@londonart blog

From my Art Night London experience last weekend, I have the following suggestions to the organiser from a user perspective -

1. Pick the right date:

Pride + World Cup quarter-finals happening on the same day mean no one have much energy left for a full night out. That also means no media outlets will have space to publicise or promote the event even it can be a really attractive alternative to some people.

We know World Cup is a bit of an unexpected uprising, but Pride is well known to happen this time of the year and it really should not be that difficult to perhaps contact organisers of pride parade and football outdoor screening venues to see whether some kind of mutual promotions can be made. Some performances could even be brought forward to begin earlier to catch the momentum of the gathered crowds for Pride and England fans.

Lads - live dance, sound and instagram occupy project by Christopher Matthews

2. Create better TV-listing style programme:

The venues this year are very spread-out. There is a nice brochure available from volunteers in key locations with a map and details of individual events but it is too much to read. The so-called official app or digital listing is embedded with the Visit London website/app which is not solely for this event. That adds to confusion to show clearly what's happening when and where. Everything happens so quickly in a few hours and most events or performances do not happen all night long. Not many people realise that until they find that they have missed the chance to catch the things they want to see, or arrive too early and have to wait for the event to start.

It could work so much better if there is a summary table at the back of the paper programme which shows every event in a time-scale like a TV listing. They can be grouped either by the key districts or by event categories, or even both if you produce 2 separate tables. People can then plan their routes easily according to the available hours they have and then look up for further details of the events after consulting the time-scale table. The table can also be made interactive online so by clicking on the event listed one can be diverted to the details and have the opportunity of marking it on google maps or so.

3. Think Across the Spectrum

The event can become a big annual draw as the equivalent of something between Notting Hill Carnival or Frieze Art Fair which blends static installations with video works and live performances.

It can also be a great mascot of London's push for the 24/7 night time agenda. We should seize this opportunity to consider what collaboration possibilities can be made with different sectors and create more creative opporunities in future.

In most occasions, the 'exhibition' component of the participating galleries are closed before 10pm even the overall Art Night is advertised to continue throughout the night till 6am. Most events happening beyond midnight are after parties with musicians/artists. If it wants to be truly diverse and multi-faceted, why we cannot have both exhibitions and parties open the whole night long?

Is there a possibility for cross-time-zone cross-platform co-creation? Live stream something from other parts of the world where people are still awaken in day time, so that becomes part of the events happening in London at the same time? Can this become something like a global art night marathon of a few different cities hosting it around the clock?

London is always famous for its edge and imagination - we should really take this forward and make Art Night a global event!

written by Trevor To

Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga's second solo exhibition with October Gallery opened this month. Titled 'Fragile Responsibility', the theme of the exhibition is the transition between "tradition and modern, colonial and indigenous" cultures in the life of Congolese society. 

His use of vibrant colours on the subjects in the foreground, together with subtle symbols in the underlying patterns on the skin of the characters in the paintings and the monolithic background, create a visual tension for the viewers to explore the canvas.

The surrealist nature of the paintings is also depicted through the gesture of the characters in the paintings. With their non-photogenic eyes and lack of direct eye contact with the viewers, they look more like ancient stone carving than contemporary people. They resemble more to static statues frozen in time or an Congolese version of terra-cotta army turning up in today's street scenes by mistake of the time tunnel. 

We have interviewed the artist during his visit in London for the exhibition, to share his creative insight with our followers:

*****

Q1: Your paintings often feature human figures in an abstract background. What is the thinking behind this?

EKI: I work much on human figures as they are the foundation of humanity. I draw upon my personal experiences and I try to question reality through these figures. The abstract background represents a grey, hazy past – a history that we are not able to grasp nor understand due to the fact it was written in an insincere way.

EKI: I approach these signs, these ideographs, as a pre-colonial savoir-faire, which has existed for centuries. Today, these symbols do not exist as the society they are from was eradicated by colonialism. They were once used in politics, justice, religion, however, today they have been erased from the memory of the Congo.

EKI: I have a strong relationship with painting. For me there is a sort of life in paintings; when I see them in museums I see a life after beyond the artist’s signature. Paintings transform over time. In twenty years, I will look at my works and they will probably be different. I am also interested in other media, for example during my researches I took pictures and made films that I have never exhibited. This summer I am going to present in Austria a series of photographs of the Mangbetu people.

written by Trevor To

We visited local creative-tech startup Easle's office in the TEA building in Shoreditch earlier to understand what their plan is for creative talents. 

Q1. Could you tell us what makes Easle different from other creative talent search websites? What's your unique selling point?

Virtually Real
12-14.01.2017
Royal Academy of Arts
written by Trevor To

With the mass arrival of VR headsets last year to the consumer world, it is no longer an expensive gadget only for the geeks or professionals. Applications of the technology range from gaming to design, but so far not a lot has been done with fine arts. What will 'VR art' look like? The latest Royal Academy exhibition attempts to give its audience a hint of that in this collaborative project with vendor HTC Vive.

Presented as 'the world's first 3D printed artworks in virtual reality', the exhibition showcases 3 separate pieces of works by 3 artists from RA alumni Adham Faramawy, Ellio Dodd and current third year student Jessy Jetpacks. Apart from the virtual piece inside the headset, there are also 3D printed sculptures on display in the venue, which are featured inside the VR pieces.

Below is a short interview with one of the exhibited artist Jessy Jetpacks - whose piece is probably the least conceptual and most resembling to a traditional video art piece, with the exception that it is a panoramic VR experience instead. The photos are the prototype prints of the 'creatures' featured in the VR film.

A: What is most different about VR digital format is how it is experienced, not so much how it is created. As a digital artist the process of putting work together is not dissimilar to other projects I have done. Crucially however, you must dip in and out of the immersive environment in order to see how the work is progressing. 

A key difference would be freedom from certain costs, and physical restrictions. For instance you can imagine the cost and labour of attempting a fully immersive installation environment in real life. In virtual reality you can play with light, gravity, landscape and scale unbound, but limited to the producible aesthetics of the tool.

Q2: How do you convey your concept to the audience in this exhibition?

A: Because the environment is immersive it can be very manipulative on a base emotional level, doubly so because mine includes specifically composed music. i wanted to use this manipulation in a kind and generous way, so the viewer is free to experience virtual reality without heavily referencing virtual reality or some already established themes of virtual reality e.g. jump-scares, or even certain aesthetics. I designed the simulation to provide constant but not overwhelming stimulation, with sequences of events that happen throughout. I use my enthusiasm and joy, in the form of the martian landscape and giant trilobite herds, a sense of the absurd and comical, with the hoards of dancing women (who are my avatar), also I use the poetic and symbolic within the music and how the whole experience ties together. 

The fundamental difference between the medium or format of these art pieces and the traditional formats such as paintings, sculptures or even performances is that they can only be completely experienced by those who has been equipped with the required hardware. Although one may argue that there are still limitations to how artists can express themselves within the capacity of these hardwares, they have opened up new possibilities of creating and experiencing art undoubtedly. In the piece by Adham Faramawy (shown in above image the physical print on display in the gallery), the visitor can interact in real time with the art piece by spraying colour-changing virtual paint on the 3D sculpture within the virtual space. It is, however, not very clear that what it symbolises in terms of concept other than demonstrating the functionality of the hardware product. The co-creation component, does not seem to have any significance to the art work itself, or one can argue after the excitement, where does the visitor's temporary contribution go into the art piece?

In Elliot Dodd's piece, the visitor enters a space with some sort of pathway connecting one end of a homogeneous environment to the other end which has a centerpiece scultpure, as shown in the above physical print on display in the gallery. The interesting aspect in this piece is that one can walk around in the created space, but also can beam oneself to a certain spot with the way the control pointer works with the hardware. You can also scale the environment up or down to experience it in a different way.

Some may compare this exhibition with Björk Digital in Somerset House last year. While one going to Björk Digital will probably have a certain expectation of what they will see because of the signature style and artistic direction of the singer, it is relatively uncharted territory to those who attended the Virtually Real show, simply because the 3 artists are lesser known in their catalogue of works. Also because they are exploring different possibilities within the technology and their artist direction, it does not have a so-called 'central theme' throughout the pieces, unlike Björk's show which her voice is the common entity that ties all the exhibits together.

Another potential paradigm shift in this development is that for museums and galleries, how do they showcase, collect and archive these art pieces? The usual white box model does not work any more. If any piece becomes hugely popular, there is no way they can simply sell more tickets to let more people in given the limited amount of time and hardware facilities available. So should the museums or artists consider a remote sales strategy similar to Orchestra selling live cast of their concerts online and in cinemas now? Would this open up new possibilities to exhibit in multiple locations around the world simultaneously because one is not limited by the unique physical presence of an art piece any more provided that the works can be 'replicated' across different platforms in different geographical locations in exactly the same way the artist wants it to be?

When the internet was first born, few people knows what to do with it and we are only realising its real potential in recent years. It is, perhaps still early days for artists to truly realise the potentials virtual reality can bring to artistic creation. And the end products, will definitely not look the same as the art works we have been seeing in the past centuries, just like an instant message with emojis is not the same as a letter written by hand in ink.

Further Readings -
Official page for the exhibition
Interview with Adham Faramawy by alphr.com, 13.01.2017

South London Gallery
10.06-04.09.2016
written by Suzanne Harb

Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today is one of a trio of touring exhibitions from the Guggenheim-UBS’ MAP Global Art Initiative. 

The London leg of the exhibition (which will also visit Sao Paulo and Mexico City) curated by Mexico born Pablo León de la Barra brings nearly 50 pieces from more than 40 artists born after the late 60’s to the South London Gallery. The result: a rich array of works that convey a dialogue of the shared reality of artists internationally. 

Simon Armstrong (Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation), Margot Heller (SLG Director) and Pablo León de la Barra (curator) introducing the show.

The works, shown as part of the MAP initiative, will enter into the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. This is an interesting move from the western institution to engage with and collect works from non-western artists. This position of awareness is telling of the current climate in art. Even the private markets have not escaped; Christies have dubbed one of its seven hot trends for 2016 as ‘the rise of non western art’.

Entrance to the main gallery

The exhibition itself spans the whole of the gallery space, including the recently donated former Peckham Road Fire Station, ‘the earliest surviving purpose-built fire station in London’ which won’t be fully completed and open to visitors until 2018. Pablo has included in the selection a rich variety of artistic forms including sculpture, installation, painting, video and a performance piece by Amalia Pica (every Saturday at 1pm) and other off-site art works.

Be sure to check out Federico Herrero’s mural on the Pelican housing estate during your visit. The mural, not only an important Latin American artistic tradition, does well to tie in the large Latin American community that resides in the area and subtly reinforces the idea of shared global cultural narrative despite geography.

View of Amalia Pica's AnBnC (2013) and Carlos Amorales' We’ll See How Everything Reverberates (2012)

Pablo spoke of his complete submersion in the two-year long project that has seen him travel across his native region and surrounding areas, visiting artists and their workshops. His aim was to collate a group of artists that tackled issues and themes that surround a shared reality and addressing the influences of ‘colonial and modern histories, repressive governments, economic crises [and] social inequality’. To set the stage for this Pablo included the works of two older artists who have greatly influenced the landscape of contemporary South American artistic expression today and so their canonisation will live on with important works like Alfredo Jaar’s A Logo for America (1987) being included in the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. 

Alfredo Jaar’ A Logo for America (1987)

Many of the works have a participation element to them. Most notably Carlos Amorales’ We’ll See How Everything Reverberates (2012) invites the viewer to play the mobile (visually indicative of the work of Alexander Calder) of cymbals. It is this interactivity with the work that gives the show a playful element. This participation goes to further the sense of interconnectivity between artist, his message and viewer. Enabling this kind of conversation cements the viewer in the show and in this wider idea of global communication initiative, something I feel that cements MAP’s aim. 

 Pablo interacting with Amorales’ work

While some may question the Guggenheim’s motivations to appear culturally engaging in this manner I see this initiative as an important breakthrough no matter the motivations. As Richard Armstrong noted during the launch he found that there were a great number of unexpected similarities between the Guggenheim and SLG as institutions, and the further people go to foster unlikely global relationships the more democratic our view of the contemporary art world can become. 

Further Readings: 

Office page of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Official page of South London Gallery
Official page of Guggenheim Map Global Art Initiative

Bacchus, 2006–08,  © Cy Twombly Foundation (image from Gagosian's website)