Observe, Experiment, Archive, Museum and Winter Gardens, Sunderland
This new exhibition from NEPN (North East Photography Network) explores the relationship between photography, science, technology and health. It brings together eight photographic artists whose work questions our rapidly changing world, including two new commissions by Tessa Bunney and Liza Dracup, plus the UK premiere of A Guide to Flora and Fauna of the World by Singaporean visual artist Robert Zhao Renhui. Elsewhere, Maria McKinney’s Sire, which is made up of large-scale photographs, explores selective breeding and genetics in contemporary cattle farming, while Mandy Barker’s SOUP highlights the extent of plastic in our oceans. Other artists exhibiting include Helen McGhie, Penelope Umbrico and Sophie Ingleby.
Until 5 January www.northeastphoto.net
Steve McQueen: Year 3, Tate Britain, London
Steve McQueen’s vast new art work is one of the most ambitious portraits of children ever undertaken in the UK. Every Year 3 pupil in London was invited to have their photograph taken by a team of specially trained Tate photographers, including children from state primaries, independent schools, faith schools, special schools, pupil referral units and home-educated pupils. The resulting large-scale installation captures tens of thousands of pupils and offers a fascinating glimpse into the capital’s future.
Until 3 May www.tate.org.uk
The person who is recording cannot intervene, Arcadia Missa, London
This group exhibition explores the role of art as documentation, and includes painting, sculpture and photography by artists Alan Michael, Claire van Lubeek, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings and Kayode Ojo. It takes as its starting point Christopher Isherwood’s novel Goodbye To Berlin, which offers an account of the experiences of a fictionalised version of the author in the decline of the Weimar Republic. Included in the exhibition are Ojo’s candid photographs in mirrored frames which document gallery and museum after-parties, Quinlan and Hastings’ video Something For The Boys which endeavours to create a lasting record of a receding queer culture and was filmed across two iconic Blackpool queer venues, and Michael’s photorealist paintings based on images of agency models walking the streets of central London.
Until 14 December www.arcadiamissa.com
Back Put Together It, Vane, Newcastle upon Tyne
This exhibition by artists Roland Hicks and Stephen Palmer features various depictions of cut-up, disfigured, deconstructed and reassembled forms. In an attempt to make sense of an increasingly fractured world, Hicks creates paintings and objects that look like modernist abstract assemblages, apparently stapled together from found offcuts of various types of chipboard. Meanwhile, Palmer’s recent paintings and drawings use as their starting point a model made from a sheet of A4 paper that has been defaced through a series of actions. The finished works offer an intriguing exploration of the undoing of formal geometry, grid systems and mark making, and a celebration of negation as a positive, creative act.
Until 14 December www.vane.org.uk
Line/Extended, Art and Design Gallery, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield
This show brings together five artists whose work explores the potential of the drawn line and the expanded field of drawing. As you might expect, there is a wide variety of approaches, ranging from traditional drawings on paper through to performative and site-specific pieces. What links them is a sense of action, whether it be live, latent, captured or documented. Artists include: Rosana Antolí, Lucy Brown, George Eksts, Jane Grisewood and Andrea V Wright.
Until 20 December www.uharts.co.uk
Images:
1. Mandy Barker, Birds Nest from Hong Kong Soup, 1826. Courtesy: the artist
2. ‘The person who is recording cannot intervene’
4. Roland Hicks, Four Part Dissemblage (OMCM), acrylic gouache on gesso panel, 30x23x4cm, 2018.
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