News 2013
Venice Biennale - 2013
Professor Emeritus Phyllida Barlow and alumni Ed Atkins and Tacita Dean are showing in this year's Venice Biennale. The Art Exhibition will take place between the 1 June to 24 November 2013 at the Giardini and at the Arsenale, Venice. See www.labiennale.org/en.
Shan Hur - L'Âge D'Or
Shan Hur has a solo show L'Âge D'Or at Aando Fine Art, Tucholskystrasse 35, D-10117 Berlin, from 21 September - 8 November 2013. See www.aandofineart.com.
Exchange - Flat Time House
Marc Camille Chaimowicz is showing in Exchange at Flat Time House, 210 Bellenden Road, London SE15 4BW, from 26 September - 27 October 2013. See www.flattimeho.org.uk.
Robin Jones - I am shapeful and gracely, a creature of the air I'd say
Robin Jones has a solo show, I am shapeful and gracely, a creature of the air I'd say, at 126 Artist-run Gallery, 4 Commerce House, Flood Street, Galway, Ireland, from 5 October - 2 November 2013. See www.126gallery.blogspot.ie.
Exeter Contemporary Open
Malina Busch is showing in the Exeter Contemporary Open, Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter, EX4 3LS, from 13 September - 2 November 2013. See www.exeterphoenix.org.uk.
Project Space: Word. Sound. Power - Tate Modern
Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen is showing in Project Space: Word. Sound. Power. at Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG, from 12 July – 3 November 2013. See www.tate.org.uk.
Daniel Silver: Dig
Daniel Silver: Dig, commissioned by Artangel, is showing at The Odeon Site, 24 Grafton Way (off Tottenham Court Road), London WC1E 6DB, from 12 September - 3 November 2013. See www.artangel.org.uk and www.theguardian.com.
Paper - Saatchi Gallery
Algae Bassens and Steven Lowery are showing in Paper at the Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York's HQ, King's Road, London SW3 4RY, from 18 June - 3 November 2013. See www.saatchigallery.com.
V22 Young London 2013
Mark Barker, Lucy Beech, Nicholas Brooks, Raphael Hefti, Paul Kneale, Sophie Lee and Nicole Morris are showing in V22 Young London, V22 Workspace, F Block, The Biscuit Factory, 100 Clements Road, London SE16 4DG, from 15 September - 3 November 2013. See www.v22collection.com.
Tacita Dean - JG, 2013 and c/o Jolyon, 2012 -3
Tacita Dean is showing JG, 2013 and c/o Jolyon 2012 -3 at Frith Street Gallery, 17-18 Golden Square, London W1F 9JJ, from 13 September - 26 October 2013. See www.frithstreetgallery.com.
Lara Kamhi - Art Below
Lara Kamhi is showing in Art Below as part of this year's Frieze Art Fair. Her work will be displayed at Regents Park Station from 17 - 20 October 2013. See www.artbelow.org.uk.
Ed Allington visits Slade alumni in Japan
Ed Allington met with many Slade Alumni during his visit to Musashino University where he is visiting Professor in September 2013. See www.musabi.ac.jp.
From left to right: friend of Jumpei Kinoshita, Ayuko Suigura, two friends of Ayuko's, Jumpei Kinoshita, Ed Allington, Haruka Ono, Hiroko Nakajima, Kentaro Haruyama, Kito Kito the dog with Watanabe San's wife, behind the dog, and Watanabe San, who was one to the first Japanese students to come to the Slade.
Friday Salon: Lifting the Curtain - On Audience and Authorship -ICA
Lee Campbell is speaking at Friday Salon: Lifting the Curtain - On Audience and Authorship, at the ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH, on 25 October - 26 October 2013. See www.ica.org.uk.
Phyllida Barlow: Dog Door
Phyllida Barlow was invited back to the Slade School of Fine Art to create a small editioned print for the inaugural Slade Print Fair, which is now available for purchase online. We tracked her processes on video as she worked through them with James Keith, Teaching Fellow at the Slade. The short film Phyllida Barlow in conversation presents Phyllida discussing the work with Eleanor Morgan and Michael Duffy.
Eleanor Morgan
Pressing through: Phyllida Barlow prints
In the summer of 2013 Phyllida Barlow spent a week working in the Slade print workshop, assisted by teaching fellow James Keith. Primarily known for her sculptures and drawings, Barlow’s exploration in the print workshop resulted in an edition of 25 prints - or, more accurately, a series of 25 individual prints, each subtly changed through the process of making. What is particularly exciting about these works, and Barlow’s description of working in the print workshop, is not only the way in which she identifies and explores the shared concerns of printing and her sculptural processes, but also the strange particularity of printmaking itself; as Barlow puts it, ‘What is this flattening out thing, where you roll something through a press?’
Phyllida Barlow studied at the Slade from 1963-66, and after joining the staff in the late 1960s, taught there until 2009. She is represented by Hauser & Wirth gallery and has exhibited extensively. Recent exhibitions include Des Moines Art Center, the New Museum in New York, the Serpentine Gallery, this year’s Venice Biennale and the Carnegie International, and she has been commissioned to create new work for Tate Britain’s Duveen galleries in 2014. Often made from scrap materials, Barlow’s sculptures tend to be large, awkward, and seemingly precarious and her process of making involves dismantling her sculptures and reusing materials. Such an interest in impermanence and change may seem to work against certain printmaking traditions, in particular the reproduction of identical images. Rather than focusing on the edition, what aspects of printmaking could work with Barlow’s interest in the physicality and mutability of things?
The print that Barlow created is formed of layers and, as with any print, to understand both the work and the process of making it is necessary to work backwards – separating and recombining these layers that have been pressed together. The top layer, the final mark, is the hint of grey silkscreen of small rectangular cut-up shapes, under which are two more silkscreen layers, one black and one grey, and then two layers of pink ink-rolled linocut. Each new layer both builds upon and obscures the previous layer. As Barlow says of this layering process, ‘We could do it accumulatively. Like collage, but collage the wrong way round or inside out.’ She compares the process to that of sculptural casting, in which ‘you begin with something and then that something disappears. It’s a vanishing act. It’s magical. And then it’s brought back in another form.’
There are moments of transition, in which through the process of printing an image or a mark may disappear and reappear in a surprising form – not least because everything is back-to-front. The physical carving into a sheet of lino will leave a negative mark, and when the paper is peeled back from the linocut after it has been pressed you see an unfamiliar version of a familiar form: a mirror image. Like Barlow’s sculptures, in her print the position of the dark form on the page has a deliberate awkwardness – off-centre, but not comfortably asymmetrical. She describes the print as a space in which the drawing of a sculpture she had previously made began to emerge. This sculpture exists as a large architectural shape that can be walked under, but through printmaking the form ‘becomes slightly comical…an animal-like image has come out.’ As she describes, this was not necessarily her intention, but ‘an odd, humorous shape’ has crept in – the lintel has grown legs.
In keeping with her interest in physicality and change, it was vital that the different layers could be shown and that each print was slightly different – marking both the process and the material layering of hand, lino, inks, rollers, press and screen. Each print could be both unique and cumulative, and by informally inking up the lino it retained both the spontaneity of mark making, and a ‘slightly shifting look’ as if the print is constantly on the move.
Barlow’s interest in the creative potential of the process of printmaking and the proof, rather than identical replication, reflects the similar concerns of printmaking at the Slade. What is it about printmaking in particular that fascinates Barlow? It is, she says, ‘the layering, and the surprise and the going wrongness and the back-to-frontness and the beginning from the bottom and working upwards, and then the pressing through - as though that could almost be a thing in itself. A one-off thing.’
All quotations are taken from an interview with Phyllida Barlow recorded at the Slade printmaking workshops on the 14 October 2013 with Michael Duffy and Eleanor Morgan.
Phyllida Barlow was invited back to the Slade School of Fine Art to create a small editioned print for the inaugural Slade Print Fair. We tracked her processes on video as she worked through them with James Keith, Teaching Fellow at the Slade. This short film presents Phyllida discussing the work with Eleanor Morgan and Michael Duffy.
Phyllida Barlow was invited back to the Slade School of Fine Art to create a small editioned print for the inaugural Slade Print Fair. We tracked her processes on video as she worked through them with James Keith, Teaching Fellow at the Slade. The short film Phyllida Barlow in conversation presents Phyllida discussing the work with Eleanor Morgan and Michael Duffy.
Ben Barbour - Qatar UK 2013
As part of Qatar UK 2013 Year of Culture, Ben Barbour is travelling on Q-Flex Liquid Natural Gas tanker from Qatar to Wales tracing the historic pearl route, from 17 July - 5 August 2013, documenting his journey in a book. The journey will culminate in exhibitions at Katara Cultural Village in October 2013 and in Wales.
Sculpture Season - UCL Grant Museum of Zoology
Sculpture Season at UCL Grant Museum of Zoology, Rockefeller Building, University College London, University Street, WC1E 6DE, is showing from 5 June - 31 August 2013, 1 - 5pm. Sculpture students from the Slade School of Fine Art at UCL have been invited to create works in response to the Museum’s collections. See www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/events and www.ucl.ac.uk/museums.
A review of the show is in The Telegraph, 6 June 2013.
A Crisis of Brilliance - Duwich Picture Gallery
Works by Paul Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and David Bomberg are on show in A Crisis of Brilliance, 1908 - 1922, at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, London SE21 7AD, from 12 June - 22 September 2013. See www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk.
Above: David Bomberg, In the Hold, 1913-14, oil on canvas, 196.2 x 231.1 cm, © Tate, London 2012
Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist - Tate Modern
Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist is showing at Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9PN from 3 July - 9 September 2013. See www.tate.org.uk.
An account on his time at the Slade School of Fine Art is on the Slade Archive Blog.
Emma Hart - Dirty Looks - Camden Arts Centre
Emma Hart - Dirty Looks is showing at Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road, London NW3 6DG, from 26 July - 29 September 2013. See www.camdenartscentre.org.
Artroulette at Hackney WickED
Princess Belsize Dollar (Helen Benigson) is at Artroulette for the Hackney WickED festival at The Glass Factory, Queens Yard, London E9 5EN, on Friday 16 August 2013, 6-9pm. See http://artroulette.tumblr.com/.