Category: All

Art Circus Spotlight
‘Family Snaps’ by Tim Fawcett

L0008288

I have always painted the human figure, I wouldn’t call them portraits in the traditional sense as I’m not interested in displaying likeness, personality or mood, I leave that to the viewer to decide. I think our first language is visual, based on facial expression and recognition. We learn to recognise and interpret emotion this way before we learn verbal communication. We grow up learning to almost rely on this form of subconscious communication.

My aim then is to rewind and undo this process by removing the visual detail we rely upon. Combine this with my fascination with social dynamics and emotional turmoil often hidden behind grinning family snaps and you have a clue as to the rationale behind my work. The classic happy family on holiday frozen in time and our outward portrayal of domestic bliss is the focus of my investigations and visual interpretations. What does the viewer identify with and remember about their childhood then think again a little deeper. Continue reading “Art Circus Spotlight
‘Family Snaps’ by Tim Fawcett” →

Dan Attoe’s ‘Landscapes With Water’ at Peres Projects, Berlin

dan

Dan Attoe paints mystical and eerie fictitious landscapes, populated with tiny figures expressing distinctive character traits of the artist and how he would like to embrace the environments he creates. For this body of work, Attoe has revisited several landscapes he has previously explored, playing with different elements and discovering new possibilities for the characters in the scene.

Attoe says “These paintings are a series of landscapes that I’ve been kicking around in my head and in my drawings for a while. Some come from places that I’ve lived in and have personal relationships with, like the North Shore of Lake Superior, the rivers and waterfalls of Washington state and Idaho, and the coast of the Northwestern U.S. Others exist some place in popular culture or in some kind of collective visual vocabulary. With this body of work, I’m playing with the character of these places and trying to make images that have some kind of deeper meaning.” Continue reading “Dan Attoe’s ‘Landscapes With Water’ at Peres Projects, Berlin” →

Art Circus Spotlight
‘Subversion’ by Will Adams

Subversion_8big

My architecture work is about distorting and reinventing the representation of structures that have surrounded me my whole life. ‘Subversion II’ comes from photographing the same building sixteen times on a single frame to distort the representation of architecture. This has been influenced by the way Gordon Matta-Clark’s building cuts completely recreate how architecture is experienced. Due to repeatedly cocking and releasing the shutter, the camera has moved between each exposure, leaving the image with sixteen slightly different viewpoints. The result is that the representation of the building is put under a lot of stress, as the process softens the sharp lines and break up the grids that dominate architecture.

Continue reading “Art Circus Spotlight
‘Subversion’ by Will Adams” →

Camel’s Final Wish Is To Have Bones Perfectly Carved Into Bicycle

adel-abdessemed-carves-camel-bone-bicycle-designboom-10

Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed’s ‘la chine est proche’, translated from french as ‘china is near’ is a full-scale gentlemen’s bicycle. Superbly carved from camel bone with lovely details from the ridges on the tires to the break cables. The bone bike sculpture is delicate yet durable, and plays with a historical and cultural influence from Chinese artisans who use the material to craft jewelry and charms. (Via)

Continue reading “Camel’s Final Wish Is To Have Bones Perfectly Carved Into Bicycle” →

Jake Wood-Evans in ‘Darkness Visible’
On Show at the Leyden Gallery, London

After-François-Boucher-web

Wednesday 12th March to Saturday 12th April, 2014

Leyden Gallery will be hosting an exhibition of new oil paintings by Jake Wood-Evans this spring, showing alongside lithographs by Henry Moore.

”Jake Wood-Evans’ work lives with and aspires to classical standards, and his paintings are tense with one of art’s classic disputes: the conflict between truth and beauty. His instinct has always been to make something wonderful for the eye; and his shows are shocking partly because of the sheer overflowing gorgeous technique they display. These oils are alive, and paying homage to their ancestors. A flash of Turner’s light, the glint of a Velasquez eye; Richter’s ‘technological’ blurring: aesthetic high points from the history of art are here. Dangerous company to keep, perhaps, but these paintings are triumphantly realized. Continue reading “Jake Wood-Evans in ‘Darkness Visible’
On Show at the Leyden Gallery, London” →

Art Circus Spotlight
‘Chromogenic’ by Jeff Edwards

L0008534

My practice is almost entirely analogue. There is a small digital aspect but if I had to break it down I would say my process is 85% analogue and 15% digital. Everything starts from a 4×5 or 6×4.5 film negative, which is then edited in a way where I can influence the actual emulsion of the negative. I use various consistencies and dilutions of rubbing alcohol and inks to achieve the final result.

I am constantly working and re working images, so I often end up with half a dozen or so of the same negative but worked in various different ways and techniques. So then it is difficult to decide what is working and what isn’t, what do I like and what do I hate. It is often a fine line for me what is and isn’t working. The fun part is seeing what effects and alterations work with the image rather than simply to it. It is very important to me that anything I do to the negative works with the final print, so it actually seems as if the subject is fading away, dissolving, disintegrating etc. Continue reading “Art Circus Spotlight
‘Chromogenic’ by Jeff Edwards” →

Q&A with James Elliott Dixon

james3

Where was ‘Black pool’ (Shown above) taken and what happened there?

‘Black Pool’ is a small harbour on the East Lothian coast. I’d seen it and noted that when low tide coincided with low evening light, water was replaced by shadow. I see this as a key picture as it uses shadow, landscape and light to create a transition from one void to another.

Do you have the scenes in mind and then seek them out to photograph?

I tend to set some parameters of what I’m looking for, for instance certain types of shadow and light, geometry or scale, Then I choose locations as a stage for these. Continue reading “Q&A with James Elliott Dixon” →

Ryan Mosley at Alison Jacques

ryanmosley

21st February – 15th March 2014

”In Ryan Mosley’s third solo exhibition at Alison Jacques Gallery his narratives within narratives and worlds within worlds feel even more transgressive and irreverent than those we’ve previously been invited to explore. Rich with art-historical devices and painted asides, his vocabulary is now unmistakably Mosleyan, and his characters not only veer well beyond the boundaries of societal norms, but are willing us to get lost with them.

In the large painting, Audubon’s Last Aviary, a skull whose entire torso is constructed from its falling beard conspires with a humanoid spearhead and a vine-stem-face in a yellowing cave. They are surrounded by a flock of abandoned and undiscovered subspecies of bird – hunchbacked and monochrome as if their subterranean existence has made colour, flight and even birdsong distant redundancies. Elsewhere, two courtiers – also with only skulls for faces but resplendent in afros and harlequin-chequered garments – are held in some pre-Quattrocento heraldic pose, carrying boules as orbs and standing within a living coat of arms which is itself part giant skull, part disturbing Botticelli-twin-fantasy. Continue reading “Ryan Mosley at Alison Jacques” →

Going to Art14?
Why Not Take A Pal For Free

art14

Friday 28th – 2 March 2014

Art14 London is returning to the Olympia Grand for its second year with last year’s Art13, attracting over 25,000 visitors. Art14 will offer a platform for 180 galleries from 40 countries, showcasing over 700 artists, from emerging talents to modern masters. The Fair will feature a range of media including painting, sculpture, photography, editions and more. Last year’s fair stood out as one to pay attention to by showing an impressive array of skilfully made, edgy and exciting work, a rare combination in the contemporary art world. Take a look at some of the highlights from Art13.

Art14 have kindly given the Art Circus a 2 for 1 ticket offer for our readers, so If you’re heading down to the fair, go to Art14 and quote ‘ARTCIRCUS’.

Michelle-Marie Letelier in ‘Magic Block
Contemporary Art from Chile’

L0008664

17th Jan – 2nd Mar 2014

Magic Block seeks to explore these relations, specifically highlighting artists working in Chile over the last 35 years. The example of Chile offers a compelling view onto the power plays of visibility and disappearance. The dictatorship of Pinochet, from 1973 to 1989, brought forward a difficult structure under which many artists struggled. And even now, in recalling its current traces. In doing so, questions of what was permissible or not lent to experimental approaches, and often the issue of what can be shown, and how or what can be seen, provided a challenging backdrop to the arts. This led to performative, ephemeral and conceptual approaches, inspiring artists to work directly in public space, while also turning inward to the experiences of private life, to gauge the politics of silence and silencing.

Continue reading “Michelle-Marie Letelier in ‘Magic Block
Contemporary Art from Chile’” →