Anne Hardy | Time Out London | Apr 2013

What you see isn’t at all what you get with Anne Hardy’s haunting photographs. Her makeshift rooms, fabricated from material scavenged in and around her east London studio, are littered with the presence of recent human activity. Debris-strewn floors, an indoor target practice range and scribblings on a wall of coloured boards are all suggestive devices that Hardy relies upon to activate our imagination. But we are being controlled.

Read the entire review of Anne Hardy at Maureen Paley on Time Out London.

Image:Anne Hardy, 'Notations', 2012. Courtesy Maureen Paley

Bernadette Corporation | Time Out London | Apr 2013

You could be forgiven for thinking you've walked into a branded pop-up shop in Selfridges but in fact you're standing in the ICA's lower gallery where beats boom out from the sleek black structure and catwalk models promenade on monitors. Welcome to salon Bernadette Corporation...... 

Read the entire review of Bernadette Corporation: 2,000 Wasted years at ICA on Time Out London.

Sterling Ruby | Time Out London | Apr 2013

Drip-spattered dirty monumental effigies to America dominate Sterling Ruby’s first show with Hauser & Wirth. However, the Los Angeles-based artist isn’t paying homage to the land of the free; rather, he’s exposing his misgivings.............

Read the entire review of Sterling Ruby: EXHM at Hauser & Wirth on Time Out London.

Image: Installation view of EXHM. © Sterling Ruby and courtesy of Hauser & Wirth, London.

TEITH Q&A | Dazed Digital | Nov 2012

I caught up with the London-based duo, The Eyes In The Heat for Dazed Digital. Read my Q&A here where they talk about their debut album, Program Me, ski-diving and Jackson Pollock.

Francis Thorborn | Time Out London | Sep 2012

Read the entire review of Francis Thorburn at Enclave in Deptford at Time Out London.

Peter Blake | Time Out London | Aug 2012

Read the entire review of Peter Blake's exhibitions at Fine Art Society and Paul Stolper at Time Out London.

Tino Sehgal - REvisited

With Tino Sehgal's recently unveiled Tate Turbine Hall Commission, I thought it apt to revisit a piece I wrote on his first Scandinavian exhibition at Magasin 3 back in 2008 for Swedish Bon.

Still only 31, Berlin-based Tino Sehgal has already represented Germany at the Venice Biennale and been nominated for the prestigious Hugo Boss Award. In March 2008 he returns to the city where his work transformed from a background in choreography and political economy into Art.

Sehgal unleashes orchestrated scenarios onto often unsuspecting audiences within the confines of the museum or gallery, “I’m interested in constructing a situation”, he tells me over the phone fresh from his opening at Marian Goodman, New York. And what a ‘situation’ he creates, no materials are involved in his work, just the presentations from his ‘interpreters’. But who are they? He’s worked with political groups to children and explains, “Interpreter, it’s an overarching word for someone who follows some kind of pre-scripted authored structure but of course has their own creative impact into that.” And this is imperative to the composition of his crafted encounters, you can expect interactions with the gallery staff, or to be invited to discuss various topics with someone whom you assumed to be just another gallery visitor but after Sehgal’s given his instructions, the piece ultimately owns itself.

The line is blurred between theatre and installation but it’s certainly not to be considered performance art, “It’s kind of like a sculpture or like an installation, it has the same kind of permanence”, Sehgal goes onto explain, “For me it was interesting to insert something into this format [the Museum] which was not material but still had the same validity, it functions in the same way in the conventions of the museum so it’s just a work of art like any other that it can be shown in a situation like an exhibition, it’s also something that you have to kind of figure out, well it’s not material but it’s still something”

Whether you do or don’t figure it out, the three pieces that will be on show are to be experienced either by observing from the sidelines or fully participating in the intentional chance engagements.

Tino Sehgal

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall

6 March- 4 May 2008

Esther Teichmann feature for Aseop Publication

I recently met with artist Esther Teichmann to talk about her work for Aesop's online publication. Read the entire article at Aesop Publication and watch her exquisite film, In Search Of Lightning above.

Extract: Interested in the slippage between autobiography and fiction, Esther Teichmann explores her intrigue of, ‘how we write our pasts’ in her hauntingly beautiful photographs. ‘All my bodies of work stem from autobiographical experiences reworked and restaged into fictional and fantastical narratives.’ In melancholic hues, the essence of desire and loss is explored through capturing partially clothed figures set against bedroom interiors or unworldly landscapes, ‘all the spaces have the magical feeling of the tents children build, light filtering through coloured blankets transforming reality.’ 

Converse Dazed Emerging Artists Award 2012

Today the shortlist for the Converse/Dazed Emerging Artists Award 2012 was announced. I'm curating the exhibition of the four shortlisted artists and the winner will be unveiled at the opening night Award ceremony at the Whitechapel Gallery on 24 October 2012.

The Naturalists | Twin | Issue 6 S/S 2012

For the current issue of Twin, I spoke with four artists whose work examines 'Landscape'.

Excerpt: Dutch artist, Marjolijn Dijkam is a modern day explorer. Her diverse practice interrogates our desire for control and unearths the impact this has on many 21st Century living components, in particular nature. Incorporating a variety of media from monumental encyclopedic archives to landscape interventions, film montages to participatory events, Dijkman reveals the fabrication of our constructed environments.

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art Photography course in 2005, Italian artist Salvatore Arancio has been exploring the potential of alternative art forms, “I somehow lost interest in making photographs. I was more interested in experimenting with other media and with different possibilities to interact with the viewer.”  His practice reveals our desire to understand the inexplicable and the difficulties inherent in the order of the universe, “Within my work I suggest a new organization of meanings, which reflect on how little we know of the world that surround us and how science can be easily redundant and open to failures, contributing to a state of uncertainty and our inability to read past and at the same time to imagine the future.”

Anne Wenzel’s sculptures and gallery installations are hauntingly ominous. The Rotterdam-based, German artist, tackles momentous subjects such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters, “We are intrigued and repelled by disaster,” she explains. Collecting her source material from newspapers, her monumental works question our reactions to such events and the resulting fallout, “We love to watch pictures of catastrophes such as 9/11, tsunamis. Sitting in front of the TV - which is quite important - feeling completely safe. Watching these pictures makes us aware about our own life, the weakness of the human being as well as the safe and cosy setting at our own home.”

Growing up in Hertfordshire underpins photographer, Andy Sewell’s fascination with the confliction between nature and the urban environment. He explains, “The Hertfordshire landscape, the rural, feels like a back drop to very suburban lives.  It’s a place in between, without the energy and diversity of the city but also lacking any real connection to the landscape beyond the car window.” Over the past five years, Sewell has been traipsing over Hampstead Heath, capturing the essence of the rambling uncultivated land that culminated in his self-published book, The Heath.