Category: Museums and Galleries

Agostino Arrivabene’s ‘To Pathei Mathos’
At the Panorama Museum, Badfrankenhausen, Germany

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The Agostino Arrivabene “To Pathei Mathos” retrospective exhibition at the Panorama Museum in Badfrankenhausen, Germany is composed of 125 works, mostly paintings (miniature to large) and drawings, etchings and sketchbooks. During the years he has developed a series of symbolic, mythologic themes and characters (life and death, light and darkness, body and soul, Pandora, Orpheus, Athena, Lucifer etc.) trying to sublimate his own tragic life experiences into a creative and sharable path. The result is a fantastic and magical trip in which personal nightmares and eternal feelings can live side by side. The title of the exhibition is a Greek phrase that means truth and knowledge through pain and suffering.

With a strong classical and italian background, all influences and inspirations from ancient and present masters are clearly and sincerely visible in the progress of his activity, from the strong fascination for the symbolism of William Blake, Gustave Moreau and Ernst Fuchs in his earlier work, through Odd Nerdrum and the nordic art environment.

Images by Agostino Arrivabene and text by David Molesky. (Via)

Jeffery Camp’s ‘The Way to Beachy Head’
On show at the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings

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20th July – 2nd October 2013

‘The Way to Beachy Head’ celebrates the Camp’s 90th year and a body of work inspired by the landscape of coastal Sussex, particularly the dramatic chalk coastline where the South Downs meets the sea. Liz Gilmore, Director of the Jerwood Gallery, said ‘We are thrilled to be celebrating Jeffery Camp’s 90th year and to reappraise one of Britain’s most accomplished artists through a body of work inspired by the sea, shore and fields of Sussex and particularly of Beachy Head, one of his favourite subjects’.

Jeffery Camp was born in East Anglia in 1923. He studied at Lowestoft and Ipswich Art Schools, followed by Edinburgh College of Art in 1941. He taught at Chelsea School of Art in 1960-61 and went on to teach at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1963 to 1988. Camp has been an RA since 1984 and in 1988, had a major retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts followed by retrospective exhibitions at South London Gallery and the Serpentine.

For more info, please visit the Jerwood Gallery

‘Aquatopia, The Imaginary of the Ocean Deep’
On show at the Nottingham Contemporary

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Juergen Teller: Octopussy, Rome, 2008 Courtesy of Juergen Teller

20 July 2013 – 22 September 2013

This major exhibition brings together over 150 contemporary and historic artworks that explore how the deep has been imagined through time and across cultures. Sea monsters, sirens, sperm whales, giant squids, octopi, submarines, drowned sailors and shipwrecks are all portrayed here by many of art history’s “greats” JMW Turner, Odilon Redon, Hokusai, Barbara Hepworth and Oskar Kokoshka among them. Steve Claydon, Wangechi Mutu, Juergen Teller, Alex Bag, Christian Holstad and Mikhail Karikis are some of the many celebrated contemporary artists amongst whose oceanic – inspired artworks are shown here too.

The imaginary oceans these artworks explore represent both the limits of our knowledge and the crossing of existential thresholds. Oceans are places of metamorphosis where “we suffer a sea change into something rich and strange”, according to Shakespeare in the Tempest. Our wild imaginings about the ocean aren’t simply escapist. The ocean is the keeper of political histories that continually resurface in the present day. Ocean myths both ancient and contemporary have been shaped by conquest and colonialism, and by the tide of gender politics too.

For more info, please visit the Nottingham Contemporary

Jockum Nordström’s ‘All I Have Learned and Forgotten Again’
On show at the Camden Arts Centre, London

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26th July – 29th September 2013

This major survey of work by Swedish artist Jockum Nordström (b.1963) brings together collages, graphite drawings and architectural sculptures, representing the breadth of his work from the 1990s to the most recent pieces made especially for the exhibition. The title All I have Learned and Forgotten Again harks back to the wisdom and magic of childhood, a lament of the lost innocence that gives way to the demands of an adult world.

A simple charm and naivety runs throughout Nordström’s work, yet it is not without inner complexity: His characters, whether they are riding horses, sailing boats, making love or playing music, are constantly in action. But as the scenes unfold, they reveal imagery of a strange, sinister, at times even violent, nature.

For more info, please visit the Camden Arts Centre

Nick Cave’s ‘Sojourn’ at the Denver Art Museum

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The “soundsuit” is a wearable sculpture, believed to ‘hold transformative powers, which can psychologically transport its wearer to a realm of fantasy beyond the limitations of the human body’. In Cave’s new show, visitors can see his signature furry, floral suits, some fashioning tree branch structures. As well as examples of his new work, which plays with a galactic theme, where the ‘soundsuits’ evolves and appear to belong to metallic, glittering, future super race.

‘Sojourn’ is on view through to September 22. Images courtesy of the Denver Art Museum. (Via)

‘Witches & Wicked Bodies’
At the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

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27th July − 3rd November 2013

In this major summer exhibition, visitors will get the chance to discover how witches and witchcraft have been depicted by artists over the past 500 years, including works by Albrecht Dürer, Francisco de Goya and William Blake, plus pieces by 20th century artists such as Paula Rego and Kiki Smith. Through 16th and 17th century prints and drawings, learn how the advent of the printing press allowed artists and writers to share ideas, myths and fears about witches from country to country.

For more info, please visit the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Cleon Peterson’s ‘There is a War’ at The Outsiders, London

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5th July – 3rd August 2013

Cleon Peterson’s nightmarish tableaux feature scenes of a barbaric holocaust, where might is right and the weak are merely souls with holes for the strong to torment and abuse. Deviance is the norm, and the displaced individual is forced to navigate this wicked world alone, finding hollow bits of pleasure and meaning in violence, sex, religion and drugs

Cleon says ‘My work doesn’t just contain violence, there’s a humour to it – the images are so over the top.’ A horde of uniform bad guys, at once ethnic, gothic and alien rampage through the works, sacking small the metropolis within and wantonly abusing its law-abiding residents. These bogeymen are so comically stereotyped as to infer that oppressors take many forms, throughout history to the present day, from slavers and plutocrats to bullies and witch-hunters.

For more, info please visit The Ousiders.

Mathew Weir at the Alison Jacques Gallery, London

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5 July – 3 August 2013

British artist Mathew Weir will be showing nine new paintings at the Alison Jacques gallery. In these works Weir continues to fuse imagery of ceramic figurines with his archive of landscapes to create complex narratives with exquisite yet melancholic auras. By dislocating and re-presenting historic objects such as early 19th Century German terracottas or Victorian ceramics in uncanny contexts, Weir entreats the viewer to reconsider how our interpretations of their original representations have been transposed over time and to actively address notions of racism, oppression, violence and death.

Femke Hiemstra’s ‘Fiebertraum’
On show at Merry Karnowsky Gallery, LA

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June 22nd – July 20th 2013

Femke Hiemstra new solo show titled “Fiebertraum” (Fever Dream) features her signature anthropomorphic animal characters. Painted in a lushous glow, she catches these creatures in their intimate household scenes and spiritual experiences. Hiemstra’s always has fun with the way she presents her work, and many of the new paintings are rendered on altar-like panels adorned with tassels. Hiemstra will be showing alongside Deedee Cheriel and Mel Kadel. (Via)