Roelof Louw: Holland Park

Richard Saltoun Gallery are showing Roelof Louw’s Holland Park in the Frieze sculpture garden. The scatter piece was first installed in 1967 in London’s Holland Park and consists of approximately 300 wooden slats, randomly distributed in lots of 2-6 pieces over an indeterminate area, at irregular intervals.

Not to be missed!

Jo Spence and Helen Chadwick will also be shown under Saltoun’s banner during Frieze week. Spence will feature in the ‘Great Masters’ section and Chadwick in their Great Titchfield Street gallery space from 14 October 2014.

http://www.richardsaltoun.com/home/

Thank you!

We’d like to say a huge thank you to all the speakers, chairs and delegates who came to York yesterday and shared their incredibly rich and exciting research for the London Art Worlds conference. Particular thanks to James Boaden, Elena Crippa, Hilary Floe, Antony Hudek, Dominic Johnson, Carmen Juliá, Courtney J. Martin, Lucy Reynolds, Lisa Tickner, Isobel Whitelegg, and Andrew Wilson. Thanks also to the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the British Art Research School and the Centre for Modern Studies at the University of York for making the day possible.

Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain, 1966 – 1979

From the exhibition website:

“In the late 1960s, artists on both sides of the Atlantic turned away from the enclosed spaces of the studio and gallery and went out into the landscape to forge new forms of art. This art encompassed a wide range of practices and attitudes, including elements of sculpture, performance and photography, and went under several names: Land art, earth art, process art and ecologic art, among others. Of these terms, Land art has come to be most widely used internationally.

Artists working in Britain were part of this phenomenon, but here Land art took distinct forms: predominantly Conceptual and ephemeral, handmade and organic. The key strategies developed in the UK included the photographic documentation of actions, the positioning of walking and travelling as creative acts, an exploration of locality and a keen awareness of rural traditions and contexts.

Drawn largely from the Arts Council Collection, this exhibition explores how landscape and nature came to be key concerns of Conceptual art in Britain in the 1960s and 70s. Many of our most significant British artists used landscape and nature in radical new ways and reconfigured one of the oldest subjects of art into one of the most dynamic and vital forms of art today.

Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain 1966–1979 is a touring exhibition organised by the Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London and curated by Nicholas Alfrey, Joy Sleeman and Ben Tufnell. The exhibition launched at Southampton City Art Gallery (10 May – 3 August 2013) and tours to The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (28 September 2013 – 5 January 2014), Mead Gallery, University of Warwick (18 January – 8 March 2014) and Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (5 April – 15 June 2014).”

Exhibition – Supporting Artists: Acme’s First Decade 1972 -1982 @ Whitechapel Gallery

Image c. Acme Studios and Whitechapel Gallery.

Until 23rd February 2014, Whitechapel Gallery London.

“Leaving the protective environment of art school has always been a huge challenge. In 1972, a group of London graduates, led by Jonathan Harvey and David Panton, took matters into their own hands. The unpromising recession-gripped landscape of East London – of empty factories and riverside warehouses, and boarded-up houses destined for demolition – presented an unexpected route to survival: cheap, though temporary, space to work and live appeared to be in free supply. Acme Housing Association was formed as the legal mechanism to unlock this space, with short-life houses transferred by local government authorities to make use of an otherwise wasted resource.

Self-help was key, with artists finding ingenious solutions, given limited means, to create the spaces they needed from the semi-derelict properties at their disposal. From these modest beginnings, Acme offers affordable working and living spaces to thousands of artists, as well as residencies, advisory services and exhibitions.

This exhibition tells the story of their first decade. Using remarkable documents and photographs from their archives, the history of the Acme studios and the legendary Acme Gallery in Covent Garden (1976–1981) unfolds. Co-curated by Jonathan Harvey, CEO, Acme Studios, assisted by Research Consultant, Dr Arantxa Echarte.”

Text taken from Whitechapel Gallery website.

Roelof Louw at Karsten Schubert: 27 November 2013 – 13 December 2013

Image c. Roelof Loew and Karsten Schubert Gallery.

Roelof Louw’s Rolled Lead Piece, 1970 is being shown in London next week. The work has not been shown since the 1970 exhibition Between Man and Matter. The Richard Saltoun website writes:

‘The final show to be staged in Karsten Schubert Gallery’s, Soho, London, space the work will take over an entire room and consists of sheets of lead, rolled and then pushed towards the gallery walls.  The lead sheets themselves are specified to a particular weight, in relation to the gallery surface area. Arising out of the Process Art movement of the 1960s, the work emphasizes the process of its own construction and tests the limits of the human body. It uses a traditional sculptural material  – lead – in a non-traditional form and manner. The physical act of rolling out the lead becomes part of the work, with the work being interrupted at various stages and documented. The process is completed, when the exhibition has ended and the lead removed, ultimately destroying the gallery floor, and sold back to the supplier at the end of the exhibition for scrap.’

More information can be found on the Richard Saltoun website: http://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/31/overview/

Thank-you to Joy Sleeman, who will be speaking on the sculptor Roelof Louw at London Art Worlds, for highlighting this.

SLIDE/TAPE, Vivid Projects Birmingham, until Saturday 16th November

SLIDE/TAPE is taking place in Birmingham at Vivid Projects until this Saturday. The exhibition addresses the medium of slide-tape installation used by a diverse range of artists in the 1970s and 1980s. This format was often used to create immersive environments and is often considered in relation or as a precursor to expanded cinema. 

The exhibition includes the work of Black Audio Film Collective, Ian Breakwell, Nina Danino, Bill Furlong, Sunil Gupta, Tina Keane and Cordelia Swann. It is curated by Yasmeen Baig-Clifford, Director of Vivid Projects and Mo White (School of Arts, Loughborough University). 

http://www.vividprojects.org.uk/programme/

 

Tina Keane : 5 October – 9 November 2013

Lucy Reynolds’ paper will discuss the film distribution network ‘Circles’ at the London Art Worlds event. See an exhibition of one of its co-founders Tina Keane at England & Co in London, until 9th November.

New speaker and programme announced

The organisers of ‘London Art Worlds’ are happy to announce that Prof. Lisa Tickner (Courtauld Institute of Art) will be giving a paper at the symposium. Lisa will be presenting her research on Ken Russell’s 1962 Monitor documentary Pop Goes the Easel. The film depicted its four subjects Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty and Peter Phillips careening through the world of pop culture opening up a new world and a new role for the artist in the popular imaginary.

We are also happy to announce that the full programme is now available on our blog. Full abstracts will be announced in the next few weeks.

If you would like to register places are still available. Simply email your name to londonartworld@gmail.com. 

London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent and Ephemeral Networks, 1960-1980

Photograph © Clay Perry, courtesy England & Co gallery, London

‘London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent and Ephemeral Networks, 1960-1980’

A one-day conference at the University of York, Berrick Saul Building Friday 29th November 2013, 10.00am – 6.30pm

Confirmed speakers include: Elena Crippa (Tate), Antony Hudek (Liverpool John Moores), Dominic Johnson (QMUL), Carmen Juliá (Tate), Courtney Martin (Brown), Lucy Reynolds (Central St Martins), Joy Sleeman (UCL), Isobel Whitelegg (Nottingham Contemporary) & Andrew Wilson (Tate).

Bringing together new research on the national and international networks that came to characterise the London art world during the 1960s and 1970s, this conference at the University of York aims to trace the many informal, impromptu and experimental relationships that exist alongside, and fragment, more established institutional histories of British art in this period. The day will explore a diversity of practices, movements and spaces, ranging from painting, sculpture and film through to land art, performance and activism, addressing in particular the impact of feminism, international exchange – specifically with Latin America – and changes in art education on the works produced during these two extremely lively and innovative decades, when understandings of the ‘art world’ were challenged and reformulated in multiple ways. Papers will include studies of Alexander Trocchi’s Project Sigma, Stephen Willat’s Control Magazine, Expanded Cinema at Gallery House, the emergence of the artist performance-lecture, and the performances of COUM Transmissions, and the day will end with a roundtable discussion to which all are invited to contribute.

The symposium is kindly supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Centre for Modern Studies at the University of York.

The event is organised by Dr. Jo Applin, lecturer in the history of art at the University of York and two PhD students under her supervision, Catherine Spencer and Amy Tobin.