We Were There: Emerald Winter Pride Art Awards

23/05/16
We Were There: Emerald Winter Pride Art Awards

Published in the June 2016 issue of DIVA magazine

Portfolio: Henrietta Armstrong

20/05/16
Portfolio: Henrietta Armstrong

As a child, Henrietta Armstrong used to make large robots from odd bits of wood she would hammer together in the garden. In her young mind, these would guard the house. “I don’t have an awareness of ever wanting to be an artist,” she says, looking back. “I just always was one.”

Armstrong describes herself as both “a visual thinker” and “a total clutterbug”. She trawls the internet for source material, collects unusual fabrics and enjoys rummaging around car boot sales and Parisian flea markets. Recently, she has been looking at ways to expand her practice and is taking a crash course in animation from YouTube tutorials.

Armstrong is also working with four other women artists to put on an exhibition, The Overview Effect, this month. “The Overview Effect is the name given to the change in perspective that astronauts have when they view Earth from space and realise how fragile it is in its relation to the universe,” she explains. “I have always really loved the structure of pylons and have been digitally manipulating photos I have taken. I’ve been looking at the idea of future civilisations or aliens looking at these weird structures without knowing what they were for, like they were deities to worship or offerings to our gods. I’m completely obsessed with patterns. Drawing lines and connecting things up, physically and metaphorically, is very satisfying.”

See Henrietta Armstrong’s work in The Overview Effect at Lewisham Art House from 6-19 June 2016.

Image:

Henrietta Armstrong

Pylon 6 (2016)

www.henriettaarmstrong.com

Published in the June 2016 issue of DIVA magazine

News of the Art World

11/05/16
News of the Art World

Published in issue 21 (summer 2016) of State magazine

John Nassari: 80 at 80

11/05/16
John Nassari: 80 at 80

Published in issue 21 (summer 2016) of F22 magazine

Feature: Perceptions of Pain

11/05/16
Feature: Perceptions of Pain

Published in issue 21 (summer 2016) of F22 magazine

Periscope

11/05/16
Periscope - Don't Miss

Published in issue 21 (summer 2016) of F22 magazine

Visible - Four Artists to Watch

11/05/16
Visible - Four Artists to Watch

Published in issue 21 (summerl 2016) of State magazine

Eurostate: Malta

10/05/16
Eurostate: Malta

Published in issue 21 (summer 2016) of State magazine

Interview with Miranda Donovan

10/05/16
Interview with Miranda Donovan

Published in issue 21 (summer 2016) of State magazine

Interview with Martine Syms

10/05/16

Interview: Martine Syms

Martine Syms: Fact & Trouble 

Institute of Contemporary Arts

20 April - 19 June 2016

Drawing from a rich mixture of American pop culture, black aesthetics, philosophy and semiotics, Martine Syms (b1988) produces work across many media that strives for a specificity the artist knows not to exist. Instead, through her films, performances and other work, she hopes to raise questions about representation, the embodiment of imagery, the value of assimilation, and how popular culture becomes internalised. Incredibly widely read, Syms is also the founder of Dominica, a publishing imprint dedicated to exploring black aesthetics in visual culture. She spoke to Studio International about her latest exhibition, Fact & Trouble, at the ICA, London.

Read the interview here

(Contemporary) Art in Stately Homes

09/05/16
(Contemporary) Art in Stately Homes

Published as part of a larger feature by Prince Charles, in the Mail on Sunday's Event magazine, 09/05/16

Interview with Gillian Wearing

06/05/16

Interview: Gillian Wearing

As part of this year’s Brighton Festival, Turner Prize-winning artist Gillian Wearing (b1963) will be premiering her new film, A Room With Your Views, part of her collaborative, global film project, Your Views, for which she asked people – everyone – from around the world to film and submit a short clip of their curtains or blinds opening and the view from their window.

Wearing, whose work explores our public personas and private lives, describes her working method as “editing life”. She uses photography and film, alongside theatrical staging techniques, to record people’s confessions and present herself in various guises and with various masks.

She spoke to Studio International about the ideas behind her project.

Read the interview here

Book Review of Tulip by Celine Marchbank

04/05/16

Tulip

By Celine Marchbank

Hardback, 152 pages

ISBN 978-1-907893-87-2

Published by Dewi Lewis Publishing

Since the age of 16, my room has scarcely ever been without a vase of flowers. It began when I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Throughout my treatment – even when I was in an isolation ward and not allowed them – people would send me beautiful bouquets. Their vivid colours and sweet scents cheered up the room, but, as they began to fade, the omen of impending death became too prescient and they had to be replaced by fresh specimens, full of life and renewed hope. And so the cycle goes on. 20 years later. I survived. The flowers die, but new ones take their place and accompany me on my journey.

For Sue Miles, flowers also played a significant role in her cancer journey. Unfortunately, unlike me, she did not survive. Her stage 4 lung cancer had already spread throughout her body by the time of diagnosis. But her daughter, documentary photographer Celine Marchbank, made it her project – their shared project, in fact – to capture on camera the last years of Sue’s life. An edited compilation has now been published by Dewi Lewis Publishing as the beautiful visual memoir, Tulip. “This was obviously a very painful time for me, but I always felt it was important to record it in some way,” writes Marchbank in the foreword. “I’m a documentary photographer after all and so, more than ever, I felt the need to record everything, like some kind of magpie collecting thoughts and moments rather than shiny things.”

Read the full review here