Women Laura Hawk Abrams

This text is a completely Charting the rise of the fascinating journey through 1970s female artists the changing landscape who decided to re-write of architecture in reference to the Surrealist themselves, this account of the avant-garde movement. Spiller’s introduction sets the scene for movement is filled with power, potential and imaginative possibilities, speaking of a renewed aspiration. With photographs and introductions relationship in this digital age where the limits of for each artist, Gabriele Schor presents a world imagination are pushed daily, making possible of radicalism, poetry and self-examination, with concepts that were previously only dreams. works from Cindy Sherman, Ana Mendieta, Nil Featuring a comprehensive exploration of the Yalter, Ketty La Rocca, Birgit Jürgenssen, Renate movement throughout history, Spiller argues Bertlmann and Francesca Woodman and others. that the links within construction grow ever While documenting and marvelling at the stronger as we move into the future. An increased various artworks, Schor also focuses on the appreciation and understanding of Surrealism, he accomplishments of the practitioners, reflecting argues, will encourage architects to conceive of on the pathways they forged for those to come. structures not previously thought possible within Bodies, sexuality, maternity, partnership, beauty the present confines of Modernism. And the time standards and many more universal topics are for this is now, within the zeitgeist of burgeoning approached without inhibition. This text provides invention and advanced technological enterprise. the chance to gain an insider’s perspective.

Blueprints, plans, diagrams, photographs, sculpOverall this is a compelling and comprehensive ture and an array of images packed in amongst book which sheds light on a fearless movement. essays, quotations and studied discourse paint This is an opportunity to learn more about the a captivating portrayal of the beautiful, ab- artists who crossed boundaries and spoke out stracted dreamscapes that are yet to be built. about topics still relevant within today’s society.

Slim Aarons’s fascination with women from high society, the arts, fashion and Hollywood takes centre stage in this latest publication to showcase the photographer’s expansive and creative career Interwoven between lavish snippets of celebrity personalities such as Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy, Diana Vreeland and Marilyn Monroe, lies a sense of the inspiration Aarons found at the heart of these figures and their personal lives.

Known for his work in leading magazines including Vogue, Life and Travel & Leisure, Aarons’s personal portfolio offers an intimate side to this high-flying and glamorous lifestyle. Featuring more than 200 photographs, the book is divided into light-hearted chapters, entitled Attractive People, Doing Attractive Things, In Attractive Places; each of which gathers a cohesive assemblage of images connected by comparable themes.

Accompanied by texts from freelance writer and close colleague Laura Hawk, Slim Aarons: Women, with its bold and luxurious full-page colour prints, is a wonderful tribute to the life and work of this influential figure in fashion photography.

Bryony Byrne

Selina Oakes

Kate Simpson

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artists’ directory

Nikki Stevens

Award-winning London-based artist Nikki Stevens specialises in large-scale watercolours which explore man’s changing relationship with the natural world.

In her work, birds and animals no longer walk on the wild side – they roam freely amongst the data Keri Oldham, Judith & Holofernes. Watercolour on paper, 22in x 30in.

and symbols of a carefully constructed society.

Limited edition prints and originals: www.kerioldham.com

www.nikkistevensart.com

meiyi yang Born and raised in Shenzhen, china, and based in new york, meiyi yang is a metals and Jewellery Design mFa student at the Rochester institute of Technology. with a deep

Fabien bruttin Swiss artist Fabien Bruttin’s work is based on an experimental approach with different mediums, technical and pictorial processes. His paintings aim to express a vivid interior world.

www.Fabienbruttin.ch

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interest in fashion and costume design, she explores the relationship between jewellery and clothing as they relate to the human body as an expression of individuality.

www.meiyi-yang.com

Image: Shhh, 2016. Oil on canvas.

Carmen Selma gabriela torres ruiz

Carmen Selma is a Spain-based painter. Memory is one of the fundamental pillars of her work. She has a particular interest in discovering the past, diving into it to try to understand the present.

She believes that we cannot completely dissociate ourselves from the context in which we live, just as we should not dismiss the past.

www.gabrielatorresruiz.com www.gabrielatorres-ruiz.de

www.CarmenSelma.Com

Image: Moich’s Self Portrait. Mixed media on canvas. Photographed by Antonio Parente.

tomas harker

The work of award-winning artist Moich Abrahams has been

Tomas Harker is an emerging artist featured in collections

selected for numerous exhibitions in London, including Institute of Contemporary Arts, Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery,

worldwide and garnering increasing international interest.

The Discerning Eye at The Mall Galleries, amongst others.

has recently had two successful solo shows in the UK. Tomas

Camden Arts Centre, Royal College of Art, Menier Gallery and

He has been included in an exhibition at Tate Modern and

His work will be on show at The London Group Annual, 12-21 October

AP QP.indd 4

recontextualises images culled from classical paintings

and the artist will be in attendance on 12 October, 14:00 - 18:00.

and found photographs, obscuring or altering parts of the

The Cello Factory, 33-34 Cornwall Road, London SE1 8TJ.

original works to create a new, uncanny experience.

Moich AbrAhAMs | www.MoichAbrAhAMs.co.uk

www.tomasharker.co.uk

23/09/2016 15:06

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artists’ directory

Andrew Harrison London-based Andrew Harrison’s paintings are influenced by the urban environment: its organisation and dimensions. He edits these structures down to their simplest forms, using solid blocks of colour to complement the planes and shapes. Andrew will participate in Imperfect Reverse, a group exhibition at Camberwell College of Arts, 18 October - 18 November 2016. www.andrewharrisonart.com

www.soulparabole.com

Image: Untitled #7-5105, 2013. From the Traces of this World series. C-Print Diasec ®, 120cm x 160cm.

Anita Kovacevic Anita Kovacevic is an internationally published and exhibited fine art photographer and visual artist, working primarily in monochrome. Born in Slovenia, she is currently based in Austria.

Her art reflects her emotions, thoughts and life experience; and is essentially inspired by the simplest, uncomplicated and quieter sides of life. www.fineartbyanita.com

Ani Celik Arevyan Istanbul artist Ani Celik Arevyan aims to position photography as a tool through which ontological doubts are reformulated and addressed. Questions about temporality lie at the core of the work. Her images are shown in collections including Istanbul Museum of Modern Art and Bibliothéque National de France. www.anicelikarevyan.com ani@anicelikarevyan.com

Anna Porter Anna Porter’s lush paintings and photography of flowers capture the beautiful colours and intimate details found in her artist gardens.

She has a solo exhibit at Cascade Sotheby’s, 310 N. State Street, Lake Oswego, Oregon, USA, 20 October -16 November. The opening reception is 16:00 - 19:00.

Image: Pure White V, 2015. Photography.

Annamarie Dzendrowskyj Informed by her career as a PADI Scuba Diving Instructor, the art of Annamarie Dzendrowskyj reflects the experience of underwater vision, presenting the emergence and dissolution of forms. Her work was shown at the Nappe Arsenale, Venice in the finalist exhibition of the 2016 Arte Laguna Prize and she was awarded a residency at the Artistic Serigraphy Fallani in Venice. www.annamariedzendrowskyj.com

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Ania Perkowska Ania Perkowska is a London-based ceramic artist. She creates functional pieces inspired by contrasts and opposites such as smooth and rough, convex and concave.

Working mainly in stoneware, her techniques include organic textures and sgraffito. She aspires to capture a sense of joy in the handling of objects and transforming them into everyday art. www.onmytoes.co.uk

www.annaporterartist.com info@annaporterartist.com

Image: Antique Roses. Acrylic.

Alexander Koby “But dream of him and guess where he might be, And do her best, survive unrest, and get to him.”

Alexander Koby says: “I speak with black and white. Analogue photography and poetry is all that I am. I hope the spectator might see beyond the lies, vanity and illusions of everyday life.”

Antoinette C.H. Antoinette C.H. studied fine art in Den Bosch and sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

She creates a world of boundless imagination, expressed through precise craftsmanship. Antoinette is passionate about the power and directness of black and white, which she makes use of to create snapshots of impossible, unknown worlds, drawn with pen on paper. www.antoinette-art.nl

Artem Korenuk The art of Artem Korenuk transmits a sense of joy and wonder at the experience of beauty, seeking out its essence in material objects.

Ranging across photographic genres, he uses varied styles in order to discover people and places.

His works are a starting point for an experience which is completed in the imagination of the viewer. www.artemkorenuk.com Instagram: @artemkorenuk

Aya Kawabata Aya Kawabata is a designer and artist from Tokyo, based in New York and Europe. Her designs are driven by her interest in colour, shadow, time, sounds and space. Aya is a winner of the New Talent Competition 2016 at DMY International Design Festival, a 2016 pinkdot Award recipient and was selected for the Brno Biennial. www.ayakawabata.com Instagram: @Aya_Kawabata_Design

Beth Charles The work of New Zealand multimedia artist Beth Charles explores abstract notions of time and place. She works intuitively, building on a mark, colour or line to develop the idea, using the most appropriate medium – print, stitch or collage – to convey her concept.

Blake Lewis Blake Lewis is an Australian photographer currently based in the UK. He utilises a variety of processes and experimental techniques – creating camera-less images that are unique, one-off prints. Variation and chance point to an array of possibilities that lead to the far reaches of the imagination.

www.bethcharles.net www.cargocollective.com/blakelewis

Boxen Co Boxen Co, formerly Myrtle and Corky, was established in early 2015 with the intent to reverse the stigma and boundaries created between artistic fields. They never seek to undermine any creative processes but rather to unify them, by forming a collection of art and artists that brings to fruition their collective and individual vision.

www.carolinemcneillmoss.com carolinemcneillmoss@gmail.com

www.boxenco.com

Chloe Obermeyer Experimenting with alternative photographic techniques is central to Chloe Obermeyer’s practice.

Fascinated by cyanotype, she uses these experiments to explore her interest in the natural world. She delves into ideas surrounding scientific discovery, the uncanny and environmental concern.

Image: Entangled, 2016. Cyanotype.

Image: Pleasure Cups, 2016. Sterling silver.

Caroline McNeill-Moss Caroline McNeill-Moss is a London-trained silversmith based in Sheffield. Using the dining table as her canvas, she designs and creates tableware which pertains to the art and science of good eating. This perspective allows her to transform familiar objects into aesthetically pleasing treasures.

Claudia Pombo This piece from Claudia Pombo depicts a desert separated in two parts by an insurmountable fissure of lava. It can also be interpreted as a standoff, a situation in which two people are incapable of communicating. www.clpombo.wordpress.com clpombo.art@gmail.com

www.chloeobermeyer.com chloeobermeyer@gmail.com

To be included in the Artists’ Directory contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or katherine@aestheticamagazine.com.

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artists’ directory

Daniela Labosova Daniela Labosova works with memory traces and silence. Of particular interest to her are environments that she couldn’t have previously encountered, and the ways in which ordinary objects can become mediums of experiences and information. Daniela collects, stores and works with such objects.

David Schofield David Schofield is an awardwinning artist and illustrator based in Edinburgh. The overarching themes within his work are the ideas of stability and safety and the idealised notions of the remote and rural. Observations of people, places and situations inspire the narratives in his oeuvre.

www.dalenalabos.tumblr.com dalena.labos@gmail.com

www.davidschofieldartist.com

Elisenda Vila Elisenda Vila is an international artist based in London and Barcelona. Her paintings depict a rich and deliberate use of colour, combining expressive gesture with realism. She is influenced by conceptual theories and neosurrealist movements. The Natural World series explores wildlife that she has encountered on her travels.

Elliott Kaufman This piece is from the Street Dance series by Elliott Kaufman.

It pulsates with the constant movement of the modern urban environment, broken down into sequential compositions. There is a staccato rhythm as these images strive to capture the dance that occurs when the space is fractured and the participants are allowed free rein within the composition. www.ekaufman.com

www.elisendavila.net

Eric Wiles Northern California artist Eric Wiles’s unique focus on fine art and landscape photography reveals dynamic images of natural beauty and man-made objects. His contemporary photographic creativity has propelled his work to exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, and the pages of various mainstream fashion and design magazines. www.ew-photo.com

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Fiona Scott-Wilson Fiona Scott-Wilson works in a diverse range of mediums. Recently, she swapped paints and brushes for a scalpel and multicoloured papers. Using a unique technique and style, her art is intricately created from many component pieces of paper and inspired by the beauty of nature and design, with an oriental influence. www.fionascottwilson.co.uk fionascottwilson6@gmail.com

Giorgos Chatzigeorgiou Giorgos Chatzigeorgiou is a graphic designer who lives and works in Greece. He combines graphic art with photography through collage and layering, with a hint of psychedelia. His work is a gateway to the subconscious via an eternal dialogue between symbols, colours and sentiments.

Igor Vitomirov Igor Vitomirov’s art is driven by a love of both nature and humanity and a fascination with the relationships between the two – notably the way in which nature can reflect emotional states. His pieces reflect an emotionally-charged atmosphere and the camera is used as a tool to record that interaction.

www.retroboxdesign.com info@retroboxdesign.com

www.vitomirov.com

Isabel Servera Isabel Servera is a Majorcan visual artist based in Barcelona. Her work is focused on mechanical actions involving repetition, accumulation and routines taken to the extreme. Servera uses different production processes and non-specialised resources, creating a dialogue between the limits of painting, art and crafts.

James Tarry James Tarry is a London-based photographer who specialises in interior/architectural photography and conceptual art pieces. His current series involves a variety of techniques, from triple exposing to using old film, corrupting the negatives and painting on prints with the intention of creating large slabs of eye-catching colour. www.jamestarryphotography.com mail@jamestarryphotography.com

www.isabelservera.com

Janis Cornelius A graduate of Chelsea College of Art and Design, Janis Cornelius paints landscapes and seascapes of the UK and Antigua. Her practice also includes portraiture of Londoners in their workplaces as well as selfportraiture. She has exhibited in New York, Amsterdam, London and Venice and is to exhibit at the Carrousel du Louvre in October. www.janiscornelius.com

Joana Pérez Joana Pérez is fascinated by light and its relation to textures and shadows. She examines the figure and volume of forms in the natural world and is particularly interested in errors and experimentation, moving away from correct technical applications. Joana says she is in awe of the power of photography because it makes that which is visible become invisible. www.joanaperezart.photoshelter.com

Jean Davis Jean Davis explores the balance between transience and stability in her paintings, represented by the coexistence of abstraction and realism in her compositions. She paints her subjects in the midst of movement, rather than from planned poses, in order to allow elements of her unconscious to contribute to the work. www.jeanzart.com

John Brooks Award-winning artist John Brooks creates photographic images which capture the spirit of both urban and rural landscapes. These are printed on archive-quality paper in a range of sizes and in limited editions. His photographs are exhibited at both regional and national galleries in the UK and galleries in Canada and the USA. www.johnbrooksphotography.co.uk www.john-brooks-art.com

Judith Grassi Judith Grassi’s paintings are vibrant and dramatic: richly coloured canvasses which portray the form, colour, texture and scale of nature.

The Flower series features closerange images on dark backgrounds which emphasise the energy and strength of the subjects. www.judithgrassi.co.uk Image: Amaryllis Bud. Acrylic on canvas.

To be included in the Artists’ Directory contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or katherine@aestheticamagazine.com.

Julian Davies Julian Davies creates abstract “imagined landscapes”, which investigate the interaction between colour and form. He specialises in relief printmaking. Julian has exhibited both in the UK and abroad, and his work is held in private collections in the UK, the USA, Canada and Japan. www.julian-davies.co.uk Image: Target Practice, 2015. Three colour reduction linocut on Japanese paper. 20cm x 15cm.

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Julie Moss Julie Moss examines the structured landscapes of forests and enclosed gardens for both their painterly and symbolic possibilities. Using the importance of an experience in the landscape as a motive and also as her subject matter, she is exploring the fluid nature of memory through oil paint. www.juliemossfineart.co.uk

Image: Static Caravan, 2016.

Oil on canvas, 153cm x 153cm.

Karen Thomas Karen Thomas is acclaimed for her pop culture figures and loosely dynamic painting style, recognisable for its thick and vivacious brushstrokes. She has shown in numerous exhibitions such as SELECT Fair, New York, Affordable Art Fair Hamburg and Berliner Liste. Karen will be showing at The Other Art Fair at Truman Brewery, London, 6-9 October. www.karen-thomas.org

Kate Whitehead Kate Whitehead specialises in weave and embroidery. Her work is a protest against the way textiles are produced in Western society.

Tired of a world in which clothes are produced and thrown away, Kate’s practice involves slower processes that embrace tradition, salvage the discarded and fix the broken.

Image: Hand-dyed and hand-embroidered apron and kimono.

www.kate-whitehead.co.uk

Liam Barr The exploration of the peculiar is at the heart of New Zealandbased Liam Barr’s practice.

Images draw reference from subjective fact to fiction and weave stories expressed with an aura of pathos combined with symbolism to impart a historical narrative that is contextualised in a contemporary fashion. www.liambarr.co.nz Instagram: liam.barr

Liliya Milpetrova Liliya Milpetrova is a London-based artist who makes self-portraits in 3D, incorporating her Jewish nose as an integral element. Living in an era, where a “hooked” nose is considered imperfection, while dysmorphophobia has become an epidemic, she deliberately practices self-irony and brings into question the importance of self-worth. www.thenoseworld.com

Loz Taylor Loz Taylor creates contemporary gambling art for those who understand odds, chance and risk.

He recently wrote Stored Images, a book which charts the story of how he became a successful sports writer and gambler, and how this led to the development of his ten-year art practice. It can be read at www.issuu.com/loztaylor www.loztaylor.com

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Laura La Wasilewska Laura La Wasilewska, an independent artist and art curator, lives and works in the USA and Poland. She creates psychological portraits of famous people (Lucian Freud, Ennio Morricone, JeanMichel Basquiat, Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Andy Warhol) based on materials such as photographs, films, sketches and letters. www.facebook.com/LAURA.LA.ART laura.wasilewska@gmail.com

Lux Eterna Lux Eterna is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the passing of time and cycles of life and death through collecting biomaterial, which she photographs and digitally manipulates. Lux maintains a Body Weather dance practice, closely connected to the natural world and its elements, and uses the impetus from this to develop video and performance-based work. www.luxeterna.tv

Margaretha Gubernale Margaretha Gubernale is an international artist who has been creating work for more than 30 years. Mainly using oils on canvas, her pictures take inspiration from nature and philosophy. www.margarethagubernale.org

Image: The Spiral of Backward- and Forwardspeed, 2016. Oil on canvas, 100cm x 100cm.

Marguerite Knight American-born Marguerite Knight is now England-based, exhibiting internationally and is included in the permanent collection of the North Dakota Museum of Art. She believes in the currency of abstract painting and brings to it a contrast between the free expression of batik, and her control of composition and colour. www.guildstudioartists.com margueriteknight@talktalk.net

Marsha Balaeva Marsha Balaeva is an artist living in Manchester. She uses a range of techniques, from hand-drawn to digital. Her work is detailed, with an emphasis on composition and often including surreal imagery. She also collaborates with indie bands such as Frog Eyes, creating award-winning videos using stop-motion photography, drawings and digital animation. www.marshabalaeva.com

Image: Neferititi, 2015. Collage and ink, 4.5in x 6.75in.

Micheline Robinson From the chaotic effects of uprooting countries to the beauty in the chaos of the dense thickets of the New Zealand bush, the contemporary work of French Canadian artist Micheline Robinson seeks to challenge perceptions and notions of beauty. She was a finalist for the NZ Art Show’s Signature Award and has work in private collections internationally. www.michelinerobinson.co.uk

Max Lawrence White Max Lawrence White is an Australia-based painter. White’s practice is centred on colour and its tendency to be inexhaustible in terms of its combinations, readings and meanings. He aims to present an unconventional experience and a challenge to how the viewer perceives colour. www.maxlawrencewhite.com

Peter Bradley Cohen Sculptor Peter Bradley Cohen works with found and industrial materials. He examines the tension and balance between geometric rigidity and organic fluidity, material weight and the impression of weightlessness. Much of his process involves improvisation and finding the perfect intersection of those elements. www.peterbradleycohen.com peter@peterbradleycohen.com

Rachel Olsen Hornaday Rachel Olsen Hornaday is a New York-based artist working in collage and printmaking. Magazines, newspapers and found images shape her visual vocabulary. Her collage intertwines the past and the present. It recuperates popular icons, inspiring new histories. Sourcing the material is as integral to the process as creating the collages. www.rachelhornaday.com rachelhornaday@gmail.com

To be included in the Artists’ Directory contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or katherine@aestheticamagazine.com.

Rebecca Humphrey Rebecca Humphrey is a contemporary photographer based in London. Her work explores the ideas of death and the intangible energies that surround us. Humphrey’s recent project Chakras looks at the transitional energy of the body after we die and is aimed to provoke the viewer’s own perspectives on mortality. www.rebecca-humphrey.com

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artists’ directory

Ritva Raitsalo Ritva Raitsalo is a London-based collagist. In images such as Layered, she reveals secret memories of cities and a hidden city beyond the city. She mixes up places and uses parts of the buildings to assemble her own vision of the existing world. The worlds and cities she creates exist only in her image, but are memories of actual urban landscapes at this moment in time. www.ritvaraitsalo.com

Sarah Elise Abramson Sarah Elise Abramson is a fine art photographer based in San Pedro, California. Her obsession with everyday surrealism and the eccentric beauty in things most people overlook extends to the found objects, vintage gypsy glam costuming, eccentric natural and man-made locations, and luminous ambiances captured in her images. www.sarahelisephotography.com Instagram: slow_toast

Sarah Luxford Sarah Luxford uses miniature scale to prompt childhood memories of innocence, aspects of ourselves that become lost as adults. Simple as these works may first appear, they send our thoughts on lost journeys, leaving unanswered questions. They try to capture experiences within a single moment, while memories last forever. www.sarahluxfordart.co.uk luxfordlala1@yahoo.co.uk

Image: Majestic, 2016. Watercolour.

Ulrike Nordquist Ulrike Nordquist is a Germanborn painter and photographer based in Sweden. Through diverse media she experiments in the realm of figurative and abstract art. She believes in the power of beauty within all creativity, and explains: “For me, art is beauty.

Beauty breeds fantasy. Fantasy opens up the Universe.” Her current focus is on Africa. www.ulrikenordquist.com

Vicki Axtens Vicki Axtens is a contemporary painter from New Zealand. She concentrates on the flora and fauna of Aotearoa, capturing the light and essence of the colours of the country in her own unique way. Each painting is carefully composed and executed with the intention of looking at the subjects in an almost abstract form, yet is detailed and realistic. www.vickiaxtens.co.nz

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Susana López F. Spanish artist Susana López F. becomes a modern day flâneur through photography. She explores how the surface of the photograph is a modern day canvas to capture the “routine’’ of daily life and transform it into something exceptional. Her mission is to catch the beauty of a city with each shot capturing unnoticed aspects of city life that we often are too busy to realise. www.susanalf.es.

Vibeke Lillefjære The paintings of Norwegian artist Vibeke Lillefjære are known for their unique colour combinations and uninhibited brushstrokes.

She paints with a sense of freedom and impulsiveness, creating contemporary art that contains an unusual sensitivity. Lillefjære calls her work Happy Art. www.atelier-eureka.com atelier-eureka@hotmail.no

Vinicius Terranova São Paulo-based artist Vinicius Terranova portrays real stories in a provocative atmosphere. He explores the line between the real and the surreal, by contrasting different symbols and cultures.

Terranova is particularly interested in the disruption of conventions of beauty and social standards. www.vterranova.com Instagram: @viniciusterranova

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Chiharu Shiota, The Key in the Hand, 2015. Japan Pavilion at the 56 th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy. Courtesy of the artist and Blain|Southern. Photo: Sunhi Mang.

last words

Chiharu Shiota Artist

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When I was painting, I felt limited by the two-dimensionality of the canvas. I started to experiment, looking at how I could operate in three dimensions. For my new work, I will be using thread that is red: a colour laden with symbolism. Using of the hue of blood echoes the interior of the body and the complex network of neural connections in the brain.

Furthermore, the interwoven strands express the connection between people. A thread can go straight between two points, but it can also tangle up – and break. Weaving together many layers, I can form a dense space, making some of my installations feel labyrinthine; however, when you enter them, your perception changes. Uncertain Journey is at Blain Southern, Berlin, until 12 November. www.blainsouthern.com.

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