Interview with James Richards

27/10/16

Interview with James Richards

Requests and Antisongs

ICA, London

21 September - 13 November 2016

Combining fragments of film, music, vocals, erotica and medical documentary, James Richards (b1983, Cardiff) creates site-specific audiovisual installations and morphing exhibitions, which immerse the visitor in a kaleidoscopic and cinematic sensorial experience. Keeping a diaristic digital scrapbook, Richards draws from this to create his collages and assemblages, inspired by Dada.

Already having won the Jarman award for film and video in 2012, and the Ars Viva Prize for young artists two years later, Richards was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2014, and will be representing Wales in Venice (Cymru yn Fenis) at next year’s biennale. He spoke to Studio International during the installation of his exhibition Requests and Antisongs, at the ICA, London.

Read this interview here

Review of Robert Mapplethorpe: Objects at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg

01/10/16

Robert Mapplethorpe: Objects

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg

29 August – 19 November 2016

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89) may be best known for his photographic works and controversial imagery of the underground BDSM scene in the late 60s and early 70s of New York, but he didn’t really begin taking photographs until he borrowed a Polaroid camera in 1971, and then later acquired a Hasselblad medium format of his own. Before this point, he studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, majoring in graphic art (although he dropped out in 1969 without completing his degree). During this time, however, and in the years immediately following, he made a large number of collages and three-dimensional assemblages, compiling everyday objects and found images from (often pornographic) magazines. This small, but enlightening and enriching exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg, brings together 12 of these “objects”, rarely ever seen, and recently acquired by the J Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, set up by the artist before his death from HIV/Aids-related complications at the age of 42.

The objects on display show a clear graphic influence, with the triangle – representative of the Trinity and the traditional portrayal of the Holy Family – recurring as a repeated leitmotif throughout. One of six children, Mapplethorpe had a strict Catholic upbringing, which permeates his work, even when its content becomes more explicitly homosexual and contentious.

Read this review here

Interview with Maha Malluh

18/02/16

Interview: Maha Malluh

Maha Malluh (b1959) lives and works in Saudi Arabia and her art is infused with the culture that surrounds her. Her assemblages of discarded items, found in junk shops and flea markets, present objects imbued with cultural meaning and embedded histories. “My inspiration,” she says, “comes from my country, a land of contrasting images and ideas. Good art forces you to pause, to contemplate and think harder about your surroundings.”

Currently one of the 14 artists in the Saatchi Gallery’s first all-women exhibition, Champagne Life, Malluh has covered one of the gallery’s walls with an assortment of burnt aluminium cooking pots, traditionally used throughout the Arab world. The title of the series to which the work belongs – Food for Thought – Al-Muallaqat – makes reference to the pre-Islamic, sixth-century Suspended Odes or Hanging Poems, traditionally hung in Mecca.

Malluh spoke to Studio International about the potency of such objects as transmitters of cultural meaning, her views on gender, and the significance of women-only exhibitions.

Read the interview here