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Exhibitions While we focus on performance, we do list major UK and European exhibitions. Here is a selection from our news pages from 2008 - 2013.
Ja Natuurlijk / Yes Naturally - How art saves the world
group exhibition
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, the Netherlands
15 March - 16 August 2013
The international art event Yes Naturally – How art saves the world is an event initiated by Stichting Niet Normaal under the artistic direction of Ine Gevers. The key questions in Yes Naturally are What is natural, and who or what decides?; Are human beings the only ones to have a say or do animals, plants and inanimate objects also have a role to play?
The exhibition offers a tour of the natural world, including both clichéd images of romantic landscapes with waterfalls and the hard and inescapable facts of environmental degradation. It will wake us up to the reality of oil slicks and genetically modified fish, but suggest that solutions to environmental problems can be found if we are prepared to change our habits: through recycling and new kinds of cooperation we can save the planet. Artists will propose new and unconventional approaches. Sculptures, films, installations, performances and bioart from Francis Alÿs, Jimmie Durham, Olafur Eliasson, Peter Fend, Fischli & Weiss, Natalie Jeremijenko, Atelier van Lieshout, Ursula Beiman, Marjetica Potrc, Zeger Reyers, Tinkebell, Superflex and Ai Weiwei, among others, will be on display until the end of August 2013 in the GEM/Gemeentemuseum, in the museum gardens, the duneforest and even further afield.
More than 80 artists will use this grand-scale exhibition to present partnerships between humans, nature and technology. You can design your own pet, fungi turn out to be our best friends, you can harvest the city and seagulls are quite tasty on the barbeque. But also: your smartphone is your memory, Facebook is your habitat, internet the new biotope and nanoparticles have become an integral part of our existence.
www.ja-natuurlijk.com
Aquatopia
group show
Nottingham Contemporary
20 July 2013 - 22 September 2013
Aquatopia explores the imaginary of the ocean deep and features artists from JMW Turner and Rene Magritte to recent Turner Prize nominees Spartacus Chetwynd and The Otolith Group. Fascinating marine objects will also appear amongst the artworks like scrimshaw, glass botanical models and ancient maps.
The exhibition is a collaboration with Tate St Ives in Cornwall, where it will be shown from October 2013 to January 2014. image: JMW Turner. Sunrise with Sea Monsters, c.1845 © Tate, London 2012
www.nottinghamcontemporary.org
Barnraising and Bunkers
group show
G39
Oxford Street, Cardiff, CF24 3DT
8 May - 29 Jun 2013
Despite the desires of architects and planners, the growth of the built environment happens organically at the will of its inhabitants. This environment is a process, not a fixed state. The exhibition Barnraising and Bunkers looks at our impulse for shelter, and how we choose to build. If Barnraising epitomises collective action and co-operation, Bunkers suggest the opposite, a singular act. Barnraising and Bunkers features work by artists who engage with architectural or physical structures, through their construction and our navigation within them, around them and through them. Artists include Uriel Orlow, Abigail Reynolds, Angharad P Jones, Rich White, Dan Griffiths, Geraint Evans, Jonathan Powell, Richard Powell.
The exhibition shows us how we often think of urban and rural being in opposition - the former synonymous with presence and the latter with absence. As our basic need to create shelter gave us our first dwellings, so these clustered to form villages and eventually cities. But urban dreams of utopian living and social cohesion do not always survive the accelerated and fragmented organic growth of the places we inhabit. When the dividing line between public spaces and private spaces is drawn so distinctly society will find ways of redrawing the line - or at least blurring its edges.
www.g39.org
Movable Borders: Here Come the Drones!
group show
Furtherfield Gallery
McKenzie Pavilion, Finsbury Park, London N4 2NQ
11 - 26 May 2013
The devices that once populated the creepy dystopian futures of science fiction have broken through into our daily reality.
Drones of dozens of different types are becoming a part of everyday life. They scout our public (and private) spaces, carrying out surveillance or reconnaissance in the service of nation states and as unmanned robotic tools, armed with missiles and bombs, acting in defence of national security.
According to a European commission document, drones will be commonplace in the skies within a decade. There are already many companies building these airborne, robotic spies for military and police uses, and this has "prompted concerns from civil liberties groups.
Artworks and projects are by Bureau of Inverse Technology (US & AU), Lawrence Bird (CA), Patrick Lichty (US), Dave Miller & Gavin Stewart (UK), The Force of Freedom (NL) and Dave Young (NL) criticalnetwork.co.uk
Rhôd 2013: Future Nature Culture
group show
Melin Glonc, Drefelin, Carmarthenshire
27 May - 1 June 2013 Rhôd’s fifth annual exhibition, Future Nature Culture, invited artists to consider the future of the relationship between nature and culture.
Future Nature Culture invites artists and audiences to re-interpret and re-imagine the relationship between nature and culture, beyond exploitation and idealization, towards a future in which we acknowledge ourselves as not separate from, but an intrinsic part of, nature, and the responsibility this implies. Artists include Maria Rebecca Ballestra (Italy), Stefhan Caddick (Powys), Rawley Clay (Vale of Glamorgan), Helen Clifford (Cardiff), Pascal-Michel Dubois (Caerphilly), Johana Hartwig (Cardiff), Jo Lathwood (Bristol), Matthew Smith (London), Fern Thomas (Swansea), Sean Vicary (Ceredigion).
Rhôd is an artist-run project exploring and promoting urban-rural dialogue. Taking its name from the sixteenth century water-mill in which it is based (Rhôd is Welsh for water-wheel) the project involves an annual exhibition held in the building and grounds of Melin Glonc, in Drefelin, Carmarthenshire. The emphasis of Rhôd is on the creation of new site-specific artworks in a variety of media, including sculpture, installation, performance, sonic art, relational /participatory art, and video. therhod.wordpress.com
Puppet Show
group show
Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham B9 4AR
23 March - 18 May 2013
Eastside Projects is finally revealed as a 'puppet state' or 'marionette government'. The art organisation has been taken over by little 'creatures', marking what could well be a latent global condition.
Puppet Show is populated by impersonators, impostors, and transvestites – by ultimately dubious characters that are used to criticise, debase, mock, undermine or protest in the place and voice of others. During Puppet Show, Eastside Projects has been possessed in order to come to life, and speak what cannot be said through the mouthpiece of its puppet population — reversing the role of puppet and puppeteer. Puppet Show in this way exposes the animal and the natural worlds, architecture, music, education, entertainment and death, all subjects analysed through their possible revolution. Puppet Show includes Edwina Ashton’s ongoing work with dour gormless creatures who undertake the partial or total destruction of Eastside Projects; Simon Popper’s zoomorphically possessed painted objects; a critique of wilderness versus civilisation orchestrated by Spartacus Chetwynd; Geoffrey Farmer’s revelation of a small-scale rebellion in an abandoned institution; Heather & Ivan Morison on the construction of the self and that of natural and cultural histories; Pedro Reyes’ embodied counterfactual debate between capitalism and socialism; souvenirs from Simon Starling’s ‘expedition’ with boats and transplanted buildings; and Jirí Trnka’s meditation on the struggle for creative freedom, all set to the rhythm of Calder’s circus through the lens of Painlevé.
image above: Heather & Ivan Morison Pleasure Island (Professor Morello), 2008, photo: Ivan Morison
eastsideprojects.org/exhibitions/puppet-show
Eden3: Trees are the Language of Landscape
Collins and Goto Studio
Tent Gallery, Art Space and Nature
Edinburgh College of Art
Evolution House (corner of Westport and Lady Lawson Street)
Edinburgh, EH1 2LE
22 April - 25 May 2013
The Collins & Goto Studio presents an on-going series of works with trees, including Eden3 an installation of trees and technology that provide an experience of photosynthesis through sound, and Caledonia Tomorrow a series of expeditions and related inquiries about specific forests.
There is an Artists' Talk on 16 May, 4:00 - 6:00pm. Tim Collins and Reiko Goto will host an open discussion about their work and the role of art in relationship to a changing environment.
collinsandgoto.com
Ecologies of Value
John Newling
Nottingham Contemporary
Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB
26 January - 7 April 2013
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John Newling's works explore the natural world and the social and economic systems of society, such as money or religion. He belongs to a generation of artists whose work evolved from Conceptual Art, Land Art and Arte Povera – art movements occurring during the 1960s, that placed emphasis on the concept, process and site of the work, alongside material and aesthetic properties. Ecologies of Value is Newling’s first major survey exhibition and presents a selection of his work from the 1970s to the present day. The first section of the exhibition plays with ideas relating to money and religion. The second section features new artworks inspired by the natural world and its ecological systems.
John Newling, An Eclipse between Coin and Leaf (Jersey Kale) 2011-12. Courtesy of the artist, from nottinghamcontemporary.org www.nottinghamcontemporary.org
Collaborative Effects
Piero Gilardi
Nottingham Contemporary
Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB
26 January - 7 April 2013 
Piero Gilardi was an influential figure in the development of Arte Povera (poor art) in Italy in the late 1960s centred in Turin. From the outset, he was concerned with creating social relations through art. Collaborative Effects tracks Gilardi’s approach to collaboration within and outside the art world over a 22-year period from 1963 to 1985 through his interactive sculptures and his creative work with social and political movements. It brings both these stories up-to-date through the inclusion of recent sculptures and work relating to anti-austerity and environmental campaigns in Italy. Collaborative Effects reveals the significant role Gilardi played in the development of the Italian and international avant garde of the late 1960s and 70s. It also reveals him as an important precursor of participatory and socially-engaged art practices today.
The exhibition begins with Gilardi’s early sculpture – interactive sculptures based on natural motifs, including his celebrated Nature Carpets. Gilardi’s Nature Carpets are highly colourful, realistic sculptures of slices of nature made from carved and painted foam.
image: Piero Gilardi, Vestito natura-Anguria, 1967. www.nottinghamcontemporary.org
Games People Play
Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW)
Haldon Forest, near Exeter, Devon
6 October 2012 – 24 February 2013
CCANW’s year-long Games People Play programme will explore what games can tell us about ‘human nature’, and how a deeper understanding of the advantages of cooperation can help us all to address the needs of the planet.
Indoors, the exhibitions will be presented in two halves. The first will show a selection of early board games which were intended as guides to moral improvement or general knowledge. It will include documentation of unusual local games, past and present. The second half will focus on photography and video by contemporary artists which use sporting imagery, and will focus on the new generation of video games designed to address social and environmental challenges. Both halves will include participatory and interactive work including performances of H.G.Wells’ ‘Little Wars’ and Guy Debord’s ‘The Game of War’, and demonstrations of cooperative games of the 1970s.
Outside, games will be devised and played in a ‘playground’ area in front of CCANW’s building, along the trails and in the wider forest environment. Five villages surrounding Haldon will be working with The Moveable Feast Workshop Company, inventing new games as well as researching the heritage of local games. Additional activities include Fluxolympics–inspired and Paralympics events and a letterboxing challenge on Haldon similar to that played on Dartmoor. Biodiversity and interdependence will also be explored through activities led by artists and wildlife experts in Haldon Forest, a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the presence of birds of prey, Nightjars and 30 species of butterfly. The title of the programme takes its name from Eric Berne’s book ‘Games People Play’, first published in 1964.
www.ccanw.co.uk
Frozen Relic: Arctic Works
ScanLAB
Architectural Association Gallery and Front Members' Room,
36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES
12 January - 9 February 2013
Frozen Relic: Arctic Works is a series of re-fabricated real world scenarios by designer/makers ScanLAB Projects. Using millimetre perfect 3D scanning technology ScanLAB stage and capture transitory moments on location across the world. In the Frozen Relic: Arctic Works series these moments are digitally archived and reproduce out of context and out of time. Whilst working with Cambridge University aboard the Greenpeace Icebreaker ‘The Arctic Sunrise’, ScanLab documented a series of ice floes in the Fram Strait North West of Svalbard, Norway. During the course of two expeditions to the Arctic the team captured a total of 26 floes in forensic detail, mapping their surfaces, analysing core samples of the ice and mapping their drift through the fluxing ice pack. Frozen Relic: Arctic Works temporarily recreates this landscape in the AA Gallery in its natural material - frozen saltwater. Each piece is a digitally fabricated scale replica of the original ice floe which was 3D scanned from above and documented using underwater sonar from below. The completed digital survey model is used to guide a cnc robotic arm, which carves the moulds in which each replica is cast. The replicas float in the Gallery space, with eye level replacing sea level. Alongside the exhibition are:
Lecture - 23 January, 6:00pm
ScanLAB Projects: Experiments in Observation & Capture
Matt Shaw and Will Trossell of ScanLAB Symposium - 2 February, 12:00 - 4:00pm
Frozen Relic & Other Absent Landscapes.
www.aaschool.ac.uk...
Parallel Horizons
Curated by Saif Osmani
The Stephen Lawrence Gallery
Queen Anne Court, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, Greenwich, London SE10 9LS
21 January - 28 February 2013
This multi-disciplinary showcase examines how bamboo has been appropriated in a context of space, in place-making and within the process of establishing national boundaries. Each project explores cross-cultural interaction and linkages forged through material and spatial syntax in the formation of cultural codes and future identities across borderlines.
Parallel Horizons stems from Baasher Ghor / Bamboo House, an international collaborative platform bringing together 35 practitioners from four continents including architects, artists, designers, sculptors, photographers and oral historians with the aim of rediscovering stories and narratives misplaced through human migration and interpolation.
Artists and collaborators include:
Muhammed Ahmedullah, Victor Angelo, Lee Borthwick, Wang Wen-Chih, Hilde A. Danielsen, Lee Dalby, Marcus Fearon, Steven Follen, Benjamin Garcia Saxe, Atar Hadari, Anna Heringer, Lisa Hudson, Fatima Hussain, Zahra Hussain, Samiul Kamal-Uddin, Faridha A. Karim, Ruhimunnessa Khanom Karim, Asif Khan, Zia-Uddin Khan, Julia King, Hsinyi Ku, Peter Kyte, Rebecca Lucraft, Akinori Matsumoto, Rosa Nguyen, Saif Osmani, Larisa Sarajlija, Sba Shaikh, Julia Thompson, Chris Wright, Maria Zerguine.
www.stephenlawrencegallery.net
Galápagos
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
curated by Bergit Arends and Greg Hilty
2 November 2012 – 13 January 2013
This exhibition brings together work by twelve artists who have traveled to and spent time in the Galápagos archipelago through a residency programme initiated in 2007. Each artist found the experience transformative for their artistic practice and their life. Collectively they demonstrate considerable variety of approach and discipline within the visual arts, ranging across film-making, video, installation, painting, sculpture, photography, animation, illustration and sound. The artists also brought to the project, and developed during it, considerable skills of communication and interaction with scientists, tourists, and local inhabitants of the Galápagos, allowing them to explore subjects of scientific or social interest consistent with their artistic concerns. Artists include Jyll Bradley, Paulo Catrica, Filipa César, Marcus Coates, Dorothy Cross (with actor Fiona Shaw), Alexis Deacon, Jeremy Deller, Tania Kovats, Kaffe Matthews, Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt), Alison Turnbull. photo: Marcus Coates fruitmarket.co.uk
Documenta 13
Kassel, Germany
Here are reviews of Documenta 13, the five-yearly international exhibition, curated this year by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: Adrian Searle in the Guardian Roberta Smith in the New York Times: 'Art show as unruly Organism' Liz Brown in the Paris Review: 'Materiality is one of those words that comes up all the time in contemporary art, and at the Ottoneum musuem it really was everywhere: seeds, water, bark, dirt, fossil fuel. Toril Johannessen’s looming magic lantern ran on petroleum. Claire Pentecost had created 'soil-erg,' an alternative currency, out of compost. The stacked ingots of dried mud didn’t seem that crazy considering that only that afternoon Spain’s government had requested a hundred billion euros from the EU to stay solvent.'
Shiela MacGregor on AxisWeb: Apples and dogs feature in this year's exhibition.. appearing in 'a series of paintings of apples by Korbinian Aigner, a Bavarian village pastor who created a new strain of apple while imprisoned in Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps and went on to document various kinds of apple and pear in 900 postcard-sized paintings, all observed, standardised and numbered with conceptualist rigour.' 'Anna Maria Maiolino’s piece in the Auepark was similarly disconcerting. The Brazilian artist has filled a small house on the edge of the Auepark with plants and smoothly coiled clay and has supplemented the birdsong round about with the more exotic sound of birds from her South American homeland. From that point on, all birdsong in the park seemed exaggerated, as if a chorus had been staged for the particular benefit of visitors.' Documenta 13 is impressive in its scope. Yet it left me with a feeling of unease. How big is the carbon footprint of an exhibition on this scale? And do the event’s extraordinarily high production values not blunt its critical edge? Can an exhibition bank-rolled by so many state institutions all over the world, not to mention an unedifying collection of corporate sponsors, ever really bite the hand that feeds it?'
Pertaining to Things Natural…
The Chelsea Physic Garden, London
10 July – 31 October 2012
This outdoor sculpture exhibition presents monumental sculptural works, ephemeral land art projects and delicate interventions by over twenty leading artists. Curated by David Worthington, Vice President of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, Pertaining to Things Natural… takes its name from the 17th century definition of ‘physic’ and is a reminder of the Physic Garden’s founding mission as a place for the study of useful plants, especially those used in medicines.
The exhibition takes place throughout the entire site, with works installed in greenhouses, the café, the entrance lobby and the composting area, as well as the garden itself.
Artists: Owen Bullett, James Capper, Annie Cattrell, Jo Coupe, Joe Currie, Judith Dean, Chris Drury, Tessa Farmer, James P Graham, Greyworld, Tim Knowles, Tania Kovats, Keith Rand, Peter Randall-Page, William Peers, Michael Shaw, Cathy Ward & Eric Wright, Julian Wild, Hugo Wilson and David Worthington. image: INTAKE by Joe Currie www.pertainingtothingsnatural.com
www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk
The Future’s Not What It Used To Be
 group exhibition, curated by Deborah Smith
Chapter Arts Centre
Market Rd, Canton, Cardiff CF5 1QE
21 September - 4 November 2012
The Future’s Not What It Used To Be is an exhibition of ten international artists who explore the concepts of past, present and future. Using a range of media, the artists present multiple perspectives of their changing landscape, helping viewers to define and redefine their own relationships to the world.
Susan Hiller, Vernon Ah Kee and Tony Albert give voice to indigenous cultures in the hope that we learn from the past; Marjetica Portc and Monika Sosnowska’s architectural and sculptural works investigate the poetics and politics of space; Amie Siegel and Jeremy Millar explore how events in history resonate with our understanding and experience of the present; Patricia Piccinini engages us with the changing nature of our environment; Darren Almond and Matt Bryans mark, manipulate and erase time. image: Tony Albert, Be Deadly / Bydd Wych, 2011 – 2012, poster print www.chapter.org
Annie Cattrell
solo exhibition
Inverness Highland Museum
25 August - 27 October 2012
Annie Cattrell trained as a sculptor and her work is informed by her interest in neuroscience, anatomy and meteorology, the fusion between science and art. She works in a variety of media but is drawn to glass because of its transparency and through it she captures the rhythms of the natural world, moments in time, fleeting things, clouds on a particular day, the delicacy of the human lung.
Works on display include Conditions which comprises twelve individual sculptures, representing a variety of cloud types in difference sky strata between January to December in and around the UK and Currents which depicts the ever-changing surface of the sea and its response to wind intensity from above and undercurrent movement from below.
The human organ of oxygen, the lungs, was produced by blowing air into molten borosilicate glass normally used for making laboratory test tubes to form the intricate dendritic formation of the human lungs. editors' note:Annie contributed to our metaphors for sustainability with the Fetch (of a wave; to collect). image: courtesy of
inverness.highland.museum
www.anniecattrell.com
Helen Stratford - A Day With a Duck
Babylon Gallery, Waterside
Ely, Cambridgeshire CB7 4AU 1 September - 7 October 2012
In June, artist and architect Helen Stratford spent a day with a Muscovy duck on Ely’s Riverside researching how public areas are shared between human and duck. The day formed a starting point for conversations and encounters with city residents, visitors, tourists and workers whose paths interact with the public spaces that adjoin the riverside. Ely is in the midst of change - currently undergoing a masterplanning process of ‘planned growth’ to ‘maintain the city’s unique identity.’ In contrast, A Day With A Duck explores alternate and unplanned ways through which places are generated. There is a public programme of interactive live-art events in collaboration with invited artists, local people and wildlife:
15 September: a day long series of Live Art events will take over areas of Ely. The events include One Minute Birdwatching by Holly Rumble and Ring This Bell by Townley and Bradby. The public is invited to bring along Super 8 duck related footage to a Live Duck Shoot by Helen Stratford and Cambridge Super 8 group outside Babylon Gallery. Special guest, Avril Hayter-Smith: Ely's Official Town Crier, will open the day with The Duck Proclamation. On 6 October there is a gallery screening and discussion.
criticalnetwork.co.uk...
Rona Lee: That Oceanic Feeling
John Hansard Gallery, Southampton
28 August - 13 October 2012
The exhibition That Oceanic Feeling brings together new works in different media by British artist Rona Lee, developed in dialogue with geoscientists at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, whose research involves mapping the deep sea, the least understood and accessible environment on the planet. That Oceanic Feeling explores our complex symbolic relationship to this emergent political and economic landscape asking what it might mean to look into this otherwise dark space. The John Hansard Gallery will host a free, one-day symposium exploring related ideas on 13 October. www.hansardgallery.org.uk
Orchard : Gerry Loose & Donald Urquhart
Scottish Poetry Library
Edinburgh Art Festival
2 August - 29 September 2012
The poetic names of older varieties of apple trees, many of which are now endangered - such as Embroidered Apple, Hoary Morning and Swan’s Egg - are the basis for a new set of collaborative works by the poet Gerry Loose and the artist Donald Urquhart. Starting with a selection of Victorian engravings, Loose has added a text inspired by old descriptions of apples grown in Scotland. Each annotated engraving is set alongside a block of colour by Urquhart, drawn from a spectrum of the tones of fully ripe fruit.
Orchard is simultaneously a lament for the loss of varieties and a celebration of that rich variety.
Orchard: Gerry Loose & Donald Urquhart in conversation
9 August 2012
5.30—7.00pm Poet Gerry Loose and artist Donald Urquhart discuss their exhibition Orchard and explore their collaborative process. www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk
Môr Plastig
Mike Perry
Unseen Photo Fair
Unseen Gallery, at the Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam
19 - 23 September
Môr Plastig is Welsh for 'plastic sea' and is a photographic study of plastic objects washed up on a small beach, Cwm Gwyllog, in North Pembrokeshire, Wales. Photographs from the series will be exhibited by the Unseen Gallery, Amsterdam, at their Photo Fair. www.m-perry.com
www.unseenamsterdam.com
'Pertaining to Things Natural...' at the John Martin Gallery
38 Albemarle street, London W1S 4JG
6 - 15 September 2012
The gallery exhibition brings together related drawings, paintings and sculpture by artists taking part in Pertaining to Things Natural at the Chelsea Physic Garden.
Artists exhibiting: Owen Bullett, James Capper, Annie Cattrell, Joe Currie, Judith Dean, Chris Drury, Tessa Farmer, James P Graham, Tim Knowles, Tania Kovats, Keith Rand, Peter Randall - Page, William Peers, Michael Shaw, Cathy Ward & Eric Wright, Julian Wild, Hugo Wilson, David Worthington. image: SKYFIELDS by Cathy Ward and Eric Wright www.pertainingtothingsnatural.com
www.jmlondon.com
Carbon 12
Espace Fondation EDF
6, rue Recarnier
75007 Paris
4 May - 16 September 2012
This Cape Farewell exhibition encompasses biodiversity, atmospherics and oceanography — earth, wind and sea. Five artists who have worked with climate scientists exhibit their artworks alongside the scientific enquiry. The pairings are:
artists Lucy + Jorge Orta with Amazonian Biodiversity Research / ECI
artist Annie Cattrell with wave technology from Heriot-Watt University, Orkney
artist Erika Blumenfeld with
Bio Luminescence / Dr Michael Latz
artist David Buckland
Marine Biology with Dr Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez
artists HeHe with Jean-Marc Chomaz / Fluid Mechanics Laboratory see Annie Cattrell's metaphor for sustainability on Ashdenizen . www.capefarewell.com
fondation.edf.com
Poetry, Language, Code and Games Artists Play
group show
Ruskin Gallery
Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge
19 - 29 June & 3 - 12 July 2012
This exhibition, opening in the week of the centenary of Alan Turing's birth, will focus on the interrelationship of text code and visual image. Artists featured include John Cayley, Paolo Cirio, and Jacques Donguy, Eduardo Kac, William Latham, Liliane Lijn, Alessandro Ludovico, heath bunting.
Two artists' work connects with biological 'coding'.
Eduardo Kac shows a new work, CODA, the culmination of a series called Edunia, within which Kac hybridised his own DNA with plant DNA, to form a new transgenic, 'bioart', work. Kac will also display a work-in-progress which connects bio-conductive ink, silk-screening, MBED circuits and a sound score developed with Dr Rob Toulson of the Anglia Ruskin CoDE Research centre.
Edward Burtynsky: OIL
The Photographers' Gallery
16 - 18 Ramillies Street,
London
19 May - 1 July 2012
"In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany. It occurred to me that the vast, human-altered landscapes that I pursued and photographed for over twenty years were only made possible by the discovery of oil…"
- Edward Burtynsky
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky chronicles the effects of oil and reveals the rarely seen mechanics of its production and distribution.
This exhibition shows three sections from Burtynsky’s series OIL: Extraction and Refinement, Transportation and Motor Culture and The End of Oil. The works depict landscapes scarred by the extraction of oil, and the cities and suburban sprawl defined by its use. He also eloquently addresses the coming end of oil, as we face its rising cost and dwindling availability.
From aerial views of oil fields and highways ribboning across the landscape, to derelict oil derricks and mammoth oil-tanker shipbreaking operations, the exhibition confronts the viewer with the evidence of dependence on this finite resource. photo: Shipbreaking #13, Chitagong, Bangladesh, © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier, Toronto
photonet.org.uk
Galápagos
the Bluecoat
School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX
4 May - 1 July 2012
The Galápagos archipelago uniquely exemplifies the delicate tension between a pristine environment and human curiosity and intervention. Over 5 years, 12 artists visited these islands returning home with film footage, drawings, photographs, sculptures, sounds and imaginings. The resulting exhibition at Liverpool's the Bluecoat offers an insight into the cultural reality, the human stories and the living laboratory of Galápagos.
Artists featured are: Jyll Bradley, Paulo Catrica, Filipa César, Marcus Coates, Dorothy Cross (with actor Fiona Shaw), Alexis Deacon, Jeremy Deller, Tania Kovats, Kaffe Matthews, Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) and Alison Turnbull. The exhibition is curated by Bergit Arends, curator of contemporary arts at the Natural History Museum, London, and Greg Hilty, curatorial director at the Lisson Gallery, London; it is produced by Angela McSherry.
photo: Paulo Catrica, Galápagos 2010
Here on the Directory and on Ashdenizen, Alison Turnbull offered a metaphor for sustainability.
www.thebluecoat.org.uk
www.artistsvisitgalapagos.com
Occupy Everything
kennardphillipps
Hales Gallery
Tea Building, 7 Bethnal Green Road
London E1 6LA
18 April - 26 May 2012
kennardphillipps is an artist collaboration forged between Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps during the build-up to the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2002. The two artists work together to create pieces that confront political and corporate power in solidarity with the social movements that form in resistance against state and commercial oppression. Each piece is adapted to exist in various environments: in galleries, on the street, for publication in print and on the internet. Occupy Everything centres on their work relating to the global protests and occupations which were widespread in 2011, with a large proportion of it having been already used on the street. Photographs and documentation showing the work in action will also be exhibited.
www.kennardphillipps.com
www.halesgallery.com
U-N-F-O-L-D
John Moores University, Liverpool
8 March - 26 April 2012
Cape Farewell's U-N-F-O-L-D exhibition features the work of twenty-five artists who have participated in the Cape Farewell expeditions in 2007 and 2008 to the High Arctic and in 2009 to the Andes. The exhibition will overlap with Cape Farewell's university shortcourse/uk programme. shourcourse/uk provides unconventional psycho-geographic tours inquiring the role of ecology and environment in the education of contemporary artists. image: Nathan Gallagher www.capefarewell.com
HEVVA! HEVVA!
Cape Farewell & University College Falmouth
Core Building, Eden Project, Cornwall
2 - 12 April 2012
Percy Craft, Hevva! Hevva!, 1887
courtesy Cape Farewell
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HEVVA! HEVVA! showcases artwork by 21 emerging artists and designers from across University College Falmouth. This exhibition represents their creative response to three days' expeditions made around the landscapes of Cornwall as part of Cape Farewell’s SHORTCOURSE/UK.
The title, HEVVA! HEVVA!, encapsulates the spirit of the journey the party made in an attempt to engage with the localised effects of climate change. The Cornish word 'hevva' recalls the roar once heard from the cliffs of Cornwall where a 'huer' on spotting a shoal of pilchards bluing the sea would call loudly to the fishermen.
An exclamation, a halloo from way off, but, too, a premonitory warning cry, HEVVA! HEVVA! frames a collection of artworks, text and performance that share a common genesis in place and environment, which in chorus looks to communicate an urgent message.
The three days of journeying encouraged a psycho-geographical approach to investigating human relationships with both urban and natural landscapes. At each leg of the expedition students were joined by a number of specially invited artists, geographers, oceanographers and botanists.
rane.falmouth.ac.uk/hevva_exhibition_details.html
rane.falmouth.ac.uk/pdfs/Hevva_Online_Catalogue.pdf
www.edenproject.com
Without Boats, Dreams Dry Up
The Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Art
16 John Islip Street
London SW1P 4JU
24 February - 29 March
An exhibition of 20 emerging artists and designers from Chelsea, Camberwell and Wimbledon Colleges of Art. All artists were participants in Cape Farewell's SHORTCOURSE/UK, a 3-day urban expedition in London in October 2011 led by a team of artists, scientists and academics. www.capefarewell.com
Social Fabric
Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts)
Rivington Place, London EC2A 3BA
19 January - 10 March
Social Fabric focuses on the textile industry and its relation to capital, labour, colonialism, international trade and radical politics. The exhibition examines the social and economic role of textiles, particularly in India. Its starting point are works by artists Alice Creischer about the circulation of global commodities and by Sudhir Patwardhan who records the impact of the textile industry on Mumbai. Other artists are Celine Condorelli, Archana Hande, Raqs Media Collective, and Andreas Siekmann. The exhibition refers to Karl Marx's account of boom and bust in the industry and its effects on workers in Britain and India. The craze for Indian Chintz caused Spitalfields weavers to protest in 1719, and a century later the restrictions on imports devastated India's textile industry. photo: Apparatus for the Osmotic Compensation of the Pressure of Wealth during the Contemplation of Poverty, by Alice Creischer. photo by Thierry Bal www.iniva.org
Plunge
Michael Pinsky
LIFT and ArtsAdmin
Central London
7 February - 4 March, 2012
Plunge by Michael Pinsky
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The London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) partnered with Artsadmin as part of the IMAGINE 2020 network to commission and present a new public art work in central London by artist Michael Pinsky that responds to climate change. The piece was launched 7 February 2012 and continues through 4 March.
Plunge is a set of 3 blue led-light rings placed on the Seven Dials Sundial Pillar, the Duke of York Column and the Paternoster Square Column. Each indicates the water level of the Thames, in one thousand years, should climate change go unchecked. www.liftfestival.com/plunge
TOPOPHOBIA
Danielle Arnaud
123 Kennington Rd, London SE11 6SF
13 January - 19 February
The fear of place and the manifestation of this in contemporary art is the territory for TOPOPHOBIA. As an anxiety disorder, this phobia is understood as an irrational dread of certain places or situations, yet, considered as a cultural phenomenon, topophobia connects us to the existential human question of how each of us finds our place in the world. The exhibition and related publication take a look at the representation of place and space as threatened or threatening. The artists are Anne Eggebert, Matthias Einhoff, David Ferrando Giraut, Polly Gould, Marja Helander, Uta Kogelsberger, Almut Rink, Abigail Reynolds, Emily Speed and Louise K Wilson.
A Conversation Between Trees
Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW)
Haldon Forest, near Exeter, Devon
22 October 2011 - 29 January 2012
Visualisation looking up at the canopy of a
mango tree in the Mata Atlantica, Brazil
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The exhibition by Active Ingredient, following their residency at CCANW, reveals the invisible forces at play in forests, displayed as a series of data maps generated live in the gallery space. Large video projections will show trees from Brazil and the UK ‘in conversation’ - revealing the light, colour and climate in the canopy of trees, changing over time.
Environmental sensors and mobile phones are placed in the canopy of trees in each of the forests and data sent to the gallery via a mobile phone. A machine also interprets the scientific data, scorching sheets of paper with circular graphs that tell the story of 70 years of climate and environmental change. At the Opening, Refreshments. Active Ingredient discuss the exhibition with Carlo Buontempo, Senior Climate Change Consultant at the Met Office. www.hello-tree.com
www.ccanw.co.uk
High Arctic
Sammy Ofer Wing, National Maritime Museum, London
14 July 2011 – 13 January 2012
Based on United Visual Artists' (UVA) creative director Matt Clark's experience of Cape Farewell's 2010 Expedition to Svalbard, the exhibition uses a combination of sound, light and sculptural forms to create an abstracted Arctic landscape. Created as a monument to the Arctic past, set 100 years into the future, the installation conveys the scale, beauty and fragility of the Arctic. www.capefarewell.com
www.nmm.ac.uk
Ghosts of Gone Birds
Rochelle School, Arnold Circus
Shoreditch, London E2 7ES
2 - 23 November 2011
Ghosts of Gone Birds features over 200 new works from artists as diverse as Sir Peter Blake, Ralph Steadman, Charming Baker, Rob Ryan and Kai & Sunny. Each of the 120 artists, writers and musicians has adopted an extinct species. The exhibition is intended to bring artistic life back to the bird species that have been lost, and to raise money for BirdLife International's Preventing Extinctions programme.
In addition to the visual arts, there is live printing, talks, readings and performances. There is a series of Ghosts stories that shed light on the conservation work being done around the world to prevent any further species extinctions. This is the London phase of an international project.
www.ghostsofgonebirds.com
Autoconstrucción: The Optimistic Failure of a Simultaneous Promise
Abraham Cruzvillegas
Modern Art Oxford
to 20 November 2011
Modern Art Oxford presents a major exhibition of new work by Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas. The artist is best known for his long-standing project, Autoconstrucción, in which he takes inspiration from the eclectic and improvisatory architecture of his childhood home in the area of Pedregales de Coyoacán, Mexico City. Autoconstrucción operates as a metaphor for individual identity and the identity of a place existing in a state of flux. Cruzvillegas’ project is informed by ideas of ‘survival economics’ – how scarceness can lead to recycling and solidarity in opposition to consumption and individualism. Over the last year, Cruzvillegas has explored aspects of Oxford and its history, including associations with science, literature, magic, ethnography, imperialism and politics to propose works that combine aspects of the local with his highly personal and poetic visual language.
www.modernartoxford.org.uk
The Animal Gaze Returned
London Metropolitan University
27 October - 11 November 2011 The Animal Gaze Returned addresses contemporary art and animals. The focus of the exhibition is on animality and the active social space between and among different species; on new representations of other animals in what is termed a post-critical era; and on animal as medium in contemporary art. The artists include Greta Alfaro, Steve Baker, Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan, Aurelia Mihai and Snaebjornsdottir/Wilson. The exhibition is in two locations:
Cass Gallery - Central House, 59-63 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7PF; and Cass Gallery - Commercial Road, 41 Commercial Road, London E1 1LA. www.animalgaze.org
BEE BOX
Anne Brody
Bishop's Square, Spitalfields
Brushfield Street, London, E1 6AA
1 September - 1 November 2011
The first public art exhibition held simultaneously across eight countries in Europe focuses on relations between art, science and society. As the UK representative, Anne Brodie, presents her artwork, BEE BOX, for the first time.
The BEE BOX reminds us of the invisible disappearance of our
pollinators. Bees, like us, form communities of workers capable of generating intelligent social interactions. Brodie offers a poetic reflection on the fragility of these communities. The project is organised by the European Public Art Centre (EPAC), a collaborative engagement between organisations across Europe with the aim to exhibit art-science artworks in urban outdoor public settings. The other countries are Latvia, Finland, Portugal, Spain, Iceland, Estonia and Poland.
In 2006/07 Anne was awarded an Antarctic international fellowship sponsored by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Arts Council England, and spent 3 months working in the Antarctic. She continues her creative investigation on the human/environmental interface with scientists at BAS and the University of Surrey.
annebrodie.co.uk
epac.c-lab.co.uk
Tarnished Earth
Manchester, Brighton, Cardiff, Edinburgh
6 April - 30 September
Tarnished Earth is a street exhibition of photographs by Jiri Rezac showing North American wilderness, the environmental consequences of human actions, and sources for alternative forms of energy. The photographs tell the story of the Canadian tar sands oil extraction.
The exhibition is presented by The Co-operative, working with WWF-UK and Greenpeace.
The exhibition tour is:
Manchester
6 April - 8 May
The Avenue, Spinningfields
Brighton
11 May - 5 June
Brighton Promenade, next to Brighton Pier, Kings Road
Cardiff
1 - 31 July
St David's Shopping Centre
Edinburgh
1 - 30 September
Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh
www.tarnishedearth.co.uk
H2O
Chelsea Futurespace
Hepworth Court, Grosvenor Waterside
Gatliff Road, London SW1W 8QP
19 July - 2 October A group show on the theme of water, H2O features the artists:
Ekkehard Altenburger, Crispin Chetwynd, Keith Collins, Richard Elliott, Stephen Farthing, David Ferry, Derek Jarman, Robin Jenkins, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, Doug Kuntz, Shoko Maeda, Oborn & Reekie, Tim O'Riley, Emily Rubner, Donald Smith.
www.chelseafuturespace.org
In the Event of Flooding
Elizabeth Willow
High Tide
libraries on Merseyside
1 - 30 June During a High Tide residency at FACT in Liverpool in 2009, Elizabeth Willow gathered 90 responses from visitors to the 'Climate for Change' exhibition. The responses are presented as a set of four books. The books are exhibited at the Allerton, Lea Valley and Wavertree libraries in
Liverpool and the Bebington, Birkenhead Central, Wallasey and West Kirby libraries on the Wirral
www.hightideuk.org
ECO-ART
Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland
4 February - 29 May 2011
ECO-ART is a group show of contemporary artists working in the fields of environmental and ecological art. Included are works by: Jan-Erik Andersson, Brandon Ballengée, Ciel Bergman, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Joyce Cutler-Shaw, Agnes Denes, Chris Drury, Michael Flomen, Andy Goldsworthy, Helen and Newton Harrison, Ichi Ikeda, Richard Misrach, Nils-Udo, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, Alan Sonfist.
www.poriartmuseum.fi
Spaghetti Junctions
Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller
Cubitt Gallery
8 Angel Mews, London, N1 9HH
16 April - 29 May 2011
Cubitt Gallery presents Spaghetti Junctions, the first UK solo exhibition by Swiss artists Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller. Through video, sculptural-recreation, text and archive material the artists explore two short-lived experiments with solar energy, both marking points of change or crisis in the history of oil consumption.
Sun of 1913 (2009) looks back to the first commercial-scale solar power plant, built in 1913, in Egypt under British mandate, by American engineer Frank Shuman. For a short period solar was the most economical form of power generation, cheaper than shipping coal from Britain. However, the plant ceased operation after one year, when at the onset of World War I the British Government began mass-scale crude oil production in Iran, precipitating a widespread turn to oil. The fate of Shuman’s solar plant is told through a narrative written with Egyptian writer Wageh George. A video projection shows two segments of the plant being reconstructed in Cairo by the artists and craftsmen.
A Curiosity, a Museum Piece and an Example of a Road not Taken (2006-2007) investigates former American president Jimmy Carter’s pioneering but ultimately futile energy programme. It culminated in his symbolic solar installation on the White House roof during the 1979 energy crisis, which was removed by the Ronald Regan administration.
cubittartists.org.uk
At Water's Edge
Environmental Photographer of the Year 2009 - 2010
EDGEspace, Liverpool
22 February - 19 March 2011
The Environmental Photographer of the Year is an international showcase for the best in environmental photography. At Water's Edge is an exclusive exhibition of images selected from the 2009 and 2010 Environmental Photographer of the Year submissions. Curated by High Tide in partnership with the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM), this exhibition uses these poignant images to continue exploring High Tide's core theme of 'water' and water's significance to all life on Earth. EDGEspace, High Tide's new venue for eco-culture in the North West of England, opened on 21 January 2011. It promotes Experimental Dialogues for Generating Eco-culture. Located in the Ropewalks district of Liverpool city centre, EDGEspace aims to be a hub of creative activity around ethical, environmental and ecological issues. photo: Changing Climates: Solar Energy Versus Fossil Fuel by Dave Walsh/Greenpeace
EDGEspace
34 Slater Street
Liverpool, L1 4BX www.hightideuk.org
Material Actions
Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World
Haldon Forest Park, Exeter, Devon, EX6 7XR
27 November - 27 February 2011
Continuing their series of exhibitions and workshops on fashion and ecology, the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW) presents Material Actions.
The exhibition shows work by 13 makers which questions how textiles are used to affect and contribute to ethical, social, cultural and environmental change. photo: Jonnet Middleton and her Unity Pandas (photo by Matt Wilson)
www.ccanw.co.uk
Dominion
Peninsula Arts, University of Plymouth, Devon
22 January - 5 March 2011
Drawing on the overarching symbol of the whale, Dominion is a multilayered and allusive attempt to come to terms with a shared history between human and whale. It incorporates Angela Cockayne’s chimerical objects and Philip Hoare’s text. The result is an aesthetic sermon on the state of the whale and the world.
www.plymouth.ac.uk
A Memorial for the Still Living
Beatriz da Costa
Horniman Museum & Gardens, London
2 October 2010 to 9 January 2011
Beatriz da Costa presents A Memorial for the Still Living, a sombre reflection on endangered species in an installation which confronts visitors with the reality of British species threatened with extinction. Da Costa’s focus is on the ‘still living’: species that have been classified as being under threat, but which still stand a chance for survival if immediate action is taken.
Artist's talk: 25 November 2010 from 7:00 - 9:30 pm
Beatriz da Costa discusses the inspiration and processes involved in creating A Memorial for the Still Living and leads a tour of the exhibition.
To coincide with the exhibition, da Costa has released the Endangered Species Finder, a mobile application that helps you to locate, identify, and submit sightings of endangered species in the UK. www.4thestillliving.net
www.horniman.ac.uk
Behind the Dawn
Moray Art Centre, Findhorn, Scotland
6 November - 11 December 2010
Behind the Dawn is an exhibition accompanied by events, performances and workshops celebrating the International Year of Biodiversity. The exhibitions
are: Evaporation, by Jana Winderen – film and sound environment recordings 25 metres under the ice of Greenland and inside the ice itself
Cell biology microscopy, x-ray chrystalography and scanning electron microscopy photography by The University of Edinburgh
Midwinter, Close Reflection, Water Wind and Light - films by James Hawkins
Paintings Inspired By Nature – an aesthetic interpretation of a microscopic world by Hamer Dodds, scientist
www.morayartcentre.org
Amazonia
Lucy + Jorge Orta
Natural History Museum
6 October - 12 December 2010
Artists Lucy + Jorge Orta joined the Cape Farewell expedition to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest in July 2009. Working closely with the Manú Biosphere Reserve in Peru, with scientists from the Environmental Change Institute, Oxford, and with the Natural History Museum's collections, the artists developed Amazonia, an exhibition of sculpture, photography and video for the Jerwood Gallery. The exhibition includes:
Madre de Dios - Fluvial Intervention Unit: a 5m-long pirogue (flat-bottomed) boat sculpture with hundreds of tiny creatures.
Perpetual Amazonia: an interactive installation featuring thousands of plant and flower images each representing a designated area of the rainforest's Manú Biosphere Reserve.
Bone Variations: large-scale aluminium sculptures modelled on fossil dinosaur bones from the Museum's collections.
Amazon Florae: sculpted, hand-crafted flowers inspired by expedition photographs.
Amazonia: 2-screen video projection with images and sounds from the expedition, accompanied by a poem narrated by eco poet Mario Petrucci.
www.nhm.ac.uk
NEXT NATURE
iNTERTEXT Gallery
7 South Street, Leominster, HR6 8JA
22 October - 27 November 2010
Curated by Sally Payen, Next Nature is part of iNTERTEXT’s program of international artists’ installations that began with Uncivilisation at The Dark Mountain Project Festival in Llangollen in May this year.
This exhibition explores the duality between the idealised nature we dream about and the changing nature brought about by humankind’s interference, the rising of a next nature, which is wild and unpredictable as ever. .
Artists in the exhibition include Cyriak, Jaime Jackson, James Winnett, Paul Evans, Morag Colquhoun and Susan Bowman The exhibition is open during the Hereford Photography Festival. The will be a Climate Change seminar on 25 November at the Festival, chaired by Stephen Snoddy, Director of New Art Gallery. photo: still from video 'Moving' by Susan Bowman
Editors' note: see our blogs on the Uncivilisation event and the Dark Mountain Project here and here. iNTERTEXT website
Building Green
Radar at Loughborough University
May - November 2010
Building Green explores issues around sustainability and food production and consists of three new commissions by major artists, Amy Franceschini / Myriel Milicevic (Futurefarmers), Rebecca Beinart and Nils Norman.
These artists / provocateurs use their work to channel concerns about the need to sustain a global ecological balance using seemingly commonplace processes such as gardening, building and food production.
Each Artist is using the environment of Loughborough University as the platform for their work. FutureFarmers are cultivating a plot of land. Beinart is finding and using natural yeasts that exist around the campus and town, and Norman is creating a permanent structure from recycled materials. All three pieces will develop over the summer and come to fruition in October 2010.
Hydrarchy: Power and Resistance at Sea
Gasworks, London
18 September - 7 November 2010
Hydrarchy: Power and Resistance at Sea is a group exhibition that approaches historical and contemporary examinations of the sea and the offshore as contested cultural, political, legal and socio-economic territories. Focusing on specific events, situations and mythologies attached to past and recent maritime history, the works address power relations at sea and the forms of resistance and survival developed as a response.
The exhibition brings together artists whose work explores themes encompassing colonialism and the slave trade, commerce, sea tourism and offshore finance, as well as maritime folk history, piracy and the proverbially tyrannical figure of the captain. While not always explicitly referenced in the works, the ship, as the ultimate container and enabler of these activities, histories and relations, stands as the unifying element of the exhibition. The artists are: Mathieu K. Abonnenc, Goldin+Senneby, Laura Horelli, Melanie Jackson, Anja Kirschner and David Panos, Paul McCarthy, Uriel Orlow, Femmy Otten, Christodoulos Panayiotou, João Pedro Vale. Photo: Anja Kirschner and David Panos, Polly II: Plan for a Revolution in Docklands (2006), 30', video still. Gasworks
155 Vauxhall Street
London SE11 5RH
www.gasworks.org.uk
Ambulation
Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth
14 August - 10 October 2010
Ambulation is an exhibition, series of events, films and new commissions by artists and architects who use walking as an artistic practice.
The series of newly commissioned tours explore the city of Plymouth through its histories; and unseen, distinctive anomalies. The intention of Ambulation is that the exhibition of ephemera, commissions and documentation along with the projects will help to develop a conversation on walking and the city over the period of the exhibition.
The artists are ad:HOC, Bridgette Ashton, Tim Brennan, Simon Persighetti and Tony Whitehead, Phil Smith and Polly Macpherson, and the Architecture Centre Devon and Cornwall. Plymouth Arts Centre
38 Looe street
Plymouth, PL4 0EB www.plymouthartscentre.org
Arctic Perspective
Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London
Until 30 September 2010
HMKV Phoenix Halle, Dortmund, Germany
18 June - 10 October 2010
The Arctic Perspective Initiative highlights the cultural, geopolitical and ecological significance of the Arctic and its indigenous cultures. In collaboration with the people of Igloolik, Kinngait, Iqaluit, Mittimatalik and Kanngiqtugaapik in Nunavut, Canada, artists and architects are devising a mobile media and living unit, powered by renewable energy sources, to be used by Inuit and other Arctic peoples for creative media production, communications and monitoring the environment, while moving, living and working on the land.
The Arctic Perspective Initiative is an international collaborative partnership between Projekt Atol, C-TASC, HMKV, The Arts Catalyst and Lorna. It is led by artists Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman. The exhibition at Canada House is curated by The Arts Catalyst. The exhibition at the Phoenix Halle, Dortmund, Germany, is curated by HMKV in the framework of European Capital of Culture RUHR 2010 and the international media-art conference ISEA 2010.
www.artscatalyst.org
Joseph Beuys/ARTIST ROOMS
Glasgow International Festival of Visual Arts and Hunterian Art Gallery
Glasow
1 April - 27 September 2010
Andy Warhol portrait of Joseph Beuys, 1980
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This ARTIST ROOMS exhibition contains a selection of the work of Joseph Beuys (1921 - 1986), one of the most influential figures in post-war European Art.
The exhibition includes a number of vitrines, including the legendary 'Fat Chair', a selection of drawings and an iconic portrait of Beuys by Andy Warhol.
ARTIST ROOMS is a new collection of international contemporary art created through a gift made by Anthony d’Offay, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), The Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned and managed by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate on behalf of the nation.
The principle of ARTIST ROOMS is the concept of individual rooms devoted to particular artists.
www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk
www.glasgowinternational.org
www.tate.org.uk/artistrooms
www.nationalgalleries.org/artistrooms
Turbulences
a moved wind exhibition
near Hesse, Germany
15 - 29 August 2010
This year's exhibition by bewegter-wind (moved wind) is on the theme of 'Turbulence', and will be held on locations around Hesse Germany. Artists working with wind objects, installations, performances and landart have been selected from a competition. From the exhibition organisers: Turbulences are meetings of unordered currents. A dynamic turbulence is the swirling of a current in the meteorological and in the metaphorical sense. They stand for fast changing situations. This is also a metaphor for the aspects of the communication of winds in the the world. Turbulences can be both: a threat and a chance, upswing or crash.
moved wind have, since 2004, held annual exhibitions of wind art. 'Wind is the only element, which is not visible and is only noticed through the relationship with the other elements. It is a phenomenon and a symbol for spirit. Each landscape is shaped by it, each culture is affected by it. Its play with high and low pressure is a metaphor for communication in the back and forth of the winds of the world. These various aspects of an invisible phenomenon occupies artists world-wide' bewegter-wind.de
A Horse walks into a Bar
Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
18 June - 8 Aug 2010
This group exhibition examines the parameters of human and animal characteristics and question the evolution of the human race. Some of the work blurs the boundaries between nostalgia and abhorrence, referencing the use of animals in the entertainment industry, whilst other work references animals in heraldic, mythological stories. Conventions in visual art practice are also deliberated, highlighting the inter-dependence of living beings in a contemporary world, these range from the allegorical use of animals in traditional regal portraiture to other works that alter our perception of sculpture by fusing animal imagery with mass produced objects. The exhibition can be seen as reflective of our increasingly uneasy relationship with the natural world that is tainted with confusion, contradiction and confrontation and will oscillate between the playful, sinister, surreal and controversial. The artists included are: Corey Arnold, Richard Billingham, Andrew Bracey, Lorraine Burrell, Maddi Nicholson, Dan Staincliffe, Chiz Turnross, UHC and Mark Wallinger. www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk
Uneven Geographies: Art and Globalisation
Nottingham Contemporary
8 May - 4 July 2010
A group exhibition, Uneven Geographies brings together artists who aim to represent the fabric of lives affected by global flows, rather than capturing the instant, sensational journalistic image. Whether using film, installation or sculpture, or experimenting with maps, flow-charts and diagrams, all aim to make the networks of power, profit and exploitation very visible.
The artists included are:
Éduardo Abaroa, Azzellini & Ressler, Yto Barrada, Ursula Biemann, Bureau d’Études, Öyvind Fahlström, Goldin + Senneby, Mark Lombardi, Steve McQueen, Cildo Meireles, George Osodi, Bruno Serralongue, Mladen Stilinovic, Yang Zhenzhong. The exhibition is curated by T.J Demos and Alex Farquharson. www.nottingham contemporary.org Photo of work by Cildo Meireles
Stuart Whipps - New Wooabbeleri
Focal Point Gallery, Southend Central Library
17 May - 3 July 2010
New Wooabbeleri is an analysis of how the local conurbation of Thamesmead received its name, and by implication, how large developments sometimes rely on chance and spurious encounters, as much as clearly defined parameters and plans. Stuart Whipps became interested in the history of Thamesmead after investigating its uncertain origins. Known in its early days as 'The Woolwich-Erith Riverside Project', it needed a clearly identifiable moniker, so a 'name the new town' competition was launched in November 1966. In all, there were 565 entries and 'Thamesmead' was finally chosen in March 1967. The site which remains the largest geographical location designated for regeneration in Europe. The project aims to address how sometimes random and indiscriminate historical facts can affect the imagination of local communities. It suggests that, if certain plans are always open to interpretation, then perhaps it's responsible for each of us to try and take control of how our environment is shaped, and be actively involved in injecting our surroundings with meaning and potential for the future. www.focalpoint.org.uk
Ed Kashi
photographs
HOST Gallery, 1-5 Honduras Street, London EC1
8 March – 3 April 2010
Ed Kashi is known worldwide for his outstanding photojournalism and his commitment to documenting social and political issues. The exhibition of his work in the Niger Delta presents photographs included in the newly published Curse of the Black Gold. Related events are:
Ed Kashi in discussion with Colin Jacobson
HOST Gallery
8 March, 6.30pm
'In the Picture'
Ed Kashi at the Frontline Club
10 March, 6pm.
As part of Shaping the Future, a PLATFORM residency at the Stephen Lawrence Centre, Ed Kashi will be running a hands-on workshop on the ‘photo-essay’ for young people. For more information on this, email Ben Amunwa at Remember Saro-Wiwa.
HOST gallery website
Psychopomp
Marcus Coates
Milton Keynes Gallery
Milton Keynes
15 January - 4 April 2010
This exhibition is the first survey of Marcus Coates’ work in a public gallery in the UK and it includes early film pieces, sculpture, sound, costumes and photographs as well as new work.
Coates often assumes the identity of an animal, such as a fox, goshawk or stoat, by simulating its appearance, enacting its habits and appropriating its language. In the film, Stoat (1999), for example, Coates totters around on ramshackle platforms, learning to recreate the animals’ bounding movements; in Goshawk (1999), a telephoto lens captures the artist as a rare bird perched precariously at the top of a tree; while in Finfolk (2003), the artist emerges from the North Sea spluttering a new dialect, as spoken by seals.
Coates has also trained as a shaman and the exhibition includes films of his rituals, where he achieves a trance-like state and communes with the animal kingdom to address social issues.
photograph: Marcus Coates, Vision quest, Ernie, 2009, by Nick David www.mk-g.org
The Case of the Deviant Toad - Brandon Ballengée
The Arts Catalyst and Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The Royal Institution of Great Britain
21 Albemarle Street, London
16 - 31 March 2010
New York artist, activist and ecological researcher, Brandon Ballengée brings his high-resolution scanner photographs, videos and delicate preserved specimens of deformed toads to the Royal Institution for his first London solo exhibition, The Case of the Deviant Toad. Presented as part of the International Year of Biodiversity, the show presents the outcome of the artist’s study of deformed amphibians in the UK, commissioned by The Arts Catalyst and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
www.rigb.org
RETHINK - Contemporary Art & Climate Change
Copenhagen, Denmark
31 October 2009 - 5 April 2010
Tomas Saraceno,
Observatory/Air-Port-City, 2008
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The National Gallery of Denmark, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, and the Alexandra Institute join together in RETHINK - Contemporary Art and Climate Change an international contemporary art exhibition showing diverse perspective on the climate debate.
The exhibition, part of the official culture programme for the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP15, includes artists whose work relates to the intersection between art, culture and climate change. The four exhibitions are:
The RETHINK website includes essays and blogs on rethinking politics, nature, art, social life, technology and borders.
An article by RSA / Art & Ecology curator, Emma Ridgeway, RETHINK: A new improbable form of life is here, and on the RSA site.
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RETHINK Relations
National Gallery of Denmark
31 October 2009 - 5 April 2010
RETHINK Relations bids the audience to reconsider our social relations and how we live.
Featured artists: Tomas Saraceno (AR), Olafur Eliasson (IS/DK), Henrik Håkansson (SE), Allora & Calzadilla (US/CU)
RETHINK The Implicit
Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art
31 October - 27 December 2009
RETHINK The Implicit brings to light the aspects of climate changes we take for granted or overlook.
Featured artists: Elin Hansdottir (IS), Thilo Frank (DE), Henrik Håkansson (SE), Bright Ugochukwu Eke (NG), Kerstin Ergenzinger (DE), Tove Storck (DK)
RETHINK Kakotopia
Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center
31 October 2009 - 10 January 2010
RETHINK Kakotopia considers the possibility of a future with catastrophic climate changes.
Featured artists: Lise Autogena (DK) and Joshua Portway (UK), Bill Burns (CA), The Icelandic Love Corporation (IS), Eric Andersen (DK), Superflex (DK), Tea Mäkipää (FI), Haubitz + Zoche (DE), Tue Greenfort (DK), Cornelia Parker (UK), Ruri (IS), Superflex (DK), Fiona Tan (ID/NL)
RETHINK Information
Moesgaard Museum, online at www.rethinkclimate.org and in public spaces
from 31 October
RETHINK Information deals with new technologies and how to use them to understand climate changes.
Featured artists: Jette Gejl (DK), Parfyme (DK), Janine Randerson (NZ), The People Speak (UK) www.rethinkclimate.org
Earth Art of a Changing World
Royal Academy of Arts and GSK Contemporary
3 December 2009 - 31 January 2010
A collaboration between the Royal Academy of Art and GSK Contemporary 2009 (sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline), Earth Art of a Changing World sets out to consider the impact of climate change on the practice of a broad range of contemporary artists, working in a wide-variety of media. Some of the artists featured are involved in the issue directly. For others, it has an indirect resonance with their work. The sections of the exhibition are:
Introduction
An introduction to the key factors that make up the natural world our cultural relationship to earth’s stability, the section includes Works by Ackroyd & Harvey, Spencer Finch, Mona Hatoum and Marcos Lutyens & Alessandro Marianantoni.
Perceived Reality
Showing representations of the world as we imagine it today, the section includes works by Antti Laitinen and Edward Burtynsky.
Artist as Explorer and Reflector
At the centre of the exhibition, this section is about the role of the artist as communicator, reflector and interpreter of key issues of their day. The artists include Sophie Calle, Lucy & Jorge Orta, Cornelia Parker, the poet Lemn Sissay and Shiro Takatani.
Destruction
This section will consider the consequences of human behaviour through natural disasters and physical collapse, counterpoising the beauty of the planet with the damage that is being inflicted upon it.
The New (Reality)
This section shows how the world and the sense of beauty is being re-defined by the impact of climate change.
This change has fostered new notions of care and empathy for habitats, for bio-diversity and a new sense of a shared emotional understanding. Artists include the writer, Ian McEwan, Mariele Neudecker and Emma Wieslander. Photo above is of '400 Thousand Generations', by Mariele Neudecker, 2009. Photo courtesy and © the artist.
www.royalacademy.org.uk
DARK PLACES
Arts Catalyst
Office of Experiments, Steve Rowell, Beatriz da Costa, Victoria Halford and Steve Beard
John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton
24 November 2009 - 23 January 2010
Menwith Hill, North Yorkshire,
for Ultimate High Ground. Photo: Steve Rowell
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Dark Places uncovers sites of secrecy and technology across Britain. Commissioned by The Arts Catalyst and co-curated with the Office of Experiments, SCAN and the John Hansard Gallery, the exhibition presents new artists' works that explore spaces and institutions below the radar of common knowledge.
The Office of Experiments' (OOE) Overt Research Project sets a background by mapping and recording advanced labs and facilities that are unwittingly or purposefully concealed from public view. OOE also brings together The Mike Kenner Archive, revealing years of campaigning by one man into the public biochemical warfare experiments conducted by Porton Down (Salisbury).
Victoria Halford and Steve Beard's film Voodoo Science Park traces a secret geography of the Health and Safety Laboratory in Derbyshire, where train crashes and industrial accidents are re-created to examine their destructive pathways. The film imagines a delayed encounter between poet William Blake and political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, drawing affinities to this unique site.
Beatriz da Costa's A Memorial for the Still Living is a sombre reflection on endangered species of the British Isles. Presenting a selection of rare animal, insect and reptile specimens, including loans from the Natural History and Horniman Museums, da Costa identifies these collections and the bleak future they imply as 'dark places' of zoological science.
Steve Rowell, a collaborator with the US-based group the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), in his solo project Ultimate High Ground UK, uncovers shared US-UK spaces of military power. Realised as a multiscreen video installation, the work focuses upon RAF Menwith Hill, North Yorkshire, a satellite ground station and
communications intercept site, known for its distinctive radome structures.
www.artscatalyst.org
www.hansardgallery.org.uk
Anthem
Beth Derbyshire
with Ulrike Haage
opening performance: 14 November - 9 December 2009
Mediterranean Biome at the Eden Project, Cornwall
The Eden Project and Cape Farewell present the premiere of Beth Derbyshire's film work, Anthem, with music by composer Ulrike Haage. Anthem is a trilogy of films with a choral component, exploring notions of land, place and nation.
Anthem assembles ideas around nationality, identity and language using the symbols of landscape and song to explore our cultural relationship to landscape. Song and landscape have long been associated with expressions on nation. Derbyshire borrows from sources such as national anthems, ancient land names and etymology to capture cultural and natural settings, to explore the connections between people and landscape through balancing components of voice, music, word and image.
Anthem was filmed in Newfoundland, the UK and in the Arctic during the Cape Farewell research expedition of 2007. www.bethderbyshire.com
www.youtube.com
www.edenproject.come/visiting-eden/whats-on
www.capefarewell.com/art/exhibitions
Nostalgia
by Omer Fast
South London Gallery
7 October - 6 December 2009
Judgement Day struck in 1980 and the world has been mired in a second Dark Ages since. Northern Europe is a wasteland and Britain has become a barren backwater where nomadic tribes roam across the dunes and raid one another for depleted resources. The only steady export from this once fabled island are migrants, who desperately stream across the European mainland in hope of a more peaceful and prosperous future in Africa.
The South London Gallery presents 'Nostalgia', a three-part film installation by Omer Fast. One film depicts a migrant from a dystopian Britain seeking asylum in Africa. Adapted from a true story, this narrative is presented alongside an extract of original footage and a dramatisation of an encounter between the artist and a person seeking asylum in Britain. In a third story, in a west African colony increasingly hostile to Britons seeking a better life, an asylum-seeker is interrogated as to the whereabouts of a tunnel used to smuggle people into the colony. He is offered a deal by the authorities and must choose between betraying his friends and securing his future.
Fast's film and video work, often shown as installations on multiple screens, takes contemporary issues or historic moments as their points of departure, meshing narrative, documentary and dramatic content.
'Nostalgia' is co-produced by the South London Gallery; the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; and the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie, Berlin. www.southlondongallery.org
65 Peckham Rd
London SE5 8UH
Gustav Metzger: Decades 1959–2009
Serpentine Gallery, London
This major exhibition of work by the influential artist and activist Gustav Metzger, examines his life-long exploration of politics, ecology and the destructive powers of 20th-century society. Metzger’s career has spanned over 60 years and this is the most extensive survey of his work to be shown in the UK.
The exhibition draws together the themes and methodologies that have informed the London-based artist’s practice from 1959 until the present day. The broad cross-section of works on view include Metzger’s auto-destructive and auto-creative works of the 1960s, such as his pioneering liquid crystal projections; the ongoing Historic Photographs series, which responds to major events and catastrophes; and later works exploring ecological issues, globalisation and commercialisation. Film footage of seminal performances and actions are exhibited, as well as a new, participative installation using the archive of newspapers Metzger has been collecting since 1995. www.serpentinegallery.org
2009
Lucy Orta
Plymouth Arts Centre and Plymouth College of Arts
The exhibition and series of workshops by Lucy Orta
examines the social bonds within communities and the relationships between individuals and their environments. The exhibition brings together sculptures, videos, objects, drawings and photographs created by Orta over the last ten years. Orta’s work reflects on themes including community and social inclusion; dwellings and mobility; and recycling and sustainable development. Conceptual in her approach, she is also innovative and experimental, creating modular and transformable objects such as wearable shelters, survival kits, giant dinner parties and mobile kitchens that are both functional and utopian. www.plymouthartcentre.org
2009
Radical Nature: Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969–2009
Barbican Art Gallery, London
19 June - 18 October 2009
Radical Nature is the first exhibition to bring together key figures across different generations who have created utopian works and inspiring solutions for our ever-changing planet.
Radical Nature draws on ideas that have emerged out of Land Art, environmental activism, experimental architecture and utopianism. The exhibition is designed as one fantastical landscape, with each piece introducing into the gallery space a dramatic portion of nature. Work by pioneering figures such as the architectural collective Ant Farm and visionary architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, artists Joseph Beuys, Agnes Denes, Hans Haacke and Robert Smithson are shown alongside pieces by a younger generation of practitioners including Heather and Ivan Morison, R&Sie(n), Philippe Rahm architects and Simon Starling. Radical Nature also features specially commissioned and restaged historical installations, some of which are located in the outdoor spaces around the Barbican while a satellite project by the architectural collective EXYZT is situated off site. www.barbican.org.uk
www.barbican.org.uk for a listing of talks and events
INTERSPECIES
Arts Catalyst, with Nicolas Primat, Antony Hall, Kira O'Reilly, Ruth Maclennan, Beatriz da Costa, Rachel Mayeri
1 - 4 October 2009
A Foundation's Rochelle School, Shoreditch, London, UK
Interspecies uses artistic strategies to stimulate dialogue about the way we view the relationship between human and non-human animals. All the artists in Interspecies question the one-sided manipulation of non-human life forms for art. They try instead to absorb the animal's point of view as a fundamental part of their work and practice.
There have been many examples in history of 'living art', where artists have manipulated the actions of swarms of bees, herded sheep, commanded dogs and sent rats down mazes. But can artists work with animals as equals? What does this mean to how we humans see ourselves as just one species inhabiting a planet in crisis?
The family day, Sunday 4 October, will give people a chance to see artists in contact with animals. Performance artist Kira O'Reilly will be Falling asleep with a pig, called Deliah, and Antony Hall's Enki Experiment 4 will invite visitors to communicate with an electric fish. During the afternoon, parents and children can take part in a series of free events: Becoming Bowerbirds
Children and parents are invited to be a bowerbird for the afternoon with artist Sally Hampson.
Interspecies Tales
Poet and storyteller Shamim Azad uses aspects of the Asian folk and oral traditions, with chant and body movement, poems, percussion instruments, tabla and songs.
Animal Handler’s Tales
Broadcaster and trainer of the owls used in the first Harry Potter movie, James Mackay talks about his work as 'The Animal Man' with exhibition curator Rob La Frenais.
The exhibition was first shown at the Cornerhouse, Manchester.
www.artscatalyst.org
IOU Antarctic Travelogue
IOU Theatre, Halifax
6 June- 25 September 2009
Antarctic Travelogue presents the culmination of IOU's Artistic Director's David Wheeler's three months with the British Antarctic Surveyas 'Artist-in-Residence'. This is the first exhibition relating to his trip. It was previewed in our 'Productions in development' feature.
The Travelogue consists of three-metre wide panoramic photographs and video with five linked cameras.
Check their website for information on making an appointment
www.iouproductions.com
Ecopoetics on Haldon
Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World
6 - 28 June 2009
'Ecopoetics' is the study of the ways that creative writing can address ecological issues. Fifteen poets' works are featured. The exhibition features: site-specific work
performance
found poetry
digital writing
critical discussion Sponsored by the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World Tuesdays - Sundays & Bank Holidays 10.00 - 17.00
www.ccanw.co.uk
Futursonic Festival and Conference
Manchester
13 - 23 May 2009
Futursonic, the urban festival of art, music and new technologies, this year included the Environment 2.0 Art Exhibition, centred at the CUBE centre. It included artworks that made visible and tangible the outcomes of our actions at a local level, artworks conceived as social interventions, and artworks which arise out of a sustained dialogue between artists and scientists. Artists and exhibits include: Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey
Beuys' Oaks
an installation of 250 oak saplings, exploring the legacy of Joseph Beuys and his seminal artwork 7000 Oaks Amy Balkin
Reading the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
A public recital by volumteers and artists of the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Prayas Abhinav
Petpuja
A project on urban food systems in Bangalore and Delhi, exploring the nutritive, environmental and inter-personal implications that growing vegetables in the public can have on neighbourhoods. Eva Meyer-Keller
Handmade
A film in which three different catastrophic weather scenarios are re-enacted with playful precision using household objects and materials such as a mixer, a hairdryer, salt and water. www.futursonic.com
Climate for Change
FACT Gallery, Liverpool
13 March - 31 May 2009
With Climate for Change, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) explored how humans can be invested in the change needed to sustain civilization and is examining the multiple crises affecting the world: ecological, financial, food, housing. Is society itself becoming unsustainable? From FACT's website:
'The 21st century has finally hit and there is an energy in the air - how do you respond? Forget the eco-art and bring on local, national and international debates, actions, contexts, struggles and solutions'.
Climate for Change proposed to be an experiment in local activism and engagement, involving residents from Eyebeam's Sustainability Research Group, Stefan Szczelkun, Melanie Gilligan and more. www.fact.co.uk
The Animal Gaze
Plymouth: Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Roland Levinsky Gallery
Exeter: Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW)
24 January - May 2009
Kate James, The World is a Dangerous Place
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The Animal Gaze explored the complex relationships between animals and humans. The exhibition featured over 40 national and international artists whose works showed new approaches to animals, taking into account ethics, politics and aesthetics.
The Animal Gaze took place in four exhibition venues in Plymouth and at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW) near Exeter. CCANW Animal Gaze film evening
CCANW showed a special selection of short films and animations by 15 artists involved in the exhibition on 5 March.
Artists featured included Roz Mortimer, Paul Bush, Suky Best and Tessa Farmer. The Animal Gaze exhibition was a London Metropolitan University event and is curated by Rosemarie McGoldrick. The artists include Suky Best, Roz Cran, Matilda Downs, Tessa Farmer, Hayden Fowler, Aurelia Mihai, Nicola Oxley, Andrea Roe, Claire Rousell, Clara S Rueprich, Helen Sears and Miranda Whall.
www.animalgaze.org
www.plymouthartscentre.org
www.ccanw.co.uk
INTERSPECIES
Cornerhouse, Manchester
24 January - 29 March 2009
Nicolas Primat, INTERSPECIES
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The Arts Catalyst exhibition, Interspecies: artists collaborating with animals consisted of new commissions and existing works by artists working closely with different species of animals, stimulated by the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. All the artists questioned the one-sided manipulation of non-human life forms for art. They tried to absorb the animal's point of view as a fundamental part of their work and practice. The newly commissioned works are by Nicolas Primat, Kira O'Reilly, Antony Hall and Ruth Maclennan. The other pieces are by Rachel Mayeri, Beatriz Da Costa and Kathy High.
Kira O'Reilly presented an action/installed performance featuring herself and a sleeping female pig. The work addressed the ethics of human and non-human animal interaction.
Antony Hall encouraged the public to directly communicate with live electric fish in the gallery space, through mild electrical impulses both tactile and visual.
Ruth Maclennan's 'The Department of Eagles' examined the relationship between falcons and falconers, and its association with human surveillance.
Two existing works were also shown in the touring exhibition: Rachel Mayeri's 'Primate Cinema', which casts human actors in the role of mating non-human primates; and Beatriz Da Costa's 'PigeonBlog' which investigates the military use of homing pigeons. The exhibition opens at the Cornerhouse, Manchester, and will tour to Edinburgh, Northumberland and London.
www.artscatalyst.org
www.cornerhouse.org
Moral Imagination
Current Positions in Contemporary Art in the Face of Global Warming
Museum Morsbroich
Leverkusen, Germany
7 February - 26 April 2009
The exhibition Moral Imagination. Current Positions in Contemporary Art in the Face of Global Warming showed over 20 international artists who are foucssing on the theme of climate change through installations, video films, sculpture and painting.
The exhibition included works by Ursula Bieman, Olafur Eliasson, Douglas Gordon, Tue Greenfort, Christina Hemauer und Roman Keller, Jonathan Horowitz, Horse Art, Christoph Keller, Leopold Kessler, Deborah Ligorio, Elke Marhöfer, Gordon Matta-Clark, Gustav Metzger, Anna Meyer, Olaf Nicolai, Dan Peterman, Marjetica Potrè, Philippe Rahm, Santiago Sierra, Rirkrit Tiranvanija, Marie Velardi, Christine Würmell. The works in the exhibition considered the consequences of human actions; addressing, documenting and reflecting about climatic phenomena, as well as offering strategies and potential solutions including ideas for recycling and setting up closed systems.
Museum Morsbroich
Leverkusen, Germany
www.museum-morsbroich.de
Flooded McDonald's
South London Gallery
January - March 2009
Superflex: Flooded McDonald's
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The South London Gallery presented a new film work by the Danish collective Superflex entitled Flooded McDonald's.
In the film, a life-size replica of the interior of a McDonalds burger bar, without any customers or staff present, gradually floods with water. Furniture is lifted up by the water, trays of food and drinks start to float around, electrics short circuit and eventually the space becomes completely submerged. This is the first solo exhibition by Superflex in in London. Over the past 15 years, Superflex's work has included large-scale installations, long-term process-based projects and, more recently, films.
www.southlondongallery.org
65 Peckham Road
London SE5 8UH
www.superflex.net
Alan Warburton - the Fruits of Conversation
The Shop, Cambridge
8 - 20 December 2008
The Fruits of Conversation was a community collaboration in which residents of Cambridge worked together to dissect local issues - using apples. In the spirit of his project Cutting the Melon, which documented how ordinary Venezuelans used melons to explain politics, Alan Warburton and his team asked Cambridge residents to do the same with local apples.
After a trip to an orchard to collect apples, the group (which included university geneticists, a food historian, community workers, civil servants and a police officer) were asked to cut, core and peel their apples to explain their opinions on a range of political topics. The conversations were documented in detail by the artist, and the resulting exhibition displays video and photographic evidence of the process. The subject matter shows how Cambridge residents attempt to articulate the personality of a changing British city. More information on www.criticalnetwork.co.uk
www.theshopjesuslane.co.uk
NUCLEAR: Art and Radioactivity
Arts Catalyst and SCAN commissions
Nicholls & Clarke building, Shoreditch, London
14-16, 20-23, 27-30 Nov 2008
Chris Oakley, 'Half Life', 2008
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The Arts Catalyst and SCAN are presenting the results of new commissions from the artists Simon Hollington & Kypros Kyprianou and Chris Oakley, exploring the re-emerging concerns of nuclear power in the exhibition NUCLEAR: Art and Radioactivity. The exhibition and events explore the contradictions of nuclear power, as it has come to stand both for the failed utopian promises of modernism and a fresh hope for a carbon-free future.
Simon Hollington & Kypros Kyprianou's installation is the outcome from their residency at the British Atomic Nuclear Group, with an emphasis on the work the artists did as part of the wide-ranging public consultation process into siting a new nuclear power facility in the heart of London.
An examination of nuclear science research through a historical and cultural filter, Chris Oakley's film 'Half-Life' looks at the histories of Harwell, birthplace of the UK nuclear industry, and the development of fusion energy technology at the Culham facility in Oxfordshire.
Two events are included: A 'Talkaoke' event will be hosted by The People Speak 14 November at the Nicholls & Clarke building. A mobile chat-show, the format allows all visitors to comment on the work and the issues around it in an informal and entertaining way.
In partnership with the RSA’s Art & Ecology programme, The Arts Catalyst presents a day-long forum at the RSA on 28 November exploring the impact of nuclear power in art, culture and society. Prominent artists, writers and experts will discuss their work and engagement with issues around nuclear energy, from Hiroshima through the 50s’ ‘white heat of technology’ and Cold War nuclear tensions to present day energy debates. Speakers include the controversial American ‘nuclear sculptor’ James Acord. To register for the events, which are free, and for more information: admin@artscatalyst.org
www.artscatalyst.org
www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk
The Animal Gaze
Unit 2 Gallery and Metropolitan Works
London, E1
18 November - 12 December 2008
then touring to the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World; and the Plymouth City Museum & Gallery, Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth College of Art & Design and the Roland Levinsky Gallery.
The Animal Gaze features works by over 40 artists about animals and humans. The curators have chosen works which explore current themes in academic studies about the animal and the human, ideas about taxonomy, representation, difference and indifference. They have not included works which could be considered wildlife portraiture, or those that use animals as decoration or status symbols.
Artists include
Angela Bartram, Sarah Beddington,
Catherine Bell (AUS), Mircea Cantor (ROM), Marcus Coates
Nicky Coutts, Roswitha von der Driesch & Jens-Uwe Dyffort (GER), Tessa Farmer, Hayden Fowler (NZ), Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan, Jo Longhurst, Snaebjornsdottir/Wilson, Martin White.
Accompanying the exhibition is The Animal Gaze: Contemporary Art & Animal/Human Studies, a symposium to be held at Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media & Design, London Metropolitan University, on 20 - 21 November. Places are limited. See the website for availability.
www.animalgaze.org
Kielzog
6 June - 1 November 2008
Waterloopbos Forest, Netherlands
Could art change the climate?
With this question seventeen international artists were sent into the Waterloopbos, a forest in the Netherlands which has grown over the ruins of the former Hydrodynamic Laboratory.
In the outdoor laboratory, hydraulic engineers worked for several decades to find technical solutions for hydrodynamic problems all over the world. Kielzog asked artists to work amongst the ruins of the scale models of the laboratory, amongst overgrown sluices, harbours and river courses, on a new view of the Dutch battle against the water, and a creative view of climate change.
The forest is managed by the Nature Monument Association (Natuurmonumenten) and is accessible to the public.
www.kunstbroedplaats.nl
Of All the People in All the World
13 September - 5 October 2008
A.E. Harris Factory, Birmingham In this exhibition by Stans' Cafe, a grain of rice represents one person. In the former metalworking factory in Birmingham are billions of grains of rice, 112 tonnes, 6.7 billions grains, representing each person on the planet. The landscape of rice mountains represents a different population, each with a story about the world's people, politics and current affairs. The exhibiton has toured Los Angeles, Melbourne, Madrid and New York City, and is now returning home to Birmingham. See Stan's Cafe's page here on the Directory for their theatre production, Home of the Wriggler. stanscafe.co.uk
After Nature
17 July - 21 September 2008
New Museum, New York City After Nature depicts a future landscape of wilderness and ruins. Part dystopian fantasy, part ethnographic museum of a lost civilization, the exhibition is an examination of humankind's relationship to nature. Including over ninety works, it brings together an international and multigenerational group of contemporary artists, filmmakers, writers, and outsiders. The exhibition is organized by Massimiliano Gioni, Director of Special Exhibitions.
www.newmuseum.org
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