Thursday 23 October 2014

Review of Erica Scourti: So Like You at the University of Brighton Gallery

23/10/14
Erica Scourti: So Like You
University of Brighton Gallery
4 October – 2 November 2014

The Photographers’ Gallery
3 October – 3 December 2014


With the explosion of smartphones and apps and websites such as Instagram, tumblr and flickr, suddenly everybody is a photographer. Not only that, but our once private snapshots of friends and family, children growing up, weddings, christenings and other special – and even mundane – occasions, are now, unless you are clever enough to fully comprehend privacy settings, fair game for anyone searching the internet. Athens-born, London-based artist Erica Scourti, who works with the mediation of personal experience through networked space, using video, writing and performance, has begun to ask some pertinent questions: How can a creative individual be recognised as unique, when Instagram has made everyone’s photographs look the same? What value has a snapshot once it’s uploaded and absorbed into a larger ‘cloud’ of image data?


To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2014/10/erica-scourti-so-like-you/


Tuesday 21 October 2014

Interview with Jonas Burgert at Blain | Southern

20/10/14
Jonas Burgert: Stück, Hirn, Blind
Blain | Southern, London Hanover Square
14 October - 22 November 2014
Down the road from London’s Royal Academy, where the German painter Anselm Kiefer is currently wow-ing the public with his epic paintings on a very grand scale, another, younger, German painter is on show.
Blain | Southern gallery shows Jonas Burgert. Born in Berlin in 1969, he also works on a scale that shocks and surprises. 
But are works on this scale purely the province of museums and the private collectors with foundations of their own? Just who could house a painting like these with their overwhelming power and dominating presence…




Video of 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair

21/10/14
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair
Somerset House
16-19 October 2014

The exceptional environment of London's Somerset House plays host to the second edition of 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair.

The interest in ethnic art has never gone away, but it is usually the antique and the traditional work that attracts attention.

1:54 is a platform for galleries, artists and curators involved in contemporary African creativity. And it is enticing a growing and appreciative western audience.


And the 27 galleries showing here in the heart of historic London certainly know how to put on a show.






Saturday 18 October 2014

Interview with Keita Miyazaki

18/10/14
Interview with Keita Miyazaki
rosenfeld porcini 

30-year-old artist, Keita Miyazaki, was born in Tokyo and, after studying at the University of the Arts, came to London in 2011 for a three year course at the Royal College.

That same year, Japan was hit by a major tsunami causing widespread mayhem and destruction – and 18,000 fatalities.


In his recent work   on show here at the rosenfeld porcini gallery in London  Miyazaki responds directly to this national tragedy, seeking to create art out of waste and rubble as monuments to the lost – and to suggest an optimism for the future.





To watch this interview, please go to: http://www.state-media.com/state/index.php?q=videos/miyazaki 




Interview with Glenn Ligon


18/10/14
Glenn Ligon: Call and Response
Camden Arts Centre
10 October 2014 – 11 January 2015


Glenn Ligon (b1960) is famed for his thought-provoking works which combine text, silkscreen painting, neon and video and explore themes of identity, racism, sexuality and civil rights.

His first solo exhibition in the UK, now on show at the Camden Arts Centre, presents new works based on the plight of the Harlem Six and using footage of the comedian Richard Pryor.

A new series of enormous black and white silkscreen paintings are based on composer Steve Reich’s taped-speech work, using the recorded voice of Daniel Hamm, one of the Harlem Six, describing how he had to puncture one of his bruises to prove to the police he had been beaten. Layered up so as to obscure the text, creating a rhythm that recalls Reich’s musical piece, the works dominate the large gallery at the Camden Arts Centre.
A new neon piece takes from the same source material and demonstrates Ligon’s technique of creating ‘black’ neon.

Finally, a seven-screen video installation uses footage from the comedian Richard Pryor’s stand up show, Live on the Sunset Strip, from 1982. Removing the sound, Ligon forces viewers to observe Pryor’s lively and exaggerated body language, exploring an alternative means of communication and self-expression.

Ligon spoke to Studio International before the opening of his exhibition.