The brilliant Joan Jonas represented the USA at Venice in 2015. The US pavilion galleries were filled with video installations, drawing, sculptures and props, which explore the fragility of nature, whilst taking on some of the qualities of a stage set.
“Hockney also began to experiment with theatricality, as in the 1963 paintings The Hypnotist, Two Friend and Two Curtains, Play within a Play and Closing Scene. This is often a literal theatricality, with curtains and staged spaces.” 1.
It is at the David Hockney retrospective at the Georges Pompidou, that I first got to see the painting The Hypnotist, a work made in the early stages of Hockney’s long career. A gold frame encompasses a green curtain, which marks the stage, the setting of the work. There are two male figures in the picture plane facing one another. The Hypnotist to the left of the image in furious concentration, hands raised and to the right a ruddy cheeked, blond and younger male in red. The chasm between them is transgressed by the concentration of The Hypnotist made visible in a white bodily form and lightning bolt which physically connects to the brilliant blue eyes of the youth.
Curators: Joao Ribas & Marta Moreira de Almeida 10th September – 11th December 2016
Visit: 15th October 2016
1. Helena Almeida
2. Helena Almeida Exhbition View
3. Inhabited Canvas series
4.Study For Inner Improvement 1976
5. Study for inner improvement 1977
6.Inhabited Drawings
7.Inhabited Drawing 6
8. Inhabited Drawing
9.a Planning Drawings
9.Inside Me 18 Elements
10.Seduce
Helena Almeida’s solo exhibition is presented in WIELS alongside the two floor extravaganza from Erik van Lieshout.
Both solo shows, both artists present themselves, in their imagery and content. The contrast otherwise is thought provoking. Almeida’s photographic, video and painting works are presented on stark white walls,
Modern Art Oxford, Oxford 7th November 2015 – 10th January 2016
Anne Hardy MOMA Oxford 1
Pasific Palisades faded into remote vision
Pasific Palisades.. detail
Pitch Black interior
Pitch Black view 2
Pitch Black view 3
Pitch Black a smooth echo scoop with a shelter 2015
Punctuated Remains detail
Punctuated Remains detail 2
Punctuated Remains
On entering the gallery we encounter the first work by Anne Hardy, titled Pacific Palisades faded into remote vision, 2014/15 and are given a cosmology of a studio wall space, as a digitally printed image on a wooden billboard type support. The image is of digs, scrapes and the stapled corners of pieces of coloured paper,
Nova-Sin Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic Curator: Tomas Svoboda
Objects, was curated as part of the Prague Quadrennial 2015 (18th – 23rd June 2015)
Visit: 18th June 2015
Objects
Objects video projection
Any questions as to the selection of objects on the plinth, is answered by the film, which shows us a range of theatre professionals, against a black background. Each is telling a story whilst holding and playing with a particular object. The narrative told by the custodian, is the history of the object, its significance in certain productions, how the object was found and variously the performing life of the thing, whether a poodle, a cat, a unicorn, an umbrella, a chair or flying pig. Some of the stories are read, others performed, but all speak to the significance and emotional connection to the thing, sometimes poignant and at other times humorous. The status of the thing its-self is in question.
Art Hill is a new commission by Claude Parent for the 8th Liverpool Biennial, as part of A Needle Walks into a Haystack, curated by Mai Abu ElDahab and Anthony Huberman.
Art Hill is an immersive architectural and curated space, where we as public are invited to climb ramps and slopes, lie on floors and explore relationships between actual and illusory architectural elements existing within both the gallery site and in the selected paintings curated into the space. Claude Parent has created a physical experience in which we become all too aware of our journey through the exhibition as we view works by Naum Gabo,