Artipedia - Arts News

Antwerp Art Weekend

Franz West, Ein Hod, 2008, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp.

Antwerp Sculpture Show
Fri 12.09 - Sun 14.09.08 11am - 6pm

Opening: THU 11.09.08 6 - 10pm

Antwerp Sculpture Show [Open Air]
Square between Vlaamsekaai and Waalsekaai
2000 Antwerp | Belgium

http://www.antwerpart.be

The annual Whitsun fair, tennis championships, Cirque du Soleil, parked cars, the musical 0110 event in protest at the political climate in Antwerp, which is shifting to the right, ice sculptures, an exclusive trade fair of luxury articles and even more numerous circuses of other origins: the filled-in southern docks between the Vlaamsekaai and the Waalsekaai have in the past played host to a wide variety of events. But only on one occasion has the square been used for contemporary art, in the summer of 2002 when Villanella and MuHKA installed the ‘drive-in wheel’, a huge Ferris wheel for cars designed by the Dutch artist John Körmeling.

The South, with the filled-in southern docks at its heart, has though been surrounded by the visual arts for many years now: historical works in the Royal Museum of Fine Art, contemporary art in the galleries and the MuHKA and FotoMuseum. And yet it was not until 2008 that an idea that had been in circulation for a long time – literally and figuratively filling the square with contemporary art – could be put into action. This was an idea which, with hindsight, turned out to be so obvious that several actors had had it in mind for several years.

In the end it was the galleries that took the actual initiative and put together a proposal for a sculpture exhibition. It seemed to them that, as a form of artistic expression, sculpture had for too long been treated harshly by the institutions; it was high time attention was paid exclusively to this medium. They went in search of partners ‘in crime’. They found them in the first place in the Middelheim Museum, which concentrates on sculpture in the open air, and is also a municipal museum, which meant that Antwerp city council could make use of the expertise regarding art in the public space that it had built up over the years. This in its turn meant that the agreement it already had with the MuHKA could be brought forward a year, and the decision was taken with the MuHKA to embed this show in a broader event, the art festival ‘t Zuid Antwerp Art Weekend’, which had previously been held twice in the autumn. The intention with the Antwerp Sculpture Show is quite simp
le and without great pretension, but this does not make it any less ambitious: every gallery and every non-profit contemporary art venue was invited to choose an artist to produce a new work or select an existing one for the exhibition. The MuHKA and the Middelheim Museum provide the facilities to make it possible. 19 galleries and non-profit art venues took up the invitation and, with the two museums, 21 works of art have been chosen.

Luc Deleu and his TOP design firm have been entrusted with the task of giving shape to the event: the Waalsekaai and the Vlaamsekaai will be linked by a blue carpet that cuts across the square: on one side of the carpet will be the exhibition infrastructure, two office containers one on top of the other and a tent for the opening, and on the other side the works of art. A daring arrangement based on an open view of sculpture and the city.

The fact that the exhibition will only last four days, and is therefore quite transient, has not prevented the artists from displaying great commitment. The international appeal and the dedication of the various partners involved also give the event a potential future.

An extensively documented publication on the Antwerp Sculpture Show will be published afterwards.

Extra City Center for Contemporary Art

Mother’s Day
by Smadar Dreyfus
13 September - 08 November 2008

Extra City Center
for Contemporary Art
Tulpstraat 79
2060 Antwerp,Belgium
info@extracity.org
http://www.extracity.org

Extra City is delighted to announce the premiere of Mother’s Day (2006 – 08), a multi-channel sound and video installation by Smadar Dreyfus (1963 Tel Aviv, lives and works in London)

Following on from her seminal large scale installation Lifeguards (premiered at the 9th Inter-national Istanbul Biennial, 2005), Mother’s Day is part of Dreyfus’ investigation into the role of the voice in the constitution of contested public spaces, as well as its function as a mediator between individual and collective and its implication in the negotiation of cultural perspective.

Mother’s Day originates at the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line in the Golan Heights, across which the local Druze community has been geographically separated for several decades in the absence of a peace agreement. At the heart of this installation are sound recordings of dialogues on the annual Syrian “Mother’s Day” celebration, between mothers on the Israeli-controlled side of the ceasefire line and their student daughters and sons who arrive from Damascus to what is known as the “Shouting Hill” on the Syrian side. Exchanging greetings through a sound system set up for the occasion, these voices enact an imposed boundary, striving for intimacy across the geography of the valley.

Biography

Smadar Dreyfus studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London (1992-94 Postgraduate Studies in Media Fine Art), after completing a Masters degree at the Royal College of Art, (1990-92 MA Illustration and Photography). She works across video photography and audio in the context of installation. Her practice increasingly centres on the way meaning is derived from a specific relationship, or a gap, between the aural and the visual.

Dreyfus’ work has been shown internationally and in solo exhibitions at IKON Gallery Off-site, Birmingham, 2005, and the Victoria Miro Gallery, London, in 2006. Most recently her work has been included in ‘Trial Balloons’ at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), Spain 2006, and the 9th International Istanbul Biennial, 2005.

She also took part in group exhibitions at the Fri-Art Centre d’Art Contemporain Friburg, Switzerland, De Appel, Amsterdam, Almanac, Art on Television, Channel A1, Amsterdam, W139, Amsterdam, Gasworks Gallery, London, The Israeli Biennial, Art Focus2, Jerusalem, The Tannery, London, and The Atatürk Cultural Centre, Istanbul.

Amongst others her work was reviewed in ArtForum, Contemporary, Camera Austria, and Art Monthly.

contact:
Katrien Reist / katrien.reist@extracity.org

Extra City Center for Contemporary Art
Tulpstraat 79
2060 Antwerp
Belgium

Tel/fax +32 (0)3 677 1655
info@extracity.org
http://www.extracity.org

Opening hours: WE – SU 14 – 19h / TH 14 – 20h

Thanks and support
This project has been made possible with the generous support of The Arts Council of England, Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, Steim Foundation Amsterdam, DeBuren Brussels.

Bonniers Konsthall

Ann-Sofi Sidén
In Passing, 2007. Courtesy of Galerie Barbara Thumm in Berlin and Galeria Pepe Cobo in Madrid.

Ann-Sofi Sidén: In Passing
August 29 - October 12, 2008

Bonniers Konsthall
Torsgatan 19, SE-113 90 Stockholm
Phone: +46 8 736 42 48
info@bonnierskonsthall.se

http://www.bonnierskonsthall.se

Bonniers Konsthall starts off the autumn season with Ann-Sofi Sidén’s latest video installation, In Passing (2007), which receives its premier presentation in Sweden. In Passing is an urgent and visually stunning story of a young woman who leaves her newborn baby at a “baby hatch” at a hospital in Berlin.

In Passing is a spatially complex video work in which the viewer is encouraged to move through the installation in order to experience all parts of the narrative. On two monitors and four large projection screens, we follow parallel stories featuring the woman and the child after their separation at the hospital. As in many of her previous works, Ann-Sofi Sidén makes use of surveillance cameras. The black-and-white, documentary-feel images are interspersed with sequences in the style of cinéma vérité. In Sidén’s works the viewer is not given an unambiguous image of right or wrong, cause and effect. She has the single narrative and the image split into a number of voices, situations, moments and stories.

In Passing is equally much a calling into question of our human failings in the present moment, and a test of the strength of the bond between children and parents, the vulnerability of the abandoned, and the pain of separation.

Ann-Sofi Sidén has been one of Sweden’s most prominent contemporary artists since the mid-nineties. Sidén’s art has influenced a young generation of artists with the ability to cut deep into our own time and depict both the human psyche and people at the crossroads, or in passing. As in Warte Mal! (1999), where she portrayed prostitutes in the new Europe, she often sets out from extreme situations, depicting them in an undramatic way.

Ann-Sofi Sidén (b. 1962) has participated in major international group exhibitions, including Manifesta 2 and Carnegie International, as well as the biennales in Sao Paolo, Venice and Berlin. Sidén has held solo shows in Seccession in Vienna, Museé D’Art Modern in Paris and the Hayward Gallery in London. Ann-Sofi Sidén was educated at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, where she is now Professor of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Stockholm and Berlin.