Current
Leah Capaldi, Lay Down, Matt’s Gallery’s new temporary space, 11 November – 18 December 2016, Friday – Sunday, 12 – 6pm
Lay Down is the first major solo show by artist Leah Capaldi. The exhibition opens Matt’s Gallery’s temporary new space in Bermondsey, marking a new era for the gallery as it moves south of the river.
Lay Down is an entirely new work by Capaldi, a site-specific installation involving a video sculpture with continual performance, inspired by her time in the deserts of the American West. Here, Capaldi met a Utah cowboy and his horse, a film exploring their relationship and the vast, performative landscape that surrounds them forms the core of the installation. Lay Down asks how power is constructed and understood, this question arising throughout the installation, in the iconic figure of the American cowboy, the influence of the sublime landscape and the authority of the screen.
The crossover area between the disciplines of sculpture and performance are of particular interest to Leah Capaldi’s practice, with echoes of the seminal performance work of the late 1960s and early 70s. Capaldi’s work explores the pivotal relationship between object or subject, encouraging the audience to question themselves in relation to the work and playing with notions of surveillance and spectatorship.
Lay Down is generously supported by Arts Council England, University of Brighton and 5A Studios.
With thanks to: West Taylor, Bill Roberts, Elliot Ross, Jason Moffat, Roddy Canas, Paul Russell, Barbara Capaldi, Arthur Manzo, Al Gunby, Elias Bate, Angus Braithwaite, Lawrence Leaman, Tim Lucas from Price and Myers.
Performer Credits: Jonathan Caruana, Josh Gardener, Gordon Raeburn, Bless Klepcharek
Richard Grayson, Possessions_inc. Continues 01 December 2016 with Episode 7
Possessions_inc is a new video and web project by Matt’s Gallery and Richard Grayson. Episode 7 is now available to watch.
Over 2016 and 2017 Matt’s Gallery will be posting monthly instalments of the video project Possessions_inc. Part series, part blog, part essay, part talking head, Possessions_inc. is an expanding exploration of: ideas of value, ways we invest in objects, the Bilderberg owl, animatronics, the mystery of Rennes Le Chateau, codes, fakes, oligarchs, the missing head of Philip K Dick, treasure hunting, M.R. James, the V.I.P. Lounge, drug smuggling, computer animation, animism, Pygmalion and the insurance industry.
To subscribe please sign up to the Matt’s Gallery mailing list
To watch the episodes click here
Artists’ News
Benedict Drew, The Saw Tooth Wave, Centre of Contemporary Art, Derry~Londonderry, 15 October – 11 December 2016
Benedict Drew’s solo exhibition The Saw Tooth Wave is on view at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry~Londonderry. This installation of new work continues the artist’s interest in the ways that technologies and cultural zeitgeists imbue our experience of the world. The exhibition includes video, painting, sculpture, and wall drawing, while touching on a number of ideas: technology and abstraction, embodiment and spectatorship, gender codes and somantic affects. Yet, rather than presenting a critical deduction of these ideas, the installation conducts a mood of experience that weaves through the exhibition as a whole.
Benedict Drew, KAPUT, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 28 October 2016 – 26 February 2017
Benedict Drew presents KAPUT at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, a show exploring the concept of space tourism through a thrilling installation. Using a combination of video, audio and sculptural elements, Drew reflects on society’s uncertain relationship with technology and presents a dark, dystopian response to what he describes as ‘the horrors of the modern world’. This is an Arts Council Collection National Partner Exhibition.
Lindsay Seers, Nowhere Less Now⁷, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, Wales, 15 October 2016 – 19 March 2017
Lindsay Seers exhibits the work Nowhere Less Now⁷ at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. Set in a ship that moves through past, present and future time, Nowhere Less Now⁷ traces the journey of a relative who sailed the seas in the Royal Navy over a hundred years ago. Finding his inscription on an ancient baobab tree on the African island of Zanzibar, Lindsay Seers connects intimate stories of individuals dragged along in the strong currents of global histories. This is a new incarnation of this continuously evolving work which weaves some of the Gallery’s own story through that of its founder Richard Glynn Vivian and Swansea’s own maritime past into this acclaimed work. This piece is part of The Artangel Collection, an initiative to bring outstanding film and video works, commissioned and produced by Artangel, to galleries and museums across the UK.
Jennet Thomas, Essex Road III, Tintype, London, 9 December 2016 – 14 January 2017
Jennet Thomas has been commissioned to produce a new film A Tale I Know Nothing About, presented at Tintype gallery in London. Now in its third year, Tintype’s Essex Road invites eight artists to each make a short film connected to the mile-long North London street. The gallery window, on a busy corner in Essex Road, becomes a public screen for six weeks over Christmas and New Year. The films are back-projected into the window on a loop from dusk to midnight.
Anne Bean, 12 Hour Action Group, Cooper Gallery, Dundee, 3 December 2016
Anne Bean will present a performance/lecture at 12 Hour Action Group, an international symposium culminating the exhibition Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event?. The symposium is galvanised by keynote talks, collective readings, performances, screening and a round table discussion. Juxtaposing historical and contemporary positions inscribed in art practices, 12 Hour Action Group will examine the insights of feminism as one of the most volatile and motivated political movements that critiques cultural, political and economic iterations of power. Keynote speakers include art historian and theorist Amelia Jones, curator and art historian Lynda Morris, film theorist Laura Mulvey, Adele Patrick from Glasgow Women’s Library and writer and critic Marina Vishmidt.
Anne Bean, Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event?, Cooper Gallery, Dundee, Chapter 1: 28 October – 16 December 2016, Chapter 2: 20 January – 4 March 2017
Anne Bean is participating in an exhibition and rolling event programme comprising live performances, screenings, collective readings, participatory dance and an international symposium 12-Hour Action Group at Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. The programme references art works, artist collaborative groups and activism by women from the 1970’s to the present day, looking at the contemporary relevance and cogency of feminist thinking on power as it is enacted through bodies, institutions and systems of representation.
Jordan Baseman, Blackout, London Short Film Festival, London, 6 – 25 January 2017
Jordan Baseman’s Blackout (2015) has been selected for the 14th edition of the London Short Film Festival. The festival has been recognised as the premiere UK showcase for cutting-edge UK independent film, while now accepting international submissions. Renowned for daring cross-arts programming, the London Short Film Festival is a Mecca for the UK’s young creative talent and a significant date in the UK film calendar.
Jordan Baseman, Edge of Frame: Elemental Animation, Close-Up Cinema, London, 9 December 2016
Jordan Baseman’s film Little Boy (2014/16) will be screened at Close-Up Cinema in London as part of the Edge of Frame Weekend’s Elemental Animation programme. The screening aims to bring together works that use the material of film itself as a canvas. These visceral, vibrant films feature camera-less techniques such as scratching, painting and printing onto the filmstrip, subjecting film to decay and decomposition, and affixing materials such as letraset or insects to its surface. Seen in the cinema, these works achieve a powerful effect, immersing us in strange and previously unseen worlds, while displaying the breadth and scope of abstract film.
Jordan Baseman, 22/2/1992, Dolph Projects, London, 16 November – 3 December 2016
Jordan Baseman will present 22/2/1992 at Dolph Projects. 22/2/92 is a 90 minute unedited interview with the twin brothers Lee and Dee Smith. Lee Smith began his hand built Mansion in Wapiti, Wyoming, in 1979. In April 1992, he fell twelve feet onto a roof on one of the lower sections of the Mansion. He struck his head and lay unconscious for two days while he bled out and died. Locally known as The Crazy House, The Mansion remains unfinished, yet still stands. This interview was recorded two months prior to Lee Smith’s death and was never used, nor broadcast, located in the Wyoming State Archives in Cheyenne, Wyoming for the past 24 years. The interview focuses on the idea of landscape and our environment. At times very funny, wild and informal, the document is a moving discussion with a pioneer, maverick unlicensed architect. 22/2/92 will be presented on a continuous cycle, in a pitch black space.
Graham Fagen, NEON: The Charged Line, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, 1 October 2016 – 7 January 2017
Graham Fagen exhibits work in NEON: The Charged Line, a major new survey exhibition exploring how artists have worked with neon, from the 1960s to the present day. The exhibition will encompass a wide range of ways in which artists have experimented with light designed to be seen rather than illuminate; whether through text and language, the drawn line or an investigation into its physical and sculptural qualities.
Hayley Newman, Liberties, EXCHANGE, Penzance, 22 October 2016 – 7 January 2017
Hayley Newman exhibits work in Liberties at EXCHANGE in Penzance, an exhibition of contemporary art by 24 female artists reflecting on the 40 years since the Sex Discrimination Act. Curated by Lucy Day and Eliza Gluckman it presents a snapshot of a woman’s place in British society. Body, femininity, sex, motherhood, economic and political status are explored through film, photography, sculpture, performance and painting. Works by more than 20 women artists reflect the changes in art practice, within the context of sexual and gender equality, since the introduction of the Act.
Alison Turnbull, Multiplicities II, Art Seen Contemporary Projects and Editions, Nicosia, Cyprus, 10 – 22 December 2016
Alison Turnbull has produced a new work titled The Dissolution of the Western Empire, commissioned by and presented at Art Seen Projects and Editions in Nicosia, Cyprus. The work coincides with the end of Turnbull’s solo exhibition Cloud Diagram and will be shown as part of the exhibition Multiplicities II, opening on 3 December 2016.
Alison Turnbull, Re:Bandera, Centro de Memoria, Bogota, Columbia, 12 October 2016 – 17 January 2017
Alison Turnbull is exhibiting as part of Re:Bandera at the Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación in Bogotá, Columbia, for which 26 artists have been invited to reimagine the Columbian flag. This project is curated by Más Arte Más Acción in Bogotá, Colombia to coincide with the Colombian peace process and marking the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia.
Benedict Drew and Imogen Stidworthy, British Art Show 8, Southampton City Art Gallery and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, 9 October 2016 – 15 January 2017
Benedict Drew and Imogen Stidworthy have been selected for the British Art Show 8, widely recognised as the most ambitious and influential exhibition of contemporary British art, with artists chosen for their significant contribution over the past five years. Imogen presents the installation A Crack in the Light, 2013, which was first shown as part of the Bergen Triennale 2013, while Benedict has created new work Sequencer, 2015 specifically for the exhibition. The work will now tour to Southampton, on view until 15 January 2017.
John Frankland, petition to reverse the damage of Bolder 2 in Mabley Green
John Frankland has started a petition to reverse the damage of his 65-ton solid granite sculpture Bolder 2, originally installed in Mabley Green in 2008. The sculpture has been severely compromised, both as an artwork and as a climbing boulder, as a result of Hackney Council’s recent re-landscaping of this East London green space. Boulder 2 is one of two landmark public artworks that were commissioned by the acclaimed arts organisation PEER. The ‘sister’, Boulder 1 is sited in Shoreditch Park. John Frankland, as well as many members of the arts and climbing communities ask that you join them in their request for Hackney Council to remove the mounds of earth and planting that surround and abut Boulder 2.
Mike Nelson, Imperfect geometry for a concrete quarry, Kalkbrottet, Limhamn, Malmo, Sweden
In autumn 2012, Mike Nelson exhibited his installation 408 tons of imperfect geometry at Malmö Konsthall. The work consisted of cast concrete blocks placed on the floor in a geometric pattern. The blocks’ weight was calculated so that it – plus the visitors – could only just be supported by the exhibition hall’s floor. These same concrete blocks have been used to create a new work for Kalkbrottet (Limhamn limestone quarry, now a municipal nature reserve within the City of Malmö, Sweden).
Imperfect geometry for a concrete quarry consists of approximately 3,500 concrete blocks laid out in their strict repetitive geometric pattern. Here, Nelson allows the suggestive and enigmatic patterns of Oriental art to encounter and tie in with Western art’s rational minimalism. The work’s placement in Kalkbrottet adds yet another dimension through its location being the very source of one of the main constituents of concrete, that of limestone. The physical nature of the work seems strangely fitting to the site, reinforcing a sense of servitude that one might feel about its very making – something echoed in the site returning to nature after its creation through man’s industry.
Imogen Stidworthy, An Introduction to Bliss for Two Voices with Chorus (2014-2016), commissioned by Concreta magazine for their 6th online platform
An Introduction to Bliss for Two Voices with Chorus (2014 – 2016) is a binaural sound piece by Imogen Stidworthy, commissioned by Concreta magazine for their 6th edition online platform. The work can be found here: http://www.editorialconcreta.org/bliss/index-en.html
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