The Vera List Center for
Art and Politics

“Knitting Nation: Phase 1 – Knitting During Wartime”
(from Allison Smith’s Public Art Fund project “The Muster”), 2005
Governors Island, New York City
Photo by Kim Stoddard

Panel Discussion & Craft Reception
Crafting Protest
Saturday, January 26, 2008,
3:00 - 5:00 p.m.

The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
New York City

http://www.vlc.newschool.edu

Many contemporary artists are using craft as a largely unregulated place of protest where diverse and timely political statements are being made. Presented as part of a series of talks on agency, the panel proposes that crafting, because it is often social and communal, plays a vital role in the public sphere. The speakers examine the role of craft in forming national identities, especially in times of political turmoil or war; notions of patriotism; feminism and the domestic sphere; and economic models that circumvent conventional market models. By linking the act of production and handmaking in the public realm to political expression, participants will ask: how can art foster political agency?

This program is presented concurrently with the release of the February issue of Modern Painters that features a roundtable discussion by the panelists. Participants of this program have also collaborated on a large-scale knit banner to be unveiled at the event. Following the panel discussion, audience members are invited to an informal craft reception in which panelists will present tactile examples of the materials, machinery, and processes they use in their work.

Moderator:
Julia Bryan-Wilson, art historian and critic, University of California at Irvine

Panelists:
Liz Collins, artist/designer
Sabrina Gschwandtner, artist
Cat Mazza, artist/activist
Allison Smith, artist

This event is presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Agency,” and is co-sponsored by Modern Painters. Allison Smith is a 2007 Artists’ Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). This presentation is co-sponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange, a public program of NYFA.

For further information, please visit http://www.vlc.newschool.edu

Centre Culturel Suisse

“Âpre Mont”
(27.01 - 06.04.08)

Centre Culturel Suisse
32-38, rue des Francs-Bourgeois
F-75003 Paris
eguigo@ccsparis.com

http://www.ccsparis.com

“Âpre Mont”
Valentin Carron
& guests : Fabian Marti, David Hominal and Balthazar Lovay
from 27 January to 6 April 2008
opening 26.01 from 6 to 9 pm

Sculptor Valentin Carron (1977) lives and works in Valais. More specifically his sculptures revisit the vernacular forms of Swiss culture. By creating substitutes of objects from this mountain region (Valais wine, religious symbols, figures of bears sculpted from wood…), his work questions the construction process of a so-called national culture. Going beyond the humorous slant on an authentic pseudo-folklore, he is making a statement about the production conditions and uses of this imagery and expresses an aversion to “blinkered middle-class and right-thinking” values.

Valentin Carron will present sculptures specifically made for this exhibition at the Centre to give the French public an opportunity to appreciate his work on a wider scale in an institutional setting for the first time. For this exhibition, he invited 3 other artists to particpate : David Hominal (*1976); Fabian Marti (*1979) and Balthazar Lovay.

PROJECT ROOM
“A certain, je ne sais quoi”

Following the multidisciplinary principle which this time brings together a photographer, a graphic artist and a visual artist, the CCS project room is presenting three successive monographic exhibitions from young Swiss artists. This is the first personal exhibition in an institution in France for all three of them.

Lukas Wassmann (27.01 - 17.02)
FLAG (21.02 - 09.03)
Guillaume Pilet (13.03 - 06.04)

Next exhibitions
John Armleder
Cornell Windlin
(18.05 – 28.09.08)
Opening 17.05 / 6:00 – 9:00 am
The Centre culturel suisse de Paris is the representation of Pro Helvetia, Arts Council of Switzerland

Handy information:
Open from Wednesday to Sunday / 1 pm – 8 pm / late night Thursday till 10 pm
(entrance by 38 rue des Francs-Bourgeois – at the end of the passage) / free entry
Rendez-vous du jeudi soir
Evenings / 8 pm / reservation recommended 01 42 71 38 38

Subscribe now to the CCS newsletter on http://www.ccsparis.com

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall

Miroslav Tichy, Untitled
Courtesy: Foundation Tichy Oceán.
Julia Margaret Cameron, “The Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty”, 1866
Courtesy: Collection Moderna Museet

MIROSLAV TICHY & JULIA MARGARET CAMERON
January 26 - March 23, 2008
Curator: Tessa Praun

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall
Frihamnen, SE -115 56 Stockholm
Phone: +46 8 545 680 40
art@magasin3.com
http://www.magasin3.com

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall starts this year’s exhibition program with an encounter between a recently “discovered” contemporary artist, Miroslav Tichy, and an early star in the writing of photographic history, Julia Margaret Cameron.

Working independent of his contemporaries from the 1960’s up to the 90’s, Miroslav Tichy (b. 1926, Czech Republic) created an idiosyncratic style, fascinating in its imperfection and reminiscent of photography’s early experimental years. Using homemade cameras Tichy took blurry, mottled photographs in his Moravian home town Kyjov. His anonymous portraits depict mothers, waitresses, students, sitting on park benches, waiting for the bus or in conversation with a friend – moments from everyday life and often framed by elaborate mounts.

By contrast photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879), part of Victorian England’s privileged cultural elite, was able to devote herself to exploring the new medium of her time, assiduously taking portraits of her circle of friends. Authors, scientists, artists and their families were captured in dream-like, allegorical images or intimate portraits. Cameron gained early acclaim as a photographic innovator for her experiments with composition and lighting, and today her works still surprise with their
timeless expression.

The exhibition presents for the first time in Scandinavia a wide selection of Miroslav Tichy’s extensive production and a small group of excellent works by Julia Margaret Cameron. The curator Tessa Praun is pleased about this opportunity and says:
“It is fantastic to be able to show Tichy’s works that have been tucked away from a public until only a few years ago, and see them together with some of Cameron’s most distinguished and
intriguing portraits”.

A documentary about Miroslav Tichy called “Tarzan retired”, 2004, made by Roman Buxbaum, founder of Foundation Tichy Ocean, will also be on view.

On Saturday, 26 January at 3pm Roman Buxbaum will give a lecture at Magasin 3.

In conjunction to the exhibition Magasin 3 will publish a richly illustrated book.

Photographic works by Miroslav Tichy were for the first time shown in a group exhibition at Die Blaue Kunsthalle in Cologne (DE) in 1990 and in 2004 at the Seville Biennale. In 2005 Kunsthalle Zürich (CH) presented Tichy’s first solo exhibition and since then his work has been shown in Canada, USA, Germany, and most recently in China. The Centre Pompidou in Paris (FR) will also host a solo exhibition in May 2008.

Julia Margaret Cameron became a member of the Photographic Societies of London and Scotland in 1864, one year after she started to photograph. She exhibited and published her works extensively and sometimes charged for her portraits. Today Cameron’s photographs are widely known but
rarely exhibited.