Dorothy Cross’ Exhibition will take place at the Frith Street Gallery between 24 March 2011 – 5 May 2011.

Dorothy produces the most dramatic and emotive photography and sculpture inspired by her home setting, the Irish West Coast. She creates visual stories through natural objects washed up on the beach; the visual stories depict a curious outlook on what is the reality of everyday life.

Her film, Stalactite, will also be shown, a film about; ‘The Great Stalactite of Doolin Cave in County Clare which has grown over the course of one million years in its black chamber’. The film inspired Dorothy’s Sculpture Earth a mesmerising piece, formed of hundreds of bronze casts of human fingers gravitating towards the Earth. An inspirational exhibition, which portrays delicately the wonders of our natural world, further information can be found on the website below:

www.frithstreetgallery.com

Mina Kwon is an artist, illustrator and graphic designer. Like her art, her life philosophy is quirky and extrovert; ‘If you don’t have it, draw it and have it.’ Her work is predominantly influenced by hip-hop. Mina produces Drake T-Shirts as well as designing fresh and contemporary album covers. Every piece exudes character and energy. Her bold illustrations include characters of huge modern relevance such as P.Diddy, Snoop Dogg and Bart Simpson making her work present and sought after. Therefore she is definitely a talent to be watched.

Baghdad, 5 March 2007: Jeremy Deller at the Imperial War Museum

Since September 2010, there has been a curious addition to the grand atrium of the Imperial War Museum in London, where visitors can wander through a permanent display of military hardware from throughout the last century. These revered specimens have been joined by a new work from Jeremy Deller, the Turner Prize winner famous for probing cultural hotspots. In the middle of the atrium, Deller has deposited the carcass of a wrecked car. The rusty shell – crumpled and warped – is surrounded by the Museum’s well-preserved tanks, canons, submarines and aeroplanes. It is laid out, funereal, on a platform that indicates the car’s original surface area, while its title, Baghdad, 5 March 2007, refers to the event of the car’s damage: the car was salvaged from the bombing of the Al-Mutanabbi Street book market in Baghdad, which resulted in the deaths of 38 people, besides wounding many more. The tragedy has accrued a certain significance, being seen as an attack on Iraqi culture altogether, because not only was the street named after a well-known Iraqi poet, but it was a centre of Baghdad cultural and intellectual life, full of book markets and cafés. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and Deller’s salvaging of the vehicle serves as a frightening memorial to the suffering of civilians, increasingly a feature of modern warfare. The car, without wheels, previously starred in Deller’s project, It Is What It Is, where it was toured through a series of American states, making a hard fact of the far-away war available to the public. Now, joining the Imperial War Museum’s collection, it is devoid of the glory or pride of the older specimens with which it is surrounded. Although we at home are bombarded by news footage, Jeremy Deller observes, “It’s unusual to see anything from the conflict in Iraq ‘in life’ so I was interested in being able to show this car to the public, initially in the US and now the UK.”

Baghdad, 5 March 2007 will be on display in the Imperial War Museum London until March 2011; it will go on display at Imperial War Museum North from April 2011.

Imperial War Museum London
Lambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZ
Open daily 10.00am – 6.00pm
www.iwm.org.uk

Banksy’s Marks & Stensils pop up shop, 1 Berwick St, W1F 0DR

Stuck for what to buy your boyfriend for Christmas? Or perhaps you have a cool cousin who loves the urban side of the art scene that you still just don’t quite get yet. Well have no fear because we have the answer. Open until the 22nd of December and back by popular demand, this pop up shop showcases all that Banksy evidently believes is hip and on trend in the urban art scene this year. Curated in collaboration with ‘Pictures on Walls’, there are two floors of street art from a range of different artists and there is new stuff being added every day. Bespoke pieces have been made especially for the shop so the chances of you finding a one off piece are not as slim as you might think. So go to buy art, go to ogle or go to be seen. Either way just go.

Although he rarely discusses the motivations behind his work and is reputably an extremely private man, he has implied that his inspirations are drawn from high-energy messages communicated to us by higher beings. His intuitive gift allows him to receive and transcribe these messages into works of art. Each piece visually articulates important cosmic lessons. Sometimes moody and atmospheric, sometimes uplifting and energizing, but always prophetic and full of meaning. He presents a window or door into another world, space, or void.

In the deliberate act of choosing not to title his paintings Carter is reinforcing this concept of a strictly subconscious “space” with the fear that any references to the physical world would shatter the true meaning of the messages, detracting from the emotional connection to the work. This is also reflected in the evidence (or lack of it) of paint as material, with brush strokes almost non existent and, in the case of current work, surfaces which are smooth and almost seductive in their quality, a finish that is achieved through hours of painstaking brushing on and “polishing away” of the oil paint.

Photomonth 10 east London photography festival through to 30th November.

1 October-30 November 2010 www.photomonth.org

Photomonth is a celebration of photography. In 2010 there are over 200 exhibitions and events in East London and beyond. To mark our 10th anniversary we have created a series of special projects – the new photolounge at the Old Truman Brewery, images along the East London Line from Dalston to Shoreditch, eatyourartout with exhibitions in a wide range of restaurants, bars & cafes, photomonthlive.com for your mobile and the photomonth assignment for budding photojournalists. We are also partnering the Brighton Photo Fringe and collaborating with Rhubarb-Rhubarb from Birmingham.

Frieze Art Fair 14th-17th October

For the eighth year in a row Frieze will be setting up its temporary home Regent’s park. This year things are a bit more upbeat with a huge Vegas inspired flashy sign spelling out Frieze Art Fair and a red carpet at the entrance and inside you will find the box office has been transformed by artist Matthew Darbyshire.

As you walk around the exhibition you can download the Frieze Art Fair iPhone app at the web site: http://www.friezeartfair.com/ to help you navigate the overwhelming number of galleries, tell you about talks and projects that are going on and even search for art work by price bracket!

On your way round look out for installations by Cartier award winning artist Simon Fujiwara who has staged archeological digs around the fair in order to create the illusion that under the tent lie the remains of a fictive ancient city that was a hub of art and commerce!

With a 173 galleries from 29 different countries to see it is hard to know where to start but Timothy Taylor, Victoria Miro, Vilma Gold, the Approach and Pilar Corrias Gallery from London, Spruth Magers from Berlin and Zeno X from Antwerp are galleries that I wouldn’t miss. Once again Frame will show case solo exhibitions by galleries under six year’s old, look out for Des Hughes at Ancient & Modern with his exhibition ‘Endless Endless’ featuring new sculpture, watercolour paintings and bronzes.

The projects and talks are the beating heart of the fair so try to catch the talks by Bridget Riley and Wolfgang Tillmans as well as see the project Poetry Park, a collaboration by Ei Arakawa and Karl Holmqvist, the ‘park’ will include sculptural and print interpretations of poetry which will take place in Regents Park.

Enjoy!

Article by Chiara Ventura

Starting August 9th, Tate Britain is hosting a free exhibition on Romantics painters. A bit more than a temporary show, the Clore Gallery’s nine rooms, previously dedicated to JMW Turner only, are being taken over by his contemporaries until December 2012.

The works are both newly acquired and being drawn from Tate’s collection, and they include powerful illustrations hand drawn and coloured by William Blake, beautiful paintings inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and by the world of fairies realised by Henri Fuseli, and beautiful English countryside renditions by John Constable. The paintings are extremely beautiful and transport the visitor in a wonderful world of fairies, elves and passionate poets. The exhibition doesn’t aim to be a complete one, as it would be impossible given to the amount of works produced in the 1800 by these prolific artists, but more to initiate the public to this group of extremely interesting painters (and sometimes writers too) who aimed to express themselves and their feelings and to experiment new techniques and designs. An highlight of the exhibition are the upstairs room still entirely dedicated to Turner, where adults and children alike can learn about the fascinating art of engraving and about colours and light.

Article by Dorothy Feaver

At the end of the summer term, London’s art schools open up to the public to exhibit their students’ final degree shows – and many of the works are often available to purchase. It’s a big trawl. Catch the exhibitions still remaining open over the summer, or make note for next by visiting the University of the Arts’ special website: showtime.arts.ac.uk

Bringing a lot of young art under one roof, throughout June and July every year the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane plays host to Free Range, a series of degree shows bringing regional art schools from around the UK to a bigger audience in London. This is something to make note for 2011. The former brewery provides a vast exhibition space, accommodating exhibitions of work from around 100 art courses, specialising in Fine Art, Fashion, Photography, Printmaking, Illustration, Sculpture, Graphics and Interior Design. Exhibitions rotate week by by week and the venue stays open till late, allowing for after work or pre-drinks browsing. Much of the artwork is for sale and prices are often very low. If you like something, keep a lookout for the artist, as they may well be within earshot or available to get in touch with, if you are interested in seeing more of their work. Without labels telling you what to think, it’s all about going with your gut instinct, there is no greater signal of value than that of liking something for yourself.

For more information visit:  www.free-range.org.uk

Many galleries, both public and private, produce specially edition prints, to make artists’ work available at an accessible price. If you like an artist’s work in an exhibition, there may well be a print produced specially to accompany it, just ask when you are next looking around.  To starts with, here are some public galleries with programmes of  limited editions, starting from around £50:

Whitechapel Gallery.
www.whitechapelgallery.org

Serpentine Gallery is curently offering 20% off limited editions.
www.serpentinegallery.org

Parasol Unit
www.parasol-unit.org

Camden Arts Centre
www.camdenartscentre.org

South London Gallery
www.southlondongallery.org

Article by Jessica Ratcliffe
e. jecsratcliffe@gmail.com

Upper Floor Designs is a small young atelier, creating and making bespoke printed or embellished garments. Founded in 2009 by Eleanor Ross, a textile graduate from Chelsea College of Art and Design, Upper Floor makes all sorts of beautiful, fun and original pieces from I-pod cases to molded brooches to printed fleece blankets. Eleanor can design and produce any item in her unique style, perfect for gifts, fashion, businesses and the home. Upper Floor Designs are also able to take larger orders for high-quality printing on t-shirts for your office, social function or individual design. Each item produced at Upper Floor Designs is truly unique, and they can translate your ideas onto items just how you envisaged.

Upper Floor Designs are contactable on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Heathfield/Upper-Floor-Designs/236608874005?v=wall&__a=27&ajaxpipe=1

And a few pieces are available to order online here: www.folksy.com/shops/UpperFloorDesigns

Picasso: The Mediterranean Years

I strongly recommend that you try to see this exhibition at the Gagosian
which brings together pieces from one of Picasso’s most creative and
imaginative periods.
The Mediterranean years , 1945-62, were a time of joy and freedom for
Picasso for it was when he moved to the French Riviera after an isolated
period of living and working in German occupied Paris during the war. The
feeling of Picasso’s work from the Mediterranean Years is one of carefree
exploration and joyful creativity. The Gagosian Gallery have brought
together a significant collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings,
ceramics and prints from the period, all of which are beautifully
displayed.

Picasso (1881- 1973 ) has been and continues to be an inspiring artist
whose work is both intellectual and playful. Early on in his career his
fascination with African and Iberian sculpture led him to be one of the
first Western artists to make paintings that were free from objective
truth, something that had long been practiced in African and American art.
The first painting that he made in this way was entitled  Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon which was thought to be deeply shocking and ugly at the time
that is was made in 1907, but it went on to influence many artists and
change the course of Western art.

His work still tests expectations of the viewer and this exhibition is
full of his inventiveness: drawings that are made into sculptures, pots
that are painted with portraits, humorous prints made after old master
paintings, paper models and much more…..

Gagosian Gallery,6-24 Britannia Street, WC1 until August 28. Tues-Sat
10am-5.30pm.

Article by Clara Drummon

Nathaniel Pimlott
Station Approach
11 – 25 June 2010
Stables Gallery, Green Templeton College, 43 Woodstock Road, Oxford

Nathaniel Pimlott has been living in Oxford for the last year, spending time in the nature reserve beyond Abingdon Road; the results constitute his first solo exhibition, in Green Templeton College, a discrete graduate enclave down the Woodstock road. There are no birds or animals in his new paintings however, nor in the accompanying short film, that slices together white noise from train lines, the motorway and a weir.  From his particular quiet spot – a bridge, safe from passers-by – Pimlott has been observing the city’s orbit of traffic. Opening with a neat description of the railway tracks, the following paintings scan the view, opening up, blurring, switching focus: branches meet branch lines, fields dilate into sky, funny little vehicles tootle along. Around a corner, the pictures darken, turning to the the motorway at night, where headlights point ahead in odd little triangles. Painted on the reverse of an abandoned road sign, one of these shows cars dashing onwards, nowhere in particular. Pimlott is viewing Oxford itself in reverse.

Article by Dorothy Feaver
www.murdofleur.org

Paul Kindersley is an emerging artist who focuses on making provocative installation pieces. After living and studying in Berlin and Cambridge Kindersley moved to London to do a BA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, where he received a First.
Kindersley curated the current exhibition at the Centre for Recent Drawing where he is also launching a Zine on the 19th May.

> How would you describe your work?
Exploring and blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality, the personal and the public, suggesting a fluid involvement with mythologized film experience. In play with the idea of an amateur interacting with constructed glamour, celebrity, icon and stereotype and create an uneasy reversing of the fan/artist positions, so it is no longer clear or important where lines are drawn. The aim is to create a place of borderline existence, anchored in a shared pop culture.

I create rooms, installations, sets, and constellations of found objects and images, arranged and filtered through convoluted amalgams of histories and personal experiences. Places that confuse the roles of voyeur, madman, co-conspirator and obsessive fan, familiar yet uneasy backdrops into which the viewer is implicated. These installations often draw on camp, nostalgia and the extremes of exploitation movies of the 60’s and 70’s.

Through obsessive re-making and re-creating, using photocopies and available objects I aim to present clues, props and objects with which to interact. This enables a slowing down of the film time and a breaking up of the film screen, allowing the viewer to have a sense of ownership of the romanticised glamour that we associate with film and its stars. In this way I play with cultural fictions and present a melancholic hankering for the never real.

> Who or what are your main influences/ inspirations?
My biggest influences are as diverse as performance artist Jack Smith, artists Karen Kilimnik and Tom Burr and directors John Waters and Harry Kummel.

> What are you working on at the moment?
I’m curating the show ‘HAND JOY’ with over 40 pieces from 23 artists, including a piece by me from a series of imagined sexual encounters with closeted homosexual film stars of the 60’s 70′ and 80’s. HAND JOY runs until 28 May, we will be launching a tie in zine on the 19th May with a drinks reception from 6-8pm.

> Any big plans for the future?
Hopefully moving into a new studio, and working on some larger installations, and
continuing my curatorial  collaboration with the Centre For Recent Drawing.

http://www.c4rd.org.uk/C4RD/Centre_for_Recent_Drawing.html

The Centre for Recent Drawing: 2-4 Highbury Station Rd N1 1SB, London. Opening times are Wednesday to Friday 12pm – 6pm.