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Episode 223: Jonathan Watkins

Christopher — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:22:59 +0000

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This week, another in the series of interviews Duncan and Christian did at the Banff Centre while they were on art vacation, Jonathan Watkins!

Jonathan Watkins (born 1957) is an English curator, and is currently Director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. Watkins emigrated to Australia with his family in 1969 and studied Philosophy and History of Art at the University of Sydney, where he later taught. He was curator of the Chisenhale Gallery in London during which period this relatively small local gallery became an internationally known centre of excellence – many of the Artists shown at that time later going on to major acclaim including a number of Turner Prize winners, Watkins later moved to the Serpentine Gallery from 1995 to 1997 and worked in a freelance capacity as curator of the Biennale of Sydney in 1998. Watkins now lives in Birmingham, England. He currently directs the Ikon Gallery, and recently unveiled plans for a new museum of modern art in Birmingham.
Jonathan Watkins
Ikon Gallery
Banff Centre
Chisenhale Gallery
Serpentine Gallery
Sydney Biennale
Hayward Gallery
Tate
Christian Kuras
Tom and Simon Bloor
Tatsumi Orimoto’s Breadman
Stay Away from Lonely Places
Fukuwoka Asian Art Museum
Santiago Sierra
Fiji
Giuseppe Penone
Carmen Herrera
Julian Opie
Ron Terada

Top 5? Well…not quite, but…

stephanieburke — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:47:54 +0000

OK, so here’s the deal for right now. Every week (well almost every week) I do a pick of shows that I think are most likely worth seeing (I am often wrong). The problem is that I sometimes don’t get to go to all the shows on my list (I generally see art on the weekend and usually just go to openings, I don’t have the “it’s so crowded in here, I can’t see the art” issue, I just shove my way through and look, but I digress). So this week I am giving ya’ll a list of where exactly I am going. I chose this route because I noticed something odd this weekend, there are seven apartment gallery show openings and closings in the next three days. I figured, what the hell, I’m going to be out, some of these places I like, some of them I don’t really like, some of them I’ve never visited, why not make a circuit of them all, a selection of this Chicago art institution known as the “Apartment Gallery” and see the “State of the Apartment” so to speak. And (this was added after the list was mostly done), I like openings that go till 10 or 11 at night, you can cram a lot more in that way.

APARTMENT GALLERY OPENINGS (AND CLOSINGS) THIS WEEKEND:

1. Australia at Concertina Gallery

Aron Gent, detail from Australia (Hugh Jackman & Nicole Kidman) 2009

And I quote, “Acting as a springboard for works by both Anthea Behm and Aron Gent, Baz Luhrmann’s 2008 movie Australia provides loaded content for each artist to pick apart and reconstruct. Though the artists work off the same source material, they diverge in form and intention. Triggering questions of cultural ownership and responsibility, Behm and Gent address the cultural transmission between those represented and those representing.” This is how the gallery describes the show. I’m most interested in going to see Anthea’s work, she’s a friend of mine and I’m curious to see what she’s been doing.

Concertina Gallery is located at 2351 N. Milwaukee Avenue, 2nd Floor. Opening Reception: Friday 7-10pm

2. Double Fantasy at Noble & Superior Projects

The card-announcement-thingie for Double Fantasy (why this? no other pics on their blog, that's why)

So this place is brand-spankin’-new. I don’t even know if it is actually an apartment gallery, though all indicators point to that (especially the directions that once you get to the address, “Rear House, Through The Gate!!!”). As you can see by the ever-so-informative card-announcement-thingie, the show features the work of Ivan Lozano and Kate Brock. I can’t find a website for Kate Brock, guess you’ll just have to go to the show.

Noble & Superior Projects is located at 1418 W. Superior St. #2R. Opening Reception: Friday 6-10pm

3. 2-for-1: After Effects at secondBEDROOM and Side Effects at Medicine Cabinet.

A two for one in Bridgeport. For those of you who haven’t been there, these two “galleries” are both part of the same apartment, secondBEDROOM located in, you guessed it…and Medicine Cabinet is the name for the installation space/bathroom.

Thad Kellstadt "what we do is a secret" (2009)

In the secondBEDROOM: “Thad Kellstadt’s After Effects attempts to explore the possible afterlife of objects, once dependent on human touch, now neglected but possessing a new presence. Some believe that the breaking of a mirror brings a lengthy stint of bad luck due to the soul confiscating power of the mirrors reflective surface.” Yep.

Side Effects by Jesse Mclean

and in the Medicine Cabinet: “Pharmaceutical marketing strategies and scenic nature photography combine to serve up a warning: Don’t get too comfortable on that plateau. While the view is spectacular there are other forces at work, just out of earshot and bubbling their way toward the placid peaks.” Uh huh.

secondBEDROOM and Medicine Cabinet are located at 3216 S. Morgan Street Apt. 4R. Opening Reception: Saturday 7-11pm.

4. The Trunk Show at Barbara and Barbara

The Trunk Show at Barbara and Barbara

Barbara and Barbara do love you, as their web address so astutely says. For this round the Barbara-ganza is putting on a show dealing with the idea of travel.The show includes the work of a crap-load of people, incuding: Sierra Berquist, Ben Bontempo, Peter McLean-Browne, Evan Burrows, Pete Cuba, Fred Frederick, Julia V. Hendrickson, Landon Manucci, Colin Nusbaum, Emma Powell, Scott Reinhard, David Schalliol, Elizabeth Stoutamire, Christopher Sykora, Sean Sykora, Jessie Vogel, Kelly Wallis, Rustél Weiss, Hannah Zurko

Barbara and Barbara is located at 1021 N. Western Ave. Opening Reception: Saturday 7-10pm.

5. Exhibition 2. 10242009 at MVSEVM

Exhibition 2.10242009 at MVSEVM

Ok, so I’m a bit confused as to who exactly MVSEVM are and whether or not there are two of them. So, instead of linking to the blog that seems like it might be theirs but says they are on vacation, I’m linking ya’ll to the On The Make (another wonderful site) page about the show and gallery. And I quote, “For its second exhibition MVSEVM invites eight diverse artists to contribute site specific works and installations that address the ambiguity of the space as both domestic and professional, private and public, as well as external concerns. In Exhibition 2.10242009 these inquiries manifest in an interrogation of social paradigms, raising questions pertaining to human relationships filtered through biological and technological themes.” Artists in the show: David Brooks, Joe Cruz, Chris Cuellar, Szu-Han Ho, Jesse Vogler, Gabriel Martinez, T UM’, Andrew Yang and Harley Young.

MVSEVM is located at 1626 N California Ave. #2. Opening Reception: Saturday 6-10pm.

6. Deedee Davis and Casey Roberts at Home Gallery

Deedee Davis and Casey Roberts - Works and Collaborative Works

Less of an apartment gallery and more of, well, a home (go figure), Home Gallery is located down in Hyde Park and run by Laura Shaeffer. For this round of exhibitions, Home will be featuring the work of Deedee Davis and Casey Roberts.

Home Gallery is located at 1407 E. 54th Pl. Opening Reception: Saturday 6-9pm.

7. Marginal Waters at Golden Gallery

Doug Ischar "MW 22"

So, this isn’t and opening, it’s a closing. Golden is also, like Home, on the edge of the “apartment gallery” definition, but what the hell. For this round of Golden-tastic-atude, they are closing out Marginal Waters, work from the 80s by Doug Ischar. And I quote, yet again, “Ischar will exhibit a body of photographs from 1985, never before seen in its entirety, taken on the now defunct Belmont Rocks in the city of Chicago, and a new single-channel video work.” The closing is also rolled together with the catalog release, and there’ll be an interview with John Neff.

Home Gallery is located at 816 W. Newport. Reception/Catalog Release: Sunday 3-6pm.

Attempted Murder of Australian Painter Cameron Sparks

Christopher — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:25:52 +0000

Sydney artist Cameron Sparks, 78, is being operated on in Royal North Shore Hospital after his 41-year-old neighbour allegedly attacked him in the backyard of one of their houses at Waverton. The latest reports are that his alleged attacker Peter Grayson, 41, was refused bail at Manly Local Court and has claimed to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the attack.

Mr. Sparks is in critical care and has recently gotten out of the OR.

Mr Sparks regularly showed his watercolours at the prestigious Macquarie Galleries, which has since closed. He also compiled a catalogue of the work of Australian artist David Davies.

Photographer Bill Henson’s Work Seized

Christopher — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:56:09 +0000

This is an ongoing story that I will barely scratch the surface of but Bill Henson an artist/photographer living in Australia has over the last few days/week been having his work of 25+ years seized, closed down and put into legal doubt.

His work is largely inky black desaturated figurative photos of individuals in minimal or distant urban environments wearing either loose clothing or nude. The catch is that there are also nude teen age models included.

Wikipedia sums up the events of the last few days quite well:

Controversies

On the 22 May 2008, the opening night of Bill Henson’s 2007-2008 exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, depicting nude children, was canceled after Hetty Johnston, a child protection campaigner, lodged a complaint about the exhibition with the New South Wales police [1] [2][3].

It was announced on 23 May 2008 that a number of the images in an exhibition of his work set to go on display at the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Paddington, Sydney had been seized by police local area commander Alan Sicard, with the intention of charging him with “publishing an indecent article[4], under the Crimes Act.” The seized images were also removed from the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery website, where the remainder of the series can now be viewed online[5].

On 25 May 2008, The Age published uncensored the image which was used on the print and email invitation, accompanied by an article by John Elder.[6] Superscript text.

Additional Information

Since then additional galleries have either been raided or have taken down exhibitions that were in the works.

To see additional works of his to inform your opinion you can visit his gallery representation Tolarno Galleries or view an index of images online via google

National Gallery of Victoria buys a Van Gogh…err a Rubens? Wait is it a Gavin Turk?

Christopher — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:34:23 +0000

Head of a Man is the name given to a $5 million Vincent Van Gogh portrait that was purchased in 1940. Only thing is now no one belives it is a Van Gogh. The Amsterdam Van Gogh Museum performed a 10-month investigation by scholars and has found the portrait was probably painted by a fellow student of Van Gogh in Antwerp or Paris in the mid 1880s. They are absolutely sure though that it is not a forgery since the work makes no attempt to directly mimic or pass itself off in a documented or established way as a Van Gogh.

Germaine Greer, a writer for the Guardian Unlimited has a theory that the work is a Rubens which I would think she is joking since Rubens is widely know for doing portraiture with almost no hard edges and voluminous features. Either way the work is now valued at a fraction of a fraction of it’s previous value and is being relabeled to reflect it’s now unknown creator.

I would like to personally throw my hat in the ring and say that I believe the portrait to be the product of Gavin Turk. After having seen his Warhol riffed “Piss Paintings” at the Armory I believe that his mimicking of past Masters has no limits and this is a 1800′s portrait of Turk with a rocking beard and a decade (for him) of hair growth.

That’s just my thought it could be a Thomas Kinkade for all I know.

Source: Paul Klein’s Art Letter

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Episode 223: Jonathan Watkins

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