Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Jason Lazarus the 37 year old American artist, curator, writer, and Assistant Adjunct Professor has been interviewed by Julia Halperin for Blouin Artinfo in an article titled ‘26 Questions for Semiotically Inclined Photo and OWS Sign Artist’. In the article Lazarus states “The documentation of OWS created more questions than answers — the disparate messages on protest signs resisted clear, linear, or congealing narratives that traditional media rely on to produce content. Re-creating the signs, collaboratively, with the public, allowed a way to not only produce those messages documented widely across time and space en masse, but the process of creating them literally slowed down readings of the phenomenon, producing an experience of heightened awareness of the productive (unresolved) questions that linger in OWS’s wake as well as to the economy of protest (materials, aesthetics, scale, textual play/innuendo/multiple layers of meaning). The project is a kind of reverse-photography, imaging 3D sculptures from flattened images demands a careful, multiple-layered, and active reading. …The project … frames a collective process of becoming where our strain of late capitalism is openly and visibly questioned and criticized as incompatible with our current iteration of democracy. Meanwhile, the capital in the system, like water, continues to fill in the gaps with unending resilience and infinite flexibility. … it’s important to me that the project started as re-created signs that actually occupied public space as part of Occupy USF Tampa, and they have since traveled to alternative exhibition spaces on their way to a museum. They will make their way back to alternative venues and street as well. Political art is optimal when it’s most liquid, able to travel through contexts and paradigms. I’m interested in how this project will change as its referents become distant with time.”

Inspired by Julia Halperin, Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/jAq2p Image source Twitter ow.ly/jAq0S

Bjarne Melgaard the 45 year old Norwegian artist born in Sydney Australia by Norwegian parents, raised in Oslo, Norway, and now works and lives in New York has been profiled by Julia Halperin in a Blouin Artinfo article titled “The Most Famous Norwegian Artist Since Munch Brings a Buddy to the Armory Show’. Halperin states “Rising art star Bjarne Melgaard is using his critical clout to introduce a relatively unknown Scandinavian painter to New York audiences. …a series of bright, brash paintings Melgaard created in collaboration with Sverre Bjertnes, a fellow Norwegian a decade his junior. …The artists met 15 years ago, when Melgaard gave Bjertnes his first gallery exhibition at a now-defunct experimental space he founded in Oslo. Now, they often work side-by-side. Bjertnes estimates the two have produced more than 300 artworks together. …The new paintings, made especially for the Armory Show, combine Melgaard’s nihilistic, childlike smears and Bjertnes’s studied, academic figures. (The younger artist’s formal style is informed by years as a student of Norwegian realist Odd Nerdrum.) Text, images of sneakers, and shapeless, abstract shapes dance around portraits of cult individuals like Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake, fixtures of New York’s downtown art scene who committed suicide within a week of one another in 2007.  …a series of paintings devoted to New York dealer Mary Boone. “She is the ultimate dealer, and the paintings are about a relationship with her as this sort of unattainable dream,” Bjertnes said. The largest homage is almost nine feet wide and contains dozens of sketches of Boone’s face and close-ups of her eyes. The words, “The beauty of Mary Boone” are scrawled across the front. A yellow Chanel suit hangs primly overtop. Collaborating with Melgaard, who has been called the most famous Norwegian artist since Munch, lends Bjertnes instant legitimacy…”

Inspired by Julia Halperin, Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/j4ybs Image source Rolf Aagaard ow.ly/j4y9T

Matthew Barney the 45 year old American artist who works in sculpture, photography, drawing and film, whose early works combined sculptural installations with performance and video has been featured by Carol Vogel in a New York Times article titled ‘Matthew Barney Heads to the Morgan Library’. Vogel states “…Barney, an artist with a cultlike following… fashions his sculptures out of unusual materials like tapioca (dumbbells) and petroleum jelly (a weight bench). His drawings are the least known of his works. But to a place like the Morgan they are also the most intriguing. “There will be many people who will be surprised to see a Matthew Barney exhibition here,” said William M. Griswold, the museum’s director. “But his drawings are central to what we do. Many of them explore aspects of his technical innovations and his process, which makes a show like this ideal. For many people it will be a real revelation.” …It is the first museum retrospective devoted to Mr. Barney’s drawings and will consist of about 100 works. They range from the late 1980s, when he was still an undergraduate at Yale University, to those he created in conjunction with his five-part “Cremaster” film cycle, produced between 1994 and 2002, to his current project, “River of Fundament,” his film and live performance collaboration with the composer Jonathan Bepler that was inspired by Norman Mailer’s novel “Ancient Evenings.” Loans for the exhibition are coming from museums here and in Europe as well as from private collections. Besides the drawings… the show will include some of Mr. Barney’s storyboards. To show the kinds of myths and legends that inspire his work he has chosen books and manuscripts from the Morgan’s own collection, like a 2,000-year-old Egyptian Book of the Dead, a medieval zodiac and a copy of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.”

Inspired by Carol Vogel, New York Times ow.ly/iqW6r Image source Wikipedia ow.ly/iqVZF

Jeffrey L Sturchio the American Senior Partner at Rabin Martin and former CEO of the Global Health Council, the world’s largest membership alliance of public health organizations and professionals in more than 140 countries dedicated to saving lives by improving health throughout the world, has been featured in an article by Isolda Agazzi on the IPS News Service titled ‘Tsunami of Diseases Waiting to Hit’ stating “A tsunami is looming on the horizon and the world is unprepared for it. This one won’t be a massive wall of water but a tidal wave of disease – and experts say the international community needs to act fast to keep it from crashing. “Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – cancer, heart disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases, among others – have become the leading cause of death worldwide,” Jeffrey Sturchio … told a conference…  “Some 36 million people die from (NCDs) every year, 80 percent of them in low and middle income countries – a figure that will increase by 17 percent in the coming years and by 25 percent in Africa,” he added. Tuberculosis and malaria, in comparison, kill one to two million people around the world every year.“The disease burden is shifting to NCDs, but since developing countries still have to fight infectious diseases, they face a double burden,” Sturchio warned. However, developing countries do not appear to be paying adequate attention to the impending crisis. …financial resources are stretched thin, and it is unlikely that the funds needed to launch a massive global campaign will be readily available. “The reality is that in the last 20 years, tens of billions of dollars in official development assistance have gone to developing countries, mainly (to fight) HIV/AIDS, and it is unrealistic to think that the same will happen again, It will therefore be necessary to capitalise on existing investments and reallocate some of the resources already in circulation” he said.”

Inspired by Isolda Agazzi, IPS News Service ow.ly/in8m3 Image source Global Health TV ow.ly/in8iJ

Yinka Shonibare the 50 year old British-Nigerian artist best known for his exploration of colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation, while acknowledging his physical disability as part of his identity and physically incapable of carrying out the making of the work himself, his conceptualism takes on a new angle. Shonibare’s work explores issues of colonialism alongside those of race and class, through a range of media which include painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, and film. Coline Milliard in an article published on Boulin Artinfo states “…Shonibare has long nurtured an ambiguous relationship with the Establishment, past and present. But the artist, a prominent post-colonialist voice in Britain – who …cherishes his recently awarded order of chivalry as Member of the British Empire with a pride that isn’t entirely ironic. Shonibare is a self-proclaimed dandy, an “insider and outsider,” and the 18th century, cradle of that empire, is a constant point of reference both for its political overtones and dazzling aesthetic. …The adoption of a motif so conveniently combining bright patterns and politics has been a blessing and a curse for the artist. Although it provided him with a “brand,” its repetitive use has led to a flattening out of his production, and accusations of one-trick-ponyism. …the fabric serves an array of distinct topics, of which post-colonialism and hybrid identity are only two of the most central. The omnipresence of conflicts, the threat of global warming, and food-sustainability are key concerns for Shonibare. …But no matter how idea-led, there’s always an obvious enjoyment of the material, of the colors, textures, or the craft of well-tailored garments in Shonibare’s production. “I may be interested in a number of issues, but primarily I am an artist, and my job is to take people elsewhere,” the artist has said. “My job is to create a wonderland for them.”

Inspired by Coline Milliard, Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/in4R8 Image source Africa SI ow.ly/in4IN

I’ve always been out of the mainstream (February 28 2013) 

Llyn Foulkes the 78 year old American artist creating landscape paintings that utilized the iconography of postcards, vintage landscape photography, and Route 66-inspired hazard signs, returning to his childhood interest in one-man bands and began playing solo with “The Machine,” which he created. Foulkes has been interviewed by Scott Indrisek in an article published in Blouin Artinfo titled ‘Renegade Llyn Foulkes is Making a Comeback With a Major Survey at the Hammer’. Indrisek states “…Foulkes is having his second big moment. The L.A. artist and musician showed with Ferus Gallery in the 1960s and enjoyed early recognition for quirky, detailed oil paintings — an enormous cow, or rocks that sort of looked like people. He later moved on to more complicated mixed-media works, creating intricate scenes that brought together cartoon culture and self-portraiture as well as an ongoing series of grotesque bloody heads. …Foulkes had had a few recent pieces in last year’s Documenta (13) exhibition, where he also sang and performed with his complicated, self-made musical instrument, dubbed the Machine. [in the interview Foulkes states] “…Early on in the ’60s I was pretty well known, and then I gave up what I was doing and tried to go back to what I was doing before. Art changed, Minimalism and installation art and all that stuff came in, and there wasn’t that much in the art magazines about me in the ’80s. I’ve had problems from the stock market of art — let’s put it that way. I’ve always been out of the mainstream because I always talk against what’s going on in art. …I’ve always been pretty much a loner, in the sense that I didn’t really associate with that many other artists…”

Inspired by Scott Indrisek, Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/hMxcu Image source Facebook ow.ly/hMxca

Sterling Wells the 28 year old American artist painter and sculptor has been featured by Allison Meier in an article published on Blouin Artinfo titled ‘Artist Sterling Wells Creates Post-Natural Landscape Paintings’. Meier states “When looking at a painting, you lose yourself in an imagined world,” artist Sterling Wells told ARTINFO. Yet his work takes this idea a bit further than most artists, basing his detailed watercolor landscapes on miniature fabricated environments that he builds within his studio.  “The falseness connects them to painting, in that I’m inventing an artificial world within a frame, and to entertainment,” he elaborated. “Like watching a movie, going to a theme park, or looking at the dioramas at a natural history museum, I also want my art to be temporarily immersive and transporting.” …He loved working outside where he could become “attuned to the colors of the world, the way the light changes over the course of a day.” However, he became frustrated by the limitations of painting. “I initially wanted to make my own natural environments in order to control the light, and because I wanted to paint a purely natural landscape, but none was easily available,” he explained. “Painting from observation seemed too passive — I wanted to engage directly with the environment, and actively create new realities.” …he builds sculptural environments that he uses as models for his paintings, and also art on their own. He continues to work outside, painting en plein air in the middle of creeks or in the rain with a tarp over his head. Only now he also paints in a studio cluttered with rocks, paint, and warped car parts, where he tends to a small greenhouse and the often post-apocalyptic feeling of nature overtaking abandonment…”

Inspired by Allison Meier, Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/gXFTE Image source Facebook ow.ly/gXFSH

Björn Roth the 51 Icelandic artist and son of deceased Dieter Roth, the experimental Swiss-German artist has been featured in a New York Times article written by Randy Kennedy titled ‘Time and Other Collaborators’ Kennedy states “Over the last half-century few artists have explored impermanence – in art and life – quite as thoroughly as Dieter Roth, the wildly experimental Swiss-German jack-of-all-trades who died in 1998. Many of his signature materials were things you were supposed to eat, not make art with: chocolate, cheese, a veritable salumeria of sausages.  …on a recent visit to a cavernous Chelsea gallery filled with work mostly by Dieter Roth, to find a middle-aged man who looked mostly like him – the same pillowy broad face and balding head, the same weary basilisk eyes – supervising the installation. The man was in the midst of an intense discussion with two younger men, whose faces were vaguely competing variations on his own. “They’re always pushing me: ‘What do you want?’ ” the older man said of the younger ones, as the three puzzled over how to arrange a work. “The problem is I don’t know what I want.” The men – Dieter’s son, Björn Roth, 51; and Björn’s sons, Oddur, 29, and Einar, 24 – represent the second and third generations of what might be described as a persistent Roth art organism, more like a self-replicating species than a collective. …There are countless examples of artists’ children carrying on their legacies through estates and exhibitions. But Dieter Roth wanted to push past that tradition. Although he began his career at a time when late Modernism still exalted the idea of the lone genius, he believed deeply in collaboration – with other artists, even with his collectors (one, Hanns Sohm, was a dentist) and with his family. That affinity for intrinsically collaborative work is now second nature to many young artists…”

Inspired by Randy Kennedy, New York Times ow.ly/gXEqa Image source Reckfilm ow.ly/gXEbA

Kate Ruggeri the 24 year old American artist, curator, and DJ has been nominated by Blouin Artinfo as an emerging artist in an article titled ‘Painter-Sculptor Kate Ruggeri Finds Heroism in Humble Materials’ by Allison Meier. Meier states “Following a fire that wrecked her studio, Chicago-based artist Kate Ruggeri is persevering by creating work that evokes hope and heroes through the unlikely materials of old clothes, buckets of house paint, and twine. …she’s been experimenting with merging her interests in painting and sculpture into dimensional forms swathed with reclaimed fabric and discarded materials, and coated with thick layers of paint. The results have a scrappy, tactile quality, but also a quiet gravity. … “Joseph Campbell’s monomyth was my main inspiration, since I was little I’ve been interested in myths, adventure stories, and biographies. I don’t think it’s very difficult to identify with a hero at moments in your own life.” …One of Ruggeri’s sculptures, appropriately called “Hero,” strides like a DIY Giacometti, a paint-stained backpack on its shoulders and a walking stick pointing forward. “In the past few months, I have seen great heroics in my friends and community,” she explained. “My roommate had been mugged and shot walking home, and survived. There were a number of tragic deaths in the Chicago community. My studio building had burned down and I had lost all of my work.” … A painter at heart, she started using sculptural constructions as canvases because she was exhausted with looking at blank, flat surfaces. After building a wooden armature, she wraps it with window screens, fabric, found materials, and personal possessions. …“In my work, I try to create homages to human experience,” she said. “I see the viewer on their own journeys, having their own lives, their own struggles, triumphs. It’s a way to be self-reflective.”

Inspired by Allison Meier, Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/gSY54 Image source lawnlike ow.ly/gSY33

I use materials: time, space, color, words (January 13 2013)Robert Barry the 76 year old American artist renowned for his non-material works of art, installations, and performances using a variety of otherwise invisible media, has been interviewed by Celine Piettre for Blouin Artinfo in an article titled ‘Artist Robert Barry Discusses Working With “Time, Light, and Darkness”’.  Barry states “I don’t like this term [Conceptual Artist]. I find it very limiting, as far as I’m concerned in any case. I use materials: time, space, color, words. My work is visual, and not purely about ideas or concepts. …I don’t work so much on language as on words, which I perceive as objects. They have a color, a size. They exist in a given space and time. They have a tangible aspect. Words are also very personal. They come from us and say things about us. They have a story. We all interpret them according to our own experience. I’m always surprised when people ask me this question. I’m interested in words — that’s it. It’s like I painted flowers or landscapes. It’s a personal interest, a work material that offers infinite possibilities. …Video is a natural medium for me. I’ve used it since the beginning of my career. It’s a medium of time — a notion, a material that is truly integral to my work, like light. I like the idea of light emerging from the darkness and plunging into it again. It’s something that everyone experiences. …It’s important to me that there can be different levels of perception, experiences, and time. All these components of the real are combined here: the idea of art, war, light, words, and speech — they work together to make the piece. … In general, I like using music in my work because it’s an art that exists in time.”

Inspired by Celine Piettre ow.ly/gwWNu image source TownNews ow.ly/gwWMO

You can have fun with everything (January 3 2013)Mehdi-Georges Lahlou the 29 year old French-Moroccan artist based in Brussels drawing on the history of performance and installation-art, and incorporating references to Belgian Surrealism in his works. Born to a Christian mother and Muslim father, the theme of crossing boundaries set by culture, religion and gender is present in all of his installations and performances. Lahlou is the subject of an article by Nicolai Hartvig published on Blouin Artinfo titled ‘Mehdi-Georges Lahlou Dons Heels to Stir Religious Debate’. Hartvig states “…[his] works hit on several sensitive issues in Muslim culture: the prohibition on modifying one’s body, nudity, sexuality, and improper use of the Koran and religious objects. …With his loose combination of religious iconography and incongruous objects, the ambiguous humor in Lahlou’s work is often misunderstood. But his approach is never casual — rather it blurs the boundaries between personal commentary on his subjects alongside artistic thought. “I’m not an activist shouting. I am truly respectful of religions and beliefs, except when they kill or hurt people,” Lahlou explains. “As a person, I have a political opinion, I take a position or I don’t. But in my work, I don’t want it to be like that. I want people to be in an awkward position and not know what’s happening, whether it’s humor or reality, true or false. I lean toward being stupid [in my work] because I don’t want to make people think that I am saying bad things. You can have criticisms, but that doesn’t mean that you’re against something. You can have fun with everything — but can you really have fun with everything?” …Lahlou plans to reduce his physical presence in his work. “There is the fear of repeating myself, even if everything I do is different. Since I am the basis of my work — I’m often the model, even if I’m not there — I get a bit tired of myself. Today, I want to think more, to be a bit less present,” he says. “But I think that I will still have things to say for 30 more years.”

Inspired by Nicolai Hartvig ow.ly/gpOAu image source Twitter ow.ly/gpOzv

Asim Waqif the 34 year old Indian video and documentary artist whose projects have attempted a crossover between architecture, art and design has been featured by Gayatri Rangachari Shah in an article for the New York Times titled ‘Indian Artist Looks to Bring Works to the Everyman’. Shah states “…with his elaborate sculpture “Bordel Monstre,” at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris … Waqif, a former architect, said he felt limited designing within the confines of an office, and about seven years ago he started producing avant-garde installations …has used unconventional material, weaving debris — like discarded wood panels, wiring, plastic waste, metal and dry waste — into an elaborate, interactive sculpture. The 34-year-old multidisciplinary artist described the exhibit as a “means of making people aware of their own movement, to take into account an element of risk in their lives, of being careful and conscious.” In an effort to stimulate all five senses, he built mechanical pedals and electronic panels into the mazelike structure so that spectators could actively engage with the work. “People will be actors in the work, which includes light and sound,” said the show’s curator, Daria de Beauvais, by telephone. “It will be a unique experience for the audience because they will be able to hear, see, walk, feel and smell the work.” “Bordel Monstre” is the culmination of Mr. Waqif’s fall residency in Paris, which was supported by SAM Art Projects, and is the first exhibition to be displayed in the recently expanded Palais’s Music Temple room, a space originally dedicated to creating electronic music. Describing the large room as “challenging to work in,” Ms. Beauvais said she was impressed by the artist’s ability to make it his own. “The way some people work with canvas, Asim works with space”.” Inspired by Gayatri Rangachari Shah ow.ly/gdOGc image source SamArtProjects ow.ly/gdOCp

Elizabeth Price the 46 year old British artist and former member of indie pop bands having been awarded the Turner Prize for her video trilogy, the first video artist to win for over a decade. The jury “admired the seductive and immersive qualities of Price’s video trilogy, which reflects the ambition that has characterised her work in recent years. They were impressed by the way Price creates a rhythmic and ritualistic experience through her film installations combining different materials and technical vocabularies from archival footage and popular music videos to advertising.” Charlotte Higgins in a Guardian article states “Were she starting out now, her career in art – one that has just been crowned by her winning this year’s Turner prize – would be impossible, Elizabeth Price has said. The artist, who was awarded the £25,000 prize on Monday, criticised the government’s introduction of the Ebacc qualification in schools. …Price, who attended a comprehensive school in Luton before studying art at the University of Oxford, where she also now teaches, criticised the withdrawal of state funding for humanities and arts at universities. The result, she said, is that “these will become the subjects of the privileged, and history-writing and novel-writing and art-making and poetry-writing will become homogenous in terms of class and social background”. Her career – making video art whose value in the commercial world is insufficient to support her – has been possible only because of publicly funded arts institutions, she said. “If you look at my CV, just about everything I have done has come through a publicly funded institution; it is a career entirely built on that sort of support.” It would never have happened without the “generous opportunities I’ve had through education and public funding”.

Inspired by Charlotte Higgins ow.ly/g205S image source deskarati ow.ly/g20A0

Beatriz Milhazes the 52 year old Brazilian artist known for her work juxtaposing Brazilian cultural imagery and references to western Modernist painting, has been profiled by Eileen Kinsella for Blouin Artinfo in an article titled ‘The Secrets to Brazilian Painter Beatriz Milhazes’s International Success’. Kinsella states “…They virtually explode with layer upon layer of intricate patterns and wild, rich colors. These derive from a vast variety of sources, including, in her earlier works, Baroque imagery and feminine lace or ruffle motifs that refer to 19th-century embroidery. Among continuing sources of inspiration are the rhythms of Brazilian music and the festive imagery of the Carnival, as well as the tropical flora and fauna of Brazil’s lush rain forests. Her studio in Rio de Janeiro sits next to the city’s botanical garden, and its influence on her practice — frequently studded with blooming rings of petals and elaborate floral designs — is palpable. Milhazes’s later works have less of the spiderwebby patterns and feature more mechanical-looking swirls, circles, and squares. …Milhazes described her work in a 2008 interview in the biannual art review RES as having “a healthy conflict. Many people say, ‘Wow, it’s beautiful,’” she said, “but on the other hand, it’s not a comfortable beauty.” Her meticulous process limits the number of paintings she can produce. Milhazes applies paint to plastic sheets and allows it to dry before transferring the pigment to canvas and then removing the plastic. The result is an exceptionally flat, smooth appearance. “I do not want the texture of the brushstrokes or the ‘hand’ of the painter to be visible on my canvases.” the artist explained…”

Inspired by Eileen Kinsella ow.ly/fuJi6 image source Wikipaintings ow.ly/fuJZp

Wade Guyton the 41 year old American artist regarded to be at the forefront of a generation that has been reconsidering both appropriation and abstract art through the 21st-century lens of technology, using Epson inkjet printers and flatbed scanners as tools to make works that act like drawings, paintings, even sculptures. Guyton has  been profiled by Rachel Corbett for Blouin Artinfo in an article titled ‘”A Weird, Perfect Storm”: What’s Behind the Rise of Inkjet Artist Wade Guyton?’  Corbett states “Nobody, it seems, has a bad thing to say about Wade Guyton these days. Critic Roberta Smith called the artist’s current mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art “beautiful” and “brilliant.” Art advisor Lowell Pettit described him as “a southern gentleman, the sweetest guy you’ll meet.” And perhaps the most generous compliments come from collectors, who have been shelling out upwards of $650,000 for his abstract inkjet prints. …He [] seems to have found an intellectual and financial sweet spot. His timeless, neo-minimalist aesthetic—typewritten Xs, inky monochromes, razor-sharp lines, all manufactured by an Epson inkjet printer—is highly collector-friendly, and his market was strong even before the Whitney exhibition. The intersections between painting and technology in Guyton’s work contribute to a larger historical conversation tied to Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Agnes Martin. This is partly why observers bet that Guyton, along with perhaps his frequent collaborator Kelley Walker and Sterling Ruby, have the conceptual chops to outlast their peers.”

Inspired by Rachel Corbett ow.ly/f5vwG image source ArtNet ow.ly/f5vtJ

David Sandum the 41 year old Swedish Artist and organizer of the first #Twitterartexhibit in 2010 in the belief that “Through art we can change the world.” The #Twitterartexhibit concept utilizes social media and public engagement to generate income for charities and nonprofit organizations. In the past, #Twitterartexhibit has generated funds for children’s books at a local library and resources for a Women’s shelter. Artists worldwide contribute a postcard-sized, handmade original artwork to the #Twitterartexhibit, which in turn organizes a local, physical showcasing of the art. The public is invited to buy the art at an affordable price, with100% of proceeds going to charity, providing artists with new avenues, audiences and benefactors, and appeals to art enthusiasts all over the world. Every participant, from artists to organizers, are working on a voluntary, unpaid basis. Sandum states we just care about “sharing your talent for a good cause.” It is his vision to get Twitter artists from as many countries as possible to participate. For the audience, one of the most fascinating parts of the exhibition is walking around the space and seeing where there all the artists come from. There is no theme. The idea here is to promote artists from all over the world for a good cause. “So paint/draw something that represents your style and work. As this will be a public event where children may be present, we ask you to consider making the subject matter appropriate for all audiences. The definition of “appropriate” is up for debate in the art world, but please use common sense. We reserve the right to withhold any artwork we find inappropriate.”

Inspired by Twitterartexhibit ow.ly/f3yFp image source Facebook ow.ly/f3yzL

Wolfgang Beltracchi (born Wolfgang Fischer) the 61 year old German art forger and artist who has admitted to producing hundreds of fake paintings has been sentenced to 6 years imprisonment. Beltracchi along with his wife and two other accomplices sold some of the fake paintings as original works by famous artists including Max Ernst, Heinrich Campendonk, Fernand Leger and Kees van Dongen. Police have identified 58 paintings suspected of having been forged by Beltracchi, however Beltracchi claims he has forged hundreds of paintings by over 50 artists. Beltracchi and his associates fabricated stories to provide a provenance for the fake works of art, claiming his grandparents had been art collectors in the 1920s. Beltracchi sold a fake 1927 Max Ernst painting to a dealer for €1.8 million after an appraisal had resulted in the issue a certificate of authenticity. The Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière lent it to the Max Ernst Museum for an exhibition and subsequently sold it to a collector for $7 million. Steve Martin also paid a Paris gallery Cazeau-Béraudière €700,000 for a work supposedly painted by Heinrich Campendonk in 1915, who in turn sold the painting through Christie’s to a Swiss businesswoman for €500,000. Beltracchi and his wife Helene are to serve their sentences in an open prison, as long as they maintain regular employment through a friend’s photostudio, leaving prison in the morning and returning after work. While serving his sentence Wolfgang Beltracchi is maintaining a collaboration with a photographer to produce a number of mixed-media works.

Inspired by Joshua Hammer ow.ly/eU9AQ image source Twitter ow.ly/eU9lq

Wolfgang Tillmans the 44 year old German Fine-art photographer and artist whose diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations. Tillmans has an exhibition at the Moderna Museet Stockholm curated by Daniel Birnbaum and Jo Widoff, and in an e-flux article described as “one of the leading artists of his generation and is constantly in the public eye, with exhibitions all over the world. The exhibition at Moderna Museet is Wolfgang Tillmans’ largest exhibition to date and brings nearly twenty years of picture-making to a new audience. …an artist who has extended the boundaries of photography and redefined the medium of photography as an artform. Wolfgang Tillmans first attracted attention at the beginning of the 1990s, with his apparently mundane pictures of subjects taken from his own surroundings. After studying in Britain, he published photographs in prominent publications such as i-D, Spex and Interview. Today, these pictures are considered trendsetting for the young generation of the 1990s, and raise questions about subcultures and sexual identities. By turning everyday situations into almost monumental images, Tillmans very strikingly captured the spirit of the times. It soon became evident that his pictures renegotiate photographic conventions and reflect contemporary currents related to culture and identity. Since then, Tillmans has continued his in-depth investigations, expanding the realm of photography and redefining the very medium as an artform. …Recently Tillmans’ art has taken a number of different directions, revolving around various issues, everything from still lifes and modern landscapes to his lifelong interest in astronomy and the night sky.”

Inspired by e-flux ow.ly/eztu6 image source Wikipedia ow.ly/eztem

Terence Edwin Smith the 68 year old Australian art historian, art critic and artist renowned for his ability “to write criticism at once alert to the forces that contextualize art and sensitive to the elements and qualities that inhere to the works of art themselves”, has been interviewed by Orit Gat. In the interview Smith states “To give something back to curators. We all owe them a huge debt. When you’re an art historian, you tend to search museum installations and exhibitions for fresh art historical facts, for something that will help you interpret more deeply, or at least differently, a school of art or the work of an artist over a whole career. If you’re an art critic, you try to write about your response to the works in the exhibition, one by one or one compared to others, with a focus on the artist or a kind of art. But art critics, art historians, the general public, and even artists don’t pay sufficient attention to the curatorial thought behind exhibitions. …[curators] have become more active, more public thinkers…and call themselves “exhibition makers.” They overtly engage viewers with their thinking about art, and particularly about how art relates to the world—which is something that art itself has done much more since the 1960s and 1970s. Also, curators have become more like artists in the ways they present an exhibition–it then becomes, in a sense, an artwork. At the same time, certain artists are making works of art that are more like exhibitions, and more and more are taking control of exhibiting their own art…”

Inspired by Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/e0ddo image source PittEdu ow.ly/e0dOm

Marie Sierra the American Australian Artist and academic Professor researching the social construction of nature through the advertising of ‘green’ whitegoods, has a particular interest in how art constitutes research, leading her to be active in visual arts advocacy, representing the interests of practising artists through committee positions with Contemporary Art Spaces, the Public Art Committee and the Cultural Affairs Committee for the City of Melbourne. Sierra is the Head of the School of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Tasmania, and a past board member of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, performing consulting work for local government and industry in relation to commissioning and strategic planning for public art. Sierra has held numerous solo exhibitions and has participated in group shows in Australia, the US, and France. Active as an arts writer, Sierra regularly presents research papers at conferences and written a number of essays and reviews for magazines such as Agenda, Kerb, Art Monthly and Meanjin, and an art critic for a Melbourne based newspaper. Sierra recently ran the department of Sculpture and Spatial Practice at the Faculty of VCA & Music at Melbourne University, holding senior positions as Graduate Research Coordinator and Associate Dean Research, winning several grants and awards, including a 2007 Venice Biennale educator.

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Nadia Jelassi the Tunisian artist facing a five year prison term on charges of disrupting public order, following her exhibition of controversial art works, has become the focus of a campaign by hundreds of artists throughout Tunisia and abroad according to Hend Hassassi in an article published on Tunisia Live. Hassassi states “When Jelassi was summoned by the investigative judge … she went through an anthropometric test. She recreated her experience by posting a picture of herself holding a ruler by her face on her Facebook account. A support campaign was then launched by other artists inspired by Jelassi’s depiction of the incident. Many Tunisian artists have condemned the lawsuit and consider it an attempt at limiting freedom of expression. …“We are all Nadia. It is unbelievable, we never thought that charges would be brought against an artist for being creative, that’s what we do we express ourselves, we do it through our art. I don’t even get what the crime she is being accused of[…] It is certainly a first. For this to happen after the so-called revolution, it is just shocking, … It is the state that raised the lawsuit, how outrageous is that, this is not a spontaneous accusation someone is pulling the strings, it is certainly political and artists are paying the price“ said Sana Tamzini, artist and director of Belvedere Contemporary Art gallery, praising the support campaign for its intelligence and symbolism.”

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Sarah Lucas the 50 year old British Artist who emerged as part of the generation of Young British Artists during the 1990s. Lucas’s works frequently employs visual puns and bawdy humour, includes photography, collage and found objects. Lucas has been profiled by Christina Patterson for the Independent titled ‘Sarah Lucas: A Young British Artist grows up and speaks out’. Patterson states in the article “[Lucas] says, “never been someone for make-up”. She has, in fact, had “fun” not “using her femininity” because “people find it so odd”. At the Groucho club, where the YBAs used to hang out, she’d stare at the women “in their summer dresses and perfume, flirting with men”, and enjoy the fact that she wasn’t. “You realise,” she says, “that you’ve got some other charisma.”You can say that again. It’s quite rare to meet a heterosexual woman who’s making no attempt at all to make herself attractive to men, but who – how shall I put this? – radiates sex. But it’s also quite hard to think of an artist whose work is so much about it. …This is what Sarah Lucas does. She takes… “ordinary things” …and she does something to them that can actually make you blush. She doesn’t just take ordinary objects and say they’re art. Quite a lot of the YBAs, and the people they have influenced, do. They seem to think that if you say something’s art it’s art, and if you say something’s shocking, it is. They seem to forget that the person to decide whether something’s shocking, or powerful, or moving, isn’t the person who made it.”

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Sharon Hayes the 42 year old American artist who uses mixed mediums of video, performance, and installation in an ongoing investigation into various intersections between history, politics and speech, has been profiled by Kyle Chayka on Blouin Artinfo for her Whitney Museum exhibition titled ‘There’s So Much I Want to Say to You’. In the article Chayka states “…Hayes came of age during the rise of gay liberation movements and Third Wave feminism, twin currents that drive “There’s So Much I Want to Say to You.” In this tour-de-force solo show, the artist is equal parts activist, diarist, and journalist, charting her own individual upheavals even as she experiences the upheavals of her time and excavates the struggles of the past. A gay woman, Hayes integrates the personal and the political in a way that brings to mind the recent identity-based work of Simon Fujiwara and Danh Vo, but with a keener sense of the painful realities of the world and their impact on the individual. In formats ranging from her 1990s-era solo theatrical performances to her 2004 DJ set drawn from her extensive collection of spoken-word LPs, Hayes draws on lives and stories outside her own. Much of the Whitney exhibition confronts the struggle for queer identity. Sixteen-millimeter film footage shot at the 1971 “Christopher Street Liberation Day and Gay-In” is voiced over by Hayes and activist Kate Millett, who was born in 1934, in a piece called “Gay Power.” Millett reminisces about the excitement of the day while the camera runs up and down young bodies lit by the yellowing setting sun.”

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Van Thanh Rudd the 38 year old Vietnamese Australian artist whose artworks have created controversies due to their left-wing political content has contributed artworks in support of ‘Free the Refugees Campaign’. Rudd’s first step into art/politics was becoming a member of the Darebin Artists Action Group (DAAG), followed with a deeper involvement in global politics came about while attending anti-globalization S11 rallies in Melbourne. Rudd’s art is influenced, inspired and directed towards movements of social justice around the globe. His major aim is to expose his often controversial art to as many people as possible in order to inspire discussion and debate about art’s role in today’s environmental, political and economic crises. Rudd describes himself as an “anti-capitalist activist who believes art can help change the world for the better and that art is never neutral. Art is never devoid of politics and economics. Art is part of a class war between the wealthy, ruling elites of the world and the majority of the indebted, working poor and exhausted and depleting middle classes. …Along with many social justice activists around the world, am inspired by the revolutionary atmosphere taking place around the world, from the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall St, the radical Left movements of Latin America, to the local street protests. Those protests include freedom for refugees, freedom for Palestine, freedom for Julian Assange and Wikileaks, and ending the Imperialist wars in the middle east. My art attempts to assist these and many more social justice campaigns.”

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Joana Vasconcelos the 41 year old Portuguese-French artist renowned for her appropriations, de-contextualisation and subversion of pre-existent objects and everyday realities. Vasconcelos’ work has been critiqued by Patricia Vieira & Michael Marder in an Aljazeera article, where her piece titled ‘Dorothy’ is described as a “giant high-heel shoe is created by putting together aluminium pots and lids of various sizes. …Dorothy juxtaposes the most recognisable markers of the stereotypical private and public female roles: the pots symbolise housekeeping duties and the high-heel shoe stands for the glamorous image of a seductress. The artist and her work become channels for the communication among disparate things that did not previously belong to the same spatial and temporal constellation. The pots and the shoe speak to one another, and what they relate to us in their thingly language is the material underside of women’s oppression. In Dorothy, Vasconcelos stages an encounter not only between things drawn from two different spheres of everyday life but also between a given thing and a seemingly incongruous milieu. This is accomplished both by changing the dimensions of a normal shoe and by placing the giant shoe in an unexpected setting: a garden or a hall of Versailles.” Vasconcelos’ sculptures and installations, as well as performances and video or photographic records, reveal an acute sense of scale and mastery of colour, while combining in the materialization of concepts that challenge the prearranged routines of daily life.

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Kerry James Marshall the 56 year old American artist painter known for his large-scale paintings, sculptures, and objects that take African-American life and history as their subject matter. His work often deals with the effects of the Civil Rights movement on domestic life, in addition to working with elements of popular culture. Marshall developed a signature style during his early years involving the use of extremely dark, essentially black figures. These images represent his perspective of African Americans with separate and distinct inner and outer appearances, while at the same time confronting racial stereotypes within contemporary American society. Marshall has been profiled by Rachel Wolff in an article on Artinfo, where he states “€œIf you look historically at the way painting has moved from representation to abstraction, the implications of that, in some ways, erased what people can identify as political and social content in a work, one of the quickest ways you can erase what they saw as limitations of ethnicity and race was to do abstract work, and by doing so, you would find your way into the mainstream of the art world. I am trying to demonstrate that there is a great deal of potential left in the black aesthetic and within the specificity of the Black Nationalist position as represented by the colors red, black, and green. That you can transcend what is perceived to be the limitation of a race-conscious kind of work. It is a limitation only if you accept someone else’s foreclosure from the outside. If you go into it yourself, you can exercise a good deal. And you are limited only by your own ability to imagine possibilities.”€

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Héla Ammar the 43 year old Tunisian photographic Artist a participant in the Printemps des Arts [Springtime Art Festival] has been interviewed by Yasmine Ryan for Aljazeera in regard to the rise of conservative moral and violent religious censorship of her home land’s artists and intellectuals. In the interview Ammar states “A misleading video montage showing a painting has been widely shared online, presenting artists as non-believers. It’s this diffusion of dishonest information and images which has provoked hatred and condemnation from a fringe of society. …The concept of national or sacred values is just a pretext to muzzle artists and creativity. These concepts can be interpreted in many different ways, especially the most restrictive, which will ultimately result in Tunisia having official art and dissident art. This is very serious and echoes dark periods in history… In reality, the artists have been used as scapegoats. This affair has been entirely manufactured to eclipse more serious issues. We are in the middle of a war between several political movements, with the Salafists and other reactionary movements which are pressuring the present government against moderation and appeasement. …What is happening is definitely very serious because the personal details of some artists have been published on extremist [Facebook] pages which have thousands of fans. They are calling for the murder of these artists. My friends are receiving endless phone calls and insulting messages and death threats. We are very worried because we don’t have any protection, and even the cultural ministry, which should be defending us, has abandoned us.”

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I am aware of where I am (June 1st 2012)

Tracey Karima Emin the 48 year old British artist, part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs (Young British Artists), has been featured by novelist Jeanette Winterson in The Independent under the title ‘The evolution of Tracey Emin’. Winterson states from a discussion with Emin, ““Wherever I am, I am aware of where I am, and the me that is in the where I am. So I am always a little bit outside of anywhere, and wondering about it.” But Tracey, what happens when the iconoclast becomes an icon? “I’m a role model, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I belong.” But doesn’t fame and fortune put you in the elite, not the outsiders? …Warhol began the idea of artist as artwork. At its most corrupt it has become celebrity culture where making news is a much more important activity than making anything worthwhile. It is vacuity and spin. Tracey Emin does make things; she has made a lot of things, and recently in her continual re-visions of hand and eye, body and brain, her work has suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange. The ugly feral shock of My Bed. The defiant beauty of the blue nudes. It’s all Tracey Emin – she can see that. Look at her.”

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Art war to prevent destruction of culture (May 2nd 2012)

Antonio Manfredi an Italian artist, curator and director of a Naples museum, the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum has set fire to a painting valued at €10,000 to protest the under-funding of arts in Italy. Before cameras, he set fire to a painting by French artist Séverine Bourguignon watching the spectacle via Skype. In an interview with John Hooper of the Guardian, Manfredi stated “There’s no money for upkeep. We were flooded recently. And there are tons of garbage mounting up outside. …This is a war. This is a revolution, an art war to prevent the destruction of culture, and in a revolution, there are winners and losers. …There are about 1,000 works, so this could go on for years, I tell you, it’s not nice setting light to works of art. It’s terrible. Each one has its own story. …You can’t …ask for money from companies in the area that are in the grip of the Camorra, some pay [the mobsters] protection money. Others are actually controlled by them. … in this area, if you don’t have backing from the authorities, you’re in serious danger. My fear is that they’ll let me go ahead and burn the lot.”

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Students engaged each other on the topic of war (April 12th 2012)

Michael Rakowitz the 38 year old Iraqi American Artist and Professor renowned for his conceptual art displayed in non-gallery contexts has a new installation work on the streets of Chicago, titled ‘Enemy Kitchen’. The work is a continuing project begun in 2004 as a collaboration with his Iraqi-Jewish mother. Rakowitz states on his web “…the first incarnation of the project  …with a group of middle school and high school students who live in Chelsea… Some had relatives in the US Army stationed in Iraq. …In preparing and then consuming the food [Baghdadi recipes], it opened up another topic through which the word ‘Iraq’ could be discussed… The project functioned as a social sculpture: while cooking and eating, the students engaged each other on the topic of the war and drew parallels with their own lives, at times making comparisons with bullies in relation to how they perceive the conflict.” This new phase of the project encompasses a mobile food truck in Chicago at the Smart Museum of Art. The food truck features a different Iraqi cook each day, serving cuisine from different regions of the country, and will be staffed by American veterans of the Iraq War who act as servers and sous-chefs.”

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It's grueling when there are other things to do (April 7th 2012)

John Barry Humphries the 78 year old Australian comedian satirist and Dadaist artist renowned for his on-stage character and alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, has announced the pending retirement of the Dame and Sir Les. The Dame Edna character is famous for her ‘Wiseria hue’ (lilac) coloured hair along with the “face furniture” cat eye glasses, her favourite “gladdies” flowers (gladiolas) and repetition greeting “Hello Possums”. The character evolved from an ultra conservative drab Melbourne housewife of the 1950’s that satirized the suburbia of Australia, into an outlandish character “Megastar” with her elevation of a ‘Damehood’ as her popularity grew internationally. Humphries in his character as Dame Edna has interviewed many celebrities on chat shows, treating them as ordinary people, satirizing the celebrity cult with a mix of prudishness and class snobbery. On the pending retirement, Humphries stated “Edna will crop up on television I guess but not in a live show, the fact of the matter is that I’m beginning to feel a bit senior. It’s the best aerobics you could do, leaping around on stage, but it’s grueling when there are other things to do.”

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