Originally an illiterate maid from a peasant background, the physic medium, Eusapia Palladino attained a status unimaginable to 19th century society. Attracting prominent figures such as Tsar Nicholas II and Madame Curie, she preyed on their vulnerabilities with her eerie utterances and levitating tables. Although her psychic powers were genuine, Palladino’s séances were habitually based on trickery, thereby creating a parody of her gullible participants…

Palladino is a favourite of the performance artist Chiara Fumai whose enactments reveal a medley of eccentrics contrived by swapping the narratives of historic individuals and thereby making them her own. Inspired originally by the fake identities of the New Romantic Dance Movement, Italo Disco, Fumai delights in the personas of terrorists, activists, philosophers and freaks and from here, she assumes her feminist stance within the protection of her various guises. The Book of Evil Spirits, her latest installation comprises film, collage and found objects.

Housed in vitrines, the artists’s colourless paraphernalia suggest the ghastly vibes of a funeral parlour. Here lie the props for her performance and the accoutrements of her immoral spirits; flesh coloured gloves, a blindfold, the silky beard of Annie Jones, Dope Head’s shisha pipe and the ghostly attire of Zalumma Agra. Conveyed in sign language or alphabetic codes, Fumai’s urgent message whips up a state of confusion. Her collages, a compilation of magazine clippings with faceless females, cold-blooded familiars and automatic scribblings appear to reference the misrepresentation of women within patriarchal society. Likewise, her radical feminists, symbolised by a typed list of female assassins, poisoners and thieves, prepare to construct a new ‘language’ to overthrow existing systems.
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In the film, a freak show depicts a séance in which the artist assumes the role of a medium and sits blindfolded at Palladino’s table conjuring up the dead in a hypnotic trance. Among the ghosts appears Zalumma Agra, a white Circassian beauty with an abundance of dark hair who once played a speechless act for P.T. Barnum’s circus. Performing in an Afro wig, Fumai gives Zalumma lines to mouth a feminist rant. Narrating in the background is the bearded Annie Jones, another of Barnum’s curiosities on which Fumai bestows the dignity of an Orthodox priest. Fumai’s crazy scenario causes one to reflect on another freakish spectacle disguised as the ‘medical’ documentary. A grisly show which nourishes its reality TV audience with a stream of embarrassing bodies, oversized folk and other human oddities.

Where: Waterside Contemporary, 2 Clunbury Street, London N1 6TT
When: 28 January – 23 April
Website: http://waterside-contemporary.com/

Tate Britain undertook the ambitious task of presenting a retrospective of work from arguably one of the greatest painters still alive today. Frank Auerbach, an artist whose depictions of people and landscapes near his London studio painted in a zealous style, has been compared to masters such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. This clear prestige is echoed in the opening exhibition blurb that described the work Auerbach produces as some of the ‘most resonant and inventive paintings of recent times’, reinforcing his position as an influential figure in the contemporary art world. Despite the critical acclaim, that in itself draws crowds to the Tate, curator Catherine Lampert was presented with the challenge of creating a showcase that reflected the uniqueness of each of Auerbach’s piece. As although he has continually painted the same sitters and often returns to a particular location in London, every painting is considered to have its own merits, not being attached to a series or time period.

It is this deliberate avoidance of chronological narrative that makes Auerbach such an intriguing painter in my eyes. His work turns tradition on its head, as his paintings are not grounded in a desire to achieve perfect perspective or the meticulous placement of objects as part of a pre-planned composition. Instead every painting gives a snapshot of the borough of London that has been Auerbach’s home for years, providing an insight into his world painted with a clear passion for the ever-changing landscapes. Each of his canvases ooze texture, with layer upon layer of oil paint creating thick, robust pieces, that spark a desire to reach out and touch the craggy surfaces. The ferocity of brushstrokes that create a rich consistency are not concerned with capturing a true likeness of buildings or figures in the way our own eyes perceive them, but instead projecting part of the soul of a place or person onto canvas.

The exhibition features 70 paintings and drawings, making it Auerbach’s first major show in the UK since he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 2001. Lampert sought to put the spotlight straight onto Auerbach’s distinctive work; spending little time discussing his biography and letting his paintings talk for themselves. There is no doubt that Auerbach is a master of his trade, but the real beauty lies in his sumptuous landscapes with paint seeming as if it were just about to slowly seep off the canvas before your eyes. Although you cannot take Auerbach’s work as a literal interpretation of urban scenes, as there are no distinct structures, the energy of city life is injected into his work through the depth of texture and frantic brushstrokes.
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Frank Auerbach (b 1931), Head of William Feaver 2003, Painting, Oil paint on board, 451 x 406 mm, Collection of Gina and Stuart Peterson. © Frank Auerbach, courtesy Marlborough Fine

Auerbach’s work possesses a certain resonance and majestic quality, with every piece as energetic as the last. It may be hard to believe that every painting bears no connection to another, yet when you view the vast selection of work for yourself, it is clear that each has its own charisma. I can safely say Lampert is triumphant with a truly inspiring exhibition depicting art’s reckless revolutionist at his best.

Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG
Until 13 March 2016
http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain

Sergei Eisenstein’s highly influential creations of cinematic and propaganda masterworks such as Battleship Potemkin (1925), Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944-46) are strong patriotic films about philosophical issues, social justice and revolution.

The new and intriguing exhibition at the Gallery for Russian Art and Design in London (GRAD) focuses on the unexpected aspects of Eisenstein’s work, exploring his talents not only as a film director but also as a graphic artist and media theorist, discovering the director’s work beyond his cinematic achievements. Unexpected Eisenstein looks at some of the less known facts about the ground breaking Soviet director and for the first time discusses the significance of the British culture in his career.

Curated by famous film historian Ian Christie, the exhibition brings together over sixty rare items including sketches and designs for film and theatre performances costumes, printed materials and even Eisenstein’s personal letters in English.
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British culture and Eisenstein’s relationship with England was a significant yet often neglected long-term source of the director’s interest and inspiration. In 1928 he took an official journey around Europe, U.S. and Mexico to acquire and share experience in cinema worldwide. During his six-weeks stay in London he explored British culture and gave some lectures that made a lasting impression on British Filmmakers and audiences.
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According to the exhibition catalogue, Eisenstein refused to explore London’s touristic attractions suggested by his tour guide. Instead, he asked to take him on a tram journey to see the Embankment where he completed a whole circle route. Exhibition’s audio guide called Eisenstein’s Circle is based on directors own journey around London, inviting visitors to join and follow him to explore the city together. Accompanied by Eisenstein’s voice, the guide starts inside the gallery, moving around central London. Not a typical audio guide normally offered to visitors in museums and galleries, this one is rather special, almost an imaginary soundscape.

Elena Sudakova, the director and principle curator of GRAD explained Eisenstein’s great passion for all things English: “Eisenstein’s interest in British culture began at a young age and writers such as Dickens, Conan Doyle, D.H. Lawrence and Kipling all contributed to his artistic and intellectual development. He was also greatly interested in the Elizabethan world of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Many of these sources can be detected in the drawings on display in the exhibition.”
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It is incredibly fascinating to discover a different side to renowned Soviet director, picking up on connections between cinema, theatre and literature. Looking at Eisenstein’s drawings and his correspondences with the Anglophone world we can see futuristic suggestions of Sherlock Holmes and Macbeth, as well as unfulfilled designs for his later masterworks. Unexpected Eisenstein is offering an extraordinary opportunity to learn how the great filmmaker was simultaneously thinking, theorising and creating on many levels.

3-4a Little Portland Street, W1W 7JB London  | February 17 – April 30, 2016 | www.grad-london.com

[By Oliver Roche]

LONDON

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Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art | National Gallery
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Placing Delacroix alongside contemporaries such as Courbet and Chassériau, this exhibition traces 50 years of Delacroix’s legacy, exploring the profound impact he had on generations of artists to come. A true original who, at the time of his death in 1863, was the most revered artist among the avant-garde in Paris. Drawing inspiration from British art and literature, his real and imagined travels to North Africa, and biblical scenes; every chord of human passion can be found in Delacroix’s paintings – stories of love, murder, violence, and war. Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art is a long-overdue homage to France’s leading exponent of Romanticism

Where: Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN
When: February 17 – March 22
Website: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Now on:
Mick Peter: Pyramid Selling | Drawing Room
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The Glasgow-based artist’s sculptures resemble quick hand drawn sketches, mimicking hand drawn doodles that have been cut from paper and brought into three-dimensional space. This playful installation transforms imagery derived from fiction, illustration and graphic design – Pyramid Selling immerses visitors who unwittingly become active participants in this animated environment.

Where: Unit 8 Rich Estate, 46 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SF
When: January 17 – March 13
Website: https://drawingroom.org.uk

Now on:
Dean Melbourne: This Myth | Coates & Scarry
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With his skilful handling of oil paint and gloss paint, Melbourne builds luscious surfaces, using bright colours typically off-set by deep, black tones that infer a more superstitious atmosphere. The works comprising This Myth offer new and nuanced perspectives across a range of cultural anchor points from the past and the present day, paintings that create new myths – a personal collection of tales in which we can all share.

Where: 8 Duke Street, St James’, London SW1Y 6BN
When: February 28 – March 12
Website: http://www.coatesandscarry.com

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Betty Woodman: Theatre of the Domestic | ICA
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The Institute of Contemporary Arts exhibits the first UK solo presentation of works by one of the most important contemporary artists working with ceramics today. This exhibition focuses on work Woodman has created in the last ten years, including a number of major new mixed media pieces. Throughout her career, Woodman has constantly explored new techniques and media and this conceptual boldness alongside her ambitious experimentation have generated a unique series of innovations that have, most significantly, resonated with younger generations of artists.

Where: The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
When: February 3 – April 10
Website: https://www.ica.org.uk

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Sarah Hughes: One Dozen and Zero Units | South London Gallery
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Concluding her year-long residency, ‘Embedded,’ artist and composer, Sarah Hughes, presents One Dozen and Zero Units – this exhibition presents combinations of found, adapted and hand-made objects and the grouping of traditional and contemporary materials making reference to the gallery’s historic connections to the Arts and Crafts movement and its more recent programming of contemporary art. The artistic and social concerns that connect both its founding principles and current standing in the local community are seen as components of a composition, in a manner similar to Hughes’ approach to musical performance.

Where: 65-67 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH
When: March 1 – 6
Website: http://www.southlondongallery.org

NEW YORK

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Kazuo Shiraga | Mnuchin Gallery
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Tracing the evolution of Shiraga’s signature “foot painting” method over his entire career, the exhibition will feature 20 examples spanning nearly five decades, beginning in 1959. Throwing away his brushes and rejecting his hands as too trained, Shiraga began painting with his feet, which enabled a fresh and direct mode of expression. Starting with paper or canvas laid out on the floor, the artist would deposit copious amounts of oil paint on the surface, and paint with the movements of his bare feet, sometimes hanging from the ceiling by a rope.

Where: 45 East 78 Street, New York, NY 10075
When: February 10 – April 11
Website: http://www.mnuchingallery.com

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Al Held: Black and White Paintings | Cheim & Reid
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The “B/W series” is comprised of Held’s first fully realised canvases in his new style, combining various geometric forms, arranged in multiple perspectives, but within the strict confines of a black-and-white palette. As with his earlier work, Held painted on a monumental scale and the majority of these canvases measure over nine feet tall, adding to the attractiveness of the overall simplicity in shape and colour.

Where: 547 West 25th Street NewYork, NY 10001
When: February 18 – March 26
Website: http://www.cheimread.com

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Hans Breder | Greene Naftali
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As early as 1964, Breder had documented his own artistic “interventions” placing a rectangular mirror in a riverbed and photographing the play between the real and reflected worlds. From 1969 – 1973 Breder focused on creating multiple series of works that would come to be collectively known as “Body/Sculptures”. It is these works that Danziger Gallery is presenting in a photographic context for the first time. Seen in this light, they both add to the medium’s tradition of the transfigured body as well as bridging the gap between photography and the performance and body art of the late 60s.

Where: 521 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011
When: February 29 – April 2
Website: http://www.danzigergallery.com

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Olivo Barbieri: Adriatic Sea (staged) Dancing People | Yancey Richardson
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Internationally known for site specific installations, a ten-year series investigating contemporary urban spaces, along with The Waterfall Project 2006/7, Dolomites 2010, and Alps – Geographies and People 2012, projects which investigate manʼs behavior in relation to the spectacle of nature, Barbieri has now shifted his focus to the Italian coastline of the Adriatic Sea. These series of aerial shots in this colourful environment, some with characters erased from the scene, brings the photograph into the artificial, turning this real-life scene into a surreal one.

Where: 525 West 22nd Street, New York NY 10011
When: February 4 – March 19
Website: http://www.yanceyrichardson.com

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Mika Tajima: Embody | 11R
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Featuring a new series of transparent paintings, mood light sculptures and abstract woven portraits that address the imaging of bodily activities through material forms. Tajima’s recent work invokes technologies developed to control and affect the body, focusing on techniques that shape bodily experience of space and time in a built environment where work and leisure spaces have meshed.

Where: 195 Chrystie St, New York, NY, 10002
When: February 13 – March 13
Website: http://www.11rgallery.com

Eyeliner tutorials, cocktail straws and…dreary curtain linings – three emerging artists Marie Lund, Rallou Panagiotou and Mary Ramsden offer their perceptive and often comic observations on the vanilla of everyday objects. A selection of new and recent minimalist works in painting and sculpture, Vanilla and Concrete is part of the Tate’s ongoing Art Now series.

Marie Lund delights in our impact on materials, objects and their previous uses. At first sight, Lund’s bloated rucksacks gorged with concrete appear as morbid and cadaverized offerings lacking the emotion conveyed by Ron Mueck’s Dead Dad. On a lighter note, they recall the portable home of the proverbial human tortoise. Turning unmindfully to alight the Tube, it whacks a hapless commuter for six. Lund’s burdensome bags also personify the rucksack as the all too familiar selfish itinerant who hogs a vacant seat.

Rallou Panagiotou ponders the commodity value of the everyday object. In Outdoor Shower Cameo Blue, the artist swaps Les Grandes Baineuses for ‘lively’ Mykonos. Revamped with a lick of car paint, the familiar seaside object reclines provocatively on its side. The small luxuries in life are emphasized by My Toe which changes the conventional notion of the luxury as an item of extravagance. Clear-cut and compact in grey marble and acid yellow lacquer, it defines nail polish as the essence of modest luxuries. The snappy logo style alludes to the coercion of brands forcing us to constantly update these modest luxuries for new.
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Mary Ramsden’s work concerns the significance of painting within the virtual world. Her work, *hurls not girls references the relationship between digital technology and human intervention. Ramsden’s painterly strokes denote the ‘finger smudges’ left after scrolling the silky smooth screens of tablets or cell phones. Her orderly layered squares suggest the process of remediation represented by multiple screen windows directing the user’s gaze to the ambiguity of ‘no space’. The dirtiest selfie at 50pt (part1) comprises a fluted form in Memphis pink, its grubby countenance played out by two black acrylic sweeps. Ramsden’s selfie is a cheeky ‘celebrity self’ at variance with the subject’s true persona.
Classy, elegant and cordoned off, Mary Lund’s sculpture Raising the Vessel, appears at odds with the rest of the objects, but its perceived status disguises one of the most obvious of materials, copper, a component of the everyday pipe, coin and electrical cable.

Where: Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
When: 9 November 2015 – 19 June 2016
Website: www.tate.org.uk

Colour technology was considered a cheapening threat to formalism in the 1950’s when everyone was mainly using black and white photography. As a leading pioneer of colour photography, Saul Leiter was highly criticised for going against the documentary and art traditions of the day and did not receive due recognition until later in his life. Famous depression era photographers like Walker Evans and even MOMA shared the prejudice that colour photography is vulgar and unfashionable. In 1992 Jane Livingstone, chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, included Leiter in her book The New York School: Photographs 1936-1963, which finally gave his work some acceptance.
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Leiter’s retrospective at the Photographers’ Gallery is the first major solo exhibition in the UK and a belated but much needed celebration of his work.

Featuring over 100 photographs, a small representation of paintings and sketchbooks, the exhibition also holds a selection of Leiter’s commercial works for famous fashion magazines like British Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle. The display opens with Leiter’s early black and white images from the 1940-s and 50s, continuing to his paintings and concluding with the radiance of his later colour photography. The photographs have been hung in lines really close to each other creating a cosy, poetic atmosphere. It feels like the peacefulness of the gallery space fits perfectly with his works.

The wonderful fusion of street photography, fashion and architecture is so relevant even today that it reminds me of someone’s beautiful and artistic instagram. Leiter spent over 60 years living in New York capturing movement of the city in accidental, fleeting moments. There is a poetic juxtaposition between chaotic energy of New York and Leiter’s dreamy, soft-focused images. It’s important to note that photos also provide a delightful window into the fashion and architecture of New York City in 1950’s.
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Most of Leiter’s images are not bright and vivid but more of a soft and muted combination of dull brown, red and yellow hues. Even the fashion shots for glossy magazines are not hyper-defined, but airy and subtle, creating a distinct and unique style of photography – perfect antidote to overly glamorised pictures.

Using Leika and Kodachrome colour slide film Leiter deliberately distorted the reality of his images, muting colours in the process to bring an abstract painter’s sensibility to the medium of colour photography. “I like it when one is not certain what one sees. When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion,” he explained.

The absence of clarity and the reduction of depth is Leiter’s masterful technique to capture such simple subjects such as shop windows, passers-by, cars and signs in a delicate and romantic way where figures become ambiguous forms maintaining beautiful colours.

The Photographers Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies St, W1F 7LW London | 22 January – 3 April, 2016 | http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk

LONDON

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Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen | Serpentine Gallery

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Knightsbridge’s Serpentine Galleries displays a body of work by the Swedish painter, Hilma af Klint. Drawing in the most part from The Paintings for the Temple series (1906–15), af Klint’s work from this period is in the most part influenced by science and religion, specifically ideas surrounding harmonies between the spiritual and the real. Surreal environments, geometric shapes and bold colours that do seem to give off a strange sense of familiarity despite being, apparently, illogical. These are examples of some of the earliest expressions of abstract art as we know it today, alongside those of Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich.

Where: Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA
When: 3 March – 15 May
Website: http://www.serpentinegalleries.org

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Champagne Life | Saatchi Gallery

﷯Despite taking its name from a painting featuring Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, Champagne Life features a range of paintings and sculptures from an all-female lineup of emerging international artists. Looking past the Pommery champagne sponsorship, this exhibition tells a far more accurate story about serious artists developing imagery and ideas. Favourites include Stephanie Quayle’s Two Cows and the colossal bobbin of copper thread in Alice Anderson’s sculpture Bound.

Where: Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, London SW3 4RY
When: 13 January – 9 March
Website: http://www.saatchigallery.com

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Intellectual Barbarians: The Kibbo Kift Kindred | Whitechapel Gallery
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The Whitechapel Gallery is currently exhibiting a small collection of images and artefacts associated with the Kibbo Kift Kindred movement, an active organisation in ’20s and ’30s Britain that combined the anti-industrialist sentiments of the nineteenth-century Luddites and an appreciation of nature and handicraft. The remarkable aesthetic the group assumed is on display in the form of colourful tabards and banners alongside hand carved totems and staffs – all greatly influenced by Egyptian, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Native American cultures.

Where: 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX
When: 10 October – 13 March
Website: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org

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Painting Norway: Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928) | Dulwich Picture Gallery
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Regardless of being one of Norway’s most popular and important artists, Nikolai Astrup is overshadowed by the more melancholy and more stereotypically Nordic, Edvard Munch. In the artists first major UK show, the Dulwich Picture Gallery displays a collection of over 90 oil paintings and prints, including works from private collections never exhibited before. Astrup’s work transforms the rugged Norwegian landscape into a mythical, living entity. Exploring the luscious, colourful paintings and radical innovation in printmaking that defined the Norwegian artist’s career.

Where: Gallery Road, London, SE21 7AD
When: 5 February – 15 May
Website: http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

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Mark Wallinger: ID | Hauser & Wirth
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The Turner Prize-winning artist is exhibiting across both of Hauser & Wirth’s Savile Row spaces. Developed around Freudian ideas of the subconscious being divided into id, ego and superego, the show features new paintings and mixed-media works that encourage a contemplation of the self within a society in which behaviour and personal identity come under increasingly closer scrutiny. The loosely figurative and chaotic, rorschach-esque paintings are particularly grabbing. The mad, explosive but also melancholy scenes go along way in describing different peoples experiences with the self.

Where: 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET
When: 26 Feb – 7 May
Website: http://www.hauserwirth.com

NEW YORK

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Munch and Expressionism | Neue Galerie

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Neue Galerie looks back at Edvard Munch’s impact on Expressionism and it’s impact on Munch. With the remarkable The Scream (1985) on display beside Puberty (1914–16) and Madonna (1895/1912–13) as well as pieces by German and Austrian contemporaries—Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Egon Schiele, you’ll kick yourself for missing out.

Where: 1048 Fifth Avenue (at 86th Street), New York, NY 10028
When: February 18 – June 13
Website: http://neuegalerie.org

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Jack Early | Fergus McCaffrey

﷯Having done it all as a grown up, it’s natural that the iconic New York pop-artist, Jack Early’s latest work should turn to his childhood. The artist’s memories of childhood are recalled here in bright, punchy paintings and sculptures, however, brought into the mature, Early blends the sexual and suggestive with unsubtly phallic popsicles and vintage porn scenes.

Where: 514 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
When: February 18 – April 9
Website: http://fergusmccaffrey.com

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Helen Marten: Eucalyptus, Let us in | Greene Naftali

﷯The Chelsea based gallery is currently exhibiting a complex array of large wall-mounted mixed-media panels and rambling sculptural installations by fast-rising British star Helen Marten. As a dedicated maximalist for instance, Marten incorporates fur, rope, silk, sequins, rubber, ceramics and a dozen other ingredients in a hectic mix of function and uselessness. Despite the incongruity and unpredictability, it stops short of being outlandish, but is on the other hand more about the transition from one part to the next, rather than the individual meanings of each object.

Where: 9508 W 26th St, ground and eighth floors, New York
When: February 23 – February 25
Website: http://greenenaftaligallery.com

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Günther Schützenhöfer: As I See It | Ricco Maresca Gallery

﷯As a long-term patient in various psychiatric institutions, Günther Schützenhöfer was encouraged to explore art as a form of therapy and with reference to the title, the Austrian artist’s depictions of everyday things in scribbled graphite patches with the occasional dash of coloured pencil truly display a character within themselves. The drawings come across as from an extremely unique perspective, made apparent with the portrayal of benign objects and this gives the exhibition a nuance of a wider look into the experiences of Günther Schützenhöfer and how these interplay with his works.

Where: 529 W 20th St third floor, New York
When: 22 January – 5 March
Website: http://www.riccomaresca.com

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Richard Aldrich: Time Stopped, Time Started | Gladstone Gallery

﷯Aldrich’s paintings are layered with the process of their own creation as well as the inspiration of everyday life and experiences and like memory itself, his pieces often seem incomplete or evanescent. Photos and odds bits of collage and objects are tossed into pieces that straddle the line between abstraction and representation. Stunning!

Where: C515 W 24th St, New York
When: 29 January – 5 March
Website: http://gladstonegallery.com

The subject of waste invokes a plethora of issues. Rubbish disposal at landfill sites or its potential for recycling immediately springs to mind but we might also think about the tragedy of India’s waste pickers or the dumping of radioactive waste in Germany’s salt mines. Occasionally, waste surfaces in an art gallery. So what makes ‘curated’ waste so appealing? We might marvel at Dirty White Trash and its canny shadow created by Tim Noble and Sue Webster or debate about the impact of brands on developing countries via David Poston’s Coca Cola Cross. The associations connected with rubbish manifest differently once recycled as a medium for art and displayed away from the gallery space. This is why the bedazzling and titanic tapestries of El Anatsui, a Nigerian artist from Nsukka, are so thought- provoking. Constructed painstakingly from a myriad of metallic beer bottle tops and labels tied together with copper wire, they elevate their humble origins to a truly majestic level.

El Anatsui is concerned with constructing physically attractive forms but also those that are meaningful. His impressive work, Tsiatsia draped casually over the RA façade like a chic throw jazzing up a pre-loved sofa, displayed bottle top aluminium for what it has become; a humble throwaway item littering the landscape. In this way, we can consider the versatility of the material and also its wider implication as an item of waste on a grand scale. Once El Anatsui’s tapestries are viewed within the aura of a gallery space, the materials of these magnificent art pieces become stripped of their original associations.

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However, El Anatsui’s current exhibition at the October gallery draws the spectator closer, enabling him or her to admire the many inventive ways the artist has manipulated his medium. Five shimmering tapestries billow out from the gallery walls bearing their own individual characters or ‘stories’, each invisibly pinned in an arbitrary fashion. Preferring the interest value afforded by an indefinite outcome, El Anatsui leaves the instalment of his work at the discretion of the curator. These works differ from the graceful swathes of Gli, exhibited at the Brooklyn Gallery in 2013. Gli’s elegant crochet effect appears sporadically in Dzi II but the delicacy and transparency of this particular structure is lost owing to the gallery wall’s proximity. Warrior suggests a military precision; its darker hues and elongated segments forcing it to hang in a more structured manner. Focus, one of the most innovative by design, samples numerous techniques including the intricate pleating and shaping of aluminium into a cluster of crescents. Shiny pin wheels, silvery squares and polished rings all vie for position here, either as luminescent clumps of colour or spontaneous ensembles, creating an extraordinary visual feast the eyes.

Where: October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AL
When: 4 February – 2 April
Website: http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/

Long has art been a medium that provides a space to challenge, stimulate and excite the imagination, whilst exploring social tensions. The Wellcome Collection seeks to bridge the gap between scientific thought and creativity, curating exhibitions that spark curiosity. The work displayed is a mix of historic artefacts and contemporary artwork, charting the connection between medicine, life and art.

The reception area is a hive of activity, creating a lively atmosphere that sets the scene for a thought-provoking collection of exhibitions. As part of a changing series of installations States of Mind: Tracing the Edge of Consciousness seeks to examine the human consciousness displaying a variety of perspectives from artists, neuroscientists, philosophers and psychologists. On paper the exhibition is an interesting concept, showing how art can be used to respond to complex scientific ideas. It also provides further evidence to support the growing popularity in using the arts as a supplementary treatment to help boost wellbeing as a result of the unrestricted expression it allows. On entering the glass display cabinets were a static, underwhelming opening with the balance very much favouring scientific material. As with every exhibition visual impact and making a lasting impression is an important factor, but despite the enlightening supporting information I could not help being disappointed by the lack of variety. I was excited by the prospect of a broad range of intellectually stimulating pieces with the nature of the human consciousness being characteristically complex and expansive, yet there was no real diversity.

A defining feature was Clara MacKinnon’s video installation ‘Squeezed by Shadows’ created in 2013 as part of ‘The Sleep Paralysis Project’. The large marbled cylinder created a welcomed spark of interest, as I peered through the tiny eyeholes to witness a disturbing but strangely hypnotic film. The piece, repurposed for States of Mind, recounts the surreal hallucinations people with sleep paralysis experience in a kaleidoscopic series of black and white images. As I stood engrossed in the video there was a real sense of the entrapment sleep paralysis creates as sufferers wake trapped in a dreamlike state, as I myself began to feel a heaviness weighing down upon my chest.
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The promise of the Wellcome Collection being ‘a destination for the incurably curious’ in my eyes falls short with States of Mind as I was left feeling underwhelmed. The mind is such a rich plethora of thoughts and complex ideas that can be hard to comprehend. The potential for a dynamic exhibition exploring consciousness and the process of thought was there, however the at times dry medically orientated pieces outweighed installations such as MacKinnon, failing to present anything new.

Located 183 Euston Rd, London, NW1 2BE
Until 16 October 2016
https://wellcomecollection.org

Damien Hirst’s Newport Street gallery in south London is the fulfillment of his long time aspiration to showcase his very own art collection of over 30,000 works known as the Murderme Collection. A terrific 37,000 sq ft White Cube-style space was converted from scenery-painting studios with towering ceilings and lofty skylight.

The inaugural exhibition is celebrating British artist John Hoyland, presenting over 30 large-scale paintings drawn from Hirst’s art collection. Power Stations is a first major exhibition devoted to John Hoyland since a retrospective of his work at Tate St Ives in 2006. The impressive selection of artist’s expansive abstract works, dating from 1964 to 1982, is proudly displayed throughout all six of the gallery’s pure white spaces. Geometric forms, sometimes heavily textured, are spread across vast fields of fluctuating colours. The exhibition is arranged somewhat chronologically, taking the viewer from the large colour-field works of the 1960s, to the more spatially complex paintings of the early 1980s.
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John Hoyland may be one of Britain’s leading abstract painters, as the exhibition catalogue reads, but he was also provocatively unfashionable and outdated. Strongly influenced by American Abstract Expressionism in the late 1950s, it seems he was simply imitating the works of his friends and acclaimed American artists of the time including Mark Rothko, Barnet Newman and Robert Motherwell.

The Power Stations exhibition is revisiting Hirst’s roots as a curator, a role that helped launch his career in 1988 when he organised the famous Freeze exhibition in London. On the choice of Hoyland for Newport Street’s first exhibition, Hirst plainly commented: “The space will set the paintings off brilliantly and the paintings will set the space off brilliantly.” The gallery’s space is indeed fantastic and a perfect setting for large paintings but unfortunately there is nothing striking about Hoyland’s works apart from the fact that they are trying to recall Rothko. The question is: why would a famous artist invest in something so ordinary?
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Tim Marlow, artistic director at the Royal Academy of Arts, is addressing this in his interview with Hirst, mentioning that John Hoyland is not the most popular painter of the contemporary British art world. It is quite a surprise to discover that Hirst has been an admirer of Hoyland’s work since he first encountered it in Leeds Art Gallery as a student. “John Hoyland is an artist who was never afraid to push the boundaries. His paintings always feel like a massive celebration of life to me,” Hirst explains without hesitation. Is his choice for the first gallery’s exhibition a genuine admiration or just another provocative move?
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When: 8 October 2015 – 3 April 2016, Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 6pm
Where: Newport Street Gallery, SE11 6AJ
Website: www.newportstreetgallery.com

As a generation of screen junkies we have experienced first hand the unstoppable growth of the Internet. Contemporary society has become one big dump of data, a digital-driven civilisation that is constantly sharing, liking, downloading and scrolling their way through each day. But with every tweet or Facebook post our digital footprint spreads further, as technology continues to embed itself into everyday life.

As part of Somerset House’s commitment to remaining an influential creative hub in the heart of London, Big Bang Data is an exhibition that charts the impact of the rapidly expanding online culture. From the sheer beauty of data to the looming threat of 24-hour surveillance and cyber terrorism, Big Bang Data visualises the history of data and how it has transformed everyday life.

On entering the exhibition, the greeting low hum of generators and dim lighting set the scene for a technologically rich display. As you venture further into the exhibition you find yourself stumbling into a pitch-black room, suddenly faced with the hypnotic work of Ryoji Ikeda. A Japanese visual artist who feeds on bewilderment, with large-scale audio-video installations that present sound in raw states alongside graphics constructed with mathematical precision. My gaze became instantly transfixed by the ebb and flow of the dust like particles, as I gradually found myself drawn in momentarily stuck in a state of hypnosis.

Moving fluidly through the history of data, but at times sticking too rigidly to a structured approach with defined sections and walls of text. The most intriguing work lay in the latter part of the exhibition, which confronted the more sinister undertones of the Internet. Abruptly reminding us of the criminal activity that has begun to seep out of the dark web, threatening to tarnish digital society.

The visually provocative project ‘Facial Weaponization Suite’ by Zach Blas presented a gothic representation of the growing net that government surveillance is throwing over our Internet freedom. Blas’s work was one of the most interesting series on display, with the visually assaulting metal masks appearing as if designed to be part of a brutal form of torture. The materialisation of surveillance taps into our fear of the Internet, which still very much remains uncharted territory. Not only does Blas distort the familiarity of the human form with the cage-like objects but works to unsettle and empower you in his protest against the oppressive ‘all-seeing’ eye.

It is hard to shake the feeling that you are being watched as you are confronted with the extent of the reach of technology. Despite the flourishes of colour from the playful use of data to create beautifully vivid pieces, there is a lingering darkness fuelled by Blas’s dystopian work. Data remembers everything but will it ever forget us?

Located Somerset House.
Strand, London, WC2R 1LA
Until 20 March 2016

The work of American artist and pioneer of kinetic sculpture Alexander Calder, shown at Tate Modern, is playful, poetic and refreshing. Using motion and balance, Calder gave joyful three-dimensional life to the abstract shapes pioneered by his fellow modernist artists Joan Miró, Fernand Léger and Piet Mondrian. While Calder’s work was suggested too playful to be taken seriously by some critics, this exhibition reveals how he combined movement, choreography and sound to fundamentally transform the principles of modern sculpture. “He came from this very serious avant-garde background,” explains exhibition curator Ann Coxon. “What he was doing was ground breaking; he was a pioneer of his time.” Bringing together a selection of over a hundred works from the early 1930s to 1961, the show celebrates Calder as an artist who revolutionised sculpture, proving that art should not remain static.

The show is chronological and opens with whimsical wire sculptures from the 1920s that Calder used in performances he called the Cirque Calder. Three-dimensional line drawings include dancers and acrobats, as well as caricatures of his fellow artists and friends Joan Miró and Fernand Léger. The artist was deeply interested in the increasingly popular circus and set up his own miniature circus of animals in wood and wire while living in Paris in the mid 1920s. It was originally just for pleasure but quickly became more popular, drawing attention from the city’s avant-garde, including Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian and Jean Cocteau, who were among the first audiences.
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The exhibition continues Calder’s experiments with motorised dynamic sculptures, which he started developing in 1931 after his visit to Mondrian’s studio that converted him to abstraction. Colourful spheres and discs attached to wood and wire look like three-dimensional versions of Miró’s surrealist paintings. With disappointment, they have been frozen still for the exhibition and can only be seen functioning in videos, for reasons of fragility.

One of the highlights is the Two Acrobats sculpture that has been reassembled especially for the Tate Modern exhibition. The original work, displaying a male performer and a female acrobat, was damaged in its first showing in 1929 and the two figures were separated for more than eight decades before being reunited again as a complete mobile sculpture. A demonstration of the musical sequence however is only shown in a short video footage and cannot be experienced live.
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By 1932 Calder abandoned the mechanical in favour of organic movement. His sculptures started to move by chance and air in random motion. “Calder’s art is the sublimation of a tree in the wind,” said Marcel Duchamp, who also gave the name “mobile” to describe Calder’s moving sculptures.

The final rooms reach a majestic crescendo bringing together sixteen mobile sculptures in primary colours that are held in elegant balance. Calder’s monumental Black Widow is proudly displayed in a separate room. The four meter tall piece is on loan for the first time since Calder donated the sculpture to the Institute of Architects in Brazil, where it has hung drifting in the lobby since 1948.
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Model of Alexander Calder Mobile by Matt Granick
Calder’s last retrospective was held in 1943 at the Whitney Museum in New York. Tate Modern’s exhibition brings together major works from museums around the world, as well as showcasing Calder’s collaborative projects in various fields such as film, theatre, music and dance. Curator Ann Coxon is suggesting that the childlike implication of Calder’s work has impacted the public impression: “I think Calder tends to be one of those artists people accept, or think they know. He saw sculpture as something that could move — that could perform.”

Performing Sculpture exhibition is a refreshing change to static canvas shows, offering the viewers an airy lightness of Calder’s originality. It’s incredibly calming to watch wonderful sculptures come to life and throwing shadows in their gentle movement.

“To most people who look at a mobile, it’s no more than a series of flat objects that move”, Alexander Calder once said. “To a few, though, it may be poetry.”

Tate Modern, Bankside
London SE1 9TG
11 November 2015 – 3 April 2016
www.tate.org.uk

LONDON

Now on:
Mario Cravo Neto: A Serene Expectation of Light | Autograph ABP | Rivington Place

Shoreditch visual arts centre, Rivington Place, are currently hosting the influential Brazilian photographer’s debut solo exhibition in the UK. A Serene Expectation of Light includes twenty, large-scale black and white studio portraits from The Eternal Now series produced during the 1980s and 1990s, focusing a on a small religion local to his native region of Bahia, once a hub of the West-African slave-trade. Alongside this are twenty colour prints from the Laróyè series produced in the 2000s, before his unfortunate death in 2009. Trained as a sculptor, Mario Cravo Neto’s trade permeates through his work, using light to create strong contrasts.

Where: Rivington Place, London EC2A 3BA
When: 15 January – 2 April
Website: autograph-abp.co.uk

Now on:
Avedon Warhol | Gagosian Gallery
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The Gagosian Gallery in Kings Cross are exhibiting a unique, dual presentation of works by iconic American post-war artists Richard Alvedon and Andy Warhol. Centring on portraiture and depicting many of the same faces – Marella Agnelli, Bianca Jagger, Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, they used celebrities to draw attention to certain characteristics about culture changes over time. Highlights include Avedon’s Brandenburg Gate portfolio, capturing the moments during the fall of the Berlin Wall and Mao, Warhol’s oversized portrait of the North Korean leader.

Where: 6-24 Britannia Street, London WC1X 9JD
When: 9 Feb – 23 Apr
Website: www.gagosian.com

Now on:
Chillida: Rhythm-Time-Silence | Ordovas
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Savile Row based gallery Ordovas are currently exhibiting sculptures by Eduardo Chillida, the prominent and internationally acclaimed Spanish artist and designer of an extraordinary portfolio, stretching half a century . Eight monumental works on view reflect the intimate and universal themes that characterized Chillida’s vision, a central figure in European post-war sculpture. His works, although massive and monumental, suggest movement and tension inspired by the difficulties during his upbringing in the Basque region of Spain.

Where: 25 Savile Row, London W1S 2ER
When: 09 February – 23 April
Website: www.ordovasart.com
Now on:
Tell It Slant | Frith Street Gallery
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Tell It Slant is an eclectic grouping of works to explore ideas about abstract drawing where line and a sense of structure are fundamental, using examples from artists working in cosmopolitan cities but also in more peripheral places, with not only line and paper but a variety of materials, including found objects, and some who transcend the page entirely. Featuring pieces from throughout the 20th century from artists including Polly Apfelbaum, Zebedee Armstrong, Massimo Bartolini, Hector Alonzo Benavides, Julius Bockelt and Louise Bourgeois.

Where: Frith Street Gallery, 17–18 Golden Square, London W1F 9JJ
When: 12 February 2016 – 29 April 2016
Website: www.frithstreetgallery.com

Now on:
Mariele Neudecker: Plastic Vanitas | The Nunnery
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Mariele Neudecker’s photographs of plastic fruit, drinks bottles and other insignificant objects, all collected during her residency at the Museum of Design in Plastics, are framed in the 18th century German style of still-life painting, vanitas. Using the powerful genre of vanitas to re-stage each object, subtly altering the viewers perception, Neudecker uses the style as a parallel, to make statements on topics such as modern consumerism, the environment, waste and sustainability.

Where: The Nunnery, 181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ
When: 15 Jan – 27 March
Website: bowarts.org

NEW YORK

Now on:
Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934–1954 | Museum of Modern Art
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The Museum of Modern Art has resurfaced a variety of Pollocks work to tell the story of his progression and shifts in direction as an artist. From his loose abstractions that he is most famous for, to his early figurative pieces, pieced together are 50 works – paintings, drawings and prints, within which hangs Pollock’s One: Number 31, 1950 (1950). Widely considered his masterpiece and largest canvas, although rare and little-known engravings, lithographs, screenprints, and drawings are also included and offer an insight into a less publicised side of the artist.

Where: Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019
When: January 15 – March 13
Website: www.moma.org

Now on:
Laura Poitras: Astro Noise | Whitney Museum of American Art
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The director of Citizenfour, the winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras is making her museum debut with an interactive installation. As you might expect, it is focused on the serious issues raised with regards to surveillance and the secession of privacy and rights, Guantanamo Bay, the war on terror and the U.S drone program. The installations incorporate documentary footage, architectural interventions, primary documents, and narrative structures to invite viewers to interact with the material in intimate and direct ways.

Where: Whitney Museum of Art, 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014
When: until May 1st
Website: whitney.org

Now on:
Monique Mouton: More Near | Bridget Donahue
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The local artist exhibits engaging, washy, abstract compositions on paper and wood. Mouton’s works have a pictorial semblance, masses of colour, floating points and rigid margins hosting excesses of fingerprints and errant pencil lines – no symbolism, but what someone could imagine as scenes of different moments or thoughts.

Where: Bridget Donahue, 99 Bowery, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10002
When: January 23 – March 20
Website: www.bridgetdonahue.nyc
Now on:
Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibon: Forgetting the Hand | David Zwirner﷯

Dzama and Pettibon pay homage to the exquisite corpse game, the game originated by the Surrealists that every school kid is familiar with, of which the results are inevitably rude and bizarre. By taking turns to finish different parts of individual paintings, the two of attitudinal art’s finest draftsmen naturally come up with some pretty intriguing scenarios.

Where: David Zwirner, 533 W 19th St, New York
When: 9 February – 20 February
Website: www.davidzwirner.com

Now on:
Izumi Kato | Galerie Perrotin
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Lenox Hill’s Galerie Perrotin showcases Izumi Kato’s anime-style paintings and sculptures. Like Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami, Kato uses the fantastical and overtly spirit focused Japanese subculture but the combinations of the mysterious and curious have echoes of Picasso, Constantin Brâncusi and Paul Klee, albeit through a recent medium, they still draw attention to the cusp of reality and dream-like states.

Where: 909 Madison Avenue & 73rd Street, Upper East Side, New York, NY 10021
When: 7 January – 27 February
Website: www.perrotin.com

The work of Saya Kubota concerns memory and physical traces of the past existing in time and space. Her solo exhibition presents mixed media, montage and abandoned objects which are reworked through the application of fractal stones, gold leaf, paint and modern materials. The artist considers what her found objects might have seen had they existed longer. Although objects may be altered or even lost, it is their material existence or traces that she believes remains. Flowing like a river, objects become temporal by nature of their materials. Kubota appears to contrast this temporality with the idea of permanence, thereby informing her choice of historical and quasi-religious references.

Central to the space, a bejewelled relic sits on a circular mirror like a precious vestige from a lost kingdom. Its tiny reflection on an expanse of water, it invites the viewer to liberate the mind. Below the glass, shimmering with modern marcasite, an ancient earthenware vessel signifies Man as the conveyor of stories and recollections. An antique oil painting, its gaudy colours framed like a sentimental souvenir hangs conventionally above the mantelpiece. One half is repainted brighter as a mirror image: the intensity of the subject’s gown illuminating the past. Situated within the familial centrality of the hearth lie Kubota’s gilded binoculars, their compound eyes fixated, watching memories unfold. In other spaces, ecclesiastical references, suggestive of saints’ individual stories, signify a notion of permanence. Their faces either overlaid, backlit or iconised and embellished with marcasite or a string of pearls. Two portraits, spliced and staggered appear to recall shared memories. Maybe a triptych with a third, invisible character: a physical image misplaced and now confined to the imagination.
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Once memories become messages, they can remain afloat via Kubota’s project, the Missing Post Office. Originally sited on the island of Awashima, it was managed by especially appointed postmasters whose uniforms are currently displayed as relics. Suspended in time and space, the postcards were never sent; a collection of private admissions, promises and missed opportunities, they now lie waiting in the gallery for others to interpret. A child’s school desk, complete with a hole for an inkwell, invites the visitor to leave his own response. Hand-written and stamped, the postcards appear as novelties alongside the photographs of the island post office, its film footage and a scattering of pink shells.

Saya Kuboto is a research candidate for Tokyo University of the Arts and also, an artist in residence at City & Guilds of London Art School. She was awarded the Terada Art Award in 2014.
Material Witness is curated by Eiko Honda.

20 January – 22 February
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
13/14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle)
London NW1 4QP

LONDON

Now on:
Marie Jeschke: Can’t Remember Always Always| l’étrangère
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East London’s gallery l’étrangère hosts the Berlin-based artists first ever solo exhibition, Can’t Remember Always Always. Here Jeschke combines site-specific installations and photography to create an immersive and multifarious environment exploring ideas of memory and archiving. Warping and distorting personal images and photographs, such as the 40 year old collection of her biologist Grandfather’s archival pictures, Jeschke invites you to think about the relationships between object ontology, memory and identity.

Where: l’étrangère, 44a Charlotte Road, London, EC2A 3PD
When: 29 January – 5 March
Website: www.letrangere.net
Now on:
Frank Auerbach | Tate Britain
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A retrospective of works by this iconic artist that needs little introduction, Auerbach’s deeply stylised, brilliantly bold and resonant paintings are on display in Pimlico’s Tate Britain. Auerbach was known to spend months and even years on one painting, continuously returning to the same subjects and the urban landscape surrounding his Camden Town flat. A chance to see works described as revolutionary as those of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

Where: Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG
When: 9 October – 13 March
Website: www.tate.org.uk
Now on:
Chantal Joffe | Victoria Miro
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Londoner Chantal Joffe exhibits new work at Mayfair’s Victoria Miro gallery.
Addressing preconceptions of self-disclosure and intimacy in the making of work, Joffe places acclaimed writers alongside personal friends and family members. Drawing from people met in the flesh and on the page, the artist practices painting and drawing as a loving collection of subjects. A must see.

Where: Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London, N1 7RW
When: 22 January – 24 March
Website: www.victoria-miro.com
Now on:
Sergej Jensen: Moneybags | White Cube Bermondsey
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For over a decade New York based artist Sergej Jensen has used canvas bank bags, sewn together to form geometric patterns on his paintings. The aptly named Moneybags is Jensen’s first exhibition dedicated to this concept, merged into simple grids, Jensen uses the uniformity and natural wear and tear of the bags as a basic material, often discarding the use of paint to draw the observers attention to the subtle differences in shade, size and texture.

Where: White Cube Bermondsey, 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3TQ
When: 3 February – 17 April
Website: www.whitecube.com
Now on:
Gabo’s Monoprints: A Family Collection | Alan Cristea Gallery
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An exhibition of over 30 rare woodblock monoprints from the personal collection of Russian artist Naum Gabo’s daughter, Nina Williams, including Gabo’s first print. As a pioneer of constructivism, Gabo’s prints reflect the same movement and sense of space that you find in his sculptures and kinetic art. A romantic coalescing of personal history and the innate beauty of his works.

Where: The Alan Cristea Gallery, 31 Cork St, London W1S 3NU
When: 4 February – 12 March
Website: www.alancristea.com
NEW YORK

Now on:
Sharon Butler | Theodre:Art
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The renowned blogger and artist from the U.S exhibits new work described by herself as the culmination of finally arriving in a permanent work space after years of unsettled drifting between different residencies and studios. Expect abstract, heavy use of colour and brushwork masquerading subtle imagery. On display for a short time only, catch it while you still can.

Where: Theodore:Art, 56 Bogart St, Brooklyn
When: January 8 – 14 February
Website: www.theodoreart.com
Now on:
Jonathan Lasker | Cheim & Reid
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The New York based artist returns to Cheim & Reid, exhibiting recent work alongside a variety of black and white drawings. Accredited as one of the artists to reinvent abstraction in the 1980s, Lasker’s latest continues to focus on ways in which paintings are constructed and perceived. The artist himself describes his careful arrangement of abstracted elements as an invitation to “make the viewer see him or herself in the act of viewing” and ponder “how we construct a picture in our mind.”

Where: Cheim & Reid, 547 W 25th St, New York 10001
When: January 7 – 13 February
Website: www.cheimread.com
Now on:
Hiroki Tsukuda: Enter the O | Petzel Gallery
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In his U.S gallery debut, Petzel Gallery exhibits Japanese artist Hiroki Tsukuda’s works on paper, sculpture and installation. Tsukuda draws his inspiration from his imaginings during his youth on Shikoku Island – with a deep influence from science-fiction, the artist has created his own futuristic, dystopian, mechanical and non-sensical worlds. A personal favourite.

Where: Petzel Gallery, 456 W 18th Street, New York 10011
When: 14 January – 20 February
Website: www.petzel.com
Now on:
Moira Dryer | 11R
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A collection of abstract paintings on wood panel aside a selection of never before exhibited water colours, collages and gouaches from the late Canadian artist between 1985 and 1992, the year of her death from cancer. Dryer largely rejected typical trends of the time such as Neo-Expressionism and Appropriation Art, opting for a softer, nuanced take on abstraction. Now in it’s final week of viewing.

Where: 11R Gallery, 195 Chrystie St, New York, NY, 10002
When: 11 January – 7 February
Website: www.11rgallery.com
Now on:
Katherine Bradford: Fear of Waves | Canada Gallery
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Hailing from local Brooklyn, Katherine Bradford has been a staple of the New York scene for years and Fear of Waves showcases an apex of her transformation away from pure abstraction that has taken place over the last 20 years. This collection of works is by far her most figurative to date, depicting swimmers in playful but often profound scenes, in surreal, milky and dream-like worlds.

Where: Canada, 333 Broome St, New York, NY 10002
When: 9 January – 14 February
Website: www.canadanewyork.com

Concealed within an old attic in Copenhagen, lie the alchemic endeavours of T.E. Smith, interpretations of a strange manuscript, the Saga of the Event. According to legend, after a virginal transformation, the author of the manuscript, Lady Marianne Notewell mysteriously disappeared and the esoteric Hunting Society was founded in her name. In the passing of time, certain renowned figures have sought its membership adding a note of credibility to this elite guild.

Curated by Stine Niken Ljungdalh, the exhibition, Hunters of the Invisible requires a heady dose of the imagination in order to confront the ambiguity of the Zone, a theatrical interplay where reality meets the intangible. Spectators are invited to partake in ‘a parallel blueprint of creation’, an inspection of eclectic (and previously ‘unseen’) objects from the Hunting Society’s archives. These are interspersed with photographic imagery depicting the Society’s events, scientific curios and other installations by the feminist artist and film maker, Charlotte Bergson. Her ‘relics’ and more crudely fashioned artefacts appear to confuse the spectator’s perception of authenticity but with humorous intention.
What dark ideology lurks behind the Hunting Society’s alchemal media? There is much to decipher. Tipp-Exed scripts appear to translate as
taxi on our way from the port and more eerily, conscious of its shoulder on another hand. Spectators are reminded of the Divine Mother Herself at work in the recurring symbols and gilded sugar crystals as ‘remedies for the ritual’. And what might be the Society’s clandestine events? Fencing contests and the ever-present games of solitaire…

A research candidate at the Contemporary Art Research Centre at Kingston University, Bergson’s interest concerns metafiction, a way for expressing the different viewpoints of an event. She combines this methodology with philosophy, science and alchemy to stage her ongoing development of imaginary happenings and her characters’ identities. Her previous work includes Other Fictions at Photographic Centre (2013) and GamingGaming at new Shelter Plan (2014).
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Stanleypickergallery
Facaulty of Art, Design & Architecture
Kingston University, Knights Park, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2QJ
14 January – 15 March

‘The one thing we share—exhaustion—makes us an inoperative community, an exhausted community, or a community of the exhausted.’ Jan Verwoert

Use/User/Used/ is the new exhibition presented at the Zabludowicz Collection that looks at the societal pressures of continuously performing in a 24/7 working culture.
Displaying works in a variety of media, including live performance and dance, the exhibition reflects on what it means to be exhausted. Use/User/Used/ explores the automatic system and endless connectivity, mass production and digital technology. The exhibition presents a variety of works that criticise and investigate life at a million miles an hour, often through a humourous and ironic detachment from it.

Part of the Innovative Testing Ground programme, the Zabludowicz Collection has worked with emerging artists and curators for over eight years in order to create opportunities for creative and professional development by producing experimental exhibitions and events which test out new ideas and modes of practice, Use/User/Used/ is one of the results of this collaboration.
Use/User/Used presents works from the Zabludowicz Collection including Nick Darmstaedter, Nicolas Deshayes, Alex Dordoy, Matias Faldbakken, Lizzie Fitch, Yngve Holen, Josh Kline, Nikki S. Lee, Rachel Maclean, Kris Martin, Tobias Madison, Seth Price, Lucy Tomlins, Kirstine Roepstorff, Jack Strange, Artie Vierkant, and Gary Webb. As well as newly commissioned live works by Lea Collet and Marios Stamatis, Filippo Marzocchi, and Laura Yuile.

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Participating curators include Luis Araujo, Mattia Giussani, Jose Iglesias, Lorna McDowell, Giovanni Rendina, Celine Roblin-Robson, Alexine Rodenhuis, Angela Sanchez del Campo, Duarte Sequeira, and Kirsty White.

176 Prince of Wales Road, London
Until 21 February

LONDON

Opening Soon:
Electronic Superhighway (2016 – 1966) | Whitechapel Gallery

The Whitechapel Gallery opens its doors this week to a major exhibition, exhibiting over 100 works, showing the impact of computer and Internet technologies on artists from the mid-60s to the present day. The exhibition brings together new and rarely displayed multimedia works by 70 artists spanning 50 years including Cory Arcangel, Jeremy Bailey, James Bridle, Constant Dullaart, Oliver Laric, Roy Ascott, Judith Barry, Lynn Hershmann Leeson and Ulla Wiggen.

Where: 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London, E1 7QX
When: 29 January – 15 May
Website: www.whitechapelgallery.org

Opening Soon:
Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse | Royal Academy of Arts
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Using the work of Claude Monet as a starting point, the Royal Academy of Arts introduces a landmark exhibition, which examines the role gardens play in the evolution of art from the early 1860s through to the 1920s. Including over 120 works by Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro, Manet, Sargent, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Matisse, Klimt and Klee, Painting the Modern Garden explores how the garden gave artists the inspiration and freedom to produce masterpieces.

Where: Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD
When: 30 January – 20 April
Website: www.royalacademy.org.uk

Liquid Life | Work at Home
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Liquid Life explores the potential of an exhibition within a domestic setting by asking a diverse selection of practitioners to present a curated selection of works within a home. Working within an ‘open-house’ policy, the exhibited artists demonstrate an ethos to work outside the boundaries of production and the rules of an exhibition.

Where: 72 Median Road, London, E5 0PN
When: Until 20 February
Website: www.wah.gallery

Opening Soon:
Rana Hamadeh: The Sleepwalkers | The Showroom
﷯The Showroom presents the first solo exhibition in the UK of Lebanese artist Rana Hamadeh. The Sleepwalkers, a major new film commission, is the latest chapter of Alien Encounters, Hamadeh’s on going project which aims at further complicating the notion of ‘alienness’, understood broadly as the condition of estrangement with regard to the law.

Where: The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, London, NW8 8PQ
When: 27 January – 19 March
Website: www.theshowroom.org

For One Week Only:
Bread and Jam IV: Modern Mirror | 52 Whitbread Road
The inhabitants of 52 Whitbread Road announce Bread and Jam, a unique series of exhibitions created and exhibited in a gutted and soon to be refurbished house in a Victorian terraced street in Brockley. For the 4th instalment of the exhibition, Bread and Jam bring together the past and present, inviting 9 contemporary artists to make or present work in response to international artists active between the 1950s to the 1970s.

Where: 52 Whitbread Road, Brockley, SE4 2BE
When: Open 30th and 31st of January from 12-6pm
Website: www.breadandjamwhitbread.wordpress.com

NEW YORK

The Eccentrics | SculptureCentre

The sense of the theatre is the sense of the rope, the sense of accident.
A healthy, joyful elasticated tension of our entire being, of our total life energy. When your breath fails, when it chokes in your gullet, when little red devils dance in your brain. Like at the circus. Right under the big top—as if hung by a thread—hangs the trapeze artist and the entire audience is frozen, with bated breath…and…and…a bit more! Gasp! Enough! – Enough! – Enough!
—From the Factory of the Eccentric Actor manifesto, 1922*

Featuring work by Sanya Kantarovsky, Adriana Lara, Ieva Misevičiūtė, Eduardo Navarro, Jeanine Oleson, Georgia Sagri, Zhou Tao, and Tori Wrånes – the participating artists embed images and objects with performativity, each work comprising a single act within the show. The Eccentrics has been curated by SculptureCenter Curator Ruba Katrib.

Where: 44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, NY 11101
When: Until April 4
Website: www.sculpture-center.org

Desiring to be Data for Others: New Work by Amanda Turner Pohan | FiveMyles
FiveMyles presents an exhibition of new works by Amanda Turner Pohan. Based on scientific manipulation of chemistry, her installations present seemingly minimalist clarity through methodical order. In reality Pohan is attempting to quantify the unquantifiable through creative processing, packaging, and ordering, conjuring a self-portrait that becomes a metaphor for the bodied and disembodied nature of human response.

Where: 558 St Johns Place, Crown Heights, Brooklyn
When: Until February 21
Website: www.fivemyles.org

Cheryl Donegan: Scenes and Commercials | New Museum
﷯New Museum presents an exhibition of work by Cheryl Donegan. Working across video, painting and performance, Donegan explores the production and consumption of images in mass culture and art history.

Scenes and Commercials has been curated by Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement, with Sara O’Keeffe, Assistant Curator.

Where: 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
When: Until April 10
Website: www.newmuseum.org

Chris Burden: Buddha’s Fingers | Gagosian Gallery

It’s about trying to frame something. And draw attention to it and say, “Here’s the beauty in this. I’m going to put a frame around it, and I think this is beautiful.” That’s what artists do. It’s really a pointing activity.
—Chris Burden

Gagosian New York presents Buddha’s Finger by the late Chris Burden. Buddha’s Fingers (2014–15) is a dense cluster of thirty-two antique cast-iron vernacular street lamps, electrified with cool, bright LED bulbs and standing almost twelve feet tall. The title refers to the fingered citrus fruit “buddha’s hand”, a recurrent still-life motif and subject in classical Asian art, and a religious symbol of happiness, longevity, and good fortune.

Where: 980 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10075
When: Until February 20
Website: www.gagosian.com
Carla Gannis: A Subject Self-Defined | TRANSFER
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TRANSFER presents A Subject Self-Defined, a new body of work by Carla Gannis that addresses issues of branded identity; age and body estimation; catastrophe culture; and online agency via static, dynamic and interactive “selfie” imagery.

Gannis commented, ‘the culmination of this body of work as a solo exhibition of large-format looped moving images takes its title from Joseph Kosuth’s 1966 neon sculpture that spells out and is eponymously titled ‘A Subject Self-Defined.’ He belonged to a group of artists involved in stripping down the art object, reducing it to ideas and information that were detached from personal meaning. Forty-nine years later, when we find art in the age of networked identity and digital dematerialization, I am perplexed by subjecthood and self-definition in relationship to the “personal” when performed publicly.’

Where: 1030 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211
When: Until March 12
Website: www.transfergallery.com

“It is absurd to divide humanity into men and women. It is composed only of femininity and masculinity.”

Valentine de Saint Point
‘Manifesto of the Futurist Woman in response to F.T. Marinetti’, 1912

“In the end every definition of male and female is personal, and it’s that idiosyncrasy we value, need and hope to encourage. Who do we think we are?
A work in progress ♂♀”.
Vince Aletti, ‘Male Female’, 1999

Federica Chiocchetti, founding Director of the Photocaptionist, has been invited to guest curate Photo50 at the 2016 London Art Fair – an exhibition of fifty works by contemporary photographers. Feminine Masculine: On the Struggle and Fascination of Dealing with the Other Sex presents an unfinished exploration of the dynamics that occur between men and women, through the voice of a female curator. Loosely inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 classic film Masculin Féminin, the exhibition looks at men and women in relation to one another through a suggestive, transitional visual journey. Chiocchetti offers one perspective on a topic, which she commented, often seems ‘beyond the camera’s reach.’

Divided into five sections – He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, Till Death Do Us Apart, Ennui and Obsession, Carrying On Without Them and Wrap Thee With Fluctuant Wings – the exhibition explores the different parts of a ‘conventional’ relationship and maps the journey from start to finish, from trying to figure out whether someone likes you to learning how to move on from them. Chiocchetti comments, ‘perhaps lurking behind this year’s theme there is an unconsciously self-critical message to pay homage to certain women’s somewhat comical habit of over-analysing everything, which is probably what scares/bores the average man.’
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Photo50 presents work by sixteen contemporary photographers including work by Laia Abril, Ekaterina Anokhina, Jo Broughton, Natasha Caruana, Elinor Carucci, Francesca Catastini, Martin Crawl, Discipula, JH Engström, EJ Major, Timothy Prus, Maya Rochat, Paul Schneggenburger, Francesca Seravalle, Maija Tammi and Mariken Wessels.

Located Gallery Level 2 at the London Art Fair, Business Design Centre.
52 Upper Street, London, N1 0QH
20 – 24 January

“As a medium reliant on how the natural world appears to it, can a photograph ever be truly abstract? Yet what process is more abstract than collapsing mass, depth and time into a single surface?” – Harvey-Regan

The dictionary definition of the term ‘erratic’, in a geological sense, is ‘a rock or boulder that differs from the surrounding rock and is believed to have been brought from a distance by glacial action’, in other words, a rock that differs from its surrounding environment and has not been formed where it has been found. Darren Harvey-Regan’s series of works, titled The Erratics, executes this act of lifting something out of context in a similar way to the geological term, by presenting natural chalk rock formations that have been removed from their original location and meaning.

In his sculptural compositions, Harvey-Regan uses chalk collected from the rock falls of England’s South Coast and carves smooth planes within them, resulting in a man-made interference within a naturally eroded surface and, in doing this, the artist alternates the perception of the chalks natural form. In his photographic works, which he shot with a large format film camera, Harvey-Regan explored Egypt’s Western Desert to find monolithic chalk formations. Through these photographs, registered against his sculptural works, he exposes organic and inorganic forms through their abstraction and asks his audience to contemplate the single surface.
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www.copperfieldgallery.com

The Copperfield Gallery presents Darren Harvey-Regan: The Erratics
6 Copperfield Street, London, SE1 0EP
until the 5th of March

A pop-up exhibition of new works by renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz is preparing for an around-the-world tour, which is starting its journey in London this January at the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. WOMEN: New Portraits by Annie Leibovitz is a continuation of an on going project, which started over 15 years ago as a collaboration between the photographer and Susan Sontag. Leibovitz’s world tour premieres new photographs, commissioned by UBS, of Amy Schumer, Caityln Jenner and Venus and Serena Williams, as well as a number of other portraits of notable female figures, displayed alongside pieces from the initial 1999 iteration, including portraits of Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois, Yoko Ono, Agnes Martin and Patti Smith.

Hubertus Kuelps, group head of communications and branding at UBS, said: ‘Annie Leibovitz is the leading portrait photographer of our time and we are excited to be bringing this project to a global audience. It fits with our long-standing support of projects that encourage engagement in contemporary art and we hope it will inspire people to create.’ Leibovitz added: ‘it is extraordinary to do this work for UBS on a subject that I really care about. It is such a big undertaking and a broad subject – it is like going out and photographing the ocean.’

The curators of the exhibition have made a conscious decision to not exhibit the works within a museums or gallery space but instead exhibiting Leibovitz’s work in a number of unusual, undisclosed venues across the world – the first being a disused power station in Wapping. The organisers have supported this decision by noting the potential of putting on a series of shows in original spaces, spaces not usually accustomed to housing art, and how it encourages the viewer to have an unexpected encounter with the artworks, unpremeditated by the environment in which it is viewed.

The project, in Sontag’s words, was a series of “photographs of people with nothing more in common than that they are women.” The addition of new works to the collection refreshes and reflects upon the changing role of women, as well as some of the attitudes towards gender roles in modern society, especially poignant as the exhibition is due to travel and to be encountered by cultures with radicially differing conceptions of gender and gender roles.
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WOMEN: New Portraits by Annie Leibovitz
at the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station (Wapping Wall, London E1W 3SG)
from January 16 – February 7
www.ubs.com

LONDON

1. Rose English: A Premonition of the Act | Camden Arts Centre

The realisation of a 10-year project, Camden Art Centre presents
A Premonition of the Act, a multidisciplinary exhibition, which maps the career of performance artist Rose English. At the core of the exhibition is a new sound work, Lost in Music, a 70-minute sound installation and the precursor to a yet-to-be-realised performance which will include a chamber opera, an art installation and a circus.

Where: Arkwright Road, London NW3 6DG
When: Until 6 March 2016
What: www.camdenartscentre.org

Opening soon:
2. Champagne Life | Saatchi Gallery
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To mark its 30th anniversary, the Saatchi Gallery introduces its first ever all-female exhibition, Champagne Life. Virgile Issah, a French artist whose work features in Champagne Life commented on the recent interest in women-only exhibitions, stating, ‘I think it’s interesting that collectors who are the same generation are doing this at the same time, it shows that the identity of the artist is weaker in the work. Today, to be a woman artist is not as important. We are in a more genderless society.’

Showcasing 14 emerging international artists, Champagne Life includes works by Mequitta Ahuja, Alice Anderson, Marie Angeletti, Jelena Bulajic, Julia Dault, Mia Feuer, Sigrid Holmwood, Virgile Ittah, Seung Ah Paik, Maha Malluh, Suzanne McClelland, Stephanie Quayle, Soheila Sokhanvari and Julia Wachtel.

Where: Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, London, SW3 4RY
When: Open the 13th of January until the 6th of March
What: www.saatchigallery.com

3. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa: God’s Reptilian Finger | Gasworks
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Gasworks presents the first UK solo exhibition by Guatemalan artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, God’s Reptilian Finger. Exhibiting a selection of new sculptural works by the artist, including a glowing replica of God’s Finger, Ramírez-Figueroa’s practice explores folklore and dreams, conspiracy theories, ancient mythologies and magic.

Where: 155 Vauxhall Street, London, SE11 5RH
When: Until 7 February
What: www.gasworks.org.uk
Opening Soon:

4. Sculpture 4tet | Marian Goodman Gallery
A selection of works by Luciano Fabro, Jan-Luc Moulène, Bruce Nauman and Danh Vō, the Marian Goodman Gallery poses the question ‘how can contemporary artworks benefit from a reflection of the term sculpture?’ in the new exhibition Sculpture 4tet. Curated by Jean-Pierre Criqui, Sculpture 4tet, explores the etymology of the term sculpture through a variety of three-dimensional objects, complimented by drawing, photography, moving image and electric light.

Where: 5-8 Lower John Street, London, W1F 9DY
When: Open the 12th of January until the 20th of February
What: www.mariangoodman.com
Opening Soon:

5. Park Seo-Bo: Ericture 1967-1981 | White Cube Mason’s Yard
White Cube Mason’s Yard presents an exhibition of paintings by Korean artist Park Seo-Bo, his first solo exhibition in the UK. Ericture traces the origins of his practice, presenting 16 works painted between 1967 and 1981.

Seo-Bo commented on the meaning of his work as, ‘related to the oriental tradition of space, the spiritual concept of space. I am more interested in space from the point of view of nature. Even though my paintings may represent an idea about culture, the main focus is based on nature […] I want to reduce the idea and emotion in my work to express only that. I want to reduce and reduce – to create pure emptiness.’

Where: 25 – 26 Mason’s Yard, London, SW1Y 6BU
When: Opening the 15th of January until the 12th of March
What: www.whitecube.com
NEW YORK

1. Rob Halverson, All Repeat | Soloway
Artist-led space, Soloway, presents an exhibition of work by Portland-based artist and curator Rob Halverson. All Repeat is a multidisciplinary exhibition that engages with a range of formats from drawing and prints, to sculpture and curation, and flips the relationship between artwork and viewer by dealing with issues of perception and reflection.

Where: 348 South 4th Street, Brooklyn
When: Until 14 February
What: www.soloway.info

2. Is/Is Not | Con Artist Gallery
The Con Artist Collective presents Is/Is Not, an exhibition and artistic experiment that challenges the necessity of objectifiable subject matter and celebrates the joy of pure mark-making. A showcase of raw emotion and vibe, the exhibition is a documentation of the senses by way of an absence of colour, form and mood.

Where: 119 Ludlow Street, New York, NY 10002
When: Until 16 January
What: www.conartistnyc.com

3. Stupid Cartoons to Pass the Time in the Desert | Transmitter
“Don’t have the hubris of being the comedian. You are the straight man in this farce; the universe is the funny man.” – Lars Iyer, from “Nude in Your Hot Tub, Facing the Abyss: A Literary Manifesto After the End of Literature and Manifestos”

Transmitter presents Stupid Cartoons to Pass the Time in the Desert, an exhibition of works, by Joey Parlett, Stephanie Snider, Adam Douglas Thompson and Crys Yin, which use the format of the comic to explore an accumulation of representations through alternative narratives.

Where: 1329 Willoughby Avenue, 2A, Brooklyn, NY 11237
When: Until 14 February
What: www.transmitter.nyc

4. Coco Fusco | Alexander Gray Associates
Alexander Gray Associates presents an exhibition of videos produced over the last two years by interdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco including her latest installation Confidencial, Autores Firmantes (2015) examining Cuba’s systematic censorship of literary voices during the 1970s. Featuring works between 1990 and 2015, Fusco’s exhibition examines the politics of identity, military power, the history of racial through, and post-revolutionary Cuba.

Where: 510 West 26 Street, New York NY 10001
When: Until 6 February
What: www.alexandergray.com

5. Michael Ballou: Mud and Toys | Pierogi
Returning to the Pierogi Gallery in Williamsburg after 12 years, Michael Ballou presents a body of recent works as part of his new exhibition Mud and Toys. Inspired by the renovations of the old buildings and the high-rise developments he encounters on his daily travels around Brooklyn, Mud and Toys looks back at the artist’s oeuvre through a collection of works he refers to as ‘brute’.

Where: 177 North 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211
When: Until 7 February
What: www.pierogi2000.com

‘…I wanted to see if the experience of what I saw would have any correspondence to what I felt — the intimacy of the lovemaking…And I wanted to put into that materiality of film the energies of the body, so that the film itself dissolves and recombines and is transparent and dense — as one feels during lovemaking… It is different from any pornographic work that you’ve ever seen — that’s why people are still looking at it! And there’s no objectification or fetishisation of the women.’ – Carolee Schneemann on Fuses

In 1965, Carolee Schneemann produced a semi-autobiographical, self-shot silent film titled Fuses which showed the artist and her then partner composer James Tenney performing sexual activities witnessed by the artist’s cat, Kitch. Schneemann actively protested the presentation of sex and sexuality in art, prior to and during the 1960s, when traditionally the woman was thought of solely as an object of heterosexual male desire and aimed to present female desire on an equal part with male desire. A result of the sexual revolution of the sixties and the new wave feminism that amounted from it, Schneemann’s 16mm film Fuses presents a man and a woman consummating their sexual relationship outside of the boundaries of marriage. She commented about the work, ‘the necessity was to investigate the absence in my culture of a visual heterosexual intimacy that corresponded to my own experience… the culture obfuscates lived experience, the female erotic and the sacredness of sexuality.’ Fuses acts as a positive appraisal of sex and the woman but purposely criticises the restrictions of female pleasure during sex particularly representative within the porn industry.

Schneemann’s earlier work Meat Joy (1964) was first performed at the First Festival of Free Expression at the American Center in Paris and later in the Judson Memorial Church in New York where it remained a similar performance to the original. Meat Joy comprised of a collective mélange of men and women tackling gender roles and sexuality through kinetic theatre and dance-like- choreography alongside the interaction between the human body and dead animals. Schneemann wrote, Meat Joy is an erotic rite — excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chicken, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, brushes, paper scrap. Its propulsion is towards the ecstatic — shifting and turning among tenderness, wildness, precision, abandon; qualities that could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent.’

WORK Gallery proudly celebrates the release of a new book, Carolee Schneeman: Unforgivable, by exhibiting ten films at the gallery from Schneeman’s oeuvre including Fuses and Meat Joy, as well as Interior Scroll and Kitch’s Last Meal. The films have been presented alongside a collection of items, including contact sheets and photographs owned by the artist, which aided in the research of Schneemann’s book.

Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable is on display at WORK Gallery until 11 March
10A Acton Street, London WC1X 9NG

To mark its 30th anniversary, the Saatchi Gallery introduces its first ever all-female exhibition, Champagne Life. Named after exhibiting artist Julia Wachtel’s work of the same title, the exhibition reflects on the art that has been made by women and exhibited and collected by the Saatchi Gallery over the last 30 years. Bringing together 14 emerging contemporary artists who work in a variety of mediums and on a variety of subjects, the Saatchi Gallery attempts to represent the diverse practice of female artists, without forcing a feminist statement.
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Soheila Sokhanvari, one of the artists exhibited, describes her work as a “cultural collage between East and Western philosophy.” Born in Iran, Sokhanvari’s work presents political commentaries through often whimsical and playful visual metaphors. Moje Sabz (above) shows a taxidermied horse mounted onto a jesmonite blob. Through the denaturalisation of the horse, Sokhanvari encourages interpretation through open-ended narrative, with the intention of encouraging discussion about worldwide political systems.

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Julia Dault has precariously contorted and manipulated strips of plexiglass and tambour to create Untitled 19, 3:00pm – 8:30pm, February 4, 2012 (above). The specificity of the title, which catalogues the exact time of the works creation, implies a short life span, as the materials will eventually resist their unnatural reshaping and spring back into their original forms. Dault emphasises the importance of her engagement with these uncooperative materials explicitly through the physical bending and distortion of the medium.

The artists discussed here are only two of the fourteen artists exhibited in Champagne Life, yet they represent the diversity of the work and the multifaceted nature of an exhibition that will, hopefully, enable a gender neutralised dialogue between the viewer and the work of art.

Champagne Life includes works by Mequitta Ahuja, Alice Anderson, Marie Angeletti, Jelena Bulajic, Julia Dault, Mia Feuer, Sigrid Holmwood, Virgile Ittah, Seung Ah Paik, Maha Malluh, Suzanne McClelland, Stephanie Quayle, Soheila Sokhanvari and Julia Wachtel.

Opens at the Saatchi Gallery on the 13th of January
Duke Of York’s HQ, King’s Rd, London SW3 4RY

LONDON

1. Roberto Almagno: Suspended in Space | Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery
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The Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery presents Suspended in Space, an exhibition of work by Italian artist Robert Almagno. Working almost exclusively in wood, Almagno presents a new body of work that defies the limits of the materials character qualities, contorting and bending it like string. The artist explores the themes of balance and precariousness, fixing the sculptures as though suspended in space.

Where: 37 Rathbone Street, London W1T 1NZ
When: Until 13 February 2016
What: www.rosenfeldporcini.com

2. Smile Orange | Cubitt Gallery
﷯Who am I? Who are we? What is a nation?
These are some of the questions posed at the group exhibition Smile Orange currently on at the Cubitt Gallery in Angel. This exhibition of painting, photography and video works explore ideas about identity and the formation of personal, communal and national perspective.

Curated by Morgan Quaintance
Featuring: Russell Newell, Karl Ohiri, Ben Sanderson

Where: 8 Angel Mews, London, N1 9HH
When: Until 17 January 2016
What: www.cubittartists.org.uk

3. Maisons Fragiles | Hauser & Wirth
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Maisons Fragiles at Hauser & Wirth explores themes of fragility, vulnerability and protection through various manifestations. Through the examination and exploitation of materials each artist uniquely explores these key themes in unique ways. Spanning 60 years of artistic practice, the exhibition includes work by Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra, Alexander Calder, Isa Genzken, Robert Gober, Roni Horn, Gordon Matta-Clark and Fausto Melotti.

Where: 23 Savile Row, London, W1S 2ET
When: Until 6 February 2016
What: www.hauserwirth.com

4. Fernando Casasempere – A Death | Parafin

Parafin presents an exhibition of new work by Chilean-born artist Fernando Casasempere. A sculptor mainly working in ceramics, Casasempere uses the traditional material of pottery to produce works that examine the landscape and environment. He takes his inspiration from the Chilean landscape and the processes by which that landscape has been used.

Where: 18 Woodstock Street, London, W1C 2AL
When: Until 30 January 2016
What: www.parafin.co.uk

Last Chance to See:
5. Ann Veronica Janssens: yellowbluepink | Wellcome Collection

As part of the changing exhibition States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness, the Wellcome Collection presents Ann Veronica Janssens’ yellowbluepink. Now in its final week, yellowbluepink is a new installation, which explores light and colour by filling the gallery with coloured mist. On entering the space, the visitor is disorientated and caught in a state of suspense as all details of the environment are obscured.

Entrance into the space is limited. Queuing is likely and timed ticketing may be in operation. Last entry will typically be an hour before closing.

Where: 183 Euston Rd, London NW1 2BE
When: Until 3 January 2016
What: www.wellcomecollection.org
NEW YORK

1. DEVOTION | Catinca Tabacaru Gallery
﷯DEVOTION is a thought experiment about art created as a means of dealing with the hereafter and a discussion of one of the greatest question of human existence – what happens after death? A multidisciplinary exhibition at the Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, DEVOTION presents a body of work within a space resembling a chapel and aims to examine religious devotion in a now predominately agnostic society.

Co-curated by William Corwin
The exhibition includes works by Joe Brittain, Mike Ballou, William Corwin, Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels, Elizabeth Ferry, Rico Gatson, Elisabeth Kley, Rachel Monosov, Roxy Paine, Joyce Pensato, Katie Bond Pretti, Carin Riley, Paul Anthony Smith, Justin Orvis Steimer, Gail Stoicheff and Sophia Wallace

Where: 250 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002
When: Until 17 January 2016
What: www.catincatabacaru.com

2. Frank Stella: A Retrospective | Whitney Museum of American Art
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The Whitney Museum of American Art presents the most comprehensive presentation of Stella’s career to date with approximately 100 works showcasing his career from the mid-1950s including paintings, reliefs, sculptures and drawings. The highly anticipated exhibition maps the evolution and development of Frank Stella’s career through some of his best-known works and some rarely seen examples loaned from collections across the world.

Frank Stella: A Retrospective has been organised by Michael Auping, chief curator, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in association with Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and with the assistance of Carrie Springer, assistant curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Where: 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014
When: Until 7 February 2016
What: www.whitney.org

3. Annette Lemieux: Things to Walk Away With | Fisher Landau Center for Art

The Fisher Landau Center for Art presents Things to Walk Away With, an installation of objects, which have been collected by Annette Lemieux over the last 30 years. Each object, arranged in a grid pattern on the floor, reflects Lemieux’s ongoing exploration of memory and meaning, and invites viewers to expand the narrative of the objects through their active participation in a shared interpretation.

Where: 38-27 30th Street, Long Island City, NY 11101
When: Until 4 January
What: www.flcart.org

4. David Raffini. INSULAE #1 | Shin Gallery

INSULAE #1 is the first instalment in a series that follows a man who acquires a box of mysterious intent. David Raffini, a French painter and videographer, thematically constructs assemblages of work into a narrative that explores the themes of isolation and solitude felt when living in a densely populated city.

“Art is not on the canvas. Art is not in the mind of the viewer.
Art is the empty space between the artwork and the spectator.”
– David Raffini

Where: 332 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002
When: Until 3 January 2016
What: www.shin-gallery.com

Last Chance to See
5. Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity! | SculptureCenter

The SculptureCenter presents London-based artist Anthea Hamilton’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Lichen! Libido! Chastity! investigates cultural appropriation and pop culture through a series of sculptural and video works. Hamilton’s works question the representation of cultural phenomenon through popular media, often through the presentation of works that verge on the absurd and ridiculous.

Where: 44 – 19 Purves Street, Long Island City, New York, NY 11101
When: Until 4 January 2016
What: www.sculpture-center.org

The Random Darknet Shopper is back (after its brief time in police custody in Switzerland) and is currently purchasing knockoff designer clothing and sending them to a gallery in South London. Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo, also known as !Mediengruppe Bitnik, programmed a laptop to randomly purchase items off illicit Tor-enabled websites, also known as the dark web. With a budget of $100 (£66) a week in Bitcoins, the automated online shopping bot chooses items from Alpha Bay, currently the largest dark marketplace. The purchased items are then shipped from across the world to the Horacio Junior gallery in Rotherhithe where they are put on display alongside the laptop.

Weisskopf, one half of the Swiss art collective, commented on the project, ‘The arts should be able to mirror something that is happening in contemporary society in a contemporary way.’ She stated, ‘we really want to provide new spaces to think about the goods traded on these markets. Why are they traded? How do we as a society deal with these spaces? At the moment there is just a lot of pressure, but not a lot of thinking about stuff, just immediate reaction.’
﷯The Random Darknet Shopper project aims to explore the idea of criminal culpability and question whether a robot programmed with a randomised software agent can be held responsible for the purchasing of illegal goods. The collective confront contemporary concerns about whether authorities really have any control over actions taking place over the Internet and the repercussions of societies obsession with getting online.

The Random Darknet Shopper runs until February 5th 2016 at the Horacio Junior, 66 Canon Beck Road, SE16 7DN London, United Kingdom

To keep up to date with what the Random Darknet Shopper is purchasing,
follow !Mediengruppe Bitnik on Twitter @bitnk

LONDON

1. Random Darknet Shopper – !Mediengruppe Bitnik | Horatio Junior Gallery
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Swiss artists Domagoj Smoljo and Carmen Weisskopf return with their Random Darknet Shopper, a computer that has been programmed to randomly purchase items from the Darknet. The Darknet Shopper, which peruses a hidden part of the web frequented by undesirables, has uninterrupted access to purchasing explosives, counterfeit items and class A drugs which are then to be delivered to an unassuming South London gallery. So far there have been 3 deliveries: a counterfeit Lacoste t-shirt from Thailand, 2 Antminer USB Bitcoin miners from the USA and 20 traingle firecrackers from Germany…more to come!

Curated by Thomas Kitchin

Where: The Lord Nelson, 66 Canon Beck Road, Rotherhithe, London, SE16 7DN
When: Until 5 February 2016
What: www.horatiojr.com/Current

2. Bloomberg New Contemporaries | ICA

Now in its sixth year, Bloomberg New Contemporaries presents a selection of work by recent graduates from UK art schools. Selected by Hurvin Anderson, Jessie Flood-Paddock and Simon Starling, these artists represent emerging talent working in a variety of mediums. This year themes of gender, labour, value and consumption have been explored, as well as an interest in the act of making through differing modes of artistic production.

The Bloomberg New Contemporaries for 2015 are Sïan Astley, Kevin Boyd, Lydia Brockless, U. Kanad Chakrabarti, James William Collins, Andrei Costache, Julia Curtin, Abri de Swardt, Melanie Eckersley, Jamie Fitzpatrick, Justin Fitzpatrick, Hannah Ford, Sophie Giller, Richard Hards, Juntae T.J. Hwang, Jasmine Johnson, Tomomi Koseki, Hilde Krohn Huse, Pandora Lavender, Jin Han Lee, Hugo López Ayuso, Beatrice-Lily Lorigan, Scott Lyman, Hanqing Ma & Mona Yoo, Scott Mason, Oliver McConnie, Mandy Niewöhner, Hamish Pearch, Neal Rock, Conor Rogers, Katie Schwab, Tim Simmons, David Cyrus Smith, Francisco Sousa Lobo, Aaron Wells, Morgan Wills and Andrea Zucchini.

Where: The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH
When: Until 24 January 2016
What: www.ica.org.uk

3. Fabio Mauri’s Oscuramento: The Wars of Fabio Mauri | Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth presents a historical solo exhibition of works by Italian artist Fabio Mauri, his first show in London in over 20 years. Mauri’s practice spans performance, film, installation, found-object sculpture, mixed media works and theoretical writings, which brings into question the power of language. Oscuramento: The Wars of Fabio Mauri focuses on a series of works titled Picnic o Il buon soldato (Picnic or The Good Soldier), which reflects on the repercussions of conflict on collective cultural memory and its projection throughout contemporary society.

Where: 23 Savile Row, London, W1S 2ET
When: Until 6 February 2016
What: www.hauserwirth.com

4. Gavin Turk: Wittgenstein’s Dream | Freud Museum
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‘We are asleep. Our life is like a dream. But in our better hours we wake up just enough to realise that we are dreaming.’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein.
The Freud Museum presents Wittgenstein’s Dream, an exhibition of works by Gavin Turk. Turk investigates the dialogue between two Viennese thinkers, Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein, through a series of installations and interventions in Freud’s former residence in North London.
In association with Ben Brown Fine Arts, curated by James Putnam.

Where: 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, NW3 5SX
When: Until 7 February 2016
What: freud.org.uk

5. Susan Hillier | Lisson Gallery

Susan Hillier’s first solo exhibition in London since 2011 presents a number of recently rediscovered early works, as well as a selection of new works. Occupying both galleries on Bell Street, the exhibition loosely groups Hiller’s practice into four on-going themes: transformation, the unconscious, belief systems and the role of the artist as collector and curator.

Where: 27 & 52 Bell Street, London, NW1 5BY
When: Until 9 January 2016
What: www.lissongallery.com

NEW YORK

1. Corinne May Botz, Bedside Manner | Benrubi Gallery
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Brooklyn-based photographer Corinne May Botz blurs the line between the actual and the artificial in a series of images for her first solo exhibition at the Benrubi Gallery, Bedside Manner. Botz photographs the unknown world of medical simulations, in which trained medical
actors portray so-called ‘standardised patients’ in order to help medical students improve their diagnostic and interpersonal skills. The situations are performative, yet the viewer is left feeling unsure as to whether the images depict a re-enactment or a real life encounter.

Where: 521 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10001
When: Until 6 February 2016
What: benrubigallery.com/

2. Lech Szporer, Burial for Rebellion: Studies in Post-Criminality | Y Gallery
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Revolving around the narrative of post-criminality, Lech Szporer’s exhibition at the Y Gallery challenges our relationship between ideas surrounding art and criminality. Burial for Rebellion: Studies in Post-Criminality is be made up of five interventions, The Stolen Judge’s Pen, The NBC Arrest, The Slave Is Not For Sale Juneteenth Reenactment, Attempted Circumnavigation of Rikers Island, and The Cage Project, which all confront the theme of the prison from multiple critical angles, as well as drawings, paintings, sculptures, photography and videos relating to these actions.

Where: 319 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002
When: Until 31 December 2015
What: www.ygallerynewyork.com

3. Pat O’Neill, Let’s Make A Sandwich | Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery

The Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery presents Let’s Make A Sandwich, which spans five decades of LA-based artist Pat O’Neill. The film, in which the exhibition takes its title, was originally filmed in 1978 on 16mm film and is made up of strange and playful vignettes including an image of a mother and daughter making their version of a Welsh rabbit sandwich (also known as Welsh rarebit, and contains no rabbit), imagery which is illustrative of the surreal motifs present throughout the exhibition.

Where: 534 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
When: Until 23 January 2016
What: www.miandn.com

4. Agitprop! | Brooklyn Museum of Art

Agitprop! at the Brooklyn Museum of Art connects contemporary art devoted to social change with historic moments in creative activism. These projects highlight struggles for social justice since the turn of the twentieth century, from women’s suffrage and antilynching campaigns to contemporary demands for human rights, environmental advocacy, and protests against war and economic inequality.

The first round of invited artists includes Luis Camnitzer, Chto Delat?, Zhang Dali, Dread Scott, Dyke Action Machine!, Friends of William Blake, Coco Fusco, Futurefarmers, Ganzeer, Gran Fury, Guerrilla Girls, Jenny Holzer, Los Angeles Poverty Department, Yoko Ono, Otabenga Jones & Associates, Martha Rosler, Sahmat Collective, Adejoke Tugbiyele, Cecilia Vicuña and John Dugger, and, in a collaborative work, The Yes Men with Steve Lambert, CODEPINK, May First/People Link, Evil Twin, Improv Everywhere, and Not An Alternative, along with more than thirty writers, fifty advisers, and a thousand volunteer distributors.

Where: 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York, 11238–6052
When: Until 26 August 2016
What: www.brooklynmuseum.org

5. Yoko Ono, The Riverbed | Galerie LeLong
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“THE RIVERBED is over the river in-between life and death.
Stone Piece: Choose a Stone and hold it until all your anger and sadness have been let go.
Line Piece: Take me to the farthest place in our planet by extending the line.
Mend Piece: Mend with wisdom mend with love. It will mend the earth at the same time.”
– Yoko Ono

Following her recent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Yoko Ono presents a full gallery installation titled The Riverbed. Audience participation is key to THE RIVERBED and Ono encourages the completion of the work through everyday actions coupled with contemplation; the viewer enters into a collaboration with the artist.

Where: 528 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
When: Until 29 January 2016
What: www.galerielelong.com

Is Gilbert and George’s new exhibition worth the hype or is it an overpublicized interrogation for ranting? What seems like a room ready to undergo anger management lessons ‘The Banners’ are electric with their forwardness. ‘FUCK THE PLANET’ after reading the miseries of global warming, FUCK HIM when someone’s going past, ‘BURN THE BOOK’ after reading a book review, whilst the most outrageous ‘GOD SAVE THE QUEEN’. Now these boys are just playing with fire, but they sure as hell won’t burn themselves knowing the game so well.
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So are G&G just messing with us? Initially I sense a slight hint of ridicule, expected from us to rear in these banal banners as art: should we be offended in the writings’ foul language? Or the fact that they are simply sheets with just atrocities deemed as ‘art’? As soon as that feeling came along it vanished. The exhibition poses a prophetic character in regards to London’s societal and political frustrations, with Gilbert and ‘George being truthful in their naughty behavior. With every banner inscribing ‘Gilbert and George say…’ followed by the shocking texts you would be surprised at just how powerful the content is in which they manage to deliver. Are the words meant to be the vessel into Gilbert and George’s mind, or is this their confession on the collective frustration for what the British are thinking? In retrospect they are prayers from the gutter. It is emancipation for the English language, in all its uncensored glory where these writings may hold the next slang we text.
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In their rare alchemy to present us with these banners the quotes are still memorable, lingering over a fine line waiting to be misinterpreted. It is not for the faint hearted, but rather the bold as they successfully attain a reaction from even the most demurred. The risk is an honorable move from this trouble-starter duo who know how to stir even the calmest of waters.
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25 Nov – 24 Jan
The BANNERS is on display at White Cube, Bermondsey.
For more information check out: www.whitecube.com

‘Being deaf in a world of sound is like living in a foreign country blindly following the cultural rules, customs and behaviours without ever questioning them…Sound is almost like money and power. It’s so powerful that it could either disempower me and my art, or empower me. I chose to be empowered.’

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A deaf artist making sound art…sounds like a joke right? Rustle Tustle is the new exhibition at Carroll/Fletcher Gallery where Christine Sun Kim borrows other’s voices in order to explore the political and social aspects ingrained in the use of voice. Drawings, video and an interactive installation all investigate sound using a musical, graphic and American Sign Language notation. The exhibition is not to be undermined despite its initial quiet air when first walking in. Challenging the ownership of sound it is a question we’re not sure how to answer. Is it a self-defeating cause for a deaf artist to make sound art or is it a proclaiming that anything is possible?
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At first glance the exhibition looks poor from the white on white ensemble of the few line drawings showcasing Kim’s attempt to record sound through some writing. The Velcro strips spanning across the room when you first walk in the gallery are idle with their use unknown, whilst a lingering sound emanating from the back of the gallery creeps into the front room where we stand. Given a large device resembling an old radio-set which could have been conjured from a mad scientist’s lab we are instructed to attach our device to the Velcro strips. What sounds like a cacophony of noise, deep obscured voices, unrecognisable in their words, we soon realize why this piece is called ‘Game of Skill 1.0’. It is a balancing act to say the least, with our heads bent backward trying to ungracefully attach the device atop of the Velcro strips whilst still trying to concentrate at the grunting noise bouncing off the speaker. Supposedly it is Kim manipulating the voice of her interpreter as she tries to communicate verbally. Feeling like we’re just learning how to listen it is an act that makes us unskillful in concentrating to the various tangled words.
Whether it was that we were so caught up in the act of decoding the speaker’s speech behind the megaphone, we felt that we brushed off the line drawings. Lacking the impact from the game we were so caught up in playing.
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As we felt that playtime was over with we moved to the next room providing the video work Close Readings (2015) playing clips from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Kim consulted four deaf friends for this piece in order to caption the possible sounds for each screen. We are thus pre-assigned sounds that may not correlate to the scene playing, often ranging from literal to conceptual. Precisely Kim’s point we know or assume the sounds that we were supposed to be hearing through the films, but now we are given the ‘ghost’ of audio, with the background noise of rustling paper or anything we would otherwise brush to the side becoming the sole focus of its ideophone.
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Unaware whether it was the fact that we knew beforehand that this exhibition of sound was made from a deaf artist- and that that in itself might be a bizarre relationship to explore- we left feeling a bit more aware of the sound of the door closing behind us with the muffled voices echoing from the next explorer reaching out for their DIY-sound-device.

27 Nov – 30 Jan
Carroll/Fletcher Gallery, Oxford Circus.
For more information check out: www.carrollfletcher.com

LONDON

1. The London Illustration Fair
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A four-storey warehouse, Bargehouse is transformed to host 50 young, emerging illustrators. The hand picked artists-chosen by an esteemed judging panel who are leading figures in illustration and graphic design- will set up their stands in this three day fair. With pop-up shops carrying their latest prints, to site specific installations and murals, as well as DJs and fully stocked bars this could be 2015’s coolest hung-out pre-Christmas.

4 Dec – 6 Dec
Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf.
For more information check out: www.thelondonillustrationfair.co.uk

2. Big Bang Data
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How can you make art out of the serpentine cables of data, and how dark is this phenomenon we use everyday? This epic exhibition brings the answer with an artistic twist to offer tactile, immersive pieces with feline forms. The exhibition reminds us just how public our data is, where you can have your own tweet turned into a display for anyone to see such as the great posters created by Thomson & Craighead. Enter into the brave new world of art made from the public’s data, and just how your newsfeed may end up in an exhibition.

3 Dec – 28 Feb
Embankment Galleries, Temple.
For more information check out: www.somersethouse.org.uk

3. Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize
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This prestigious photographic portrait awards combines established and emerging artists showcasing only the best, in an ambitious approach reflecting contemporary portraiture. In a range of images trying to make a deeper connection with the audience by capturing different characters, moods and locations the exhibition builds an emotional journey with its observer. Alongside the anonymous individuals displayed are actors such s Benedict Cumberbatch and USA president Barack Obama with his wife Michelle Obama.

12 Nov – 21 Feb
National Portrait Gallery.
For more information check out: www.npg.org.uk

4. Gods Own Junkyard: My Generation
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Not quite the Christmas lights you would expect this year round, but certainly ones that should make it into your agenda. Chris Bracey, the brilliant neon artist and light impresario, has certainly not been forgotten by his family as they commemorate the artist’s one year passing by making their own display of dazzling pieces from the God’s Own Junkyard founder. In response to the signs made by the late artist comes the exploration of changing landscapes from his wife, sons and grandchildren.

26 Nov – 23 Jan
Lights of Soho, Soho. For more information check out: www.lightsofsoho.com

5. Reflections
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Reflections is an exhibition hosting various artists exploring ‘new media art. From digital photography of mystical and sensual character depicting nature and nudity, to digital projections and silent storytelling capturing momentary fragility in materials, to sound artists that transcends exquisite designed pieces. This exhibition is one that showcases just how technology has integrated itself in art and its monumental importance to make exceptional contemporary pieces.

19 Nov – 06 Dec
Opera Gallery.
For more information check out: www.operagallery.com

NEW YORK

1. Dead Treez by Ebony G. Patterson
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In a kaleidoscopic mix of floral fabrics the exhibition provides a mixed media installation. In an exploration of class, gender, race and media the exhibition is a meditation into Jamaican fashion and culture challenging the viewer to look closer at the jacquard tapestries. In an act of seduction the complex textiles depict victims from social media where the viewer acts as a witness.

10 Nov – 3 Apr
Museum of Art & Design, Hell’s Kitchen.
For more information check out: www.madmuseum.org

2. Collected by Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner
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The exhibition provides an exclusive compilation of acclaimed artists from the noted collection of Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner. Ranging from Diane Arbus, Robert Gober, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine and Christopher Wool to name a few. It is a celebration of American and international work from the 1960s to the present which is one of a kind.

20 Nov – 6 Mar
Whitney Museum of American Art, Meatpacking District.
For more information check out: www.whitney.org

3. Gazing Ball Paintings by Jeff Koons
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With his work considered a high-culture trolling, people always seem to be at two ends with Jeff Koons: you either love it or hate it. Using a blue-mirrored, gazing ball ornament Koons has reprised the ball alongside white plaster sculptures of classical composition. Displayed (or misplaced) in reproductions of paintings such as Titian, El Greco, Courbet, Turn and Manet, the ball seems to be a fortune-teller that accidentally rolled in these masterful pieces.

9 Nov – 23 Dec
Gagosian Gallery.
For more information check out: www.gagosian.com

4. Anagrams, Arcadian Retreats, Anagrams (A Pun) by Robert Rauschenberg
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No one knows experimentation and wild innovation better than Rauschenberg. Considered a collagist of life, and always thinking outside the box his assemblage of objects and images form a densely pact pictorial representations. His aggressive sculpture made from found objects evoke an intense experience for the on-lookers, whilst the pieces in this body of work are made using a technically challenging dye-transfer methods evokes ghostly effects.

23 Oct – 16 Jan
Pace Gallery. For more information check out: www.pacegallery.com

5. Things Around the House by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
﷯A leading figure in Pop Culture, Claes Oldenburg, is re-known for his ‘soft’ sculptures that are blown-up to show ordinary objects in extraordinary scale-hamburgers, sinks, eggbeaters. The 100 pieces on display are composed from kapok-stuffed vinyl, and were part of the artist’s home, which he shared with his partner Coosje van Bruggen. Embracing ‘the poetry of everywhere’ the exhibition provides the unique insight of the interior design of the artist in a well-orchestrated body of work that breathes out vitality and tactile lyricism.

7 Nov – 12 Dec
Paula Cooper Gallery, Chelsea. For more information check out: www.paulacoopergallery.com

LONDON

1. Gilbert & George THE BANNERS
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‘DECRIMINALISE SEX’, ‘BAN RELIGION, ‘GOD SAVE THE QUEEN’ or ‘FUCK THE TEACHERS’’, are some of the writings on the banners that defy conformism in this rebellious exhibition by Gilbert and George. Mounted on linen and hung up, the banners explore urban text to create an immediate reaction from the viewer. By disrupting modern convention through visualizing atheistic, libertarian, monarchist and existential context these banners are begging for a reaction. Thought provoking it is a protest against a conservative system- welcome to the revolution.

25 Nov – 24 Jan
White Cube, Bermondsey.
For more information check out: www.whitecube.com

2. Ragnar Kjartansson The Visitors
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The cinematic tableau of Ragnar Kjartansson is spread across nine HD screens at The Vinyl Factory Space. The multi-channel A/V work was filmed in two rooms of the 200-year-old Rokeby villa on the Hudson River of New York, drawing performances from collaborators and friends. Kjartansson calls the musical composition as a ’feminine nihilistic gospel song’ where ‘reality merges with fiction, history with rumors, and everyday life with dreams.’ If you think that might be a bit biased coming from the artist then take the words of the Guardian describing the screenings as ‘spell-binding.’

11 Nov – 6 Dec
The Vinyl Factory Space at Brewer Street Car Park, London.
For more information check out: www.thevinylfactory.com

3. Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2015
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The leading UK organization supporting emerging artists presents a selective viewing of work from the best artists (37 to be exact) that carefully speculate various themes of gender, labor, value and consumption. Alongside the exhibition would be talks and live events on various subjects. Don’t miss out to view the rise of the new contemporaries.

25 Nov – 24 Jan
Institute of Contemporary Art
For more information check out: www.ica.org.uk

4. Simon Denny Products for Organizing
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Contemporary tech installations using print, graphics, moving images and text you certainly would not be bored roaming through Simon Denny’s work. Rooted in themes that scrutinize technology’s role in shaping global culture this vast exhibition is a futuristic exploration for the tech-lovers. The hackers culture is explored by various vitrines set up by the gallery narrating the organizational history of hacking, allowing the audience to walk through a digital journey.

25 Nov – 14 Feb
Serpentine Sackler Gallery.
For more information check out: www.serpentinegalleries.org

5. Christine Sun Kim Rustle Tustle
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Have you ever wondered what sounds looks like? Artist Christine Sun Kim, who was born deaf, explores materiality in sound connecting drawings, paintings and performance to her personal visual language. Graphic and musical notation, body language and American Sign Language (ASL) all combined in an investigative format for their communicative ability, resulting in Kim’s own grammar and structure for her compositions. Through her ‘’ownership of sound’ she would make you see that which is constantly present, yet invisible to us.

27 Nov-30 Jan
Carroll/Fletcher.
For more information check out: www.carrollfletcher.com

NEW YORK

1. Diemut Strebe Free Radicals Sugababe and Other Works
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Diemute Srebe’s work is a crossover between art and science, and there is nothing boring with his end results. Sugababe provides a replica of Vincent van Gogh’s ear, with living cells generically modified from a male Van Gogh descendant. Speak to van Gogh through a microphone system, programmed to generate nerve impulses from the sound signal in real time. This exhibition is well worth crossing over the dark side of the nerds for this mind –blowing installation.

7 Nov – 5 Dec
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.
For more information check out: www.feldmangallery.com

2. Annina Roescheisen What Are You Fishing For?
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A new series of work embodying an emotionally charged cinematic recording and photography, Annina Roescheisen’s work reminds us of Shakespeare’s fallen Ophelia. The film comes across as melancholic and has a tangible coldness, through the long pauses of stills and instrumental sounds the artist has incorporated in the piece. The holistic approach Roescheisen has taken provides an emotional depth, growth and essentially liberation with the person viewing it.

4 Nov – 1 Dec
Elliott Levenglick Gallery.
For more information check out: www.elliottlevenglick.com

3. Rachel Whiteread Looking In
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For a glimpse of domestic architecture and humanity’s impact through inhabiting such spaces come the sculptures and works on paper by Rachel Whiteread entitled Looking In. Casting an object’s space that is invisible-a space beneath a chair, darkness under a bed and so forth- the exhibition is a compelling insight of a ghostly rendition. The pieces, yielded from resin, plaster, rubber and concrete cast a memory delivering a new look of viewing the space surrounding these objects in a tangible medium.

7 Nov -19 Dec
Luhring Augustine Gallery, Chelsea.
For more information check out: www.luhringaugustine.com

4. Joseph Kosuth Agnosia, an Illuminated Ontology
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Internationally acclaimed installation artist Joseph Kosuth is on view at Sean Kelly Gallery, chronicling five decades of neon work in an exploration of language and meaning in art. His interpretaion on neon as ‘public writing’ provides a playful and profound perception for appropriating literature, philosophy and psychology. The exhibition will activate areas never before used in the gallery’s space. The artist’s iconic work will have you reading your Freud and Wittgenstein in the most creative context.

7 Nov – 19 Dec
Sean Kelly Gallery.
For more information check out: www.skny.com

5. Christopher Chiappa Livestrong
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In what seems to be a twisted version of Dr. Seuss book or an aftermath for most of us trying to make brunch on a Sunday, this exhibition is all about the eggs. The obsession with the subject has pushed Chiappa to make 7,000 fried eggs-over a year- made in plaster. The metaphoric rendering which calls for a whimsical, silly and complicated interpretation makes the simplistic object turn into an infestation, us it spreads across the surface of the entire gallery. Egg-cellent!

14th Nov-9th Jan
Kate Werble Gallery.
For more information check out: www.katewerblegallery.com

 

What exhibition wouldn’t be worth going to if it gave you the shot at some point in your day to say: ‘Remember that one time we went to see booze in Art’? Whilst a cynic’s definition of an alcoholic is someone you don’t like but really drinks as much as you, the exhibition carries 18th century art alongside quirky contemporaries such Gilbert and George. A stimulating, yet modest exhibition, the show gives the social lubricant its spotlight as the imbibing addiction has squirmed its way into glorifying masterpieces –seeding paintings such us the infamous 1751 Gin Lane by William Hogarth with babies plummeting to their deaths to Richard Billingham’s photography in the 1990’s domestic life as he snaps pictures of his alcoholic father staring in the distance as his wife gives him an earful. A catastrophic affair of insightful grimy history, the exhibition holds an evident pro-temperance tone. A storyline of the way artists use alcohol in a narrative, rather than the way alcohol affects art or artist, TATE Britain hosts the devious iteration of drinking in a small cavernous orange room.

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The collection emphasizes the role of alcohol in shaping the lives of the majority of Victorian British homes. By no means does the exhibition present a dazzling display of colors or the glorification of booze. Despite the exhibition offering a few moments of merriment with dancing people raising their glass in toast the overall demeanor of the exhibition is bleak, with images of crying women due to their husbands drunkenness, desolate children without parents and a family losing their possessions. As George Cruikshank spoke, whose work The Worship of Bacchus (1862) is on display: ‘…no artist, nor author, dare attempt to represent or describe, to the fullest extent, the horrible crimes and disgusting deeds that are committed under the influence of wine, beer, or spirits. No it cannot, it dare not be done.’

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The atmosphere is eased with notorious Gilbert and George’s Balls: The Evening Before The Morning After. With 114 deliberately amateurish photos collaged together to form a colossal blurred montage of what could well have been the impaired vision of a drunken night, the piece itself is intoxicating. If you distance yourself enough and squint your eyes ever so slightly, the correlation could mimic a liver…a pretty damaged one in this case. The pictures, all taken in the former Balls Brothers Bar in Bethnal Green Road in east London show the progressive effects of alcohol. The photographs captured were developed in various sizes, with their clarity distorted mirroring the alcohol’s effect.
Facing towards the other side of the room is the vast pandemonium of George Cruikshank, ‘The Worship of Bacchus’ (1860-62). The painting, walking the line of insanity due to its unsubtle nature, depicts babies endangered, people beaten and shot whilst others gather around statues of Bacchus, demonstrating a world of frenzy and menace.

This small exhibition is thought provoking, with aesthetic considerations becoming less and less omissible. How can you not wonder the odd opposition between G&G’s drunken memoir, across pieces that took half a century in their making such Cruikshank’s? The woes of drinking, and sufferings seem to have completely changed in the 21st century as the interpretation of alcohol takes a lighter note to the older representations of it- seeing the artists hand shift towards a comical-take, rather than the elaborately detailed and dark paintings in the 1800’s.
In conclusion, TATE Britain raises questions of art to moralize. Either way the most bizarre and interesting stories come from the drunken tails of the ‘fallen’ so if you have the talent what kind of observer would you be if you did not depict its influence?

16 Nov – Autumn 2016
Art and Alcohol on view at Tate Britain.
For more information check out: www.tate.org.uk

It’s coming up, It’s coming up, It’s HERE! Jamie Hewlett, co-creator of the re-known virtual band Gorillaz is presenting the inner workings of his psych at Saatchi Gallery entitled ‘The Suggestionists’. Of course the theme is anything but conventional; a peep show of intricate line drawings of trees, coupled with 70’s erotic Rated B posters, finished off with good-old-fashioned Tarot cards. Makes sense, right? I didn’t think so either. But nothing is basic with this rebel artist, and we wouldn’t expect anything other than an eccentrically creative show after all the virtual concerts he has managed to pull-off. So what does The Suggestions have to suggest? Put on your best Clint Eastwood expression of puzzlement, and let’s figure out which of these three shows is your match.
﷯ ﷯The Suggestionists consists of three bodies of work titled: ‘Tarot’, Honey’ and ‘Pines’. Humorous and bizarre, the exhibition offers a glimpse into a psychogeographic journey. Initially with no intention of corresponding to each other, the body of work diverges down the same path due to their suggestive qualities. With Tarots hinting towards your future, Honey’s cheeky erotic nature and Pines where the shadows of the trees transform into something else we are left to make up the end of the story ourselves.
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One thing the exhibition has in common in the seemingly disparate subjects-other than their common thread for their suggestive nature-is their comic-like character. Tarot features an over-sized deck of cards of 22 figures drawn in watercolor. The era is Hewllianesque, as they distinctly possess the designer’s signature expression of his cartoons with an underscored humor. The artist, influenced by his wife, who offered him a reading the first time they met, found himself intrigued by all the hidden signs within the cards. Using the same deck as de Caunes – the Tarot of Marseille- and influenced by tarot obsessive and filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, Hewelett gives us a spin for our fortune.
Passing the tarot card readings comes Honey, exploring the sleazy ambiance of 70’s erotic cinema. A genre not often put in the limelight, and a backdrop of an adult cinema lobby, overt the children to stick with their tarot card findings. A buzzing of Quentin Tarrantino’s art direction in Pulp Fiction comes to mind when viewing the colors boldly displayed off Hewellet’s actress wife (posing as the model in the posters). Trashy, where X clearly marks the spot, the posters put the female body in the forefront. Sex sells after all, denoting the woman in a minimal color scope. The designs mildly poor, the intentions sketchy and the visual badly collaged the pieces transcend us back to the risqué posters once on display that were considered as an inappropriate iconography.
If you’re still lingering to view intricate drawings from the illustrator then Pines won’t disappoint. The series displays the illustrator’s patience and keen eye for detail. It presents large black and white hyper-realistic illustrations, with shadows casting altering forms of imaginative shapes. The series comes from Hewlett’s enamoring interpretation whilst living in the South of France.

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Hewlett emphasizes the reasons behind the thematic approach his has taken, referring to the audience always having things ‘over-explained and everything is delivered to us in a high-definition graphic overkill. Which is robbing us of the ability to imagine what happens up next for ourselves.’ The exhibition shifting to a didactic meaning of triggering our imagination rather than being spoon-fed what we observe, we can draw up conclusions for ourselves. As if learning to take our first steps to connect the pieces together, Hewlett won’t hold our hand with his underlining themes- not because we are incapable of understanding but because we are encouraged to make our own opinion.
So Honey wake up and smell the Pines at Saatchi cause the cards predict this is an exhibition not to be missed.

18 Nov – 2 Dec The Saatchi Gallery.
For more information check out: www.saatchigallery.com

LONDON

1. Genieve Figgis
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‘Conversation pieces’ capturing British leisurely activities have never looked so luscious as with Genieve Figgis paintings of these fashionable get-togethers. The Irish artist plays an ode to 18th century ladies and gents by placing the figures in lavish parlors in black-tie attire- in paintings such as Royal Group (as seen above). This exhibition holds the tea party where formalwear never looked so interesting before and which banal tablecloths is MIA.

21 Nov – 19 Dec Almine Rech.
For more information check out: www.alminerech.com

2. TinTin: Hergé’s Masterpiece
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The wonderfully eccentric world of Tintin, a young reporter, as drawn by the late great illustrator Hergé is presented in this small and perfect exhibition at Somerset House. Mapping through a chronological timeline from Hergé’s early years of a daydreaming schoolboy drawing in the margins of his notebook to the genre-defining graphic work of his books. The exhibition reveals the man behind the masterpiece and laid out as if entering the a comic book strip.

12 Nov – 31 Jan Somerset House.
For more information check out: www.somersethouse.org.uk
3. Jamie Hewlett: The Suggestionists
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From Gorillaz to Saatchi: Jamie Hewlett, co-founder of the virtual band Gorillaz, now presents his first ever art exhibition. The work encapsulates three shows from a mischievous lens of witty images under the title The Suggestionists. The collages incorporate an array of images from Grindhouse-type film posters, Jodorowsky-inspired Tarotica and Russ Meyer to intricate line drawings of trees observed in the South of France. Step into the psych of Jamie Hewlett and try not to go bananas in this psychogeographic journey.

18 Nov – 2 Dec Saatchi Gallery.
For more information check out: www.saatchigallery.com
4. Art and Alcohol
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From the time gin consisted a better drinking option than water in Britain, the display examines the role of alcohol in British art from the 19th century to modern day. The art of drinking is charted through a contrast of works between Gilbert and George’s Drinking Sculpture and George Cruikshank’s Worship of Bacchus. Never have drinking habits been so captivating.

16 Nov – Autumn 2016 Tate Britain.
For more information check out: www.tate.org.uk

5. Clem Crosby: My, my shivers
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Loose line drawings on laminate and aluminum, Clem Crosby piles on layering with the arduous process of redacting and adding. The paintings create a friction between the different colors clashing atop of each other, with the surprise of flashy pigmentation underlying beneath the heavy brushstrokes. Depth is built from the intertwining patches given by the paints sensual characteristics. Crosby infuses baroque art and abstract expressionism-indicating these pieces are anything but simple line drawings.

20 Nov – 9 Jan
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery. For more information check out: www.houldsworth.co.uk
NEW YORK

1. Mark Manders
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Mark Mander’s narrative sculptures build on the contradiction of the pieces residing in a space that feels foreign but still familiar, in his solo presentation with Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Mander’s erases the present, and reimagines rooms of a timeless reality in a sur-real parallel with his large scaled sculptures. The self-portrait as an architectural object is one where you can re-enact scenes of inception in this dreamlike oasis as you see the work in awe.

29 Oct – 19 Dec Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.
For more information check out: www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

2. Robert Mapplethorpe: Unique
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The legendary American photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe offers a rare glimpse into his life from carefully selected Polaroids, taken between 1970 and 1975. Unique, is an exhibition that reveals the inspiration behind Mapplethorpe’s later work through this illuminating spontaneity and creative curiosity- with self-portraits, lovers, still lifes and figure studies. Don’t miss out on this exclusive behind-the-scenes unveiling.

7 Nov – 19 Dec Sean Kelly Gallery.
For more information check out: www.skny.com

3. Donald Judd
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Judd’s sculptural practice, defining Minimalism, examines shape, color, volume and surface within an entity of itself; complying for the pieces to act as self-referential. The work is made of Cor-ten steel, a material made by the artist himself in the last five years of his life and aimed to elucidate the preoccupations of his oeuvre. To say Judd’s work is simply made of steel is woefully insufficient.

7 Nov – 19 Dec David Zwirner Gallery.
For more information check out: www.davidzwirner.com

4. Jean Tinguely
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Scraps of salvaged iron and wheels collected from junkyards, Jean Tinguely manages to create a hoarders own paradise. Abstract shapes, and found objects all assist in the creation of a new function from the by-products of consumption. The dynamic sculptures also have old motors installed to produce unpredictable motion of inconsistent behavior. Often the works entertain or irritate the viewer, so stop wondering which group you fall into and find out for yourself.

6 Nov – 19 Dec Gladstone Gallery.
For more information check out: www.gladstonegallery.com
5. Jim Lambie
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A psychedelic approach of trippy patterns, appropriated objects and a train shaped smoked machine this exhibition has many highs. The Glasgow-based artist, inspired by The Clash’s song ‘Train in Vain,’ re-invents the top chart in his own body of work laying forth an entrancing selection. Stimulating your vision with vibrant colors and stripy floors, prepare to enter in a world of bliss.

7 Nov – 19 Dec Anton Kern Gallery.
For more information check out: www.antonkerngallery.com

Behind the glass vitrine of Sadie Cole’s Gallery, lit up amid the busy Kingsley Street, individuals enter and quickly disappear up the staircase. What show is there you ask? At first glance the body of work, invisible to its existence on street level, finds safe haven on the second floor of the gallery’s space. Rudolf Stingel’s paintings, which could easily belong in the National Geographic’s archives, portray photorealistic images of animals. The capacity of the pieces to interchange from paintings to photographs is mind bending, as the artist dilates our perception and questions our memory.
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A seal, fox and warthog are a few of the animals captured in their natural landscape-snapshots of spontaneity. Reproduced in a magnified scale they are spread across the space, which feels empty even with the artwork on display. Despite the meticulous composition and time undertaken to produce each piece, you can’t help but feel withdrawn from any emotional attachment. The starch white walls, and lighting make the environment feel sterile, highlighting the subdued grisaille or faded color from the paintings. The aesthetic of photorealism is soon diminished when you step closer to the paintings, as they reveal their imperfections to us. The ideal image is shattered as the paint granules unevenly protrude from the canvas and the pigmentation sieves the manual construction of its character. It is indeed fascinating that our mind assembles these images as a unified projection, but in fact it is all part of a temporal rouge- a blotchy picture of multiple layerings.
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The source for Stingel’s inspiration is as quirky as the approach he uses to paint- a vintage German calendar where each image serves as a different month. The guise of his intention revolves around a specific time frame assigned to each animal- as each canvas is assigned a temporal duration for their being.
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Past the moment of painterly intricacy, the work lacks any form of further revelation. The awe seems to belong in the past, just as their initial character, and we are left wondering what it is these pieces can further hold, other than long hours for their making. The impasto ‘surface interference’ attests to a nostalgic nature, as the quality of ‘pastness’ is imbued in the surface texture. There is a striking contrast in the subjects timid content and vivid enlargement, and the accumulation of time that separates them from the current state they exist-the present. The ambiguity of this unresolved tension accomplishes to distance the canvases with the viewer in the present moment.

The nostalgia is unveiled by bringing the memory forth in such a grandiose scale. But the deadened pictures transcribe no emotional weight, so why would you be nostalgic for something, which you cannot be attached with?

04 November-18 December
Rudolf Stingel Exhibition on view at Sadie Coles Gallery, 62 Kingly Street London W1
For more information check out: www.sadiecoles.com

“This is disgusting” – were the words of a middle-aged man as he fled the scene of Eddie Peake’s solo show Forever Loop at the Barbican Curve. Indeed, Eddie’s work is essentially synonymous with nudity nowadays, so I did expect wobbling willies and bouncing boobs, yet this gentleman’s strong reaction, I did not.
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Stepping into the space, you enter a maze of plasterboard corridors – the path is dark and ominous but nothing compared to the climax that is to come and in the pit of my belly, I felt the suspense rising. Along the way, peepholes provide a window to view screens looping (comparatively tame) videos of dancers performing a choreographed routine, spliced with sequences of an underground radio studio and home shots of Peake as a toddler playing in the bath. Moments of shock turn to awe and “aww” instantaneously.
A top the scaffolding tower, I gazed at the chaos underfoot – at this point is when I first spied the two nude performers and heard the boorish statements of the astounded man. The performers, completely butt-naked except for sparklingly white trainers, pose and traverse the space all the while mirroring the scenes within the videos. I stand mesmerized by the jiggling flesh and deafened by their war cries of “Who dem bitches tryna tell me about time and space? Suck my dick!”
Add on top of all that, a florescent pink wall mural, Perspex bears with scarves, a metal figure with a box head filled with the crap of everyday life and a lady in a sheer bodysuit gliding around on a pair of roller-skates – like our own Guardian angel.
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However, I keep going back to that guy’s words. What is disgusting? Is the human body disgusting? Skin is skin, and yet because it is not disassociated by screen, it becomes repulsive or horrifying. The only bit that made me squirm was the piercing stare of the performers – we watch them and they watch us. As our eyes lock in a moment of intimacy, the positions of vulnerability switch and I find myself shifting awkwardly. Nevertheless, their nudity is necessary to probe the conditions of sexuality (or lust) in our own skin and the contemporary landscape – which clearly has a lot more room for change as these women continue to be condemned for what God gave’em.
A labyrinth of works and a labyrinth of ideas; the only fault I can find in Forever Loop is its potential to be ‘too much’. When you throw up so many issues into such a small space, there is bound to be some that fall short. Even now, I struggle to weave connections and unravel the complex network of concepts. Although overwhelming, Eddie Peake triumphs in creating work that is the antithesis of passive and overall, it left me questioning for days – a sign of success.
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LONDON

1) Kate Lyddon
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All things absurd and grotesque is what Kate Lyddon brings to her solo show at Zabludowicz Collection, so do not be afraid to let your dark-side out as she reveals the “messy” side of life. Working across drawing, painting and collage, Lyddon for this exhibition has created a new series of works. All stemming from the motif of trees. So watch as twisting roots and dead stumps morph into human forms before your very eyes.

12 Nov – 20 Dec. Zabludowicz Collection.
For more information check out: www.zabludowiczcollection.com

2) Susan Hiller
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The widely influential artist, Susan Hiller, is coming to Lisson Gallery – her first time showing in London since 2011. Questioning our belief in belief systems and the meanings in meanings, Hiller probes the unseen and the unheard to create art that evokes a sort of ghostliness. Her art has repeatedly been ground-breaking in its diversity of materials so our expectations are high.

13 Nov – 9 Jan. Lisson Gallery.
For more information check out: www.lissongallery.com

3) Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2015
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The prestigious photographic portrait award returns to celebrate and promote the most talented and exciting contemporary portrait photographers from across the globe. From over 2,200 entries, the selected images explore both new and traditional approaches to portrait photography whilst capturing a whole myriad of characters, moods and locations.

12 Nov – 21 Feb. National Portrait Gallery.
For more information check out: www.npg.org.uk

4) Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture
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A retrospective of the man who pioneered the kinetic sculpture and brought art into the fourth dimension gets his first major UK show for over 50 years at Tate Modern. The show brings together some real greats, including Joan Miró and Fernand Leger for this event celebrating the avant-garde. Marcel Duchamp coined the term ‘mobile’ to describe Calder’s motorised works, which apparently kept Einstein transfixed and will just as likely entertain the children. The breeze generated by the inevitable crowds will keep his sculptures twirling and thus keep the crowd staring.

11 Nov – 3 April. Tate Modern.
For more information check out: www.tate.org.uk

5) Mut Mut
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New space and exciting work by young artists, Mut Mut is the coming together of contemporary illustrators to diversify the world of illustration, including work by Anna Lomax, Nous Vous and Laura Carlin. It is a playful expression to prove illustration can be visualised not just in screen or in print, but as a tangible, physical object. Undoubtedly, this is uncharted territory for contemporary illustration, and we anticipate venturing into the unknown.

11 Nov – 12 Dec. Assembly Point.
For more information check out: www.assemblypoint.xyz

New York

1) Performa 15
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Care to find out about your visual arts event this November? Performa is one to put on your plates! It is the sixth edition for this academic investigation into the visual arts. Initially launched in 2005 the visual performance biennial encapsulates historic anchors in which the artists can integrate into their acts. This year focuses on Renaissance, with its sumptuous visual culture and its pageantry.

1st Nov-22Nov Various Locations.
For more information check out: http://15.performa-arts.org

2) Francis Bacon: Late Paintings
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Bacon’s peak of artistic maturity was reached during the last 20 years of his life. The Gagosian Gallery has on display these one of a kind pieces, where visceral brushwork, coupled with spray paint coincide in the paintings dark undertones. An exceptional viewing from one of the leading figures in the art scene.

10Nov-12Dec Gagosian Gallery, Lenox Hill.
For more information check out: http://www.gagosian.com

3) Louise Fishman
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Louise Fishman’s paintings are ones that must have been having a worse day than you. With their surfaces brushed, scraped, layered and smeared the canvases are hit with an intense energy. This renewal of energy and its tangibility through its surface is what Fishman is trying to capture. So stop zen-ing around cause this exhibition needs your presence.

22Oct-21Nov Cheim and Read Gallery.
For more information check out: http://www.cheimread.com/exhibitions/current

4) Hilary Harnischfeger
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Harnischfeger’s exhibition over at the Rachel Uffer Gallery presents materials in raw and overworked form of clay, plaster, paper, ink and minerals all along ceramic surfaces. An exhibition not quite like others, the materials are researching within the confounds of the human body and landscape, whilst contradicting themselves-as they try to physically balance themselves.

1Nov-20Dec Rachel Uffner Gallery.
For more information check out: www.racheluffnergallery.com

5) Jim Shaw: The End is Here
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One of the United States’ most influential artists, Jim Shaw draws inspiration from comic books, record covers, conspiracy magazines and iconography of religious status. His didactic approach in his selection of work will intrigue you in his formal structure and large scale. Let Shaw lead the way into your comic book enlightenment.

7Oct-10Jan The New Museum.
For more information check out: www.newmuseum.org

Francesca DiMattio’s exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, entitled Confection, looks like our grandma’s porcelain China wear got stolen and re-invented by the Mad Hatter. Donnie Darko might as well make the cut for the guest list in DiMattio’s distorted body of work. Consisting of large warped vases, violently disrupted and twisted to become almost unrecognizable as to their 17th Century French China wear origins, the artist creates stark contrasts of destabilized forms. The backdrop to all these grueling vases- that I fearfully feel they are about to tip over before we even manage to go around them? Paintings of aggressive collaging depicting furnishing and objects being part of a room with disheveled wallpaper. The surface of the canvas looks torn, tortured and then glued back together to make a virtual reality. DiMattio’s intention is to question feminine appropriation that objects hold. We vigorously begin to speculate these weird forms, trying to decipher which part to start looking at. So we chose a fold in the first ceramic piece and rolled with it.
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The distorted vases, mimicking gutted ceramics with spewing textures as if they are uncontained fungi, seemed to be growing on me. The delicacy of the vases and ‘Rococosque’ flowers that signify femininity is broken through a jarring exposure of rough forms. The ominous effect of gold highlights and intricate detailing exposes a sense of fragility. In contrast, the forms themselves provide a scratching disturbance in the latter. The objects are optically unfamiliar in their morphed anatomy, whilst their materiality is ambiguous. The sculptures seem to be on the verge of collapse, leaping to find their balance since they seem to have everything and anything stuck onto them. In Confection the ceramics act as tiers of cake pasted together, smothered with icing, seemingly melting away and losing their once glorified beauty. So is it pretty now? Unsure, as to whether these vases are beautiful or not DiMattio accomplishes to question whether we are in awe or simply repulsed by what we are staring at; they are grotesque but sophisticated, smooth but disruptive, rough but delicate. Whether it be that I was already mesmerized as to the juxtaposition of the sculptures acting as threatening presences in the low lit gallery, like thorns poking out from their structure, the glistening smoothness from the surface made me want to reach out and touch them.
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In addition, the paintings in the gallery space dynamically held a pulsating physicality. Pattern Paintings appear to act as architectural contrasts of the possible space where these sculptures had previously inhabited. Heavily collaged, with clashing wallpapers of disoriented direction, torn, withered, in an attempt to break from the canvas my eyes keep bouncing off from the multiple layers. The heterogeneity of textures and prints successfully manage to create formal cohesion.
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The instability and controversies are eminent from the beginning in this exhibition. The flowers within the sculptures seem to be feasting on the ceramic smooth surface and infesting the forms. DiMattio flourished in this exhibition as her compilations still maintained an organic tone.
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Staring down at the sculptures we begin to become part of the disruption in the clean and intimate space of the gallery, so let’s tiptoe out and eat some cake with regular icing.

Francesca DiMattio’s Exhibition will be on view at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery
from 12th October 2015 to 14th of November 2015.
For more information check out: www.houldsworth.co.uk

LONDON

1. Rudolf Stingel
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Rudolf Stingel, for his fifth exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ, is showcasing a whole new body of work – whilst launching the gallery’s new space at 1 Davies Street, Mayfair. Far from a survey of standard, yawn-inducing wildlife images, Stingel’s subject matter marks a particular historical and geographical importance. So dig a little deeper behind the guise of banality and subtle monochrome to uncover the images real nostalgia.

4 Nov-18 Dec. Sadie Coles HQ, Davies Street and Kingly Street.
For more information check out: www.sadiecoles.com

2. Petra McCarthy Resurgam
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Petra McCarthy is making her debut to London at the Rebacca Hossack gallery, Charlotte Street. What may look like bacteria under microscopic view are the expressionistic, abstract paintings by McCarthy flattened by sheets of Perspex. Her gestural brushworks become a swirling cosmos of colours that we want to get lost in.

3 Nov-28 Nov. Rebecca Hossack, Charlotte Street.
For more information check out: www.rebeccahossack.com

3. Jerwood/ Photoworks Awards 2015
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Coming to Jerwood Space, a celebration of upcoming photographic practitioners; a group exhibition of three selected artists, Matthew Finn, Joanna Piotrowska and Tereza Zelenkova. Each artist uses photography to explore a myriad of themes and for the exhibition, received an award of £5,000 to develop projects that could have remained a fantasy without Jerwood/ Photoworks support.

4 Nov-13 Dec. Jerwood Space.
For more information check out: www.jerwoodvisualarts.org

4. New Chinese Art
﷯Quite a topical exhibition given the China-UK Year of Cultural Exchange, the New Chinese Art show at Saatchi gallery is set to be one of the highlights of the festival. Presenting three leading Chinese artists: Shen Qibin, Jin Feng and Guan Ce, see the work some of China’s most exciting contemporary artists in Europe for the first time.

6 Nov-8 Nov. Saatchi Gallery.
For more information check out: www.saatchigallery.com

5. The Line
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Walk The Line – no we are not talking about the Johnny Cash song – but the contemporary art walk. Stroll along the Thames, see a sculpture by Antony Gormley, or head north to Cody Dock and spy a Damien Hirst. If you can brace the cold, it is an exciting prospect to experience contemporary art legends out and about against the urban grit of grey London town.

Until 31 Dec. Various locations around London.
For more information check out: www.the-line.org

NEW YORK
1. Frank Stella: A Retrospective

As Frank Stella candidly stated for his work, ‘what you see is what you see’. Nothing could’ve been more direct as the artist’s statement concerning his Pop Art abstraction paintings that provide a punch in the expressionistic style they take. The methodical course of the body of work made by Stella is one whose progression is eminent throughout his career. The exhibition provides an open dialogue of objects, mixed and matched, from altering periods of Stella’s long spanning career as a dominant figure in the art world.

30 Oct-7 Feb 2016. Whitney Museum of American Art, Meatpacking District.
For more information check out: http://whitney.org

2. Kaws: Along The Way
It’s like a Thanksgiving miracle with Kaw’s giant sculptures devouring the Brooklyn Museum lobby. Former street artist, whose accomplishments include designing re-known balloons that overlook the entire of New York at Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, and designing the set of MTV’s Music Awards, Kaw’s work certainly is anything but unnoticed. The 18-foot tall sculpture depicting a skull impression of Mickey Mouse is a sight for sore eyes. Drop the Mic(key) and head down for this overwhelming experience.

10 June-6 Dec. Brooklyn Museum, Prospect Park.
For more information check out: www.brooklynmuseum.org

3. Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity!
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Making a name for herself at Luxembourg and Dayang Gallery, with her interpretation of a chair forming a pair of woman’s legs spread out-who wouldn’t want to see what other obscenities Hamilton has come up with this time? The hall and courtyard are decked out with ceramic eating utensils, glass rice cakes cigarettes from PVC-pipes and many more pieces on sight. The combination of various decades worth of fetishes will captivate you, with the 70’s being the epitome of the show. Who said sex and consumer obsessions are dead?

20 Sep-Jan 4. Sculpture Center, Long Island City.
For more information check out: www.sculpture-center.org

4. Asia Contemporary Art Week 2015
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Coming back for it’s 10th edition, the Asia Contemporary Art Week will be packed with performances, screenings and festivities that will have you booked full for the whole week. The show consists of over 40 New York and Asia based art institutions and 150 artists – with highlight performances by Lee Mingwei’s Sonic Blossom at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Field Meeting’s Take 3: Thinking Performances. So plan out because there’s a lot to see!

28 Oct-8 Nov. Various locations.
For more information check out: www.acaw.info

5. Alina Szapoczikow
A Polish sculptor and survivor of the dark days in Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen and Theresiendstadt her work provides the remnants of her experiences. Alina Szapoczikow translates World War II through sculptures exploring violence and dark eroticism, drawing aspects from Surrealism, Pop Art and Post-minimalism. These freestanding figurative sculptures from the 60’s and 70’s would send chills down your spine

31 Oct-5 Dec. Andrea Rosen Gallery, Chelsea.
For more information check out: http://www.andrearosengallery.com

Jonas Wood makes it personal in his impersonal reality. I wasn’t expecting to be submerged into a space quite as the one manufactured by Wood over at the Gagosian Gallery in London. Who would in any case want to see interior spaces in flat rendering? Child like brush strokes, stylistically drawn in blocks and surreal collaging of nuance domesticity, sounds as mundane as a child drawing the sun in the corner, a square house and calling it a day. However, Wood is anything but pictorially adolescent. The work achieved undergoes a coming of age by succeeding to create an immersive 2D site through tonal maturity and a declared angle of concise calculation. Intrigued, not only by how much I kept discovering in the details from each painting, but that I actually preferred it if all spaces looked like the world of Wood.

Before you let your thoughts run to the stereotypical notion ‘I could’ve done that’ lets call it truce and uneasily fess up to our inability to even make these seemingly basic paintings. You would never expect a compilation of influences as diverse as Wood’s to make sense. From interiors by great artists such as Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard and David Hockney, alongside Chinese and Japanese still-life, ancient Greek pottery and textiles by Josed Frank. All compacted into one show, but how well to they all interact?
The reduction of the images to their initial visions and their assemblage in a re-imagined collage made from Woods personal photographs, comes his interior spaces.
Surprisingly a coherent vision of luminous perplexity.
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The more you stand across from the large scale pieces, the lavisher the palette range appears. Each piece owns a different texture, where tactility and brush stroke become more investigative, with a weight to their purpose and precision. Wishing I was an owner of such constructed interiors, whereby even a garage becomes an intricate distortion and a birdcage is an exaggerated grid, enticing the viewer to lean in, all caught me going back for a second glance. The viewer is pre-assigned a standpoint in the space to run into. Authority is stripped from our side, and you become consumed by the task of observation at our selected spot, with the urge to make a panoramic investigation of the space.
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The show continues into another room where large-scale canvases depicting ceramic pottery devour the walls. Their impact, though, is weaker than the collages, failing to catch my eye as the previous space. The eye is no longer looking for the variations of textures but my attention fades fast in its investigation of the isolated grey, black and white background that Wood employs. In Grey Greek Pot, classic art figures drawn in a black and white interpretation, are next to Grain Pot with Night Bloom whereby a pot with leaves drooping from the side, reminiscing Matisse, are in the same line for viewing. How strong is the linear style to hold this room together with such disheveled themes? The detraction from textural detailing and lack of colour variation, is not as successful as the room beforehand. The contrast, however, of making the interior space onto smaller canvases and the ceramics magnified is in itself an exciting idea.
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I went into the Wood’s and was fixated by the process of piecing together the seams left visible by the artist. The exhibition allows you to get an insight of the artist’s life, one that seems to have entered into the contemporary world, and it’s one I would like to live in.
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Exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery
from October 13-December 19 Brittania Street, London

London

1: Museums at Night
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Museums may make you think of stuffy exhibitions and school trips, but forget about normal opening hours at this year’s annual event– Museums at Night. Go behind-the-scenes and after-hours to experience some of the capital’s biggest attractions as you have never before. What a coincidence, it lands on Halloween weekend, so do expect to be slightly terrified.

30 Oct-31 Oct. Various locations around London.
For more information check out www.museumsatnight.org.uk

2: On Stage/ Off Stage: Performance and the Theatrical
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Join artists, curators, theatre directors and writers for a discussion at the Tate Modern exploring the relationship between art and theatre. Questioning, what is the difference between the stage and the gallery? How does live art blur the boundaries between art and theatre? To what extent can the artist be considered an actor or director? Head to the Starr Auditorium to learn more.

31 Oct, 14:00pm – 16:00pm. Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern.
Part of the series BMW: Tate Live 2015: Staging Situations: Art and Theatre.
For more information check out: www.tate.org.uk

3: Gravity
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Coinciding with the hundredth anniversary of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Kinetica Museum in partnership with the Paris Centre for Cosmological Physics presents a four-day festival about the ways art and science overlap. At the Hospital Club, seventeen kinetic and electronic artists are showcased to make up an exhibition of ‘out of this world’ proportions.

30 Oct-1 Nov. The Hospital Club, Convent Garden.
For more information check out: www.thehospitalclub.com

4: Chantal Akerman: Now
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In time with the UK premiere of Akerman’s new film, ‘No Home Movie’, this large-scale exhibition celebrates her prowess as an emotive filmmaker and artist. Including seven works, ‘Now’ an eight channel video installation originally commissioned for this year’s Venice Biennale, is the show’s centrepiece and explores notions of violence and conflict.

30 Oct-6 Dec. Ambika P3.
For more information check out: www.p3exhibitions.com

5: SLAM Fridays
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On the last Friday of every month, SLAM Fridays focuses on a different area of South London, with galleries staying open until late and artist-led tours to guide gallery-goers between venues. Although, do keep your eye out for the printed South London Art Map, in case you fancy visiting one of the 90 spaces at any other times of the week.

30 Oct, 18:00pm – 20:00pm. Various locations around London.
For more information check out: www.southlondonmap.com
New York

1: The Roof Garden Commission: Pierre Huyghe
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Experience the natural world in an unnatural environment through the manifestations and brilliance of French artist Pierre Huyghe. A transformation of the Met’s rooftop into an enigmatic and unsettling tableaux in a video, sculpture and landscape installation, with archaeological excavations as the thematic overview, the installation bridges culture and nature. Huyghe’s Roof Garden might just be an unexpected find that you should look into, so dig in.

12 May- 1 Nov. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park.
For more information check out: www.metmuseum.org

2: Segmented Realities: Jose Parla
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If you feel like experiencing art outside of museums and galleries this might just be the break you need just down the road. MePa’s Standard Hotel is hosting Parla’s public art in the outdoors plaza . These large painted sculptures, with underlining vibes of Havana and Caribbean cities will reverberate seeds of ancient ruins into street art. How would such a combination look? Find out.

Until November 30. The Standard, High Line, Meatpacking District.
For more information check out: www.standarhotels.com

3: Queen of The Night
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For an absurdly deluxe experience of New York’s nightlife, we are reassured the city of lights has it all. Dinner and a (circus) show in a grand part setting? Please, dive in-the acrobats sure would take the leap if you don’t. In the gorgeously refashioned Diamond Horseshoe Nightclub, the show is directed by Tony-winning designer Christine Jones, Katherine Crockett as the ball’s hostess, and Steve Cuiffo as the magician. Sit back and enjoy your drinks under the lights of glamorous magic.

Until Dec 31. Diamond Horseshow at the Paramount Hotel, Midtown West.
For more information check out: queenofthenightnyc.com

4: The Village Halloween Parade in NYC
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What would Halloween be without the basics? With the largest walking procession in the streets of NYC welcomes the night of the walking dead with open arms. A compilation of over 50 000 zombies, giant puppets and of course the man of the hour, Donal Trump would take these streets by storm. Dress up in your best Halloween costume, work on your make-up skills (or just be horrible at it-it might be better this time) and get in line for the walk of your life. March on.

October 31, from 7PM-11PM. Sixth Avenue from Spring St to 16th St, Manhattan.
For more information check out: www.halloween-nyc.com

5: The Gymschool, St Peterburg: Rineke Dijkstra
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Rineke Dijkstra studies of adolescents and the forging of their identities behind these individuals delicate time, is demonstrated through the photography of young Russian gymnasts in St. Petersburg. The work goes far beyond capturing these young kids on face value, as Dijkstra depicts a metaphorical connection between the physical and emotional state of the action in motion.

Oct 26-Dec 19. Marian Goodman Gallery, Midtown West.
For more information check out: www.mariangoodman.com

If you enter Tate Modern from ground level, you would certainly be forgiven for thinking the installation was under construction – where are the work-men? The idea of ‘under construction’ perfectly epitomises Abraham Cruzvillegas’ new commission piece Empty Lot, for the expansive and eminent Turbine Hall.
This is a show of two halves, what begins with eager anticipation ends with frustration.

Getting closer and closer, rearing up above you like the prow of a huge ship, the triangular deck slices through the space. We instantaneously remember the opening sequence of ‘Titanic’ where the vessel imposingly looms over the crowd. The awe builds with each step; Cruzvillegas’ titan of a structure perches upon a matrix of scaffolding, with its perimeters lit up by illuminated masts.
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The mezzanine level, however, delivers a very different perspective. The deck is really more of a garden allotment – a geometric field of potted soil. The scene is striking, absorbing but extremely irritating. You want to walk along the artist’s floating floor and get down and dirty with the earth, but that is simply not possible. Instead, you must squint out the wealth of details and if you don’t have perfect vision, we wish you good luck.

The desire to botanise is strong. The soil comes from 36 sites all across London, from Peckham Rye to Buckingham Palace, yet nothing has been planted. This is a garden not in bloom. In a city of withering wilderness, where land is being gobbled up for oil and property development, Empty Lot is a blatant alarm against an endangered Eden.

The optical pattern is visually appealing, but the promise of the experience is greater than the actual one. Cruzvillegas describes the piece as a “scaffolding of ideas”, it will continue to grow over time (literally) and Empty Lot has the potential to instigate some sort of social change. Although, the installation is fatally flawed because of the lack of humanity, all we want is to get even closer –is that too much to ask?

13th October – 3rd April 2016.
For more information check out www.tate.org.uk

London

1: Mademoiselle Privé
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First Alexandra McQueen, then Louis Vuitton and now CHANEL. It seems there is a fashion invasion happening in London, and this is another not to miss. Mademoiselle Privé takes over the Saatchi Gallery, presenting an enchanted journey through the brand’s origins, capturing the charismatic personality and irreverent spirit of Mademoiselle Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld.

13 Oct-1 Nov, Saatchi Gallery.
For more information check out: www.saatchigallery.com/current/mademoiselle_prive

2: Affordable Art Fair
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Making art accessible to everyone, Affordable Art Fair returns to Battersea. Exhibiting both new talents and household names, priced between £100 to £5,000. This fair opens up the contemporary art market for those looking to start their own collection.

22 Oct-25 Oct, Battersea Evolution, Battersea Park.
For more information check out: www.affordableartfair.com

3: Jon Rafman at Zabludowicz Collection
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Ever fancied sitting in a ball pit or inside a cupboard and watching a film? Jon Rafman makes those wishes come true for his commission exhibition at Zabludowicz Collection. He has transformed the space in a playful series of installations and sculptural works to immerse the viewer into his videos. This is a show to leave your inhibitions and exhibition etiquette at the door – so just enjoy.

8 Oct-20 Dec, Zabludowicz Collection.
For more information check out: www.zabludowiczcollection.com/

4: States of Mind: Ann Veronica Janssens
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‘yellowbluepink’ is the new installation by Ann Veronica Janssens at The Wellcome Collection, which explores the experience of human consciousness in a space – a space that is full of thick pink mist. The piece challenges how we perceive things, when you can’t really see anything.

20 Oct-3 Jan, The Wellcome Collection, Bloomsbury.
For more information check out: www.wellcomecollection.org

5: Parallax Art Fair
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Over 200 artists from all over the world come to Parallax Art Fair to display their work. Cutting out the middle-man, you can buy directly from the artist and with prices starting from £200, this is the art fair for young collectors.

24 Oct-25 Oct, Chelsea Old Town Hall, Chelsea.
For more information check out: www.parallaxaf.co
New York
1: Mark Grotjahn: Painted Sculpture
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Portraits on canvas may seem outdated for the contemporary art scene, but not when they are by Mark Grotjahn. Funky takes on facial features with expressionist characteristics, Grotjahn constructs sculptural collages, using boxes and tubes to recreate a sense of primitive art.

20 Oct- 29 Oct, Anton Kern Gallery, Chelsea.
For more information check out: www.antonkerngallery.com

2: Gianni Piacentino
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A distinctive founder of Art Povera in the mid 60’s, Gianni Piacentino’s elegant weirdness will seduce you. His reductive sculpture produces an electric beauty, as he turns line drawings into three dimensional forms. Italian Futurism is upon us in this exhibition.

20 Oct-31 Oct, Michael Werner, Lenox Hill.
For more information check out: www.michaelwerner.com

3: Eduardo Paolozzi: Horizon of Expectations
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A ‘graduate’ from the Pop Art movement and advocate of the Independent Group in the late 1940’s, Paolozzi’s work is oxymoronic. Behind the vibrancy of the screens prints, his work is inspired by the history of post industrial society, Brutalism and machine aesthetics.

21 Oct- 1 Nov, CLEARING, Williamsburg.
For more information check out: www.c-l-e-a-r-i-n-g.com

4: Frida Kahlo: ‘Art, Garden, Life’
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In this exhibition, you are invited to get an unique insight into Frida Kahlo’s life. Tour the ornate garden she kept outside her studio, to experience the scenery that later inspired the paintings.

16 May- 1 Nov, New York Botanical Garden.
For more information check out: www.nybg.org

5: Okwui Okpakwasili: Bronx Gothic
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A thematic performance of youth, terror and eroticism by the theatre muse Okwui Okpakwasili. This innovative, autobiographical performance is a compilation of poetic storytelling and dance. Okpkwasili uses her body and personal experiences to enchant you in this must-see performance.

21 Oct-24 Oct. New York Live Arts, Chelsea.
For more information check out: www.newyorklivearts.org

Before anything else, we should clarify SUNDAY Art Fair is not only on Sunday. Gallery-led, booth-free, SUNDAY returns for its 6th edition, located just a stone’s throw from the blue-chip Frieze fair in the warehouse building Ambika P3.

An easy-going and accessible temporary platform, the fair has gained reputation of exposing raw and pure talent. A showcase of young galleries and emerging artists on the cusps of something bigger; it was like a breath of fresh air in an art world full of must-be-seen crazed clones. SUNDAY has successfully set itself up as the hipper, edgier counterpart to the Frieze art supermarket.

The layout lends SUNDAY a casual democratic sense of openness, as opposed to the usual system of squeezing as many booths into one space at a time. Although, it can be tricky to distinguish when one gallery stand starts and another ends – the effect is visually stimulating and liberating.

What we came across was a lot of rubbish – actual rubbish or ‘found objects’. However, we do not mean the work’s actual effect was far from dissatisfactory. When Duchamp presented the urinal, it was a revolt against all the art rules, and these are the artists that are risking it all to reinvent the parameters of what is and what isn’t art, whilst having some fun with it. Here’s our list of those we think you should keep an eye on:

1:James Samuel Lewis at Gallerie Joseph Tang
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2: Guilia Cenci at SpazioA
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3: Jimmy Merris at Seventeen Gallery
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4: Lea Cetera at Southard Reid
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5: Aude Pariset at Barbara Seiler Gallery
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Check yourself into The Asylum if you feel like your week at Frieze London is getting too crazy to handle. Even the best West End productions would be envious of the theatrical setup of the Helly Nahmad Nahmad booth at Frieze Masters – no doubt, one of the most talked-about sights across both Frieze fairs.
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Let the light opera music queue as the re-enactment unveils three interiors that pay homage and replicate 1940s sanatoriums and asylums. Production designer, Robin Brown has skillfully fashioned these spaces to mimic the original sources of inspiration artist Jean Dubuffet used for his works– that are also on display. An ideal counterpoint, connecting, echoing and heightening the art.

Staring upon the mental wasteland of people’s lives, we see walls scrawled with drawings and writings, a mass of intertwined textures in a plethora of colours and the abandoned belongings of imagined patients. The first room is a doctor’s office, with notes and stethoscopes, followed by a small and simple patient’s room whose writings are etched across the walls, then the final space is the largest filled with tables and chairs all covered in scribbles.
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Fixated by the intricate details on the walls, you transcend into a contemporary scene of ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. Helly Nahmad Gallery and Robin Brown have managed to provide an insight to a world that is real, but feels foreign, where we can easily lose our minds.

If you have ever wondered what you would take with you in your ‘after-life’, then step into the Coffin at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair. ARTCUBE was brave enough to experience, along with our art market expert Magnus Resch, the multiple art pieces on display. From blown up coffin’s marked with the notorious label of Pepsi and that 90s kid’s Nokia phone to President Obama’s portrait pimped-out, we are glad to say that this exhibition has it all.

The third edition of this diverse exhibition, held at Somerset House, presents artists from the fifty-four countries that constitute Africa. The platform established in this show tributes the ethos of art, bringing together the multifaceted stages of contemporary production. The exhibition is set up by the RA projects, an architectural award winning studio, confidently demonstrating the works in an orchestral layout that is easy to follow.

A colorful take on Western consumerism, merged into collages, paintings and whatever other kitsch material we used to love. The fair highlights the multiplicity of cultural production, and reinvents our cultural existence. Here are some of the pieces that resonated with us from granny’s trippy doilies to Obama’s dazzling smile (literally).

1: Untitled Tete by Aboudia featuring Magnus Resch
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2: Fresh and Fading Memories, Part V by El Anatsui
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3: Coffins by Paa Joe and Tetteh-Ashong
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4: No Man’s Land by Jems Robert Koko Bi
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5: Banana Sculpture, no17 by Jebila Okwongwu
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6: Ku’ngang Mask by Herve Youmbi
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7: DP2 by Zak Ove
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8: I Have a Drone (Obama’s Portrait) by Hassan Musa
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9: The Irony of Power by Yassine Khaled
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10: Passage-Oriental Series by Zahrin Kahlo
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London

1: Hyundai Commission 2015: Abraham Cruzvillegas: Empty Lot
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The Mexican artist, Abraham Cruzvillegas will be the inaugural artist for the Hyundai Commission to transform Tate Modern’s monumental Turbine Hall. Empty Lot is still shrouded in secrecy, yet supposedly has a very London focus – we can see for ourselves from this Tuesday 13th.

Tate Modern, 13 Oct – 20 Mar.
For more information check out www.tate.org.uk

2: Frieze London
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Fair season is in full-swing; the UK’s largest and iconic contemporary art fair, Frieze London is back for its 13th Edition from 14th – 17th October in Regent’s Park, to present the crème de la crème of today’s artists and galleries from across the globe.

Regent’s Park, 14 Oct – 17 Oct.
To book tickets and find out more information check out www.friezelondon.com

3: SUNDAY Art Fair
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SUNDAY Art Fair is London’s budding art fair, supporting young and emerging artists and the galleries that nurture them during the developmental stages in their careers. This year SUNDAY will take place from 14th – 18th October at Ambika P3, right around the corner from Frieze.

Ambika P3, 14 Oct – 18 Oct. Entrance is free to SUNDAY Art Fair.
To find our more information check out www.sundayartfair.com

4: 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair
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Fresh from its successful New York debut earlier this year, 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair resumes its annual takeover at Somerset House this October, 15th – 18th, to unveil its most substantial showcase yet of contemporary African art.

Somerset House, 15 Oct – 18 Oct.
To book tickets and find out more information check out www.1-54.com/london

5: Dressed By Angels
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Currently on at The Old Truman Brewery, this revealing exhibition tells the story behind the world’s greatest costume house, Angels Costumiers – presenting visitors with an irresistible mix of clothing from film, TV, theatre and radio.

The Old Truman Brewery, 1 Oct – 3 Jan.
To find out more information check out www.trumanbrewery.com
New York
1: Isa Genzken
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The solo exhibition of the hugely influential German artist Isa Genzken features a plethora of eerie mannequins clothed with personal item’s of the artist, as well as collages of found materials. A pioneering contribution of sculptural eccentricity not to be missed.

David Zwirner Gallery, 16 Sept – 31 Oct.
To find more information check out www.davidzwirner.com/exhibition/isa-genzken-3

2: New York City Ballet
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The notable dance company of New York City Ballet will entice you in their captivating performances of Peter Martin’s Swan Lake, Jerome Robbins N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz, two Balanchine Programs, all under the guidance of talented choreographers orchestrated to epitomise a night of performing arts.

David H. Koch Theatre (at Lincoln Center), 13 Oct – 18 Oct.
To find out more information check out: www.nycballet.com

3: Open House New York
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The annual tour, New York Open House, allows exclusive access to nose around over 150 of the coolest architectural masterpieces, historical buildings and private houses New York has to offer. An exploration of the grandeur behind-the-scenes of some the most exciting hidden gems within the Big Apple.

Various Venues, 17 Oct – 18 Oct.
To find out more information check out: www.ohny.org

4: Sara Sze
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The anticipated show of Sara Sze is now on display at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, in the artists first major showing in the U.S. The body of work encompasses an array of sculptural work and installations, engaging the viewer’s senses through her use of sound, light, and paint.

Tanaya Bonakdar Gallery 10 Sept – 17 Oct.
For more information check out: www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/exhibitions/sarah-sze_3

5: Back To The Future Live
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Three decades and counting, Back to the Future is here to transport us, once again, to Marty McFly’s past, where he saves himself from being born. Radio City Hall provides this trip to a nostalgic time-travelling with the HD screening of the classic movie, alongside an exclusive performance by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

Radio City Music Hall 15 Oct- 16 Oct
For more information check out: filconcertslive.com

Ryan Gander is giving new meaning to the saying, ‘everything but the kitchen sink’, because the sink is actually to be found at his new solo show Fieldwork at Lisson gallery.
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Things only get more and more absurd as a baseball bat covered with nails, a dead pigeon and a decapitated teddy-bear passes our gaze. This collection of bizarre and crafted objects travel along a conveyer belt, only made visible through a small window. He has created a memory game of strange associations and a prism of connections to mull over for the rest of the exhibition.
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Gander is exploring the battle between concealment vs. reveal, by tempting, tantalising and giving the viewer just enough to satisfy their curiosity. Think of that niggling frustration of desiring to see something in full… but you are left longing. He stimulates this sensation more subtly with a mirror draped by a marble cloth, where we can just glimpse our reflection, and an internally lit tent in a remote courtyard, as we are left wondering what’s going on inside. For the final piece Never Enough, Gander has relocated a shingle beach to take over the entire downstairs space, but alas, we can only peer down at the pebbles.
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Sealed off worlds and suggestive sculptures, Gander is such a tease. Through an uncomplicated idea, explored in a diverse array of engaging works, we see his prowess as a complex conceptual artist. Gander’s practise is rooted in the potential of the ‘what-ifs’, and plants within the viewer that same seed of speculation of endless possibilities.
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Ryan Gander, Fieldwork, at Lisson gallery is on until 31st October.
For more information check out www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/ryan-gander

What is happening this week in London: Damien Hirst is putting his wealth to good use, opening his new space Newport Street Gallery, Eddie Peake brings us sheer-suited roller-skaters and never-seen-before portraits by Goya come to the National Gallery.

1. John Hoyland at Newport Street Gallery
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“I’ve always loved art and art deserves to be shown in great spaces, so I’ve always dreamed of having my own gallery where I can exhibit work by the artists I love”. Damien Hirst is proving he not just a money-making-contemporary-art-juggernaut and is giving back. His long awaited, Newport Street Gallery, opens with a solo show of paintings by John Hoyland. We did expect a tribute to his fellow YBA’s but Hoyland’s paintings are bold, abstract and geometric enough to stand against such a pristine space. Anyway, we want to see how Hirst has spent his £25 million.

Open to the public from Thursday 8th at Newport Street Gallery.
For more information check out www.newportstreetgallery.com

2. Eddie Peake at the Barbican Curve
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Eddie Peake is one of London’s biggest and brightest contemporary artists, and if you have seen his art, chances are you have seen him nude. Extraordinarily, he is not naked this time. This week he takes on the Barbican Curve Gallery with an extravaganza of sculpture, installation and roller-skaters in transparent onesies. If that does not tickle your fancy, what will?

Open to the public from Friday 9th at the Barbican Curve.
For more information check out www.barbican.org.uk

3. Alex Gardner at The Dot Project
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What is your reason for visiting? The Dot Project presents a solo exhibition of work by Los Angeles based artist, Alex Gardner. Stripping back and simplifying the human form, bodies are intertwined in dance-like poses – his paintings tell a narrative that is just as ambiguous as the figures. This obscurity is the key to his work, and makes this exhibition one not-to-miss.

Open to the public from Tuesday 6th at The Dot Project.
For more information check out www.thedotproject.com/alex_gardner

4. Goya: The Portraits at the National Gallery
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Providing penetrating insight into the public and private aspects of his life, ‘Goya: The Portraits’ traces the artist’s development, from his first commissions to more intimate later works painted during his ‘self-imposed exile’. Goya is one of Spain’s most celebrated painters, yet until now, the National Gallery shows his prowess as a portraitist.

Open to the public from Wednesday 7th at the National Gallery.
For more information check out www.nationalgallery.org.uk/goya-portraits

5. Einat Amir at Triad Gallery
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We have all got a little too close to a stranger on the tube (for our liking), but now experience that in Einat Amir’s participatory performances at the Triad Gallery. Amir will select pairs to enter a booth and they must talk to each other as guided by a pre-recorded conversational structure. He tests our comfort zones, our ability to converse and the constructs of social relationships in a time where we are much more comfortable talking through our screens.

Open to the public from Friday 9th at Triad Gallery.
For more information check out www.thetriad.org.uk

Think of Tate Sensorium or Carsten Holler, there is presently a trend for hyper-interactive sensory art.

Accordingly, Jennifer Rubell asks a lot of her viewer at her current solo show Not Alone at Stephen Friedman Gallery. You hold a baby, eat an egg, and undress in front of a film (where the artist is also in the buff, riding a horse, of course).

Glass involves an invigilator handing over a slumbering crystal child and, like most millennials, we had to set aside the phone to switch one precious belonging for another. Cradling this gift, our hands get worryingly sweaty and as we stare through this very much breakable babe, we chant a silent prayer not to drop it.
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All that pent-up tension is soon realised. For Them, we crack open the shell of a hard-boiled egg, season it with super kitschy salt and pepper shakers, before finally eating it. The princess and the frog, the hunter and the rabbit, the drunkard and the bottle; it dawned on us each pairing is a couple – one cannot be without the other.

The princess and the frog, the hunter and the rabbit, the drunkard and the bottle;

Rubell really requests our intimacy. Posing invites the viewer to disrobe whilst watching a video of the artist herself nude astride a horse. Admittedly, we did not bare all, but the experience itself is truly memorable – as we emphasise with Rubell whilst pushing the limits of our own comfort zones.
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Through this exhibition, Rubell is exploring the themes of parenthood, co-dependency, companionship and origin – which is far more pertinent since the recent birth of her second child. She throws us into situations that make us feel at once uncomfortable, vulnerable and yet liberated. We are being mothered, and weirdly begin to feel motherly.

Not Alone triumphs at engaging the viewer with new and remarkable experiences. Certainly, we will not forget hyperventilating over smashing a glass child anytime soon.

Jennifer Rubell, Not Alone, is on at Stephen Freidman Gallery only for one more day!
So head over to the space ASAP.
For more information, check out www.stephenfriedman.com

Pop art: we have seen it all before and most probably studied Marilyn Monroe’s face (courtesy of Warhol) in school. However, this is not quite the pop art you know – it’s the stuff the history books left out. The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop, at Tate Modern, really does pack a punch.
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Blindingly bright colours, hard-hitting opinions and refreshingly revolutionary; what this exhibition does best is prove that pop art is not just synonymous to Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein. In fact, the phenomenon was much more universal spreading from Peru to Japan and not just limited to the male gender.
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Female artists from the 1960s and 70s were often marginalised and shrugged off by their sexual counterparts – so let the ladies take their well-deserved spotlight. The show features car hoods strikingly embellished with female anatomy by Judy Chicago, washing machines spliced with bare bums in Martha Rosler’s collages and woman-shaped television cabinets from Nicola L. This piece really hit home, such a frank reduction of women into just a passive, domestic, source of entertainment – the ultimate objectification of women.
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The feminist angle is not the only political agenda at play – much of the work addresses conflicts like the Vietnam War or the Brazilian military dictatorship, but in the characteristic colours. Colin Self’s Leopardskin Nuclear Bomb No. 2 is a phallic bomb-like sculpture in tacky leopard print; at once perfectly commenting on the Cold War and consumer society. Everywhere you look; the work is jumping out and confronting social, cultural and political wrongdoings.
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The triumph of Pop Art is its relatability. We live in a society proliferated with media, so by mimicking the adverts and brands we all recognise has a clear subversive message. From the begrudging teenager to camera-happy tourist, The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop reaches us all and finally makes Pop Art exciting again.

The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop is on at Tate Modern until 24th January 2016.
For more information check out www.tate.org.uk

What to expect from the days ahead: staged sets, alter egos, flyposting, a little bit of the ordinary and some rubbish – but nothing is really ordinary or rubbish for that matter.

1: Juno Calypso at 71a Gallery
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Where is love found best? At honeymoon hotels of course. Under the guise of her persona named Joyce, Juno Calypso explores rituals of seduction and beauty. Why, on some days, we look in the mirror and just see a gargoyle. Calypso is a young artist to keep an eye on, taking the world one heart-shaped bath at a time, so head over to 71a Gallery to catch this 4-day exhibition.

Open to the public from Friday 2nd at 71a Gallery. Private View 1st October.
For more information check out www.71alondon.com

2: Flyposting at Cass Bank Gallery
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Poster and billboard interventions (appropriately named flyposting) by artist Mustafa Hulusi, are removed from its guerrilla context and placed into the ‘white cube’. We are relieved to hear the confinements of the gallery are not confining the work. The images will stay true to their nature, being flyposted to the walls. We wonder whether the most accurate description is contained rebellion.

Open to the public from Tuesday 29th at Cass Bank Gallery.
For more information check out www.thecass.com

3: Ilona Sagar, Haptic Skins of a Glass Eye, at Tenderpixel
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The links between technologies and the body is the basis for Sagar’s research – how does one affect the other? Her new film, Haptic Skins of a Glass Eye, unpicks the messy physiological residue that advancements in technology and the virtual realm have left us in. We are all but screens with hands.

Open to the public from Saturday 3rd at Tenderpixel. Private view 2nd October.
For more information check out www.tenderpixel.com

4: Cydney Cossette Holm, These Small Things, at Stour Space
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These Small Things zooms in on the littler details that make up the bigger picture. Holm pays attention to the [in]significant and mundane to digest her surroundings, the world we live in. Through her work do we realise the eternity of small things in our vastness, and how little we each are in the grand scheme of things.

Open to the public from Friday 2nd at Stour Space. Private View 1st October.
For more information check out www.stourspace.co.uk

5: Votives at Space In Between
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The best things are always found in charity shops and skips – Votives presents a series of sculptures installed alongside three large-scale photographs by the ARKA group. Taking inspiration from the accidental arrangements on the streets, the sculptures are bright, instantaneous and a whole lot of fun.

Open to the public from Friday 2nd at Space In Between. Private View 1st October.
Votives is a part of Art Licks Weekend – running between 2nd Oct to 4th Oct across London.
For more information check out www.artlicksweekend.com

Ai Weiwei is arguably the most famous living artist, but for what reason? He is commonly known for his relentless insurgence against the Chinese government (and that time our own government did not let him into the country). Now, he has came and conquered the Royal Academy of Arts with a vast array of sculptures and installations that left us in awe. This is an exhibition of ginormous proportions, matched only by its powerful emotions and political bite.
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Ripples of rusted steel rods form a rising landscape on the floor; Straight is a poignant and solemn commemoration to the 5,000 children who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake – each rod, collected from the ruins of the schools, is devotedly straightened to monumentalise the tragedy. A hush falls over the gallery, as we all share an intense moment of empathy.

Ai is at his best on a grand scale – but we mean stupendously big. In the rotunda, Bicycle Chandelier suspends above you, an unbelievable blend between a crystal chandelier and bicycle that proves Ai can do more than activist mode. He is master of repetition, engineering and material – we had to take a step back out of sheer wonder.
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Brave, honest, and defiant. In essence, that is what Ai Weiwei stands for and we see that purest in S.A.C.R.E.D, a portrayal of his time in captivity. Six cells stand, each with a grille to peer through, where inside you see half-sized models of Ai and two guards, scrutinising his every move. You become witness and spy to scenes of intimate surveillance and an undying struggle for freedom.
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There are instances where the trope is too obvious or overused for it to be impactful, like CCTV cameras in marble or a 2,000-year-old bowl with Coca-Cola crassly scrawled across it – so what? However, you leave the show with a sense you have truly just experienced something, and there are not many exhibitions you can say that about.
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Ai WeiWei is currently on at the Royal Academy of Arts
between 19 September to 13 December 2015.
To book your tickets and more information check out
www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/ai-weiwei

After last week’s extravaganza of blockbuster openings (need we mention Ai Weiwei), this week may seem a little slower. However, do not fret – there is plenty still to see as London’s autumn season of art is just kicking off.

1: London Design Festival, various locations around London
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We are possibly cheating because LDF started Saturday but regardless, this is the week to catch a whole host of exciting events and exhibitions by world-renowned designers, all across the city. There is an upside-down telegraph pylon by Alex Chinnick, a Tower of Babel made from tiny bone china shops, and so much more to see. We suggest downloading the guide and planning your journey to discover as much as possible.

Running between the 19th to the 27th at various locations around London. For more information on programmed events check out www.londondesignfestival.com

2. Tetsumi Kudo at Hauser and Wirth London
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Grotesque renderings of the body and objects that look like sci-fi props; Kudo’s sculptures explore the themes of pollution and decay – on nature and on humanity, the two seeming to go hand-in-hand. We expect to encounter a post-apocalyptic world where nature has lost the battle to the machine – a hint of a future yet to come.

Open to the public from Tuesday 22nd at Hauser and Wirth London. Private View 21st September.
For more information check out www.hauserwirth.com

3. Prem Sahib at ICA
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For his first institutional solo show in London, Prem Sahib will present new and recent work at the ICA. Sahib’s multi-disciplinary practise looks at the relationship between public and private spaces – community and intimacy – with club culture as a source of inspiration. Hosting the exhibition party, contemporary peers Eddie Peake and George Henry Longly will be DJs, to launch Sahib’s show into the early morning.

Open to the public from Thursday 24th at ICA. Exhibition Party 23rd September 7pm – 1am.
For more information check out www.ica.org.uk

4. Robert Irwin / Cerith Wyn Evans at White Cube Bermondsey
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White Cube Bermondsey is opening its doors Tuesday night to present two separate shows by two of its represented artists, Robert Irwin and Cerith Wyn Evans. We think this may be a match made in heaven, as both artists create light installations to a minimal effect and focus on the notion of perception. We anticipate from both exhibitions super sleek design and out-of-body experiences.

Open to the public from Wednesday 23rd at White Cube Bermondsey. Private View 22nd September.
For more information check out www.whitecube.com

5. Kemang Wa Lehulere at Gasworks
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The renovated Gasworks will be reopening with a solo exhibition by South African artist, Kemang Wa Lehulere. Unravelling the relationships between personal and collective histories, amnesia and the archive, Wa Lehulere’s practice explores how South Africa’s past continues to haunt its present (Also, we are very excited to see the Gasworks in all its new glory).

Open to the public from Friday 24th at Gasworks. Private View 23rd September. For more information check out www.gasworks.org.uk

The sun may be leaving us in London, but Ugo Rondinone is bringing back the brightness with his current show clouds + mountains + waterfalls at Sadie Coles HQ.

Rondinone has long been obsessed with geological forms, and this exhibition is no different – there are three new bodies of work on display, which you guessed it, are based on clouds, mountains and waterfalls. But forget all the romantic connotations, what Rondinone has created is a surreal territory that is simply spectacular.
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The mountains are towers of stones painted in vivid colours, precariously poised one on top of each other – defying and relying on gravity. The fear was real that if a single tremor shook, the towers would come tumbling down. Then, in the corner of the eye, the towers began to take on human form and you suddenly become very aware of their presence.
The cloud paintings are large canvases painted in pale and muted blues with cartoonish contours. They depict an illusionary, immeasurable and infinite space. Then, much like real clouds, Rondidone’s clouds are phantasmal images – where in the canvases you can see whatever form you want.
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The third and final series in the exhibition consists of waterfall sculptures – thin, freestanding lines made in clay and cast in raw aluminium, like spurts of water immortalised in time. Get up close and you can still see the fingerprints.

Rondidone’s paintings and sculptures may be referring strictly to the natural world, but the effect is much more subjective. Stepping into the space, it felt as if we were entering a kid’s drawing and that is in no way a criticism. We were filled with a childlike wonder and our imagination began to run wild – although do not actually run, just in case.
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Ugo Rondinone, clouds + mountains + waterfalls is currently on at Sadie Coles HQ between 11 September to 24 October 2015.
To find out more information check out www.sadiecoles.com/artists/rondinone#ur-clouds-mountains-waterfalls-sept-15

Contorted limbs and oblique lines, Asymptote, an ongoing photographic series by Evelyn Bencicova in collaboration with Adam Csoka Keller, is hauntingly eerie and beautifully alien. And we are utterly absorbed by her nightmarish scenes, even if we are a little disturbed.
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Taking inspiration from a history of communism in the now democratic Slovakia, these extraterritorial worlds reflect the residue of such a regime on Slovakian art, architecture and its people. In this project, we see pale bodies employed as compositional forms and masked faces in repetitive poses – it is quite literally attack of the clones. This fusion of humanity with geometrics just speaks sorrow, and yet we do not feel hopeless.
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Each man, woman and child is stripped of their individuality, instantly merging into one and vanishing into nothing. Such bleakness, such despair is only made worse by the clinical backdrops. There are ordered hallways and sterilised swimming pools – you can smell the chlorine. Then, here dwelling are the miserable figures, as if waiting for their victims to arrive.
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Asymptote is full of contradictions: at once tragic, we are inspired and, despite the austerity, the images are filled with emotion. Though we want to run, the creepy allure and beguiling beauty of Bencicova’s photographs just keeps on pulling us back and back.
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www.evelynbencicova.com
www.evelynbencicova.tumblr.com
www.behance.net/evelynbencicova

Only in its second edition, START Art Fair has already made a big name for itself, as a platform that brings together only the best of emerging artists and galleries from around the world. Setting itself apart from the mega-fairs like Frieze and Basel, our experience of START was very one of discovery – we left feeling refreshed and pumped up.

Here, are ARTCUBE’s highlights of the top five artists you need to keep an eye on:

1. DAVID BEN WHITE
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Based in London, White’s work is like IKEA gone wrong. Lumpy lamps and architectural paintings come together to construct spaces of modernist intention, which are also delightfully vivacious. This is the kind of interior design we want to step into.

Represented by l’étrangère Gallery, London.
www.letrangere.net

2. ZSÓFI BARABÁS
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Soft and sharp: subtle hues meet straight lines. Zsófi Barabás paintings are geometrically intricate and femininely delicate. At ARTCUBE we do love our cubes and we were excited to see the cube invasion in landscape form. Her work is open enough to allow for individual interpretations – and we did spend a long time staring wistfully.

Represented by Alludo Room Gallery, Austria.
www.alludoroomgallery.com

3. HANNAH QUINLAN ANDERSON & ROSIE HASTINGS
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It was surprising at an art fair marketing itself on the emerging art scene that video work was in such short supply. So, when we came across the Arcadia Missa booth, we were drawn like a moth to a flame to the work by Hannah Quinlan Anderson & Rosie Hastings. Do not be deceived by the pinks, their work has a critical bite relevant to the internet age, and it was refreshing to see work genuinely current.

Represented by Arcadia Missa, London.
www.arcadiamissa.com

4. CHIMîPOM
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At Chim-pom’s exhibition, the Japanese art collective, we befriended ‘Super Rat’, a taxidermy rat painted up like Pikachu, and we created an origami crane. Although, behind all the fun, Chim-Pom are referencing the somber history of Japan, of nuclear bombs and chemical contamination. For work that is not so subtle, we enjoyed this subtle balance between light and dark.

www.chimpom.jp

5. Suh Jeong-Min
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Neither painting nor sculpture, Jeong-Min’s tactile surfaces appear like swaying seaweed under the sea. He uses a process of densely rolling paper scraps to build up layers of mass and detail; such a simple method employed rigorously to produce complexity. His work grabbed our attention and kept us wondering how patient a person can be (we’re not).

Represented by Kálmán Makláry Fine Arts Gallery, Hungary.
www.kalmanmaklary.com

Another week means another list of openings in London. Although, this one is particularly good because perhaps the most anticipated exhibition of the art calendar is finally here: we are of course talking about Ai Weiwei’s solo exhibition at the Royal Academy.

1. Ai WeiWei at the Royal Academy of Arts
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The legend that is Ai Weiwei was last seen on British soil when he covered the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern with sunflower seeds. Now, he has returned with full-force to take over the four gallery spaces at the Royal Academy to house a major collection of some new and some old works. What to expect – big, brave, and provocative. There will be nothing tame about this show.

Open to the public from Saturday 19th September at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Book your tickets now from www.royalacademy.org.uk

2. Jerwood Drawing Prize at the Jerwood Visual Arts Centre
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The Jerwood Drawing Prize is the most renowned of open submissions for drawing in the UK, and shows only the most talented and contemporary of drawing practitioners. A total of 60 works by 58 artists have been selected by this year’s panel to showcase the diversity and breadth of drawing practises in the UK. As always, this will be a popular and well-executed exhibition not to miss.

Open to the public from Wednesday 16th September at Jerwood Visual Arts Centre.
Private View RSVP 15th September.
For more information check out www.jerwoodvisualarts.org

3. The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop at Tate Modern
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(Perhaps in competition with Ai Weiwei) The Tate Modern is presenting all that goes pop, bang and kapoow – a visual punch to the eyeballs. This exhibition will reveal how the pop-art phenomenon spread all across the globe and how different cultures/countries responded to the movement. We anticipate a whole lot of colour and revolt – a language that is relatable today more than ever.

Open to the public from Thursday 17th September at Tate Modern.
Book your tickets now from www.tate.org.uk

4. Jumana Manna at Chisenhale Gallery
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Merging politics and music, Jumana Manna is exploring the cultural traditions of Jerusalem in her first solo show in the UK. Chisenhale always has a knack for picking and commissioning the freshest of contemporary artists, and so we expect nothing less from Manna – this will surely be a conceptual and current treat.

Open to the public Friday 18th September at Chisenhale Gallery.
Private View RSVP 17th September.
For more information check out www.chisenhale.org.uk

5. MERGE Festival, various locations along Southwark Street
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Celebrating the rich culture and heritage of London’s Bankside, Merge Festival breathes life back into Southwark Street. With a variety of events, art installations, performances, this festival will be inspiring and full of unexpected happenings for those that are seeking something to do over the weekend.

Starting this Friday 18th September at various locations along Southwark Street, London Bankside.
For more information on programmed events check out www.mergefestival.co.uk

First, you just looked at art, then we needed audio guides and now, Sensorium at Tate Britain takes this one step further for those who have ever wondered what it would be like to taste a Francis Bacon painting (FYI you will neither be eating any artwork nor bacon).

‘Flying Object’, the creative geniuses behind Sensorium and winner of the Tate IK Prize, have united technology and art to immerse visitors in a multi-sensory experience. You smell, hear, touch and even taste whilst viewing the four paintings on display, to comprehend the work in an entirely new way.
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Led around in intimate packs through blackened rooms, it is easy to feel a little awkward when smelling walls. However, the experience of encountering Richard Hamilton’s Interior II with the accompanying aromas is profound; you can imagine stepping into the painting. For John Latham’s Full Stop the effect of booming noises bursting through your headphones is jolting, and the haptic impression of pressure is curious. Then, to complement David Bomberg’s In the Hold there are barely detectable scents and clanking sounds that attempt to transport you to a ship’s hold – but somehow falls short. Finally, as you stare at Francis Bacon’s Figure in the Landscape, you get chocolate. We did expect something porkier, but the chocolate provides a definite hint of smokiness.
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The power of Sensorium lies in its revolutionary and exciting concept. Although, we did anticipate more sensations, all your senses are challenged to engage with art, which normally you could disregard. So, for Sensorium, slow down and really look – but not just look.

Sensorium is on at Tate Britain between 26 August to 4 October 2015.
For more information check out: www.tate.org.uk