god i love this magazine the only beside 'Crafts' that I will bother to spend my money on.. I'm going through (as I always do) back to front and then front to back..nothing is spared. Anyway I mentioned that I am going to London with the students in October, so still looking out for anything abit different. This months shows a wonderful review on (a gallery I have not heard before, but wish I had..)
Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK Phone: +44 (0)20 7611 2222 top end of Gower street so I know where it is and not far from hotel!. The exhibition is called 'Miracles and Charms' (6th Oct-26th Feb) which looks at a collection of Mexican images that are thank you notes to God and Saints...Votive.
Quote: 'Votives objects have a long history, going back to at least ancient Greeks and in this collection they are typically painted on tin tile roofs and tell stories from the 18th c to the 1970's'. I first came across Votive s during studying for my MA at CSM, writing a dissertation on Mexican politics which naturally lead me to look at the work and life of Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo, big influences of mine at the time. Anyway I'm really looking forward to experiencing this exhibition
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/press/press-releases/miracles-and-charms.aspx
Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle painting Mexican votives are 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. 'Infinitas Gracias' will feature over 100 votive paintings drawn from five collections held by museums in and around Mexico City and two sanctuaries located in mining communities in the Bajío region to the North: the city of Guanajuato and the distant mountain town of Real de Catorce. Together with images, news reports, photographs, devotional artefacts, film and interviews, the exhibition will illustrate the depth of the votive tradition in Mexico.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15194491
Usually commissioned from local artists by the petitioner, votive paintings tell immediate and intensely personal stories, from domestic dramas to revolutionary violence, through which a markedly human history of communities and their culture can be read. Votives to be 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, gun fights, motor accidents, ill health and false imprisonment; in which saintly intervention was believed to have led to survival and reprieve.
'Infinitas Gracias' will explore the reaction of individuals at the moment of crisis in which their strength of faith comes into play. The profound influence of these vernacular paintings, and the artists and individuals who painted them, can be seen in the work of such figures as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who were avid collectors. The contemporary legacy of the votive ritual will be present in the exhibition through a wall covered with modern day offerings from one church in Guanajuato: a paper shower of letters, certificates, photographs, clothing and flowers, through which the tradition of votive offering continues today. The sanctuaries at Guanajuato and Real de Catorce remain centres of annual pilgrimage, attracting thousands of people to thank and celebrate their chosen saints.
A programme of events will accompany the exhibition.
features some 400 amulets, selected by Felicity Powell from Henry Wellcome's vast collection, which will be exhibited encircled by ten works by the artist. The amulets, ranging from simple coins to meticulously carved shells and from dead animals to elaborately fashioned notes, are from a collection within a collection, amassed by the banker and obsessive folklorist Edward Lovett, who scoured the city by night, buying curious objects from London's mudlarks, barrow men and sailors, which he sold on to Wellcome.
The amulets are objects of solace. Intended to be held, touched and kept close to the body, they are by turns designed and found, peculiar and familiar. The potency of the charms is invested through rituals of hope and habit. Each amulet on display has long been separated from its wearer, but collectively they form a repository for the anxieties, reassurances and superstitions of the city and its occupants. Lovett's amulets are held at the Pitt Rivers Museum where they have remained archived and largely unseen. The charms selected by Powell are uncanny: they are secrets brought to light.
Powell's own works address the strange allure of objects which are a source of comfort and compensation. Intricate miniatures, with white wax reliefs on black mirror slate, they carry the same intimacy of size as the amulets, and are meticulously crafted. Her portraits, which appear as inverted silhouettes, white on black, are all in a process of change, metamorphosing into other selves and creatures. Like Lovett's amulets, they seem to be more than themselves, hinting at a hidden magic at work, as they dip between real and imagined worlds. Using the reverse side of a mirror, Powell hides away literal reflection but leaves the viewer wondering at their playful and compelling strangeness.
Video of the pieces being made will be shown in the gallery, featuring the hands of the artist as she works.
this is also interesting in terms of a potential project for Foundation students..
Identity: Eight rooms, nine lives
What influences or determines our sense of who we are? What makes one person distinct from another? How does science inform human identity? This major exhibition explored the tension between the way we view ourselves and how others see us.
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Extract from Guardian 29th april 2011: One of the reasons Lutter's images feel tangible and yet weird is that they're realised in negative, so that light forms auras where shadows should be cast and the sky is always black. But it's also the way she makes them, using one of photography's simplest and oldest devices –the pinhole camera. This is time-consuming business, requiring long exposures so that the film not only records the outlines of buildings but the ghost-like forms that move in and out of the frame as the clock ticks on. They can be crafted from anything: Lutter has used an old trunk for some of her work, but she's regularly worked with room-sized boxes to create huge, one-off images.
