Artipedia - Arts News

Threshold artspace

Claude Closky: LOVE AND FEAR
12 May - 4 October 2007
curated by Iliyana Nedkova
http://www.horsecross.co.uk

Accompanied by a special release of:
Read More | A journal of critical writing
Issue 3 | 2007 |
ISSN 1755-0866 (Online)
Published by Horsecross, Perth, UK
For a complimentary copy
please contact Iliyana Nedkova inedkova@horsecross.co.uk

Claude Closky: LOVE AND FEAR
This summer, Horsecross presents Love and Fear (2007), a major new commission for Threshold artspace by the French artist Claude Closky, recipient of Le Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2005. Love and Fear has been acquired for the permanent collection of the recently opened Threshold artspace and is showing as part of a new group exhibition Body Language curated by Iliyana Nedkova.

Closky’s new work Love and Fear brings a degree of intensity, absurdity and further satirical twist to his oeuvre. The qualities, which persist are Closky’s ongoing affection for the primacy of the word in contemporary art, site-considered approach to place, and disarming bravado when exposing controversies in life. The romantic, love-hate relationship, involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and enmity, philia and phobia, silence and noise, is at the formal and contextual core of Love and Fear.

Born in Paris in 1963, Closky is known for his subtle and witty style. He often plays with the rules, codes and hierarchy of the images, sounds and words from popular culture to shift the meaning unexpectedly. Recently Closky exhibited at Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou and Grand Palais, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hague; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; MADRE Museum, Naples; Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga and National Gallery of Fine Art, Sofia.

Love and Fear is premiered in the context of Body Language — a new group exhibition which investigates how artists use the technique of ‘people watching’ to push the boundaries of the traditional genre of figurative painting. The new cinematic figuration defines studio portraits and choreographed performances, improvised documentaries and computer game characters. Invariably artists use the primal communication of body language employing gestures and postures; eyes and smiles; masques and tattoos, and even sounds and colours in their works.

The exhibition features a dozen new additions and selected works from the Threshold artspace permanent collection by Claude Closky, Brody Condon, Matt Hulse, Dan Perjovschi, Rafaël Rozendaal, Kosta Tonev and others.

Threshold artspace | Horsecross | Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation | Scottish Arts Council | 55degrees

Threshold artspace
Horsecross, Perth Concert Hall
Mill Street, Perth PH1 5HZ
0044 (0) 845 612 6314
inedkova@horsecross.co.uk
http://www.horsecross.co.uk
Open Daily Mon-Sat 10am-7pm Sun 12pm-5pm Concert evenings closes 11pm.
All Threshold artspace exhibitions are free and open to the public.

About Threshold artspace and Horsecross
Threshold artspace launched in September 2005 to national acclaim in Perth, UK. It is home to Scotland’s only permanent collection of digital art with 60 works acquired in less than 2 years. The artspace features a number of project spaces available for artists’ interventions including an entrance box for interactive soundscapes; a ‘canvas’ of 22 flat screens dominating the artspace for multi-channel video art installations; an interactive playground for art games and live Internet art; a trail of sound boxes and sensors embedded in the floor and ceiling; an audiovisual treat in the public toilets; copper-clad roof for light artists. All Threshold artspace locations are linked together by an ‘intelligent’ software which allows artworks to be displayed through curated exhibitions and experienced 24 hours a day throughout the year.

Horsecross is a new agency delivering cultural activities in Threshold artspace, Perth Concert Hall, Perth Theatre and to all communities across the Perth & Kinross area of central Scotland. The Horsecross name comes from the local area. Threshold artspace and Perth Concert Hall sit on the site of the original Horsecross — Perth’s 17th century horse market. The name is synonymous with bustling activity in the heart of the city. The development of the £19.5m Perth Concert Hall and Threshold artspace was a Millennium project and is part of the area’s economic development strategy to position Perth as one of Europe’s most vibrant small cities by 2010. Horsecross aims to put this part of central Scotland firmly on the cultural map both nationally and internationally.

For further details please contact Iliyana Nedkova, Horsecross Creative Director (New Media Art)
tel: 01738 477743 e-mail: inedkova@horsecross.co.uk

For more information go to: http://www.horsecross.co.uk

Institute of Contemporary Arts

Insider Art
Art from the Koestler Awards Scheme
12 July - 9 Sept 2007

Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH
44 20 7930 3647

http://www.ica.org.uk

The ICA presents Insider Art — an exhibition of selected artworks by prisoners and others in confinement in Britain — including inmates of young offender institutions, high security psychiatric hospitals and immigration removal centres.

The work has been specially chosen for the ICA from the Koestler Awards Scheme - an annual open submission competition which promotes art and design across the criminal justice system - by a panel comprising Zelda Cheatle (photography consultant and Koestler trustee), Grayson Perry (artist), Dr Mike Phillips (author and curator, Tate) and Mark Sladen (Director of Exhibitions, ICA).

2007 has seen a record 3,100 entries in the art and design categories for the Koestler Awards. Submissions are sent to the Koestler Arts Centre at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, and as well as financial awards, feedback to entrants is given by the judging panel. This is the first year that works from the awards scheme will be shown in a major public institution bringing the scheme and the work to the widest audience it has ever had. It is also the first time that some of the work will be exhibited under the artists’ own names.

The ICA is immensely proud to host this exhibition which reflects the great talents contained within some of Britain’s least public institution. The exhibition will present approximately two hundred artworks drawn from the 2007 submission. Works on display will include painting, sculpture, drawing, ceramics, textiles and other media. Many of the pieces will be for sale, with proceeds from the sales divided between the artists, the Koestler Trust and Victim Support.

The Koestler Trust is an independent charity that was founded by the Hungarian-born writer and activist Arthur Koestler in 1962 to support the creation of art in prisons. Koestler served time as a political prisoner in Spain and France, spent six weeks in HMP Pentonville in 1940 where he was sent as an illegal alien, and likened the experience of prison to a "death of the spirit". He believed that giving prisoners the opportunity to create art would restore confidence, encourage communication and inspire a positive means of expression, which in turn would aid the rehabilitation process and transition to life outside.

Since its foundation, the Koestler Trust has developed a unique national role and is recognised across the criminal justice system for supporting and rewarding the creative activity of offenders and for showcasing their arts to the public. 2007 will see the launch of Koestler Mentors — artists trained to support award winners to continue their arts activity after their release from prison. The Trust is funded by individual donors and other sources, but has also relied on a Government grant. Sadly this grant (which constituted a fifth of its running costs) is being cut entirely this year.

Insider Art offers an important insight into both the vibrant artistic culture within the criminal justice system and the work of the Koestler Trust in fostering it.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of talks and gallery tours.

PANEL DISCUSSION: INSIDER ART SELECTORS
Saturday 21 July, 3 pm: Brandon Room
FREE WITH DAY MEMBERSHIP
Panel discussion with three of the exhibition selectors for Insider Art, Zelda Cheatle (photography consultant and Koestler trustee), Dr Mike Phillips (author and curator, Tate) and Mark Sladen (Director of Exhibitions, ICA).

GALLERY TOURS
Sunday 22 July and every Saturday from 28 July-8 September, 3pm: Lower Gallery
FREE WITH DAY MEMBERSHIP
Special tours of the exhibition will be given every week by individuals directly involved with the criminal justice system in Britain, including Koestler Trust Director Tim Robertson and ex-offender artists.

http://www.ica.org.uk/insiderart

Insider Art is kindly supported by:

For more information go to: http://www.ica.org.uk

La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre

A History of One’s Own
26 May - 21 July 2007

Victor Alimpiev, Marie Andersson, Karlotta Blöndal, Aurélien Froment,
Graham Gussin, Martin Karlsson, Guillaume Leblon

Guest curator in residence:
Anna Johansson

La Galerie,
Contemporary Art Centre
1 rue Jean-Jaurès
F-93130 Noisy-le-Sec
T: +33 (0)1 49 42 67 17
lagalerie@noisylesec.fr

Residency for foreign curators

Wishing to contribute to the opening-up the French art scene to professionals from abroad, La Galerie, a Contemporary Art Centre located in the suburbs of Paris, hosts each year a foreign curator in residence for a period of three months. First organised in 2006, the aim of the residency is to put on an exhibition at La Galerie within the context of a French art centre, and to meet artists and professionals working in the contemporary art field in France.

The first curator in residence was Bettina Klein for her exhibition "Objet à part" (Ryan Gander, Alexander Gutke, Maria M. Loboda, Kirsten Pieroth, Wilhelm Sasnal, Albrecht Schäfer, Florian Slotawa and Simon Starling).

Selected via a call for exhibition projects, Anna Johansson (born 1976 in Uppsala, lives in Malmö, Sweden) has been working in Noisy-le-Sec on a group exhibition (with Victor Alimpiev, Marie Andersson, Karlotta Blöndal, Aurélien Froment, Graham Gussin, Martin Karlsson, Guillaume Leblon) entitled "A History of One’s Own" which she is currently presenting:

"A rather troubling experience we can have is that of suddenly waking up with the feeling of not knowing whether one’s still in the limitless domain of dream or in tangible reality. Whether it disturbs us or excites our imagination, this experience has the virtue of sending a radical tremor through reality, even if only for a second. The exhibition ‘A History of One’s Own’ tries to get in closer to these intermediate zones and examine the way the imaginative realm — from our fantasies to our dreams — can add to and even modify our relationship with truth.”

La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre in Noisy-le-Sec

La Galerie is one of the forty Contemporary Art Centres in France, publicly funded by the City of Noisy-le-Sec, the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the Ile-de-France region and the Seine-Saint-Denis département.

Founded in 1999, La Galerie offers a programme based on the notion of art as a sensory experience and a reflection of our relation to the world through a conceptual approach. Four exhibitions a year (two monographic, two thematic) offer hitherto unseen works by internationally recognized artists together with those of emerging French artists.

The centre’s main activities are to produce art works, publish bilingual reference publications, host artists and curators in residence and develop educational activities in relation to the artistic programme.

2005/2007 programme:

- Group exhibitions: "Makings of the Sublime" (James Ireland, Friedrich Kunath, Christopher Orr, Evariste Richer); "Cosmogonies" (Isabelle Arthuis, Soyoung Chung, Julien Discrit, Attila Csörgö, Vidya Gastaldon, Jean-Michel Wicker); "Expeditions" (Dove Allouche, Simon Boudvin, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Joachim Koester, Abraham Poincheval & Laurent Tixador, Daniel Roth, Hans Schabus) and others

- Guest curator’s exhibition: "Objet à part" (Ryan Gander, Alexander Gutke, Maria M. Loboda, Kirsten Pieroth, Wilhelm Sasnal, Albrecht Schäfer, Florian Slotawa, Simon Starling – curator in residence: Bettina Klein)…

- Solo shows: Laurent Montaron, Olivier Nottellet, Myriam Mechita…

Upcoming exhibitions:

- Evariste Richer (15 September - 17 November 2007)
- Adam Adach (4 December 2007 - 2 February 2008)
- "Night visions" (group show / 8 March - 10 May 2008)

La Galerie is a member of:
tram, Paris/lle-de-France contemporary art network: http://www.tram-idf.fr
d.c.a, French association for the Development of Art Centres: http://www.dca-art.com
This exhibition is part of "Plein soleil" (Out in the Sun / Summer in the Art Centres) organised by d.c.a with the Ministry of Culture and Communication’s Visual Arts Delegation.

Application deadline for the next curator’s residency: 15 January 2008
For further information, please contact Marianne Lanavère, director, at: lagalerie@noisylesec.fr

For more information go to: http://www.tram-idf.fr