Interview with Judy Chicago (auf Deutsch)

20/10/15

Interview: Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago, zurzeit ist von einer neuen Feminismus-Welle die Rede, zu der etwa die britische Autorin Laurie Penny oder die US-amerikanische Autorin und Schauspielerin Lena Durham gezählt werden. Was halten Sie von den zeitgenössischen Feministinnen?

Es gibt viele von ihnen, und das ist gut. Ich habe heute in der Zeitung von einer Frau gelesen, die als „Feminazi“ bezeichnet wird, weil sie einen Kerl beschimpft hat, als er Bemerkungen über ihr Aussehen bei LinkedIn machte. Der Artikel berichtet darüber, wie der Begriff verwendet wird, um Frauen zum Schweigen zu bringen, und wie es wieder ein Interesse am Feminismus unter jungen Frauen gibt. So ist es in der Regel: ein Schritt vorwärts, ein Schritt zurück, ein Schritt vorwärts…

Read the full interview in the November issue of Monopol magazine

Portfolio: Kitty Von-Sometime

16/10/15

Portfolio: Kitty Von-Sometime

Recently voted one of the top people Icelanders would like to have sex with, by one of the island’s national newspapers, Kitty Von-Sometime is about to lose even more of her precious anonymity with the international release this month of the documentary film about her artistic practice and work, I Want To Be Weird, already nominated as best Nordic documentary at Nordisk Panorama. “It’s being released any minute and it’s freaking me out,” says von Sometime, with a nervous laugh. “It’s way more personal than I thought it would be.”

The artist is best known for The Weird Girls Project, which grew out of her annoyance with her friends’ obsession with how they looked and their negative body image. Each episode has its own unique message, taken from an inspiring comment or a media comment on the female form, and is set to a song. Shot all in one day, but with months of preparation, editing and post-production by the meticulous von Sometime, the women featured turn up on the day with no idea of what to expect. For the most recent episode #EmbraceYourself, they were covered from head to toe in gold glitter and instructed to move about to music in a mirrored warehouse filled with black volcanic sand. The result is visually stunning and each and everybody is as gorgeous as it is natural.

Born in Devon, Von-Sometime has lived in Iceland since 2006. She regularly works abroad and is currently plotting ideas for Sweden and New Zealand. In 2011, the Icelandic branch of UN Women chose The Weird Girls Project as a way to visually announce their name change. Her very personal work, Opus (2014), was made as an expression of her feelings towards living in Iceland and choosing to stay there with her daughter – as a wonderful place to raise a child, as well as its being the home of her daughter’s father – thus losing her wife, who returned to the US. When her heart thaws and she’s interested in dating again, it looks like there is a long queue already forming!

http://kittyvonsometime.tumblr.com

https://vimeo.com/kittyvonsometime

http://theweirdgirlsproject.com

Published in the November 2015 issue of DIVA magazine where you can see the full spread with stunning images from The Weird Girls Project and Opus

Interview with Matthew Darbyshire at An Exhibition for Modern Living, Manchester Art Gallery

13/10/15

Interview: Matthew Darbyshire

Matthew Darbyshire: An Exhibition for Modern Living
Manchester Art Gallery
25 September 2015 – 10 January 2016

Bright pinks, luminous greens, Ikea shelving, a soundtrack of Flashdance, Fergie and Oliver!, Matthew Darbyshire’s largest solo show to date is a reflection of contemporary society, its consumerist obsessions and the rise of cultural homogeneity. Comprising 10 large-scale environments from over the past decade, alongside two newly commissioned multicoloured polycarbonate sculptures in the grand entrance hall of the Manchester Art Gallery, the works in the exhibition show Darbyshire’s dedication to the processes of making – and faking – it, with materials ranging from felt to wood to Perspex.

The title for this show is taken from a landmark 1949 exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts, which collected the best of modern “design for living” in the context of the rapidly changing society of post-second world war America. Darbyshire takes this concept as a starting point and updates it for British society today, bringing together art, sculpture, design and architecture, and questioning the political and economic agendas that inform our contemporary taste. Particularly interesting is his commission, IP (2013), for a shopping mall in Utrecht, where each of the nine constituent parts reflects an element of the past, present and future, echoing the tension in which the mall currently sits, as its use migrates from shopping venue to place of entertainment.

Darbyshire, who, despite appearances, doesn’t see his work as part of the pop art wave, citing Tony Cragg as more of an influence, hopes that his installations will transcend time, gaining in intrigue as they distance themselves from their roots. He seeks to uncover the spirit within the inanimate object, exploring the potential of computer generation and 3D-printing, raising questions about the need for the artist’s hand. For now, at least, he continues to advocate its presence.

Watch the interview here

An Artist’s Artist: Mark Dunhill talks about Carl Plackman

06/10/15

An Artist’s Artist: Mark Dunhill talks about Carl Plackman

Carl Plackman: Obscure Territories
Pangolin, London
9 September – 17 October 2015

Often described as an “artist’s artist”, Carl Plackman (1943-2004) was ambitious and full of ideas. When asked at the end of an interview in 1986 what he would like as his epitaph, he replied: “I just want to make a good piece of sculpture. I still think I haven’t done it. The trouble is trying to say what that could be – it’s very difficult…” Plackman rarely talked about his work and kept his ideas private. He has been hailed as the “godfather of British conceptual art” and Alison Wilding speaks of Plackman’s work as being her first encounter with “installation”.

This solo exhibition at Pangolin includes a range of Plackman’s drawings alongside a number of key sculptures, in particular Bachelor of Arts (1977), which has never been shown before.

As a generous teacher, many of Plackman’s students have gone on to become major names in British contemporary art, including Tony Cragg, Damien Hirst, Liam Gillick and Alison Wilding. Studio International spoke to Mark Dunhill, Dean at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London, and an artist in his own right, who was taught by Plackman at the Royal College of Art in the 70s.

Watch this video here

Book review of Understanding Stanley – Looking through Autism by Rosie Barnes

05/10/15

Understanding Stanley – Looking through Autism

By Rosie Barnes

Softback, 112pp

ISBN 978-0-9929521-0-5

Published by Lampshade Books

Retail Price: £15

‘If someone asks you if you know what the time is, do you answer simply “yes”?’

‘Is it important and easy for you to remember the registration numbers of all the taxis you’ve caught in the past year?’

‘Can you imagine your life being like this?’

These questions are just some of those raised in Rosie Barnes’ book, Understanding Stanley – Looking through Autism, a heart-warming – and, at times, -wrenching – insight into life with – and as – her son, Stanley, who was diagnosed with autism aged three and a half. As a photographer, Barnes realised that, to understand things that are not immediately within your grasp, sometimes words are not where you need to begin. Her motivation for producing this book was to ‘create a new kind of visual language that can really get under the skin of what it might feel like to be autistic with not much effort needed on behalf of the reader’. She is clear that ‘this is not a “what to do” book. It’s a “what it might feel like” book’. How is it possible to make people aware – and accepting – of something so complex and difficult to explain, let alone see?

Read the full review here

See here for more information

Interview with Anj Smith at Hauser & Wirth London

04/10/15

Anj Smith: Phosphor on the Palms

Hauser & Wirth London, South Gallery

22 September – 21 November 2015

With 21 paintings produced over a three-year period, Anj Smith’s latest exhibition as Hauser & Wirth London is her largest yet. It is also her most psychologically motivated and probing. An artist who seeks to celebrate the medium of painting, Smith sees the figure as a device on which to hang her concerns and her explorations of social mores. Her paintings – deeply layered to create an intense colour and incredible luminosity – deal with issues of liminality, androgyny, language, art history and zoology, amongst many others. Monkeys frolic with shattered Ming vases; a cigarette butt is revered as equal to a Van Cleef jewel; deep, dark eyes stare out from hollow sockets.

Smith’s works collapse the genres of still life, landscape and portraiture, freely referencing those who have gone before her: from 17th-century Dutch vanitas painters to so-called outsider artists, Richard Dadd and Adolf Wölfli. While acknowledging the importance of recognising where she is coming from and taking responsibility for her references, Smith is also at pains to make work that is of our time. The intricate detail, painted with single-hair brushes – stubble on a figure’s cheek, a moth hidden in the stonework, translucent veins beneath the skin – is like a reward system, whereby the viewer benefits from each further minute spent studying the work and experiences a different painting, depending on the perspective from which it is approached. Smith’s work can only be fully appreciated in the flesh and this is a valiant display well worth spending some time with.

Watch the interview here