Artipedia - Arts News

The Museum of
Contemporary Art Sydney

Eugenia Raskopoulos
words are not hard (stills) 2006. Digital video, sound. 4:16 minutes
Courtesy the artist and Arc One Gallery, Melbourne.

Video Logic

Australian video art at the MCA
19 August until 2 November 2008

Museum of Contemporary Art
West Circular Quay, Sydney, Australia
+61 2 9245 2400

http://www.mca.com.au

Australian video art at the MCA

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney presents a new exhibition entitled Video Logic, focusing on six contemporary Australian artists who work with video and screen-based practices.

Featured artists are Denis Beaubois, Philip Brophy, John Conomos, Adam Geczy, John Gillies and Eugenia Raskopoulos. Each has contributed substantially to the development of the medium in Australia and their work has been influential for a subsequent generation of Australian video artists.

Curated by Russell Storer, Video Logic explores a medium that has reached great prominence in recent years. Each artist works with video as part of a wider practice that may include installation, performance, sound, and writing. They take a range of formal, conceptual and presentational approaches to the medium, drawing upon its unique ability to combine multiple disciplines.

The works of John Gillies and Denis Beaubois form connections between video and performance. Gillies’ new work draws upon the film genre of the road movie and cinematic techniques of montage and narrative to create an evocative video performance. Beaubois’ works consider the video camera itself as an ‘actor’, producing its own electronically-generated point of view. Language and cultural history are important elements in the work of Eugenia Raskopoulos and John Conomos. Conomos’ work Autumn Song Take Two takes the form of a video essay, using a collage of images and words to investigate his personal history, within a neon-lit installation created for the exhibition. Raskopoulos’ videos employ performance and animation to consider communication and the shifting nature of meaning in different contexts.

The relationship between image and sound is explored in works by Philip Brophy and Adam Geczy. Brophy ‘evaporates’ the music from pop videos and replaces them with soundtracks of his own design, transforming them into disturbing narratives. Geczy is interested in the potential of ‘visual music’ and presents works created in collaboration with the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe and the German electronic musician Thomas Gerwin.

A catalogue has been produced to accompany the exhibition and features new writing on each artist. Brophy, Conomos and Geczy are also prominent theorists and critics in the field of video art, cinema and new media, and texts by each are featured alongside major essays by Stephen Jones, Jacqueline Millner and Bernice Murphy tracing the history and development of video art in Australia. The publication provides a context for the artists’ works and a unique and essential resource on the subject.

Exhibition dates: 19 August until 2 November 2008
Exhibition cost: Free entry

About the MCA: The Museum of Contemporary Art is Australia’s only museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting the work of contemporary artists. Located on Sydney’s iconic Circular Quay, the MCA presents a dynamic program of exhibitions and events that explores the latest international and Australian contemporary art. Visitors can engage with artists and their ideas through a diverse range of events, including artist talks, live performances, lectures, workshops and youth programs. The internationally respected and locally loved institution is an intrinsic part of Australia’s cultural fabric and last year was voted Sydney’s favourite museum by local residents.

Contact information:
Museum of Contemporary Art
West Circular Quay, Sydney, Australia
http://www.mca.com.au
+61 2 9245 2400

Ray Smith 11:38 a.m.

Ray Smith Revealed as First Resident Artist of 2008-2009 Season at Lux Art Institute

ENCINITAS, CA – July 21, 2008 – Lux Art Institute, San Diego’s interactive art destination, will welcome internationally recognized painter and sculptor Ray Smith, known for his vivid and surrealistic images, as the first artist-in-residence of the 08/09 season.

From September 12 - 27, Smith will be in residence at Lux and create a 6 ft. x 13 ft. oil painting on canvas from start to finish. Visitors can “see art happen” while he is in the studio and view his completed work through November 1, 2008.

Smith’s work is highly figurative, often featuring dogs and other animals as anthropomorphic beings that hint at aspects of human nature. He bends, twists, and transplants his imagery, creating dreamlike distortions and juxtapositions.

His exhibit at Lux will include paintings imbued with a sense of his Mexican-American heritage. “From his roots in the new expressionism of the 1980s to his surreal vision of clock portraits, Ray Smith is a captivating artist to open Lux’s second season,” said Lux Director Reesey Shaw. “With a foot in Mexican culture, inherited from his mother’s family, to his father’s family’s ranch in Texas, Smith’s influences and experiences have resonance in San Diego as a border town with a bi-national culture. It’s a thrill to welcome him to Lux.”

Smith was born in Brownsville, Texas in 1959, on lands that his family had settled in the early 19th century. He studied fresco painting with traditional craftsmen in Mexico, attended art academies in Mexico and the United States, and settled in Mexico City. Since 1985, he has divided his time between New York and Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Smith’s prodigious body of work has been widely exhibited in the United States and Mexico, as well as in Japan, Europe, and South America. He has exhibited in the 1989 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; the First Triennial of Drawings at the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona, Spain; and “Latin American Artists of the 20th Century,” an exhibition that traveled from Seville, Spain to the Musee National d’Art Moderne at the Pompidou Center in Paris, France; the Kunsthalle, Cologne, Germany; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. During the last two decades, Smith has had 50 one-man exhibitions.

Smith’s paintings are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Brooklyn Museum of Art; and Metropolitan Museum of Art, all in New York City; High Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Houston Museum of Contemporary Art, Texas; Miami Art Museum, Florida; Wurth Museum, Kunzelman, Germany; Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City; and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain.

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About Lux Art Institute
Lux Art Institute, located in Encinitas, Calif., opened its doors to the public in November 2007 and is redefining the modern museum experience with its artist-in-residence program. Artists live and work on site, while producing a commissioned work of art.

Throughout the year, Lux invites significant regional, national, and international artists to participate in the Lux residency and encourages visitors from across the country to observe and engage with them. This one-of-a-kind institution invites visitors to not only “see art,” but also to “see art happen.”

Slated to be the first “green” (LEED certified) art museum in California and located alongside one of Southern California’s remaining coastal wetlands, Lux’s four-acre site overlooks the San Elijo Lagoon and is surrounded by a wildlife preserve that stretches to the Pacific Ocean. In an effort to seamlessly meld the conservation and restoration of art beyond the museum walls, an array of rare native plants blends naturally into the nearby preserve.

Santa Monica, California-based Renzo Zecchetto, AIA – whose other significant architectural projects include the award-winning Church of the Nativity in Fairbanks Ranch, Calif. and the Alusa Printing Company in Santiago, Chile – designed the two-story building to utilize energy-saving strategies such as the use of natural light and recycled materials to preserve resources for future generations.

Lux Hours: Thursday and Friday, 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. $10 for two visits.

For more information about Lux Art Institute, please visit www.luxartinstitute.org or call 760.436.6611

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VIDEONALE 12

CALL FOR ENTRIES -
VIDEONALE 12
Application deadline: 31 August, 2008

Videonale e.V.
im Kunstmuseum Bonn
Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 2
D- 53113 Bonn
Tel: +49 (0) 228 692 818
einsendungen@videonale.org

http://www.videonale.org

MONITORING THE FUTURE

“We are looking for video art which, today, is already part of tomorrow’s breeding ground,” says Georg Elben, curator of the VIDEONALE 12. Quo vadis video art ? this is the question the VIDEONALE at the Bonn Kunstmuseum has addressed every two years since 1984. As of now all artists are invited to apply for the VIDEONALE 12 with a video work created in the past two years.

One of the oldest festivals for video art in the world, VIDEONALE 12 will present the latest trends in video art from 26 March to 26 April 2009. There is no set topic for submissions, but only single-channel works can be entered. VIDEONALE 12 will open with a four-day festival featuring a variety of events. The exhibition will run for four weeks, showcasing 40 to 50 video works chosen by an international jury. VIDEONALE has “always had the advantage, as a kind of film festival for video art, of being able to provide a realistic assessment of the current filmic state of development of this genre. That is what defines its function as an aesthetic gauge.” (K.WEST) The works featured at VIDEONALE 12 will be shown in other international institutions following the exhibition at the Bonn Kunstmuseum; the works chosen for VIDEONALE 11 were, among others, shown in 2007 at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and 2008 at the Bangalore Goethe Institut.

“Thinking outside the box” the Bonn Videonale is looking for new ways of presenting video art,”(Süddeutsche Zeitung) - VIDEONALE is particularly interested in developing new forms of presentation for video art beyond the black box. For the past years each VIDEONALE has commissioned a new team of architects and designers to create an innovative exhibition design, both technically and artistically, for presenting the exhibition in the context of a museum. “We are happy about the attention and broad recognition from the specialist audience we have received in the last years for our pioneering work in this field where, so far, only a small number of convincing approaches have been found,” says Georg Elben.

The videos presented at VIDEONALE 12 will automatically be taking part in the competition for the Videonale award worth 5.000 Euro which will be awarded by a second international jury. Application deadline is 31 August 2008. All information and entry forms can be found at http://www.videonale.org

Contact:

Videonale e.V. im Kunstmuseum Bonn
Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 2
D- 53113 Bonn
Tel: +49 (0) 228 692 818
einsendungen@videonale.org
http://www.videonale.org

Museum Het Domein

Image: Photo collage for invitation 2008.

Lara Schnitger & My Barbarian

Dance witches Dance
Opening: Friday August 29, 17 h.
with a performance by My Barbarian

August 30 - November 30, 2008
Solo exhibition contemporary art:
installation, performance and video

Museum Het Domein
Postbus 230
6130 AE Sittard
T.0031 46 4513460
The Netherlands

http://www.hetdomein.nl

Dance witches Dance plunges the public and sculptures in Het Domein into a trance and sets them dancing. This is the first time that Lara Schnitger (1969, Haarlem) has worked in close collaboration with performance group My Barbarian. The group, and Schnitger, are based in Los Angeles. In an installation, a film and texts, the characters in the songs literally acquire a physical presence and Schnitger’s sculptures evolve their own quirky personalities. In a frantic Faustian interaction, boundaries between real and unreal, creator and creation, public and actor, gay and straight, touch and smell, vanish.

Schnitger has figured in numerous performances by My Barbarian. In Gods of Canada, she designed the costumes and flags and, in Voyage of the White Widow, played a Dutch bird. In Dance witches Dance populated by a cast of mainly female characters, the disparate facets and personas are highlighted; and sexuality is a central theme. With their ornamental, erotic or clownish fabric designs, Schnitger’s canvas sculptures are provocative and playful. The charged physical presence is underlined by expressive titles like Fun Bags, Beijing Bitch or Flasher. In each work, a fabric skin is stretched over an asymmetrical, weirdly shaped, almost shapeless wooden frame. Skin is an important theme: what lurks below and what above and, by extension, identity, social engagement and femininity. Schnitger translates these themes into powerful physical statements in the form of collaged patterns, texts and photos.

Schnitger has exhibited at Sonsbeek Arnhem (2008), Stuart Shave/Modern Art London (2007), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo (2007), The Saatchi Gallery (2006), Anton Kern Gallery New York (2005), Hammer Museum Los Angeles (2005). The exhibition at Museum Het Domein is her first solo museum exhibition in the Netherlands.

A catalogue with documentation on the collaboration between the artist and My Barbarian, accompanies the exhibition.

The T-time with Lara Schnitger is on Sunday 31 August at 12.30 and deals with performance art as a fusion of theatre, music and visual art. But watch out for guerrilla theatricals and activist artists.

At the same time you can visit in the ProjectRoom of the museum the exhibition of Serge Onnen: Champagne Scissors Holes, drawings, installations, animations. ( til oktober 19 )

Further information and visuals can be found in the press room, on the museum’s home page: http://www.hetdomein.nl Or contact Karin Adams orf Lene ter Haar 046 -451 34 60; karin.adams@hetdomein.nl