Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Bharti Kher the 43 year old British Indian contemporary artist whose work encompasses painting, sculpture and installation has been profiled by Carla Raffinetti in an article published on Artlyst titled ‘Bharti Kher’s Surreal World Of Cyborgs Bindis And White Elephants’. Raffinetti states “Bharti Kher’s is one of India’s best-known contemporary artists. …Although the artist was born and bred in England, she settled in India permanently in 1992 after meeting her future husband there, the Indian artist Subodh Gupta.  As the daughter of first generation Indian immigrants to the UK, Kher’s work explores themes of identity and belonging, of being of Indian descent but of not quite being Indian, of being raised in Great Britain but not being quite British either. Kher’s world is a place where all metanarratives have broken down.  Her work collages an uneasy mix of socio-cultural memes together.  As an Indian insider-outsider, Bharti Kher questions cultural and social rules through her art.  Taking her own disjointed identity as a starting point, Kher’s work walks the tightrope between ancient Indian customs juxtaposed with modern Western values.  Outside of the narrow frame of Asian art, her work serves more broadly as a metaphor of the multiple meanings that can be ascribed to an object or a situation, depending on its context. … whilst Kher delves into her ethnicity for imagery, she does not do so exclusively, preferring an approaching that is more culturally ambiguous.  Says the artist, “The figures I make always resist all classifications of class, race, time – they could be anybody at any time.”

Inspired by Carla Raffinetti ow.ly/fKfP6 image source Arken ow.ly/fKfKN

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.”

Inspired by Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/cQQbZ image source Yiaos ow.ly/cQNRh

You need to find people to talk to and to learn (December 1st)

Martin Boyce the 43 year old UK artist renowned for his modernist sculptures and installations has been nominated for Turner Prize following his Swiss exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber. Boyce’s sculptures have been described as a form of nonsensical modernism, appearing to dreamingly merge into each other to form a larger interior modernist installation. Boyce in an interview with Coline Milliard, stated “In my early teens I realized it was as much about looking as it was about making. My world was record sleeves, music and taking in your jeans to give them a narrow leg. Pop art and pop culture were my way in … You need to find people to talk to and to learn about the things that matter to you — it’s essential. Now with college and university fees that crucial breadth of people you might meet will be narrowed.”

Inspired by Coline Milliard http://ow.ly/7A1jg image source artmw http://ow.ly/7A1DG