Art Night Dundee
a-n Board member Helen Nisbet directs this one-night event of artist commissions and performances, which is taking place outside London for the first time.
Art Night will present ten major new commissions in civic spaces across Dundee by internationally significant and emerging artists.
Dundee-based a-n member Saoirse Amira Anis presents a performance along the city’s waterfront, as an extension of her exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts (see below), while Emma Hart, also an a-n member, will show a new series of sculptures that celebrate raving.
Heather Phillipson‘s commission Dream Land incorporates archival BBC wildlife footage, ‘recast as hallucination’, while Tai Shani presents a fantastical series of filmic tableaux, which draw on film genres from horror to technicolour dreamscapes.
June 24 2023, venues across Dundee artnight.org.uk/
symphony for a fraying body
This major solo exhibition by Dundee-based a-n member Saoirse Amira Anis presents an installation of new film, sculpture and costume that explores connections between Scottish and Moroccan folklore and rituals.
Anis’ work is inspired by ‘mythologies, nature, cultural bricolage, and the rebellion and rage of those overlooked by dominant society and assigned as “other”.’ Their film features a dancer wearing a costume made of madder root-dyed rope, which resembles tentacles as it trails through water, as the protagonist moves through rockpools, waterfalls and seafronts.
Tendrils, receptacles, sand and rope pervade the work, suggesting ‘ebbing and flowing, gripping and drowning, gathering and unravelling’ and offering a view of the world from a place outside human-based knowledge: ‘to touch, feel and inhabit ideas the way nonhumans might.’
20 May – 6 August 2023, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee dca.org.uk/
Assignments23
Cardiff based Arts Organiser a-n member Ffotogallery hosts the British Press Photographers’ Association exhibition Assignments23 – the first time the show has travelled to Wales. This follows its initial ten day run at London’s Bargehouse on the Southbank in May.
Selected by open call, the exhibition features photographs that capture key events of the last year, including the war in Ukraine, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the Tokyo Olympics, as well as shining a light on less high-profile stories.
One striking portrait by Natasha Pszenicki is of Jade, an actor and writer who is pregnant with her first child following IVF with her partner Grace. Their journey to a successful pregnancy remains a rarity because of factors including money, mixed ethnicity and sexual orientation.
9 June – 8 July 2023, Ffotogallery, Cardiff ffotogallery.org
X – Contemporary British Painting
Curated by artist and a-n member Narbi Price, this ambitious painting exhibition brings together work by over 80 artists, including numerous a-n members.
The biggest show of its kind to take place in North East England in decades, it showcases a wide spectrum of what painting can be, from photorealism to gestural abstraction, large-scale work to tiny intimate studies. Artists include George Shaw, Andrew Grassie, Juliette Losq, Stephen Palmer and Paula MacArthur.
X – Contemporary British Painting marks the tenth anniversary of the artist-led Contemporary British Painting organisation and features all previous winners of the Contemporary British Painting Prize it founded in 2016, including Cathy Lomax, who also presents the a-n/SPACE Artonomics podcast.
Until 17 June 2023, Newcastle Contemporary Art, Newcastle upon Tyne contemporarybritishpainting.com
Open Studios Cornwall
Hundreds of artists, designers and makers across Cornwall open their studios and workshops to the public to share their artistic practices.
Numerous artforms are represented, ranging from painting, sculpture and pottery to furniture, weaving and woodturning.
A chance to buy original, affordable artwork direct from artists, while exploring the Cornish countryside, coast and towns.
27 May – 4 June 2023, venues across Cornwall openstudioscornwall.co.uk
London Gallery Weekend
London Gallery Weekend returns for its third edition with a 100 free events and exhibitions plus an expanded programme of live performance showcasing work by Nicole Bachmann, Li Hei Di, and Minh-Lan Tran.
a-n member Larry Achiampong is one of several artists, writers and architects who have curated routes to guide visitors around the city’s participating galleries – available on the London Gallery Weekend website and as in-person tours.
Achiampong also presents ‘And I saw a new Heaven’ at south London’s Copperfield Gallery. This solo exhibition features collaged paintings that mix cultural references from TV, video games and the Bible, breaking down notions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture and challenging a status quo in which white faces are dominant.
On the importance of gaming to his practice, Achiampong explains: “video games have had huge influence on my art work and the reality of their sophistication and cultural referencing is ignored by the rest of the creative sphere. It’s time for video games to take their place as context in the gallery while I work on my ultimate goal; a playable artwork. At its core gaming is storytelling, world building, fantasy, exploration and human culture in one”.
London Gallery Weekend, 2-4 June 2023, londongalleryweekend.art/
Larry Achiampong: And I saw a new Heaven, until 17 June, Copperfield, London copperfieldgallery.com/
Liverpool Biennial
Returning for its 12th edition, this Liverpool Biennial is titled ‘uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things’ and addresses subjects including extraction, mapping and healing.
In the isiZulu language, ‘uMoya’ means spirit, breath, air, climate and wind. Khanyisile Mbongwa, Curator of the Biennial, describes uMoya as a current and invites visitors ‘to lend themselves to its flow, allowing the artists’ work to be a compass’ to guide them through the Biennial.
Taking place in the port city that played a key role in the trade of enslaved people and the making of the British Empire, venues include historic buildings such as a former tobacco warehouse and cotton exchange, alongside the city’s galleries and museums.
a-n member Rudy Loewe will present a new large-scale installation inspired by the Liverpool Sailors’ Home gates and based on the artist’s painting February 1970, Trinidad #1, which depicts Moko jumbie (a stilts walker or dancer) and other Carnival participants helping people at a moment of Black Power revolution in Trinidad and Tobago.
10 June – 17 September 2023, venues across Liverpool biennial.com/
Top image: Saoirse Amira Anis, Film Stills
