November 2011

Matt’s Gallery Current Exhibition

Emma Hart, TO DO, last chance to see at Matt’s Gallery until 20 November 2011

In a new piece for Matt’s Gallery Emma Hart calls on the potential for a camera to precipitate an event, and not simply record it. Developing previous live works into a sculptural video installation that performs itself, Hart requests the audience to do likewise: to step up, instead of hanging back in contemplation.

Matt’s Gallery Forthcoming Exhibition

Jordan Baseman, Green Lady and 1973, Genesis Cinema, 93 – 95 Mile End Road, London E1 4UJ, Tuesday 29 November 2011, 7-9pm

A screening of Jordan Baseman’s Green Lady and launch of the book 1973. Green Lady and 1973 are thematically linked: dealing with ideas and experiences surrounding the Afterlife, pixies, the paranormal, ghosts, Houdini, Michael Jackson, The White Lady of Barnet and the recently deceased Green Lady of Oxford. This is a free event but there are limited places available. To reserve a seat please email info@mattsgallery.org using ‘1973’ in the subject header, or call the gallery on 020 89831771.

Artists’ news

Emma Hart, Jerwood/ Film and Video Umbrella Award winner

Emma Hart is one of four artists to win one of the inaugural Jerwood/ Film and Video Umbrella Awards, a major new prize for moving-image artists. As a result of this she is developing new work to be shown at the Jerwood Space, London from March to April 2012, as part of the exhibition Tomorrow Never Knows.

Emma Hart, Reclaim the Mural, Whitechapel Gallery, until 4 December 2011

Artist collective The Work in Progress (Benedict Drew, Emma Hart, Dai Jenkins, Dean Kenning and Corinna Till) present Reclaim the Mural as part of the Whitechapel Gallery’s commissioning programme of new art beyond the gallery.

Emma Hart, Their Wonderlands, mac Birmingham, 26 November- 29 January 2011

Emma Hart’s video Dice is showing at Their Wonderlands, an international group exhibition curated by multi-disciplinary collective They Are Here. Contemporary artists have been drawn together to explore the space given to make-believe and folklore in post-industrial 21st century European society.

Emma Hart, The Box: Season 6, Aberystwyth Art Centre, until 28 January 2012

This screening programme of artists’ films will include Emma Hart’s work Rushes, 2008.

Jordan Baseman, The Last Walk, Lonestar International Film Festival Winner

Jordan Baseman’s film The Last Walk has been awarded the Shorts Jury Winner at the Lonestar International Film Festival.

Jordan Baseman has received major funding for his project R.I.P

Jordan Baseman’s project R.I.P. has received major funding from the Wellcome Trust. R.I.P. will investigate all aspects of contemporary embalming, including the technical and anatomical processes of this restorative art, as well as the philosophical and sociological significance and meaning of the practice. R.I.P. will be a moving-image based, experimental portrait about contemporary embalming, reconstruction processes, preparation for burial (on land and sea) and cremation: offering an insight into an often hidden art.

Jordan Baseman, Dark Matters, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until 15 January 2012

This exhibition features Jordan Baseman’s Galaxy, 2010, commissioned by Animate Projects.

Jordan Baseman, artist in residence, TokyoWonderSite, October – November 2011

Jordan Baseman has been awarded a residency in at TokyoWonderSite and is currently in the city making work.

Nathaniel Mellors, Cobra Museum, Amstelveen, 10 December 2011 – 4 March 2012

Nathaniel Mellors will have a major solo show at the Cobra Museum as a result of winning the 2011 Cobra Art Prize.

Nathaniel Mellors, Performa 11, New York City, until 17 November 2011

Nathaniel Mellors has been commissioned to make a new radio play as part of this New Visual Art Performance Biennial, curated by RoseLee Goldberg and Mark Beasley. In addition Mellors will be screening four episodes from his Ourhouse series.

Nathaniel Mellors, ILLUMInations, 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, until 27 November 2011

Curated by Bice Curiger, this exhibition in the Central Pavilion features 83 artists from around the world. Nathaniel Mellors is presenting Ourhouse Episodes 1 and 2, the animatronic sculpture Hippy Dialectics, 2010 and a new series of photograms – Venus Of Truson (Preshistoric, Photogrammic Originals), 2011.

Nathaniel Mellors, Un’Expressione Geografica, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, until 27 November 2011

Curated by Francesco Bonami, this group exhibition of twenty international artists marks the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy. Nathaniel Mellors is showing a new video work, Ourhouse – The Nest, filmed at Villa Pisani in the Veneto.

Nathaniel Mellors, British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet, The Slaughterhouse, Plymouth, until 4 December 2011

This touring exhibition, curated by Lisa Le Feuvre and Tom Morton features work from Nathaniel Mellors’ ongoing video series, Ourhouse.

Imogen Stidworthy has curated this group exhibition which features work by around twenty artists, including Matthew Tickle, Paul McCarthy and Phil Collins. The exhibition explores the encounter, entanglement and transfer of meanings, the movement from one set of terms to another, as well as ideas of opacity and relational resistance.

Imogen Stidworthy, 52nd October Salon, Belgrade, until 4 December 2011

The 52nd October Salon exhibition, It’s Time We Got To Know Each Other, includes Imogen Stidworthy’s installation The Work v.02, 2010.

Imogen Stidworthy, Terminal Convention, Static, Liverpool, until 26 November 2011

Part exhibition, part experimental gig-space, part art store, Terminal Convention is a group show including work by Imogen Stidworthy.

Lindsay Seers, MONODROME, 3rd Athens Biennial, until 11 December 2011

Lindsay Seers is making a new work as part of MONODROME, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud and X&Y (Xenia Kalpaktsoglou and Poka-Yio, co-founders of the Athens Biennale). Monocular¹ is a live performance with two actresses and a film. The film is projected onto two 1.8 diameter spheres – at times these seem to refer to eyes, then platonic forms and at other times cosmological particles which are entangled. The work has both a live and recorded narrative sound track about a person with two different coloured eyes. This aberration has occurred genetically through the character’s sibling/twin being absorbed into one egg in the womb. Through this character, who carries a stream of alien DNA, an existential tale unfolds. The divided character struggles to understand the situation of her life. The meta-narrative of the work is about how the medium of film mirrors and creates ontological problems for the human subject, generating a new truth. In some senses it is as if the film itself has become anthropomorphic… and suffers because of its condition of being a vessel for both the ecstatic and the horrific leaves it conflicted.

Lindsay Seers, Beyond Deception, Erik Steen Gallery, Oslo, until 10 December 2011

This group exhibition, which focuses on the experience of perception, includes six of Lindsay Seers’ mouth photographs.

Willie Doherty, DISTURBANCE, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, until 15 January 2012

Part of Dublin Contemporary, this major solo exhibition presents new video and photographic works by Willie Doherty alongside a selection of his earlier work.

Hayley Newman, The Last of the Red Wine (the prequel/sequel), Project Arts Centre, until 14 January 2012

Early in 2011 an unlikely group of artists, comedians and writers worked together on The Last of the Red Wine, a radio sitcom set in the artworld. Used to being the subject of their own work, the collaborators instead cast themselves in a collective farce, written and performed in the course of one week. The next installment of the sitcom at Project Arts Centre, The Last of the Red Wine (the prequel/sequel), dissects the mix of people and personalities involved in the original project and examines the processes of self-representation in their individual practices. Presented as a selection of videos and installations, it reveals the further absurdities of art and the artworld, as experienced by serious artists with ridiculous ideas.

Hayley Newman, The Engine Room Festival and Conference, 24 November- 16 December 2011

Pop videos by The Gluts (Gina Birch, Kaffe Matthews and Hayley Newman) will be shown at the Cornelius Cardew Festival at Morley College, London.

Mike Nelson and Hayley Newman, Government Art Collection: Selected by Cornelia Parker: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain, Whitechapel Gallery, until 4 December 2011

This display of over 70 works offers an original and personal selection by artist Cornelia Parker on the Government Art Collection’s breadth and function. The exhibition will include works by Mike Nelson and Hayley Newman from the Matt’s Gallery Print Portfolio, E3 4RR, and will later tour to Birmingham Museum and Ulster Museum. For more information on the print portfolio, click here.

Mike Nelson, British Pavilion, 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, until 27 November 2011

Mike Nelson is the first installation artist to be invited to conceive and create a new work for the British Pavilion in Venice, commissioned by the British Council. For this major new work, Nelson has elected to take as his starting point another of his own key works from the past decade, Magazin: Büyük Valide Han, originally built for the 8th International Istanbul Biennial in 2003. By relocating and re-working this earlier installation for Venice, Nelson has both created a link between the two former great mercantile centres of the east-west/west-east axes, and drawn upon his own histories with the cities and their respective biennials.

Mike Nelson and Susan Hiller, September 11, MoMA PS1, New York, until 9 January 2012

This major exhibition reflects upon the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the ways that they have altered how we see and experience the world in their wake. MoMA PS1 curator Peter Eleey brings together more than 70 works by 41 artists – many made prior to 9/11 – to explore the attacks’ enduring and far-reaching resonance. Mike Nelson is showing Untitled (Shrine), 2009 and Susan Hiller is showing a version of Monument, 1980-81.

Graham Fagen, Missing, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 December 2011- March 2012

Graham Fagen’s specially commissioned two screen video installation Missing will inaugurate the contemporary programme at the re-opening of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, following two years of closure for refurbishment.

Graham Fagen, artist in residence, ArtPace, San Antonio, Texas, November 2011 – January 2012

Each year ArtPace invites nine international artists to conceive and create pivotal art projects. Graham Fagen is currently on site making new work.

Jimmie Durham, Before the Law, Museum Ludwig, 17 December 2011 – 22 April 2012

This group exhibition asks how art can address injustice and infringements on human dignity without being didactic. It includes Jimmie Durham’s major installation work Building a Nation, which was commissioned by Matt’s Gallery in 2006.

Paul Rooney, Lifelike, Art Monthly Dec/Jan

A newly commissioned text work called Lifelike will feature in Art Monthly’s Dec/Jan issue as part of a four page advertisement by art group Leeds United.

Jennet Thomas, School of Change, Live performance recruitment, Camden Arts Centre, 17 December 2011, 3pm

SCHOOL OF CHANGE is a new franchise of schools for girls, existing in a post-apocalyptic future, where changes, so radical that they have caused mutations in the working of reason itself, are threatening the viability of humanity. Jennet Thomas and composer /performer Simon Bookish present a live show including a Live Performance Recruitment, songs, film clips, lessons, a quiz and prizes.

Brian Catling and Anne Bean, SOLOS, Modern Art Oxford, 25 – 26 November 2011

SOLOS is a weekend of performances curated by Brian Catling. Participating artists include Stuart Brisley, Magnus Palsson and Anne Bean. Anne Bean will be showing I’d Rather Go Blind, 2011, a work devised for Modern Art Oxford which probes the meeting point of the lived and the has-been-lived. It positions the finished exhibition as an end and a beginning simultaneously, conceivably annihilating both.

Anne Bean, Re.act.feminism #2, Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, until 15th January 2012

Footage of Moody and the Menstruators from 1973 plus two Shadow Deeds from Autobituary (originally shown at Matt’s Gallery 2006 ): Drawing Life and Mortality will be shown as part of re.act.feminism #2 – a performing archive. The exhibition will tour to a number of other venues in Europe during 2012.