Tuesday 13 December 2016

Interview with Fabienne Verdier

13/12/16
Interview: Fabienne Verdier

Fabienne Verdier: Rhythms and Reflections 
Waddington Custot
25 November 2016 - 4 February 2017

Fabienne Verdier (b1962, Paris) produces large, abstract paintings, characterised by bold, gestural brushstrokes, made using enormous, suspended vertical brushes of her own construction. She combines knowledge and philosophy, learned during 10 years studying with old masters in China, with western expressionism, to create explosions of movement and life on the carefully prepared, layered canvases. Her physical and performative creative practice experiments with reproducing energy lines – invisible forces that are continually evolving – often echoing, albeit unintentionally, natural forms, such as branches, rivers and lightning flashes.


Verdier’s work has been shown alongside a huge variety of artists, including Auguste Rodin, Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly and the Flemish primitives, but watching Verdier in the act of painting most calls to mind Jackson Pollock with his vertical method of pouring, dripping and swirling the paint, using contraptions such as turkey basters.

In 2014, Verdier was the first visual artist-in-residence at the Juilliard School in New York, where she undertook live studio experiments seeking to answer the question of whether painting and music, in the moment of creation, might be “played” simultaneously. Her works in Rhythms and Reflections, her current exhibition at Waddington Custot, London, derive from this experiment, materialising rhythms and reflections on the canvas. They further explore the movement of the body in space and its encounters with lines of force in the landscape as one walks or strolls about.

Speaking to Studio International at the opening of the exhibition, Verdier was palpably excited about her methods and explorations, and full of creative energy.


Read the interview here




Interview with Roger Hiorns

13/12/16
Interview: Roger Hiorns
Ikon Birmingham 
7 December 2016 - 5 March 2017

Roger Hiorns (b1975, Birmingham) is perhaps best known for his installation piece Seizure (2008), involving the bright blue crystallisation of the interior of an empty council flat on a housing estate near Elephant and Castle, London, commissioned by Artangel. Originally intended to remain only for a couple of years, the 31-tonne structure, for which Hiorns was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2009, was “saved” and transported to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, as part of the Arts Council Collection, where it is now on semi-permanent display. However, Hiorns’ key concern in all of his works – disparate as they might seem – is “putting the human back into the centre of an artwork”, be that by stuffing a falling mannequin with Heidegger text or secreted brain matter; burying an aeroplane and allowing visitors to enter it underground; presenting a deeply documental installation on variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease; or planting two seven-metre-tall black granite furnaces on Bristol’s Temple Quay Central as part of an Art and the Public Realm Bristol commission.


With an exhibition opening at Ikon Birmingham, and the Bristol project nearing its (as yet unannounced) launch date, Hiorns welcomed Studio International to his studio on a housing estate in north London, where he talked about some of his key projects and the ideas behind – and linking – them.

Watch the interview here


Roger Hiorns’ exhibition at Ikon Birmingham runs from 7 December 2016 to 5 March 2017. More information about The Retrospective View of the Pathway can be found at Art and the Public Realm Bristol’s website.

Monday 5 December 2016

Feature: Liliane Lijn

05/12/16
Liliane Lijn









Published in issue 23 of State magazine, winter 2016/17

Eurostate: Swansea

05/12/16
Eurostate: Swansea







Published in issue 23 of State magazine, Winter 2016/17

Visible - Four Artists to Watch

05/12/16
Visible - Four Artists to Watch



Published in issue 23 of State magazine, Winter 2016/17

Feature: Paolo Troilo

05/12/16
Paolo Troilo






Published in issue 23 of State magazine, Winter 2016/17

Book Reviews

05/12/16
Book Reviews



Published in issue 23 of State magazine, Winter 2016/17

News of the Art World

05/12/16
News of the Art World



Published in issue 23 of State magazine, Winter 2016/17

Tuesday 29 November 2016

Interview with Emma Elliott

29/11/16
Interview: Emma Elliott

Emma Elliott: Reconciliation 
Noho Studios, London
2-4 December 2016
and
A+E Studios, New York
1-31 March 2017

The work of the 2016 Passion For Freedom ambassador, Emma Elliott (b1983), certainly fits the bill for her role: her current project, Reconciliation, to be launched in London on 2 December, before touring to New York next spring, highlights the suffering of humanity at the hands of its fellow humans, while also speaking of the hope for finding a way forward; for unity and for reconciliation.


Classically trained in painting and figurative sculpture in London and Florence, Elliott turned to working with marble for this ambitious project, sculpting a larger-than-life arm, marked with the stigmata of Christ and the tattoo of Eliezer, a survivor of Auschwitz, whom she met and befriended on a kibbutz in Jerusalem.



Elliott spoke to Studio International about the project, its message and her hopes for its future. 

Read the interview here


Image:
Blood Is Not Wet
2016
Print, dimensions variable
© the artist




Tuesday 22 November 2016

Interview with Monica Bonvicini at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

22/11/16
Interview: Monica Bonvicini

Monica Bonvicini: her hand around the room 
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
18 November 2016 - 26 February 2017

Known for her conceptual and installation art and sculpture, Italian artist Monica Bonvicini (b1965, Venice) is one of the most vital artists to have emerged during the mid-90s, going on to win the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1999. Her work investigates the relationships between architecture, control, gender, space, surveillance and power through the means of sculpture, installation, video, photography, text and performance. Known to UK audiences for Run (2012), her light installation at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, Bonvicini is taking over levels three and floor of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, with a survey show, including a significant body of drawing, as well as several newly commissioned pieces.



Although she was busy working on the final preparations for the exhibition, Bonvicini found time to answer some of Studio International’s questions by email.

Read this interview here