Museum of
Contemporary Art Sydney

Holdfast (Macrocystis angustifolia / giant kelp)
2007, tin, aluminium
Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia
Image courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery,
Sydney, Australia Copyright: the artist

Fiona Hall: Force Field
6 March - 1 June 2008

MCA | Museum of Contemporary Art
140 George Street
PO Box R1286
Sydney 1223 Australia

http://www.mca.com.au

MCA presents major solo exhibition by Fiona Hall

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney presents an in-depth survey of the work of prominent Australian artist Fiona Hall, featuring photography, sculpture, installation and video works from the 1970s to the present day.

Fiona Hall: Force Field continues the MCA’s series of solo projects that explore the work of Australia’s leading, innovative contemporary practitioners. The exhibition is presented by the MCA in partnership with the City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand and is co-curated by Vivienne Webb (MCA), Gregory O’Brien and Paula Savage (City Gallery Wellington).

Born in Sydney (1953), and based in Adelaide, Hall began her career in photography and later extended into sculpture, installation, garden design and video. Her work is characterised by its use of ordinary objects and materials, which are transformed into complex and allusive art works, often through highly labour-intensive processes.

The artist has shown a sustained fascination with the wonders of nature and in recent years her work has reflected an increasing concern at the impact of humans upon it. Her work draws upon sources as disparate as literature, politics, finance, science, media, sexuality and gardening.

Hall is well-known for her series of delicate sculptures created out of aluminium sardine tins, first made in 1989. The series Paradisus terrestris features erotically charged bodily vignettes juxtaposed against precisely sculpted flowers and foliage.

Other works in the exhibition address issues of colonisation, systems of knowledge and the ethics of consumption. In Tender (2003-05) Hall presents a number of birds’ nests in glass display cases reminiscent of an aviary. Each nest is an exact replica of one belonging to a specific bird species, but rather than construct them of straw and twigs Hall has woven the nests out of shredded US one dollar bills, featuring the words “this note is legal tender”.

The exhibition is divided into a number of chapters or zones in which works from different phases of the artist’s career are brought together. This arrangement allows the earlier works to be seen in the context of Hall’s more recent conceptual work. There are six rooms in total, titled ‘consumption’, ‘symbiosis, ‘body’, ‘paradise’, ‘territory’ and ‘trade’.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated, contextual catalogue including essays by Vivienne Webb (MCA) and Gregory O’Brien (City Gallery Wellington) and an interview with the artist by
Paula Savage.

Fiona Hall: Force Field is on view at the MCA, Sydney from 6 March until 1 June 2008, before touring to New Zealand to the City Gallery Wellington (12 July until 1 October 2008) and to the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu (4 December 2008 until 1 March 2009).

Flash Art International

Flash Art International No.259
(March - April 2008)

http://www.flashartonline.com

Flash Art International # 259
March - April Issue
FOCUS LOWER EAST SIDE

As one of the city’s most quickly evolving areas, New York’s Lower East Side is the protagonist of this issue’s Focus. With an introductory text that recounts the neighborhood’s history (from the “Real Estate Show” to the New Museum reopening) and an exclusive series of more than 25 interviews with some of the most outstanding gallerists, art critics and curators working in the area, Flash Art International explores the great expectations that surround the LES phenomenon and the effects of ‘gentrification.’

This issue’s interview with Matthew Monahan is part of the ongoing project by Maurizio Cattelan. The Los Angeles-based artist discusses his work from his downtown studio “at the intersection of toy district and skid row” through a mythological story.

Also in this issue, Paul McCarthy interviews Larry Clark. The “Tulsa Kid” tells McCarthy about his latest film Wassup Rockers over the course of a conversation that establishes unseen relationships between the artists’ past and future projects.

Cezary Bodzianowski and Adam Szymczyk talk about the 5th Berlin Biennale and much more.
On the ‘Oslo-Berlin axis,’ Andreas Schlaegel maps a line between these two art centers while introducing us to Oslo’s contemporary scene, its main private and public spaces and its most
promising artists.

Victor Palacios writes on the latest projects by five young Mexican artists: Begoña Morales, Edgar Orlaineta, Fernando Ortega, Sebastian Romo and Jorge Satorre.

Clayton Campbell meets the artist Vanessa Beecroft and the director Pietra Brettkelly on the occasion of this year’s Sundance Film Festival screening of The Art Star and The Sudanese Twins.

Victor Pinchuk presents the Victor Pinchuk Art Center and tells Chris Sharp how this collection started and how he imagines its future.

After seven years, the Letters to the Publisher are back. Gallerists, art critics and readers write to Giancarlo Politi to express their opinions on contemporary art’s current events.

Global Art presents La Trampa: Santiago Sierra’s latest performance in Santiago, Chile; this issue’s Ouverture introduces us to Serban Savu’s Eastern peripheries; and Spotlight focuses on the second part of the “Unmonumental” show: “Collage: the Unmonumental Picture.”

Group show reviews include: “Live Cinema/Return of the Image” at Philadelphia Museum of Art and “Mimétisme” at Extra City in Antwerp.

Solo show reviews include: Alan Saret, Lawrence Weiner, Lovett/Codagnone, Choi Jeong-Hwa, Mark Bradford, Shirin Neshat, Guy Ben-Ner, Luis Gispert, Angela White, Victor Man, Catherine Yass, Juan Muñoz, Rachel Howard, Falke Pisano, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Gérard Garouste, Gabriel Kuri, Saul Fletcher, Georg Herold, Kai Althoff, Fischli and Weiss, Daniele Puppi, Minerva Cuevas, Pipilotti Rist,
Sreshta Premnath.

Flash reviews include: Ana Mendieta and Hans Breder, Michael Bell-Smith, Tom Burr, JP Munro, Roni Horn, Roman Signer, Andreas Exner, SØren Martinsen, Chen Shaoxiong, Danh Vo, Jonathan Meese, Oliver Musovik.

For Fresh Start Gea Politi meets artist Christine Carole Newby alias Cosey Fanni Tutti.
The COVER ARTISTS for this issue are Matthew Monahan and Cezary Bodzianowski.

Get your hands on a copy of the March - April issue of the world’s leading art magazine while
supplies last.

For information and subscriptions:
Flash Art International
Via Carlo Farini, 68
20159 Milan
ITALY
Tel. 39 02 668 6150
info@flashartonline.com
http://www.flashartonline.com

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall

TINO SEHGAL
March 6 - May 4, 2008
Curator: Richard Julin

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

http://www.magasin3.com

“It is with great pleasure that we present Tino Sehgal’s first solo exhibition in Scandinavia. His thinking, creative process and the resultant artworks of constructed situations offer an extraordinary experience and positive challenge to our visitors as well as to us as an institution.” says Richard Julin, the curator of the exhibition.

Sehgal’s point of departure as an artist is the fact that we are using up more of the planet’s resources than what is necessary for survival. In his work he challenges the notion of production, both artistically and economically, by creating immaterial ways of generating meaning. His artwork exists only in the moment in which it is experienced, and as a verbal narrative when recounted to others. It is not documented by any audiovisual means. His practice revolves around people who are instructed by Sehgal to use their bodies, voices and personalities to interpret a specific set of rules. The reaction or even participation of the spectator gives the possibility for the work to actually happen. He makes a point of the fact that his art is not a performance, a medium which historically has been a reaction to the art market. Sehgal’s pieces exist as exhibitable, sellable and collectable, yet immaterial work.

Three works will be shown at Magasin 3, involving around 30 individuals as interpreters: staff members, academics from various fields and professional dancers. The works are ”This is new”(2003), ”Instead of allowing some things to rise up to your face, dancing bruce and dan and other things” (2000) and ”This objective of that object” (2004).

Artist’s Talk: 7 pm, Thursday, March 6th – a conversation between Tino Sehgal and chief curator Richard Julin.

Tino Sehgal was born in London in 1976. He lives and works in Berlin.
Sehgal has had solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center (2008); Marian Goodman Gallery (2007); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2007); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2007, 2006, 2005); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2006); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2006); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2006); Hamburger Kunstverein, Germany (2006); Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2004); Musée des Beaux-arts de Nantes, France (2004); and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2004). He has also participated in the Lyon Bienniale, France (2007); the Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2006); the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005); the Venice Bienniale / Utopia Station (2003); as well as Manifesta, Frankfurt, Germany (2002). He represented Germany at the 2005 Venice Bienniale. In 2007 he was nominated for the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst, Berlin and in 2006 for the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. He received the Baloise Art Prize at
Art Basel, Schweiz in 2004 as well as the 2003 Kunstpreis der Böttcherstrasse in Bremen, Germany.