Liz West
Liz West is taking part in this exhibition in Tripostal, Lille, focusing on experiencing colours. Its press release enticingly says the show will ‘tickle all our senses and visitors will be invited to explore, feel, hear, colour through a series of immersive installations’. Can you feel a colour, can you smell a colour, can you hear a colour…? Well this exhibition may offer the answers.
Artists and designers were invited to create an installation in situ, all focused on different aspects of colour, including light and colour, sound and colour, and psyche and colour. In addition, part of the exhibition has been created in collaboration with the Design Museum Ghent. Inspired by Jan van Eyck’s skillful use of colour, which has been fully revealed during the restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece, a selection of national and international designers have created work linked by their ‘affinity with colour’.
Until 14 November 2021, Tripostal, Lille, France www.a-n.co.uk/events/colors-etc/ JH
Jasleen Kaur: Be Like Teflon
Artist and a-n Artists Council member Jasleen Kaur’s first solo show in London offers an intimate reading and viewing space that will focus around two main works: the book Be Like Teflon, that gives title to the exhibition, and the film Ethnoresidue. Commissioned by Panel and Glasgow Women’s Library, the show uncovers the untold, hidden stories of Indian women living in Britain.
Exploring the Library’s collection and the voices she found to be missing, Kaur found the need for a new book — part transcript, part cookbook, part collection of essays — that foregrounds lost or underrepresented experience. One of the conversations that forms part of the book is with the artist’s maternal grandmother, which also inspired the film Ethnoresidue. Rooting the work in Pollokshields, Glasgow, the site of her family home and the focus of South Asian communities, Kaur expands on the complexities and intimacies of identity, belonging, reckoning with histories and their entanglement in persistent colonial structures. A must see.
4 June – 17 July 2021, Copperfield, London www.copperfieldgallery.com/jasleen-kaur-be-like-teflon.html JH
Out Of The Woods
Long time a-n member Jo Goddard has organised this outdoor group show in Brighton. Featuring ceramics, sculpture, painted saws and painting, it takes place in the Covid secure setting of Threeways garden in Ovingdean Village, on the outskirts of the city. 26 artists are taking part, including: Michelle Butler, Dave Pop, Jeremy Diaper, Billy Chainsaw, Chris Moore, Zoe Windle, Alex Binnie, Lisa Wolfe, Matt Noir, Jim Sanders, Robert Winterson, Michelle Porter, Jo Goddard, Christine Scawin, Julie-ann Smith, Claudia Castelton-Brown Figurative Sculptures, Jack Durling, Karen Hirst Sculpture/ Conceptual works, Chris Turrell, Simon Dredge, Tara Gould, Jacob Frerichs, Danny Manning, Dominic Parrette, Ben Swift, and Raphael Berrio.
Until 30 May, Threeways, Ovingdean Village www.sites.google.com/view/joanna-goddard-ceramics/home JH
Alternate Perceptions
For this exhibition at Salisbury Arts Centre artist Mahlia Amatina has created a multi-sensory experience of colour, line, shape and form, through tactile art that explores the creative side of neurodiversity. After being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome in 2015, the artist was inspired to share the unique sensory experiences of life on the autistic spectrum through her art. Drawing inspiration from the varied landscapes and rich flavours of her international roots and global travels, Amatina’s installation offers a ‘narrative through abstraction querying traditional boundaries of style and purpose’. Created as part of the SHIFT! programme in collaboration with Wiltshire Creative’s group of young artists: #80WashingLines – A Wiltshire Takeover.
Until 3 July 2021, Salisbury Arts Centre www.a-n.co.uk/events/alternate-perceptions/ JH
Liverpool Biennial 2021: The Stomach and the Port
With the reopening of galleries and museums, Liverpool Biennial’s full ‘indoor’ programme of exhibitions is now accessible in nine venues across the city, alongside outdoor sculptures, sound and digital commissions, and online events. Drawing on Liverpool’s history as a port city, ‘The Stomach and the Port’ explores concepts of the body as fluid and actively engaged in a reciprocal relationship with its environment. Among the 50 artists involved are Larry Achiampong, Camille Henrot, Haroon Mirza, and Alberta Whittle, while Alice Channer and SHELL LIKE recently discussed their practices and contribution to the biennial in a conversation with Wing-Sie Chan, a-n’s Head of Programmes. a-n’s partnership with Liverpool Biennial also includes awarding five bursaries to a-n members who will showcase their research and work-in-progress throughout the festival.
Also showing as part of the Biennial is John Moores Painting Prize at Walker Art Gallery – check out our recent Q&A with the winner, a-n member Kathryn Maple.
Until 27 June 2021, venues across Liverpool www.liverpoolbiennial2021.com EW
Veronica Ryan, Along a Spectrum
This major solo exhibition by Veronica Ryan, the artist’s largest to date, is the result of an extended residency at Spike Island funded by a Freelands Award. The sculptures and objects in ‘Along a Spectrum’ reflect Ryan’s environmental and socio-political concerns, personal narratives, history and displacement, through materials including crocheted fishing line pouches, tea-stained fabrics, cast bronze, cocoa pods and mango stones. Plants, vegetables, fruits and seeds are recurring objects and motifs in Ryan’s work, alluding to the different conditions and environments in which plants can germinate, root and grow, and to the history of global trade through their travel from place to place.
A series of clay casts of foam medical pillows suggest ideas of recovery and restoration, with some piled in precarious arrangements, echoing the stacked sculptures Ryan made in the 1990s. A new publication accompanies the exhibition, tracing Ryan’s practice from the 1980s to present day.
Until 5 September 2021, Spike Island, Bristol www.spikeisland.org.uk EW
Darkness at Noon
a-n member Ruth Calland takes part in this Contemporary British Painting panel discussion, which considers the transformational effects of the pandemic on artists and their practices. Taking place ahead of the ‘Darkness at Noon’ exhibition at Deptford’s A.P.T. Gallery in November 2021, the project draws on ideas of transition and alchemy, of transforming one material or state into another. Calland, who is the project curator and also a Jungian analyst, will be in discussion with Paula MacArthur, chair of Contemporary British Painting, Cherelle Sappleton, artist, Stephanie Moran, co-founder of the Marmite Prize for Painting, and Nick Medford, neurosurgeon, with Lucy Cox chairing.
5 June 2021, online www.a-n.co.uk/events/darkness-at-noon-a-contemporary-british-painting-panel-discussion EW
Lisa Watts and Dad: My Crazy Family Golf
John Hansard Gallery partially reopens its exhibition spaces with a participatory project by Lisa Watts and her father Gordon Watts, aka Dad. The crazy golf course they have created together includes family audio recordings made during Dad’s years as primary carer for his wife, who has complex mental illness. Visitors are invited to play a round of crazy golf on the sculptural course, which incorporates domestic items such as carpet and household objects, and to reflect on their own family relationships and the nature of care. The project is accompanied by the film Dad Cares, which documents the father and daughter’s artistic collaboration.
1 June – 10 July 2021, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton www.jhg.art EW
Bedwyr Williams: Milquetoast
“You’re not supposed to make work about being an artist but I can’t help it. I still find it such an odd environment,” says Welsh artist Bedwyr Williams about this major new exhibition of sculpture, painting, drawing and video. Interrogating the role of cultural establishments in contemporary society, it includes an installation of the daily iPad drawings that Williams posts on Instagram, which satirise the artworld, its stereotypes and characters. Elsewhere in the exhibition a series of sculptures of imagined buildings reflect Williams’ fascination with architectural and art tropes from the 1990s when he began his artistic career. Meanwhile his paintings explore the artworld’s affectations through objects he associates with curators, artists and cultural workers such as Le Corbusier-style spectacles, Ritter Sport chocolate and absurd, exaggerated clothing.
Until 11 June 2021, Southwark Park Galleries, London www.southwarkparkgalleries.org EW
Are you an a-n member with an upcoming exhibition? To be considered for a future edition of Now Showing, either email [email protected] or post your listing in Events.
Images:
1. Liz West, Remain in Light, 2021 © Maxime Dufour photographies
2. Jasleen Kaur, Ethnoresidue, 2020, HD Film, 19’32’’ (still). Commissioned by Tramway
3. Mahlia Amatina, Transitions II, Acrylics on Canvas (Framed) 60cm x 40cm
4. Camille Henrot at Lewis’s Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Installation view. Photo: Rob Battersby
5. Veronica Ryan, Pouch (2020). Net, orange peels, thread. Commissioned by Spike Island, Bristol and supported by Freelands Foundation. Photograph by Max McClure. Copyright: Veronica Ryan. Courtesy: Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and Alison Jacques, London
6. ‘Darkness at Noon’.
7. Lisa Watts & Dad, My Crazy Family Golf, 2021. Photo: Brian McClave
8. Bedwyr Williams, MILQUETOAST 2021. Installation at Southwark Park Galleries. Photo: Damian Griffiths. Courtesy the artist, Southwark Park Galleries and Southard Reid
