Tuesday 22 January 2013

'Selling the Dream'

Following the lecture and the seminar on 'Shopping' -

See this article about the recent television representations on the rise of the department store

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=422372&c=2

Saturday 19 January 2013

Light Show at the Hayward Gallery, London


Light Show

30 January – 28 April: Hayward Gallery, South Bank, London

Light Show explores the experiential and phenomenal nature of light, bringing together sculptures and installations that use light to create specific conditions. The exhibition showcases artworks since the 1960s in which light itself is used as material to sculpt and shape space, often creating evocative environments and sensory works that operate at the edges of the viewer’s perception. Light has the power to affect our states of mind as well as alter our perceptions, and Light Show will include some of the most visually stimulating artworks created in recent years as well as rare works not seen for decades and re-created specially for the Hayward Gallery.

Artists in the exhibition include: David Batchelor, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Olafur Eliasson, Dan Flavin, Ceal Floyer, Jenny Holzer, Ann Veronica Janssens, Anthony McCall, François Morellet, Ivan Navarro, Katie Paterson, and Conrad
Shawcross. The exhibition is curated by Cliff Lauson, Curator, Hayward Gallery.

Dancing around Duchamp at the Barbican



dancing around duchamp
This spring the Barbican embraces chance, provocation and humour in an international season celebrating Marcel Duchamp, widely considered the father of conceptual art and the most influential artist of the 20th century. We invite you to explore work by his precursors, collaborators and the generations of artists he has influenced across art, music, dance, theatre and film.
Duchamp's work, including Bicycle Wheel from 1913 and an autographed inverted urinal entitled Fountain 1917radically altered what we think of as art by blurring the distinction between art and life, using chance procedures, embracing humour and provoking the tastemakers.

At the heart of the season is the major exhibition The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg andJohns, featuring a rich array of painting, sculpture, stage sets and musical notations, orchestrated by leading contemporary artist Philippe Parreno

An exciting programme of live Cage music and Cunningham dance performances in the gallery by graduates and students of LondonContemporary Dance School and dancers from Richard Alston Dance Company is integral to the exhibition. 
In the Curve, Vancouver-based artist Geoffrey Farmer draws upon assemblage and chance practices with the UK premiere of The Surgeon and the Photographer.
In the theatre, journey into the surreal and absurd with Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roifrom Cheek by Jowl, Eugene Ionesco’s RhinocĂ©ros, a virtuoso performance byBarry McGovern in an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Watt and Robert Wilson’s inspired homage to John Cage in Lecture on Nothing

And in our cinemas, we offer a playful and subversive film programme that considers the legacy of Duchamp and Dada. Featuring work from Hans RichterMan RayJohn Cage and Jean-Luc Godard, plus silent comedy and movies from the American underground.

To pull all of these threads together we are hosting a scholarly discussion on the legacy of Duchamp called The Bride Stripped Bare, as well as one glorious night of anarchic celebration in Cabaret Duchamp.

Thursday 10 January 2013

Artists and Designers of the Future




http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nx5jv

Dr. Lynn Jones, head of the Bucks National School of Furniture alerted me to this very interesting discussion on the Radio about the value of a mixed-discipline arts education.  Listen to it on BBC IPlayer.On Start the Week, Andrew Marr explores how Britain trains the artists and designers of the future. Christopher Frayling and Sarah Teasley celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Royal College of Art, the world's oldest art and design school. But one of its former teachers, the industrial designer Ron Arad argues for a broader arts education which doesn't split sculpture from painting, architecture from design. And the artist Antony Gormley redefines the limits of sculpture and building.

Friday 4 January 2013

Design Milk - online magazine

Have you seed this e-zine?  It is particularly good for interior and furniture designers, but also has features on art, jewellery and fashion.

A Bigger Splash - Painting after Performance at Tate Modern

This is the one for me - an exhibition at Tate Modern about the relationship between painting and performance. Sounds brilliant.

See http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern

Here is the blurb from the Tate website:

This exhibition will take a new look at the dynamic relationship between performance and painting since 1950. Contrasting key paintings by Jackson Pollock and David Hockney, the exhibition considers two different approaches to the idea of the canvas as an arena in which to act: one gestural, the other one theatrical. The paintings of the Vienna Actionists or the Shooting Pictures of Niki de St Phalle will be re-presented within the performance context that they were made, and juxtaposed with works by artists such as Cindy Sherman or Jack Smith that used the face and body as a surface, often using make-up in work dealing with gender role-play. The exhibition proposes a new way of looking at the work of a number of younger artists whose approach to painting is energised by these diverse historical sources, drawing upon action painting, drag and the idea of the stage set. (accessed 40.01.13)

David Bowie Exhibition coming up in March at the V & A

The Ballgowns exhibition at the V & A finishes this weekend (wish I had gone to that one instead of the one at the National Gallery) but I am looking forward to a bit of nostalgia when the David Bowie exhibition opens in March.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/david-bowie-is/

Happy New Year

Blogging has been on hold for a couple of months but here is some more exhibition information to welcome you to 2013.

I went to the promising-sounding 'Seduced by Art, Photography Past and Present' at the National Gallery in London just before Christmas.  I found it a bit disappointing with many derivative photographs responding to paintings in stereotypical ways, so I wouldn't particularly recommend it.   I was far more excited by a surprise trip to the opera at Covent Garden courtesy of my daughter who had bought the tickets last August.  A real treat. This exhibition finishes on 20th January.

However, there are some good exhibitions coming up - see next posts.

Last night I went to see the new Ang Lee film - Life of Pi.  GO AND SEE IT!  I loved the book, but the film resolved some of the book's problems in the differentiation between fantasy and reality.  The film helped you to see that this didn't matter.  The CGI is the best I have ever seen - it challenges us to suspend our disbelief throughout.