Highlights from the London trip:
Tacita Dean at Tate Modern, The Unilever Series her response entitiled 'FILM' is a slient 35mm looped film projected onto a monolith standing 13 metres tall. pretty impressive as a visual output, however I did feel abit dissappointed that 1 you could not see it from walking into the Turbine hall and 2 I guess I was expecting something different??..Deans 'The Sea, with a Ship; afterwards an Island 1999' Blackboard drawings Three parts, each 244 x 488 cm, were breathtaking, and innovative
I came away totally inspired and in awe of these large scaled, memorising works...here is an artists talk from 2006 http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/26649826001
from the show:
Tacita Dean is a British artist now based in Berlin, best known for her use of film. Dean’s films act as portraits or depictions rather than conventional cinematic storytelling, capturing fleeting natural light or subtle shifts in movement. Her static camera positions and long takes allow events to unfold unhurriedly. Other works have attempted to reconstruct events from memory, such as an infamous thwarted attempt to circumnavigate the world.
Dean’s interest in the cinematic also extends to her work in other media. The Russian Ending 2001 borrows its title from the early Danish cinema tradition of making two alternate endings for a film: one happy for the American market and one tragic for the Russian market. In this work, Dean annotated postcards of catastrophes with director's notes.Many of Dean’s works show the ways in which architecture can be transformed by the camera's lens. Craneway Event 2009 follows the choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) and his dance company rehearsing in a former Ford assembly plant, built of glass and steel and overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Dean’s film allows the ever-changing light of this environment to fall in rhythm with the dancers’ movements.
Dean will be making a new commission especially designed to respond to the architecture of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. The Unilever Series has become renowned as one of the most exciting and impressive contemporary art exhibitions in London each year and will be free to view.
Video Link http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/1211868281001
From the show: Grayson Perry The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, British Museum
Grayson Perry curates an installation of his new works alongside objects made by unknown men and women throughout history from the British Museum’s collection.
He’ll take you to an afterlife conjured from his imaginary world, exploring a range of themes connected with notions of craftsmanship and sacred journeys – from shamanism, magic and holy relics to motorbikes, identity and contemporary culture.
Vases covered in witty captions, elaborate tapestries and the centrepiece, a richly decorated cast iron coffin-ship, will be displayed alongside objects from the past two million years of culture and civilisation. From the first great invention, the hand axe, to a Hello Kitty pilgrim hand-towel, you will discover a reality that is old and new, poetic and factual, and funny as well as grim.
‘This is a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen that over the centuries have fashioned the manmade wonders of the world…
The craftsman’s anonymity I find especially resonant in an age of the celebrity artist.’
The craftsman’s anonymity I find especially resonant in an age of the celebrity artist.’
Grayson Perry RA, Turner Prize winner
Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings
Im saving the best till last and what a great find... 'the Wellcome Collection' 108 Euston rd showing a wounderful exhibition made up of Mexican votives, small paintings, usually executed on tin roof tiles or small plaques, depicting the moment of personal humility when an individual asks a saint for help and is delivered from disaster and sometimes death. The votives displayed in 'Infinitas Gracias' date from the 18th century to the present day. Over this period, thousands of small paintings came to line the walls of Mexican churches as gestures of thanksgiving, replacing powerful doctrine-driven images of the saints with personal and direct pleas for help. The votives are intimate records of the tumultuous dramas of everyday life - lightning strikes, gunfights, motor accidents, ill-health and false imprisonment - in which saintly intervention was believed to have led to survival and reprieve.
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