Interview with Jim Dine

07/01/21

Interview with Jim Dine

At the grand age of 85, Jim Dine (b1935, Cincinnati, Ohio) has a six-decade-long career under his belt, including nearly 300 solo shows. With a practice spanning painting, sculpture and poetry, he works uninterruptedly, and with as much dedication now as ever. His exhibition, A Day Longer, at Galerie Templon, Paris, showcases works made over the past three years, many finished during the first lockdown. It includes a new body of self-portraiture, alongside bronze sculptures, and his easily recognisable paintings into which he embeds tools and incorporates symbols from his personal iconography, such as hearts, skulls, veins and the comic character Pinocchio. The title of the exhibition, taken from one of his poems, is also the title of a newly published book of his poetry.

 

Read the full interview here

Interview with Andrew Litten

15/07/20
Interview with Andrew Litten

The self-taught figurative artist Andrew Litten (b1970, Aylesbury, UK) paints unsettling images, frequently depicting liminal states, or a vortex of raw emotions, set in a nightmarish realm of distorted technicolour. His exhibition Concerning the Fragile, now on show at Anima Mundi, St Ives, seeks to share stories of authenticity and vulnerability, encouraging empathy and connection. Litten does not shy away from difficult subjects, and his works directly address issues of addiction and dependency, as well as the death, by suicide, of his wife just last year. 

At a time when humanity has become painfully aware of its fragility and mortality, this exhibition could not be more relevant and honest.

Read the full interview here

Interview with Robert Fitzmaurice

20/05/20

Interview with Robert Fitzmaurice

Robert Fitzmaurice was born in 1960 in Nuneaton in Warwickshire and studied fine art in Sunderland and Reading in the 80s. Following a 27-year career in commerce, he has returned to being an artist full-time, and is lucky enough to have a painting studio, and a smaller studio – with its own printing press and etching facilities – in his attic. He was working hard towards a joint exhibition with the architect and stone carver James Dunnett – Of Geometry and Gods, Side by Side at the Sandham Memorial Chapel – which has now been postponed because of Covid-19.

I spoke to Fitzmaurice, while under lockdown, about his work for this exhibition – which includes his first bronze since his student days – and the ideas and art historical references that inform his wider practice.

Read the interview here

Interview with Helaine Blumenfeld

09/11/16

Interview: Helaine Blumenfeld

Hard Beauty

Hignell Gallery

22 September - 27 November 2016

A professor of philosophy before turning to sculpture as a way to express her dreams and emotions, Helaine Blumenfeld (b1942, New York) has been hailed as the successor to Henry Moore. Her translucent marble works and flowing bronzes take the viewer’s breath away. Blumenfeld was the first woman to be awarded the International Sculpture Prize Pietrasanta e la Versilia nel Mondo in 2007 and was the vice-president of the Royal British Society of Sculptors in 2004-09. With an exhibition of her works currently on show at Hignell Gallery in Mayfair, she invited Studio International to visit her at her home and studio in Cambridgeshire.

Read the interview here

Interview with Eileen Cooper RA

22/06/15

Interview: Eileen Cooper RA

Hide and Seek: Drawings by Eileen Cooper RA 

John Madejski Fine Rooms, Royal Academy of Arts

29 May - 23 August 2015

Eileen Cooper (b1953) is a powerful presence at the Royal Academy this summer. An Academician since 2000, she was elected the first female Keeper in 2010. She has six works – in various media – in the annual Summer Exhibition and a retrospective of her drawings running simultaneously in the John Madejski Fine Rooms. A full-colour monograph of her life and works has also just been published.

Born in Glossop, Derbyshire, Cooper drew from an early age. At 17, she undertook a foundation course in art at the nearby Ashton-under-Lyne College of Further Education and, from there, she progressed to Goldsmiths and later to the Royal College of Art. At a time when conceptual art and performance were de rigueur, Cooper remained true to figuration, soon discovering that drawing from her imagination, instead of from life, gave her a freedom to express and explore ideas and themes that became important to her. Her often large-scale, brightly coloured, primal and primitive compositions followed Cooper on her journey through womanhood and motherhood, with their motifs and content invariably overshadowing discussion of their formal properties.

To read this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/eileen-cooper-interview-royal-academy-summer-show-2015

Video Review of Liane Lang: Fallen at Art First

27/04/13
Liane Lang: Fallen
Art First
10 April - 11 May 2013

Liane Lang’s works combine a mixture of photography and grotesquely lifelike silicon and rubber sculpture. Having recently undertaken a residency at the Memento Sculpture Park in Budapest, where she found herself amidst the supersized discarded sculptures of heroes from the Socialist era, her new works, currently on display at Art First, play with scale, status, and the act of iconoclasm.

To view the vodcast, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/liane-lang-fallen