Artur Żmijewski - Following Bauhaus

Following Bauhaus
A Foundation Liverpool
67 Greenland Street
Liverpool L1 OBY

2 July - 14 August 2010

A Foundation presents Artur Żmijewski’s first new work produced in the UK, Following Bauhaus, created during a residency within the culturally and politically resonant city of Liverpool.

A Foundation invited Zmijewski to explore the social stratification of ‘art’, and after a series of initial meetings with the various groups of people that make up the city’s art community he set up a ‘pop-up art school’ that would attempt to explore this ‘something’ called art and to reconfigure art’s relationship to the wider society. Hosted by the existing School of Fine Art and Design at Liverpool John Moores University, the pop-up school was modelled on the Bauhaus, established in Weimar by Walter Gropius in 1919. The Bauhaus explored a total meltdown of aesthetics and function, revolutionising art training through the notion that design should not merely reflect society but positively influence it. Żmijewski states “Eighty years ago the Bauhaus school invented a new visual reality – I would like to re-attempt this today. It is probably an impossible task, but that is why it is interesting.”

Żmijewski is well known for his use of the workshop as a site to explore social and political stratification. Solutions are never guaranteed, but the journeys are both compelling and revealing. In Liverpool, techniques frequently utilised at the Bauhaus such as drawing using both hands, presenting colour by the posture of the body and collective building became the conduit through which participants were encouraged to analyse their relationship to art, and to each other. Zmijewski and other visiting artists, including Pawel Althamer took the roles of ‘masters’ and ‘journeymen’ for the pop-up school while conscripts from the Art School became ‘apprentices’ - who probably got more than they bargained for but doubtless had an experience that will transform their perspective on the place of art in society.

The final installation in the Furnace at A Foundation will combine a new video work documenting the project along with materials produced during its production.

Workshops
Students of the temporary art school set up as part of Żmijewski’s Liverpool Commission, ‘Following Bauhaus’, will be holding a series of workshops at A Foundation Liverpool to complete the circle of their Bauhaus experience. Żmijewski’s apprentices will become ‘master’s’ leading workshops in movement and dance; architectural modeling; stone carving and graphic design. Places are free but numbers will be limited so contact the gallery to book a place.

Artist Workshops 3 July 2010, 1-5pm, Booking essential. Please email info@afoundation.org.uk or call 0151 706 0600.

Persistence of Vision - FACT

Exploring the nature of vision and memory
FACT
88 Wood Street
Liverpool
L14DQ
until – 30 August
www.fact.co.uk

Informed by scientific research and inspired by historical developments in media technology, Persistence of Vision explores the interplay of vision, memory and media. The exhibition presents contemporary artists’ works that repurpose current image technologies, as well as those of our recent past, to playfully review and re-imagine the devices through which our memories are stored and revived. A family friendly drop in space in FACT’s Media Lounge will provide hands-on activities where visitors can experience how seeing is shaped by memory, and how memory is influenced by how and what we see.

Curated by Karen Newman (FACT) and Andreas Brøgger (Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Denmark).

Exhibition delivered in partnership with Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Denmark.

Studio East Dining by Bistrotheque

Studio East Dining by Bistrotheque
Architecture by Carmody Groarke

until - 4 JULY 2010
Dinner 7 for 7.30pm Wednesday to Saturday
Lunch 12 for 12.30pm Friday and Sunday*

London's most amazing rooftop dining experience; Bistrotheque opens a 3 week temporary dining room, and pavilion designed by Carmody Groarke, perched 35m atop Westfield Stratford City's 1.9 million sq ft site, overlooking the Olympic Stadium and Zaha Hadid's 2012 Aquatics Center.

A fast build with a life span of just 3 weeks, weighing 70 tons, it is constructed from hired materials borrowed from the existing construction site, including: 2000 scaffolding boards, 3500 scaffolding poles, and reclaimed timber, used to create the walls and floors of the 800 square metre dining space. The cladding material which encases the roof, is a semi-translucent membrane, using industrial grade heat retractable polyethylene, all returned to the site afterwards and recycled without any waste.

Luke Jerram - Infectious Beauty

Heller Gallery
420 West 14th St.
New York
NY 10014
until – July 31 2010

www.hellergallery.com

Designed in consultation with virologist Dr. Andrew Davidson from the University of Bristol in England, using a combination of different scientific photographs and models, the sculptures were made in collaboration with a team of specialized scientific glassblowers. Through them the artist reveals the fascinating tension between something that is unusually beautiful but which is also extremely dangerous and plaguing humanity.

Luke Jerram is an inventor, a researcher, an amateur scientist and a multidisciplinary artist. Currently he is a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, England.

Jerram is the recipient of numerous awards and grants and his extraordinary projects and installations have won acclaim in cities around the world.

Switzerland: Design For Life

A Celebration of Swiss design culture
A Foundation London
Rochelle School
Arnold Circus
London E2 7ES

19 June - 1 July,
Monday - Saturday 11am - 5pm,
Sunday 12pm - 5pm.
Admission Free

Showcasing 22 young designers and design studios presenting cutting edge aesthetic innovation from Switzerland.

The exhibition features the work of twelve of Switzerland’s most talented young designers: Laurent Benner, Alexandre Bettler, Kueng Caputo, Zak Kyes, Jurg Lehni, Urs Lehni & Lex Trub, Loris & Livia, Elena Rendina and Regis Tosetti. In a continuation of an exceptional heritage, these forward thinking designers produce innovative, fresh ways of working, creating projects that move across disciplines; by making furniture, designing books and organizing events.

The exhibition will also explore how Switzerland‘s identity has changed through the decades, concentrating on the key design periods that were pivotal in Swiss poster art. For decades, the Swiss created beautiful illustrated posters, the exhibition will display 10 of these most influential and striking Vintage posters alongside 10 newly created works by contemporary designers.

Cian O’Neill and Bethan McFadden

In The Between
12 JUNE - 3 JULY 2010

The Horse Hospital
Colonnade
Bloomsbury
London WC1N 1JD
ARTIST RECEPTION: FRIDAY 11TH JUNE FROM 7:30PM
EXHIBITION: MON – SAT, 12 – 6PM

www.thehorsehospital.com

With a mutual interest in the study of physical architecture and the aesthetics of anatomical form, Cian O’Neill and Bethan McFadden present a series of works exploring the interplay of death with birth upon the boundaries of the beautiful and the macabre. Employing elements of portraiture and fluidity of movement, these works in pencil and oil on canvas invite the viewer to enter into a space where light rises from darkness and form from distortion, to participate in a conjoining of opposites that is both playful and challenging.

Central St Martins MA Communication Design Degree Show

9-12 June, 12-8pm
(6pm on 12 June)
A Foundation London
Rochelle School
Arnold Circus
London E2 7ES

www.csm.arts.ac.uk

Michael Raedecker

Galerie Max Hetzler
Oudenarder Straße 16-20
D-13347 Berlin

June 11 - July 17, 2010

www.maxhetzler.com

Since the 90s, Michael Raedecker deals primarily with traditional genres such as landscape, still life, architecture and interiors. His painting combines an extraordinary way with the art of embroidery, sewing and Special Sensors, brings thoughtful and contrasting works. In our increasingly dominated by electronic media time Raedecker work lives something deeply melancholic held.

The starting point is apparently known sites: Deserted Landscapes, lonely or abandoned houses interiors that help, because all of them coming from our collective memory, recognition and access to Michael Raedecker work.

Not infrequently, there is the sense of an unfulfilled, utopian promises. In other images, in turn, the material on the subject: clothes, towels, linen and lace are presented simultaneously and in real terms used in the factory. The titles of the works are usually very cautious and point to common memories and experiences.

The images often seem reduced and sketchy, much of the surface seem scratched, faded or erased like. Color, types of yarn and other materials to counteract each other. Embroidered lines serve the accentuation of "bleeding drops or splashes of color and keep the picture in balance between chance and design.

The different realities that Raedecker designs in his works unfold a compelling interplay of closeness and distance. Nor can the artist's preferred medium, the embroidery, reading as a commentary on much more conceptual positions and also proving to be interesting links between High and Low Art generosity and freedom mark the oeuvre of Michael Raedecker.

Ming Wong - Life of Imitation

In Life of Imitation
Singapore Art Museum
71 Bras Basah Road
Singapore
22 April 2010 to 22 August 2010
www.singaporeartmuseum.sg/exhibitions/details.php?id=45

www.mingwong.org

Life of Imitation:, Ming Wong re-visits the context of the Golden Age of Singapore cinema in the 1950s and 60s; an era of nation building, economic struggle and rapid modernisation.

Inspired by the rich legacy, Wong re-reads “national cinema” constructed through language, role-playing and identity, by re-interpreting films that are familiar to audiences spanning two generations, and which engage with performative notions of mis-casting and parroting. The first is a compendium of works by P. Ramlee, the wunderkind of Malay cinema. The second is the Hollywood melodrama Imitation of Life (1959) by Douglas Sirk about a black mother and her “white” daughter. The third is Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) with actress Maggie Cheung rehearsing a scene where she confronts her spouse‘s infidelity.

Through these video interventions, the viewer is presented with questions relating to roots, hybrid and the politics of becoming. The exhibition also unveils cinema posters by Singapore’s last surviving billboard painter; rare screen memorabilia of a private collector; and documentaries by film-maker Sherman Ong. The Singapore Art Museum re-stages this award-winning exhibition with a new design and additional exhibits.

This exhibition was first presented at the Singapore Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale 2009. It won the Biennale’s Special Jury Mention award. Tang Fu Kuen is the guest curator of this exhibition.

Sachiko Abe

photos by Julia Waugh.