Artipedia - Arts News

Tate Britain and Tate Modern

Art Now at Tate Britain and
Level 2 Gallery at Tate Modern

Tate Britain
Millbank
London SW1P 4RG

Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG

http://www.tate.org.uk

Art Now at Tate Britain reflects current developments in contemporary British art. It consists of up to five exhibitions a year which demonstrate the quality and variety of new art in the UK.

Level 2 Gallery is Tate Modern’s dedicated showcase exploring the latest ideas, themes and trends in international contemporary art. It is located at the North Entrance facing the river.

Art Now: Christina Mackie
2 June - 28 October

Christina Mackie’s sculptural installations weave an intricate web of associations between their diverse physical components, which comprise natural, man-made and crafted elements.

Holding an inherent respect for her materials and an intuitive understanding of the way things work, Mackie’s creative processes are often directed by what something can be made to do. Both personal and complex, her works are imbued with her own experience of the world and her private thought processes.

For Art Now, Mackie has created a new sculpture, The large huts, in the Sculpture Garden outside Tate Britain.

Art Now: Goshka Macuga
30 June - 14 October 2007

Goshka Macuga’s sculptural environments include unlikely displays of other artists’ work alongside disparate collections of objects — books, souvenirs, scraps, artefacts and curios — thus blurring the roles of artist, curator and collector. For Art Now she has selected objects from Tate’s Archive and Collection to explore conventions of archiving, exhibition making and museum display.

Art Now Live
Saturday 8 September 2007

Working in collaboration with commissioning agency Electra, Art Now presents a day of live works that explore ideas of participation and storytelling. Projects include new work by the Bohman Brothers, Melanie Gilligan, Emma Hedditch, Janice Kerbel and Olivia Plender.

Art Now: Seb Patane
3 November 2007 - 13 January 2008

Seb Patane creates paired-down tableaux comprising drawings, adapted found imagery and objects, sound and live performance often arranged around provisional architectural constructions. Resurrecting material that contains a particular potency for him, Patane is drawn to ideas of tribalism, urban mythology and altered states. His sources have included staged portrait photographs from a Victorian magazine, 80s avant-garde German band DAF (Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft) and occultist mountaineer Aleister Crowley. Patane will be making a new installation for Art Now.

Level 2 Gallery: Learn to Read
19 June - 2 September 2007

Learn to Read is the latest exhibition in the Level 2 Gallery series which forecasts themes and trends in international contemporary art. This visually diverse display brings together works by 29 artists which play with text, erasure and miscommunication and the works resonate with the influence of Dada, Fluxus, Letterism and conceptual art.

The featured artists are: Saadane Afif, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Carol Bove, Peter Coffin, Annelise Coste, Shannon Ebner, Simon Evans, Mario Garcia Torres, Graham Gillmore, Mauricio Guillen, Kevin Hutcheson, Bethan Huws, Július Koller, Christopher Knowles, Friedrich Kunath, Glenn Ligon, Maria Lindberg, Kris Martin, Jonathan Monk, Lia Perjovschi, Philippe Parreno, Kirsten Pieroth, Damien Roach, Vittorio Santoro, David Shrigley, Frances Stark, Sue Tompkins, Jordan Wolfson.

Supported by CULTURESFRANCE, Pro Helvetia (Swiss Arts Council) and the Romanian Cultural Institute in London

Level 2 Gallery: The Irresistible Force
20 September - 25 November

The Irresistible Force is an exhibition and magazine project that examines how the economic structures of capitalism shape labour and distribution, advertising and consumerism, creation and reproduction, and the flows of persons and commodities. As cultural values and traditions are realigned by globalisation and market forces, the international artists in this exhibition reflect on the impact of these upheavals. Tensions, uncertainty, and fantastical stories emerge from the banality of bureaucracy and circulation of commodities. Among the featured artists will be Matei Bejenaru, the first Temporary Project in Level 2 Gallery during the weekend 8-9 September.

The Irresistible Force is the first of four related exhibitions in Level 2 Gallery addressing notions of the citizen and citizenship. Acclaimed polemicist Stuart Home will be writer-in-residence for the year, producing literary responses to the concepts and contents of each of the four exhibitions.

Level 2 Gallery: Temporary Project: Matei Bejenaru
Saturday 8 - Sunday 9 September

During the coming year an artist will be invited to do a weekend-long temporary project in the Level 2 Gallery between each exhibition. The first will be Romanian artist Matei Bejenaru who will present a project with and about illegal Romanian migrant workers in the UK.

Supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute in London

Tate Britain, London SW1
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artnow/

Tate Modern, London SE1
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/level2gallery/

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

1st Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art

1st Thessaloniki
Biennale of Contemporary Art
"HETEROTOPIAS"
21st May - 30th September 2007
160 artists / 37 countries / 25 city institutions / 26 spaces / 27 exhibitions

http://www.thessalonikibiennale.gr

A huge… saw, 10 meters high, arrives…from Miami, "cutting"…the earth and the sea…in an act symbolising the gap that may exist among people and religions. "Black birds", men with ties and briefcases landing on the atrium of the Byzantine Museum, reminding us of "Golconda" by Magritte. A painted table of the artist from which 300 small sketches have escaped and float freely on…the wall creating the illusion of three-dimensional painting. "Paintings" created in Braille: These are Van Gogh’s letters describing his works, transferred to white frames, that can be "seen" through touch by people with impaired vision. These are some of the "Heterotopias" that will be exhibited in the 1st Biennale of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, entitled "Heterotopias", organised by the State Museum of Contemporary Art with the support of the Ministry of Culture from May 21 until September 30 (within the framework of "Cu
lture" operational programme - co-funded by the European Union (80% by ERDF and 20% by the Ministry of Culture).

The title is borrowed from Michel Foucault’s lecture on real spaces-islands where man follows a certain set of rules, which distract him from his daily functions. We interpret Foucault’s text based on new conditions which prove its timelessness. We detect contemporary "heterotopias", counterpoising real spaces with imaginary ones and we imagine new spaces of the future. As the Biennale’s city, Thessaloniki reevaluates the notions of centre and periphery and brings the periphery to the centre by abolishing the established borders. This way, art is liberated from the restricting walls of a Museum which, regardless, is a "heterotopia" in itself.

The Director of the State Museum of Contemporary Art and one of the three curator of the main programme of the Biennale, Maria Tsantsanoglou -the other two are Catherine David, Jan-Erik Lundström- notes: "Foucault underlines that the museum is a heterotopia. However, in the end, it is the work of art that becomes a heterotopia. It is the creation of a space within the real one, a space that borrows elements from the real space, situations and actions, archives and drawings in order to offer, in the end, a strange reflection of the real space, a "heterotopia", that exists and is determined by a system of rules referring to ethics and aesthetics codes".

The President of the Board of Trustees of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, George V. Tsaras explains: "We aim to establish the city of Thessaloniki as a meeting point where artists and art theoreticians can collaborate. We would like to bring the cultural institutions of the city together. To suggest and insinuate contemporary and enterprising artistic activities which dare to stray from the globalization tendency of deterioration and leveling, in order to support cultural singularity, to respect identity and diversity, and to equally accentuate local as well as universal qualities. The 1st Biennale’s theme, "Heterotopias" emphasizes the dynamics of a living and vivid cultural foundation which draws from incentives and inspires creation, which accepts and then emits. The diversity that we are defending with this organization is by no means established by the mediums or techniques that are used, nor does it rely on the folkloric exploitation of our cultural
identity, but rather, it is sustained by our faith in the ecumenical and at the same time subjective nature of artistic expression and communication. More than a prominent artistic event, every biennale constitutes an attitude for the international scene and the issues that concern the world. They also play a prominent political and humanitarian role as they shape the ways in which each society comprehends the world around it. In this sense, the art of our days constitutes one of the few stages of resistance against a dominating, globalized system which has invaded everything, including artistic expression".

The Biennale’s website http://www.thessalonikibiennale.gr contains all the exhibitions and events of the parallel and concurrent programme (with exact dates of openings and durations) which will take place throughout the city in collaboration with many cultural institutions: Guest Artist: Leda Papakonstantinou Title of the Piece : "In the name of" (September 2007), Exhibition-Project: Public Screen (September 2007), Closing Multi-disciplinary Conference "The Meaning of the Heterotopia in the Arts" (September 2007), Educational Programme: "The Biennale goes…to school!", the 3rd Children’s Biennale, The International Workshop of Young Artists, Project "Farkadona", Exhibition of printmaking "Heterotypias-Heterotypies"

Exhibition of 15 Greek Visual Artists "Recreation-maid in Greece", Exhibition of 27 visual artists from Greece and abroad with the title "Who is there?" (May - June), Project "OUF!" Exhibition "Other Spaces", Happening "The Concept of Symposium", "The Mystery Festival", Collaboration with art galleries of Thessaloniki.
Welcome!

For further information
Press office
Yiota Sotiropoulou / 6972336261
[t] 2310- 589152 [f] 2310- 589210, press@greekstatemuseum.com

For more information go to: http://www.thessalonikibiennale.gr