Review of Mirrors to Windows: The Artist as Woman, directed by Susan Steinberg

14/07/15

Mirrors to Windows: The Artist as Woman

Directed by Susan Steinberg
sds productions, 2015
76 minutes

The issues of sexism and gender inequality in art are back centre stage – if they ever went away – with the June 2015 issue of ARTnews, guest-edited by curator and author Maura Reilly, presenting an array of improving, but still far from satisfactory, statistics about the percentage of female artists shown in galleries, at biennials and art fairs, and their success at auction and inclusion in “great artist” lists. The stage is thus set for Emmy award-winning writer Susan Steinberg’s new film, Mirrors to Windows: The Artist as Woman. Made over three years, this candid documentary follows 10 international female artists from three generations, who are now based in London, discovering what makes them tick, where they find their inspiration, what keeps them going and how they are forging their careers in an arena still dominated by men.

Described as “a compelling collective biography” and “a cross-generational coming of age story”, the film brings together a selection of artists ranging in age from 22 to 82. Split into three chapters, according to generation, their stories are threaded together as they prepare for exhibitions and reflect on their life and work.

To read this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/mirrors-to-windows-the-artist-as-woman-film-review-susan-steinberg

Interview with Helen Sear at …the rest is smoke, Cymru yn Fenis / Wales in Venice, 56th Venice Biennale

13/07/15

Interview: Helen Sear

Helen Sear: …the rest is smoke

Cymru yn Fenis / Wales in Venice

Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, Castello 450, Venice

9 May – 22 November 2015

  

For this year’s Welsh collateral event, Wales in Venice, photographic artist Helen Sear (b1955) has filled the five rooms of former church and hospital Santa Maria Ausiliatrice with a whole new suite of work. Each room has its own identity but there is a dialogue between them, uniting the figure and landscape, nature and culture, and the local and the universal.

…the rest is smoke is a visceral experience, which draws the viewer in. At first they hear the sounds of birdsong and a chainsaw, before turning the corner and seeing the film that cleverly cuts together footage of the artist’s step-daughter circling a tree in a red dress and shots of the wood itself, with trees numbered for felling. While Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by Numbers counts from one to 100, Sear’s film counts down from 83 to one. It is a battle of number v nature and the wood is a character every bit as sentient and significant as the human self.

The title of the exhibition is taken from a tiny inscription on Mantegna’s last painting of St Sebastian, now along the canal in the Ca d’Oro: Nihil nisi divinum stabile est. Caetera fumus. This painting is honoured here with a lightbox, glowing bright yellow with the view over a rapeseed field. The image, which mirrors Mantegna’s in dimension, is pierced by rapeseed stalks, handpicked by Sear, in exactly the same spots as St Sebastian’s body is pierced by arrows. The effect is magnificent and overwhelming – not least because of the golden light – akin to standing before some masterful altarpiece. A church for worshippers of nature? For those who worry about getting old? A monument to times gone by, to changing technologies, to film and literature. These five rooms offer all this and more. There is much to be fathomed in Sear’s work, but there is much to simply be felt as well.

To watch this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/helen-sear-the-rest-is-smoke-venice-biennale-2015-video-interview-wales

Interview with Jeanne Masoero

11/07/15

Interview: Jeanne Masoero

Born in London to Italian parents, Jeanne Masoero spent her first six years living in Italy. When she returned to England and was sent to a convent school, she spoke no English and was looked on as something of a curiosity. The strict education that ensued – “Latin and Gregorian chant and not much else” – instilled in her a rigorous discipline, which is apparent in her intricate abstract drawings and paintings, where unseen nets carry clusters of minute marks – grains of colour – out into a sublime infinity, while simultaneously keeping them contained within an amniotic sac, floating in a white expanse. It is possible to trace journeys between the ridges and valleys, like on a map, and each work offers a journal of journeys – made by Masoero, made by the viewer – through invisible and imagined landscapes.

Studio International spoke to Masoero in her studio during a recent exhibition of her work at Sandra Higgins Fine Art, London, Invisible Cities:A Mayan Journey. Higgins was also present.

To read this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/jeanne-masoero-interview-mayan-journey

Interview with Herman de Vries at the Dutch Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale

02/07/15

Interview: Herman de Vries

Herman de Vries: to be all ways to be
Dutch Pavilion, Giardini di Castello, 30122 Venice
9 May – 22 November 2015

Herman de Vries (b1931) was educated as a horticulturalist and natural scientist and his work focuses on natural processes and phenomena, directing viewers’ attention to the diversity of the world around them. He seeks to encourage people to be alive and aware, and his guru, he says, is a squirrel, because this creature “is always awake”.

De Vries has spent a long time working in Venice preparing for the Biennale and has published a book, From the Laguna of Venice – A Journal, which is essentially a travelogue of his observations and collected material. His exhibition in the Dutch Pavilion brings some of this notation – written and photographed – and some of the flora into the gallery setting, “a place for observation”. This includes a central circle of Rosa damascena buds, creating a sensory experience through their colour and scent, and large chunks of charred acacia trunk, collected from the summer solstice bonfire in the village where he now lives in Germany.

Alongside the pavilion exhibition, de Vries is also displaying a series of posters –with texts including natura numquam errat (nature never makes mistakes), natura mater (nature is the mother), veritas existentiae (the truth of existence) and natura artis magistra (nature is the teacher of art and science) – across Venice. These short dicta sum up the artist’s philosophy and work. His succinct pronouncements can also be found in plaques dotted among the overgrowth on the abandoned island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, the site of a former hospital, where plague victims were nursed.

Studio International spoke to de Vries before taking a boat trip out to explore this sanctuary in the Venetian Lagoon.

To watch this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/herman-de-vries-video-interview-to-be-all-ways-to-be-dutch-pavilion-venice-biennale-2015

Review of Carol Bove / Carlo Scarpa at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

02/07/15

Carol Bove / Carlo Scarpa

Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

2 April – 12 July 2015

“If language gives meaning and narrative, what are the tools of the artist and architect to provide syntax for things in space? Are the plinth and armature to objects what articles and adjectives are to description?”

By bringing together works by the Venetian architect and exhibition designer, Carlo Scarpa (1906-78), and the American artist, Carol Bove (b1971), the Henry Moore Institute asks visitors to consider this question literally as well as metaphorically. How are objects given meaning? When does a found object become an art object? What distinguishes this art object or sculpture from the exhibition furniture on which it stands? What if the sculptures themselves represent linguistic symbols?

To read this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/carol-bove-carlo-scarpa-review-henry-moore-institute-leeds-sculpture