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Royal College of Art, London |
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John Smith | Solo Show
19 March - 13 April 2010
(Closed 1 - 6 April)
The Royal College of Art
is pleased to present a survey exhibition of John
Smith's practice with supporting programme of talks
and events.
For the first time in the 18-year history
of the RCA Curating Contemporary Art MA programme, final year
students have decided to present a solo exhibition as their
graduate project. Opening on 19 March, this will be the
largest UK show by the pioneering east London based artist
and filmmaker John Smith.
Much loved for their wit, formal ingenuity
and use of storytelling, Smith's films are as much influenced
by the humour of Monty Python as the theories of avant-garde
filmmaking. Acknowledging that much of Smith's work has rarely
been shown in a gallery context, a comprehensive selection
will be shown together in the RCA galleries.
This exhibition offers an opportunity for
Smith to return to the RCA where he began making films as a
student in the 1970s. The artist will work closely with
the students to create an exhibition that reveals the multiple
sensibilities which run throughout his
practice. Rarely seen early films will be shown in
the company of more recent work and the exhibition design will
emphasise the narrative and structural devices used within
Smith's work.
Accompanying the exhibition will be a new
catalogue on Smith's practice with critical texts, an extended
interview with the artist and a visual essay. A second
publication will follow in June focusing on the solo show as
an exhibition format. Comprised of research through
interviews and historical analysis it will also reflect on the
making of the exhibition and include documentation of Smith's
work.
The programme of events complementing the
show will provide in-depth reflection on individual works.
There will be three discussion based events, focussing on
The Black Tower (Wednesday 24 March, 7pm),
Slow Glass (Monday 29 March, 7pm), and
Hotel Diaries (Thursday 8 April, 7pm).
The programme will also include
Doug Fishbone (Sunday 21 March, 2pm),
Jarvis Cocker (Saturday 27 March, 2pm),
Darian Leader (Friday 9 April, 2pm),
John Smith & Laure Prouvost (Sunday 11
April, 2pm), and a screening of John Smith's documentary film
Hackney Marshes (TV version), followed by a
full length screening of Hotel Diaries
(Monday 12 April, 4pm).
John Smith was born in
London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of
Art. Since 1972 he has made over forty film, video and
installation works that have been shown in cinemas, art
galleries and on television throughout the world and awarded
major prizes at many international film festivals. His solo
exhibitions include Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2006),
Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (2005), Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool
(2003) and Pearl Gallery, London (2003). He regularly
presents his work in person and in recent years it has been
profiled through retrospectives at the 2007 Venice Biennale
and film festivals in Oberhausen, Cork, Tampere, Uppsala,
Bristol, Regensburg, Glasgow and La Rochelle. John Smith lives
and works in London. He teaches part-time at the University of
East London where he is Professor of Fine Art. He is
represented by Tanya Leighton Gallery in Berlin and his work
is distributed by LUX, London.
Image:
John Smith
Frozen War (from the Hotel
Diaries series) video still, 2001
Courtesy of the artist,
Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin and LUX, London.
Royal College of Art
GalleriesKensington Gore London SW7 2EU
Free admission
Open daily 11am - 5.30pm
+44 (0)20 7590 4444
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Kate MacGarry, London |
12 March - 2 May 2010
For his first exhibition at the gallery
Ben Rivers has assembled a dwelling from
discarded and reclaimed building materials. Inside, his film
Origin of the Species (2008) offers a clandestine
portrait of an elderly man living in a ramshackle cottage in
the wilderness of the Scottish highlands. The man devises his
own technologies for day-to-day subsistence while pondering
the workings of the universe and the scope of human knowledge.
Although there seems a vast discrepancy between Big Bang
theory and animal trapping, the voiceover forays into such
grand universals as evolution and epistemology, bridging this
gap through ruminations on the experience of nature.
Rivers' film is made using an old Bolex
camera, which imparts a quality that cannot be digitally
constructed. At times the blissed-out end of a reel is left
apparent as errant bursts of yellow and orange light
obliterate the image. Scratches similarly draw us back to the
film's surface and emphasise the mechanical nature of its
coming into being. Just as the man wonders at the destructive
results of the too-quick evolution of the human brain, the
near-obsolescence of film confirms this pace of change; and as
his retreat from civilisation takes on the characteristics of
an idyll, Rivers' own shack reminds us of the awkward reality
of this.
Origin of the Species is
unflinchingly beautiful, without irony or sentimentality. As
an artist working with film, though, Rivers is careful to put
its nostalgic qualities to more testing use. His studies of
the contingent lives of others are as much to do with
investigative anthropology as they are utopian escapism.
Ben Rivers born Somerset
1972, lives and works in London.
Rivers' previous solo
exhibitions in the UK include: A World Rattled of
Habit at A Foundation, Liverpool, 2009; Slow
Action/Origin of the Species, Picture This, Bristol,
2009; On Overgrown Paths, Permanent Gallery, Brighton
and The Regency Town House, Hove, 2008. In 2008 his work was
screened as part of Nought to Sixty, at the ICA,
London and at the 52nd BFI London Film Festival.
Rivers
won the Tiger Award at the 2008 International Film Festival
Rotterdam and is recipient of the London Artist Film and Video
Award (LAFVA).
Origin of the Species was funded
by Arts Council England, with the support of Film London
Artists' Moving Image Network. Thanks to Measure
(www.measure.org.uk) and A Foundation, Liverpool.
Image:
Ben Rivers
Origin of the Species
2008
16mm film, duration: 16 minutes
Courtesy of Kate
MacGarry, London
Kate MacGarry
7a Vyner Street
E2
9DG
London
+44 (0) 20 8981 9100
Wed - Sun, 12-6pm
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Galeria Espacio Minimo,
Madrid |
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SERGEY BRATKOV
Male Games
February 19th to April 1st, 2010
An image from Misanthrope,
SERGEY BRATKOV's previous exhibition in this
gallery, is his starting point for new work in which he depict
his native Ukraine. Thsi new work is what makes up Male
Games, his third exhibition at Espacio Minimo.
The exhibition shows a selection of large
format panoramic photographs in the gallery's first room, with
the remaining images in the series being projected in the
basement room. Through these images BRATKOV performs a
narrative journey through contemporary Ukraine, capturing the
country's unusual and surreal beauty with no recourse to
digital manipulation, thus showing the real transformation it
has gone through in recent years.
With this work the artists shows the
cultural and economic changes that have occurred in Ukraine.
Thorugh personal stories, and without abandoning his previous
works' characteristic sense of humour, he documents its
specific reality and the peculiarity of its inhabitants.
The show is completed with a projection in
the gallery's main space of the video Endless War, a
powerful metaphor of the other male "game" which, via an
endless video loop, the artist uses to make a powerful
political comment. The emptiness of the soldiers' helmets,
loudly hitting against the floor, makes evident the absence of
human forms, giving the images a simultaneous feeling of
nostalgia and absurdity.
As is the norm with BRATKOV's work his
reflections about social structures, ever-changing in a
transitive country like Ukraine, create a provocative body of
socially engaged work.
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SERGEY BRATKOV (Kharkov,
Ukraine, 1960) Lives and works in Moscow. From 1970 to 1978 he
studied at Repin Art
College in Kharkov, and from 1978 to
1983 he attended the Polytechnical Academy in the same city.
From 1994 to 1997 he
was a part of the Fast Reaction Group
along with Boris Mikhailov, Vita Mikhailova and Sergey
Solonsky. He represented Russia in the 50th and 52nd Venice
Bienale, at the 25th Sao Paulo Bienal, at Manifesta 5 in San
Sebastian, and at the first two Bienals in Moscow. He has had
solo shows at important museums and public institutions such
as Kunstverein Rosenheim in Rosenheim (Germany, 2002), Centre
for Contemporary Art in Kiev (Ukraine, 2003), S.M.A.K. Museum
de Gante (Belgium, 2005), Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow
(Russia, 2006), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in
Gateshead (United Kingdom, 2007), Fotomuseum Winterthur in
Winterthur (Switzerland, 2008) and Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev
(Ukraine, 2010) as well as being part of distinguished
collective shows in museums, institutions, and art centre
across the world.
His work is included in the collections of
MuKKA Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (Belgium), Museum
of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (Croatia), Museum of Photography
in Boston (U.S.A.), Zimmerli Art Museu in New Brunswick, New
Jersey (U.S.A.), Museum of Contemporary Art in Milwaukee
(U.S.A.), S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art de Gante
(Belgiuim), MARTa Herford Museum of Contemporary Art in
Herford (Germany), Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporanea in
Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev
(Ukraine) or Ekaterina Fundation in Moscú (Russia), amongst
other important public collections.
Images:
Sergey Bratkov, Peaceful
City, 2009
Color photograph, Edition of 5
82 x 220 cms
Sergey Bratkov, Provider, 2009
Color photograph,
Edition of 5
82 x 220 cms
Courtesy of Galeria Espacio
Minimo, Madrid
GALERÍA ESPACIO MÍNIMO
Doctor
Fourquet, 17
Doctor Fourquet, 24
28012 Madrid
+34 91
4676 156
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Team Gallery, New York |
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Ryan McGinley
Everybody Knows This Is
Nowhere
18 March - 17 April 2010
Team is pleased to
present an exhibition of new work by the New York-based
photographer Ryan McGinley. Everybody
Knows This Is Nowhere will run from the 18th of March
through the 17th of April 2010. Team Gallery is located at 83
Grand Street, cross streets Wooster and Greene, on the ground
floor.
For his latest exhibition, Ryan McGinley
has shifted his focus away from constructing a youthful
sublime within the boundless American landscape and has
concentrated instead on creating imagery within the confines
of his New York studio. The result is a surprisingly
restrained, open-ended study of black and white portraiture.
Here we see McGinley not as a chronicler of youthful
adventure, but as an engine for an almost scientific
cataloging of a kind of emotional optimism.
McGinley's portraits are the result of a
meticulous studio practice, in which thousands of images are
taken of each sitter; each shoot eventually being edited down
to its one defining "moment". During the course of two years,
McGinley photographed about 150 hand-picked subjects from
across the globe. Bringing these models into his studio and
stripping them of their clothing, the artist has succeeded in
answering his own question: "What would a classical Ryan
McGinley black and white portrait look like?"
In this body of work, McGinley's subjects
are not presented in an active outdoors; they are not shown
within a locatable space - a place where image conjures memory
- rather, these figures are suspended in an eternal artifice,
a strategic nowhere, so that our attention rests solely on the
sitters' state of mind. In this way the portraits can reflect
back onto the viewer, becoming surrogates for emotional
possibility. There is joy as well as uncertainty in these
intimate photographs, and our access to the subjects and their
interaction with the photographer seems limitless.
In addition to the black and white
photographs, the exhibition will also include three
large-scale images in color, which locate the other works
within the continuity of McGinley's oeuvre. Characteristically
exuberant, these photographs add a narrative backdrop to the
exhibition, which initiates an ambiguous loop between the two
approaches. McGinley's photographs have always mined the space
between chaos and control, negotiating the space between the
really-real and the only-apparently-so. In this exhibition the
push and pull of nature and the studio, of sumptuous color and
its absence, create a dynamic tension.
McGinley's photographs are included in the
collections of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in
Houston, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in
Washington D.C., and many others. The 33 year-old artist has
had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of Art and at PS1
in New York, at the MUSAC in Spain, and at the Kunsthalle
Vienna. Last year McGinley had solo gallery shows in London
and in Athens.
This is McGinley's third solo show at Team.
A new monograph published by Dashwood Books will accompany the
exhibition. Included is a conversation between McGinley and
photographer Catherine Opie.
Image:
Victor
Ryan McGinley
2010,
gelatin silver print, 12 x 18 inches, edition of
three
Courtesy of Team Gallery, New York
Team Gallery
83 Grand
Street
cross streets Wooster and Greene
New York, NY
10013
+1 212.279.9219
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Coming Next
March 24-25 Sculpture &
Installation
April 7-8 Painting & Drawing
April 14-15 Photography, Film & Video
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London
WC1N 3XX
United
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+44 (0) 870 922
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