ARTIST-TALKS

Walls, Corners, Tubes 

PRESS RELEASE COURTESY SPRUETH MAGERS

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present new works by Peter Fischli and David Weiss in London. The solo exhibition consists of sculptures created between 2010 and 2012 and are connected to the group of works in unfired clay which the artists displayed at the 54th Venice Biennial in 2011. 

In the current exhibition, Fischli and Weiss continue their ongoing observations of the unspectacular, everyday world with objects of unfired clay and black rubber. Their oeuvre consists of sculptures, photographs, films and videos, materials they have been working with since the early 1980s. For example, in the Rubber Sculptures (since 1986), the artists create true-to-life, rubber casts of natural objects and typical items of everyday use, while in the series Plötzlich diese Übersicht ("Suddenly This Overview," 1981) they imaginatively re-enact a revised history of humanity through several hundred sculptures of unfired clay. READ MORE

CT EDIT

The Point of Least Resistance, 1981 (duration, 3:29)

The Way Things Go, 1987 (duration 3:13)

TEXT INTERVIEWS

Frieze, 2006

Art review, 2009

BOOK

Afterall's book, Fischli and Weiss: The Way Things Go, Jeremy Millar 

Act1: The Apocralypse

A month of entirely hypothetical events programmed by Barry Sykes (follow @Barry_Sykes). Hosted by It Looked Like a Theatre (follow @ILLATheatre)

Featuring El Vonne Brown, Theresa Bruno, Martin Clark, Ami Clarke, Sophie Hope, Alasdair Hopwood, Toby Huddlestone, The Hut Project, Bryony Kimmings, Claire Nichols, Cesare Pietroiusti, LOW PROFILE, Paul McDevitt, Jeremy Millar, Kim Noble, Matthew Noel-Tod, Maurice O’Connell, Sean Parfitt, Emma Smith, Gavin Wade, Jonathan P Watts and Bedwyr Williams. 

View the daily talks here

Yoko Ono, TO THE LIGHT

Follow Yoko on Twitter @yokoono

PRESS RELEASE COURTESY THE SERPENTINE

TO THE LIGHT, a major exhibition of the work of celebrated artist Yoko Ono, reflects upon the enormous impact that she has made on contemporary art, exploring her influential role across a wide range of media. This exhibition, her first in a London public institution for more than a decade, includes new and existing installations, films and performances, as well as archive material relating to several key early works. 

Ono's continuing interest in the relationship between the roles of artist and viewer is evident throughout the exhibition. 

A number of works in TO THE LIGHT position both artist and viewer as agents of change. For example, a series of instruction pieces written especially for the Serpentine Gallery can be completed physically or mentally by the viewer, while the large-scale installation AMAZE transforms the viewer from the observer to the observed. 

Ono also presents #smilesfilm, a worldwide participatory project that will be exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery and encourages participation online. Conceived as a way of connecting people across the world, the project invites people to upload and send images of their smiles by hash-tagging#smilesfilm, creating a global string of smiles covering the planet. 

Working as an artist, film-maker, poet, musician, writer, performance artist and peace activist for over five decades, Yoko Ono has influenced generations of artists and received numerous prestigious awards. In her prolific career, she has embraced a wide range of media, defying traditional boundaries and creating new forms of artistic expression. Born in 1933 in Tokyo, she is a pioneer of conceptual art and her work has been presented internationally in major exhibitions and performances. 

TO THE LIGHT at the Serpentine Gallery is part of the London 2012 Festival, a spectacular 12-week UK-wide celebration featuring internationally-renowned artists from Midsummer's Day on 21 June to the final day of the Paralympic Games on 9 September 2012. For more information on the Festival programme visit london2012.com/festival. 

#smilesfilm 

'My ultimate goal in film-making is to make a film which includes a smiling face snap of every single human being in the world. Of course, I cannot go around the whole world and take the shots myself. I need cooperation...'
Yoko Ono, 1967 

Alongside her exhibition staged inside the Gallery, Yoko Ono presents a site-specific work near the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. A largescale participatory project,#smilesfilm reflects her pioneering vision of the power of mass participation. Visitors from all over the world can drop in to a specially-designed photo booth installed outside the Serpentine Gallery and record their smiles. These images will then be collected to make #smilesfilm, which will be exhibited in a physical form on a screen at the Serpentine Gallery and presented globally in digital form on a dedicated website,smilesfilm.com, and apps for iPhone and iPad. 

Ono's project at the Serpentine will tap into the transformative potential of the smile, which can change an individual's view, but also radiate out into the world. Ono associates this transmission of positive energy with healing and peace. 

'People from cities and countries around the world will be able to freely upload and send their smiles by mobile phone and computer to the world and it's people. Each time we add our smiles to #smilesfilm, we are creating our future, together. Give us your smile! I love you!'
Yoko Ono, 2012 

For more information please visit smilesfilm.com, which relaunches on 19 June in tandem with to the light at the Serpentine Gallery.  

Yoko is in conversation with Waldemar Januszczak on the 19th June, Unfortunatley sold-out. 

View the Serpetine's full program of summer events

CT EDIT

Yoko Ono in conversation with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, 2012 (duration 22:29)

Tate Gallery Lecture, 2004 (duration 4:40)

Ono's lecture 'Childhood' at Stanford University, 2009 (duration, 16:00)

1/4 

3/4

Kim Gordon, Yoko Ono and Chris Corsano perform, 2011 (duration, 3:06)

AUDIO

Yoko on Desert Island Discs, 2007

Ono's two hour radio show for BBC Radio 6, 2009

IN PRINT 

Chrissy Iley interviews Yoko Ono for the Sunday Telegraph, March 2012

Conversation between Yoko Ono and Takashi Murakami for Interview Magazine 

Art Basel 

PRESS RELEASE AND FULL PROGRAM, COURTESY ART | BASEL

Art Basel Conversations offers the show's public access to first-hand information on aspects of art collecting by facilitating direct encounters between leading personalities of the international art world. It is a forum that encourages the exchange of ideas through a series of platform discussions.

The themes of Art Basel Conversations focus on the collection and exhibition of art. Distinguished art collectors, museum directors, biennale curators, gallery owners, publishers, artists and architects take part. They present their current and upcoming projects, report on their experiences and comment on the challenges they face, providing an insider’s view and opening up an opportunity for dynamic and inspiring dialog.

 

WEDNESDAY | June 13 | Premiere | Artist Talk | ZERO

Speakers | Heinz Mack, Ar tist, Mönchengladbach/Ibiza

Otto Piene, Ar tist, Düsseldor f/Groton, Massachusetts

Moderator |  Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Serpentine Gallery, London

 

THURSDAY | June 14 | Collectors Focus | Asia's New Private Institutions

Speakers |  Monique Burger, Director, Burger Collection, Hong Kong 

Dr. Oei Hong Djien, Collector, Founder, Curator, OHD Museum, Magelang, Indonesia

Budi Tek, Collector and Founder, Yuz Museum, Jakar ta and Shanghai

Rakhi Sarkar, Collector, Director, CIMA Centre of International Modern Ar t and Managing Trustee, 

Kolkata Museum of Modern Ar t, Kolkata

Moderator |  Claire Hsu, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Asia Ar t Archive, Hong Kong

 

FRIDAY | June 15 | Public/Private | Inventing the Museum

Speakers | Lars Nittve, Executive Director Museum Plus (M+) of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Hong Kong

Roger Mandle, Senior Advisor to the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Qatar Museums Authority, Qatar

Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Deputy Director and Chief Officer for Global Strategies, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 

New York

Moderator |  András Szántó, Author and Consultant to ar ts and philanthropic organizations, New York

 

SATURDAY | June 16 | The Future of Artistic Practice | The Artist as Activist

Speakers |  Yael Bartana, Artist, Tel-Aviv/Amsterdam

Santiago Cirugeda, Architect and Principal of Recetas Urbanas, Seville

Theaster Gates, Artist, Chicago 

Huda Lutfi, Artist, Cairo

Moderator |  Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Serpentine Gallery, London

 

SUNDAY | June 17 | Artist Talk | Arte Povera Today

Speakers |  Jannis Kounellis, Artist, Rome

Santiago Sierra, Artist, Madrid

Gilberto Zorio, Artist, Torino

Moderator | Germano Celant, Contemporary Art Historian, Milan

 

+ Art Salon | The Artistic Practice | The Transdisciplinary Studio with Martin Boyce

Koons is Coming!

PRESS RELEASE COURTESY SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE 

In the summer of 2012, the SCHIRN and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung turn their attention to the work of American artist Jeff Koons (born in 1955), an artist who has been setting trends in the art world since the 1980s. The two simultaneous exhibitions dedicated to Koons’s oeuvre deliberately separate his sculpture and painting, presenting each in its own context. The SCHIRN presentation JEFF KOONS. THE PAINTER  will focus on Koons’s structural development as a painter. In his monumental paintings—whose motifs draw upon the most varied sources of high and popular culture—both hyperrealistic and gestural features give rise to highly complex concentrations of image and content. By contrast, in the exhibition JEFF KOONS. THE SCULPTOR at the Liebieghaus, both world-renowned and new sculptural works by Koons will enter into a dialogue with the historic building and its collection spanning 5,000 years of sculpture.

Curators: Vinzenz Brinkmann (Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung), Matthias Ulrich (Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt), and Joachim Pissarro (New York)

 

CT EDIT

 

The Jeff Koons Show

"I want it more than anybody else" Jeff Koons

 

Check the auction in 2/5 around 9 mins in.

1/5

2/5

3/5

4/5

5/5

 

IN PRINT

Jeff Koons in conversation with David Colman for Interview magazine

 

Jeff Koons in conversation with Pharrel Williams for Harpers Bazaar, 2011

 

Wide Open School

PRESS RELEASE COURTESY THE HAYWARD

WHAT IS A WIDE OPEN SCHOOL?

The Hayward Gallery’s Wide Open School is an unusual experiment in learning. Its programme of classes is devised and delivered by over 100 artists from approximately 40 different countries. It is not an art school however. Instead it is a wide-ranging forum where artists lead and facilitateworkshops, collaborative projects, collective discussions, lectures and performances about any and all subjects in which they are passionately interested.

That is a territory as expansive as the imaginations of artists, who this summer help to transform Southbank Centre into an international learning site for Festival of the World, showing how art changes lives.

 

For the full schedule of classes see here

CT EDIT

Since the increase in fees in higher education we're seeing more and more content developed and shared through open source media and independent schools popping up. Open Culture, The European Graduate School, Ubuweb and Ted Talks have endless valuable videos and audio for free to educate you. 

Also of note is the Summer School commencing at MoMA PS1 this year. Unfortuantely there are no more places available, let's hope they video all their lectures. 

The below are a selection of lectures and readings on Creative Writing, Design, Film, Philosophy and Psychology, Art and Society from various online media. 

Creative Writing

Truman Capote reads from Breakfast at Tiffanys

James Ellroy on re-writing history 

Design

Saul Bass on quality design, 1966

Charles and Ray Eames, 2009

Film

Errol Morris and Werner Herzog in conversation, 2007

Barbara Hammer on Meya Deren, 2011

Philsophy / Psychology 

Carl Jung on Death 

Jacque Lacan, 1977

More from Lacan and Lacanian thinkers over at the Lacan.com such as...

Badiou on Anxiety 

Art

Badiou on the subject of Art

Francis Bacon, various videos of the artist talking about his practice

Society 

Owen Jones, Chavs, The Demonisation of the Working Classes, 2012

Paul Mason, Why it's Kicking of Everywhere, 2012

 

She Lay Down Deep Beneath The Sea

PRESS RELEASE COURTESY TURNER CONTEMPORARY 

Tracey Emin's first major solo exhibition at Turner Contemporary is conceived specially for Margate, where Emin grew up and which has provided inspiration for many of her most famous art works. 

The exhibition explores the themes of love, sensuality and romanticism in Emin's oeuvre, featuring both new and existing works including drawings, monoprints, sculptures and neons. 

The exhibition's central themes continue in a display of paintings, sketches and watercolours of erotic subjects by Tracey Emin as well as JMW Turner and Auguste Rodin, whose iconic sculpture The Kiss is on show at Turner Contemporary until 2 September 2012. Read more about these works on paper here or by clicking on the PDF download at the bottom of this page.

 

CT EDIT

Watch Tracey in coversation with Stephen Fry at Turner Contemporary at The Space.

Tracey talks about her show at Turner Contemporary here on The Space. 

Tracey on Desert Island Discs, 2004 (duration 33.14)

For Tracey nearly ten years on, on love, art and Margate, see this interview in the Guardian (26/05/12)

ICA, Culture Now, 2011 (duration 1:01) 

Tracey talks about the opening of Turner Contemporary as she opened the gallery in 2011 (duration 5:26)

Video showing early footage of the YBA's following the FREEZE exhibition, 1988. See 7:07 in for Emin and Lucas. (Duration 10:55) 

Emin discusses the work of Louise Bourgeois at the Art Basel, Miami Beach fair, 2011 (duration 47:27)

Classic Emin!

For a collection of her short video works visit Ubuweb.

Lara Favaretto: Just Knocked Out

PRESS RELEASE COURTESY MoMA PS1

MoMA PS1 presents the first survey of Lara Favaretto (b. Treviso, 1973), comprising a dozen works from the past fifteen years, as well as new pieces created specifically for the exhibition. Organized by MoMA PS1 Curator Peter Eleey, the show will also feature the first presentation of the extensive archive of images that the artist has collected as source material and inspiration.

Favaretto's installations and audio, sculptural, and kinetic works balance between failure and aspiration. A sense of resignation to the forces of decay and obsolescence runs throughout her work—most visibly in her minimal cubes made of confetti, which decompose during the period of their display. Favaretto represents the eventuality of loss through a recuperative memorialization, often recycling elements from previous installations as new works, reusing discarded industrial materials, and encasing found paintings in loose tapestries of wool yarn. The memorial form is pointedly evoked in a series that the artist calls "momentary monuments," which loosely adopt but also subvert the vernacular of public sculpture. Beginning with a swamp that she created at the back of the Giardini in Venice to commemorate twenty historical figures who have disappeared, and continuing with her sandbagging of a 1896 statue of Dante Alighieri in a civic square in Trento, she has conceived a series of sculptures and public installations that draw attention to the futility and impermanence of memorials themselves. Favaretto memorializes the body in a similar state of limbo, often through mechanical representations that gradually degrade: car wash brushes whirl repeatedly, wearing themselves down against metal plates; a platoon of compressed air cylinders randomly empties itself, blowing silent party favors. These animist machines celebrate their own absurdity, taking on lives of their own, while also reflecting ours.

CT EDIT

Unfortunately I cannot find much content in English as the artist speaks Italian and Fasi, but the show is fantastic and the work offered me something joyful, even a little humouress, but with a deep sense of unease – it knocked my socks off. I'd urge you to see it if you're over in NY between now and September. 

Favaretto interviewed at the Resonance Booth at Frieze Art Fair 2007 

Favaretto's ideas for Without Earth Under Foot a project for Wonders of Weston (2010) are explained (duration, 4:34). 

PRESS RELEASE

AGAIN, A TIME MACHINE – FINAL EVENT

 THE ARTIST TALKS – PERFORMANCE AND

THE HAPPY HYPOCRITE – INTERVIEW 

THE SHOWROOM
63 PENFOLD STREET
LONDON NW8 8PQ

5.00-8.30PM

For the final event for The Artist Talks, Sarah Pierce has choreographed an ‘artist’s talk’ with six London-based art students. Staged as a group performance and using props and the central stage from the installation, this short, revised speech draws on a text written in 1905 by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and the idea of the artist talk as a mode that all artists occupy; a mode where speech, gestures and archives coalesce, and documentation both anticipates and disturbs the finished work.

To conclude the exhibition The Happy Hypocrite – Interview, hosted by Maria Fusco, presents a series of short readingsby Apexa Patel, Barry Sykes, Sam Hasler, Nathaniel Pitt, Hanne Lippard,  Jo Melvin, Anthony Iles and Stephen Sutcliffe.

For an Q&A interview with Maria Fusco please visit Q&A 

The Dailies 

Tate Shorts, Meet the Artist, 2010 (duration 3.44) 

Thomas Demand in conversation with Judy Annear, senior curator of photographs at the New Gallery NSW, Oct, 2011 (duration 1.16)

Adam Caruso and Thomas Demand interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010. (duration 4:22) 

Thomas Demand speaks to Alex Farquharson about his exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, Feb 2012 (duration 3.29)