For the first time ever, five photographers have been shortlisted for the £12,000 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, the major international photography award. Firmly established as the leading showcase for new talent in portrait photography, the prize is sponsored by international law firm Taylor Wessing.
Shows & Exhibitions : Fine Art & Fine Craft
In the last thirty years of the Soviet Union, Koretsky’s art sought to ensure world Communism’s moral health. In contrast to more conventional Soviet propaganda—filled with happy workers, glorious leaders, and uplifting slogans—Koretsky created striking scenes of survival and suffering that were designed to create an emotional connection between Soviet citizens and others struggling for civil rights and independence around the globe.
Continuing with their exploration of ideas of material value and the consequences of the actions we take to satisfy our desires, Berg-Myers have created a new body of works. This current exhibition is meant to provide the viewers with objects-situations where our choices are put to the test in how we understand the value of the things we do.
Jemima Brown is known for her sculptural explorations of the animate versus inanimate, orchestrating the complex visual narratives involved in self- (and indeed other- ) creation. The Tanner Award has facilitated significant developments at a pivotal point in Brown’s practice, particularly in experimenting with resizing the sculptures, to investigate the role of scale, surface and materials within formal sculptural decision-making, and how these questions intersect with the more narrative elements in the work.
The Iranian-born British artist and photographer Reza Aramesh makes Catholic-style statues based on figures – often Muslim captives – that he finds in press photography from conflict zones, mostly the Middle East. He uses the photographs to produce highly detailed iconic figures of human suffering which will be shown for the first time in Europe in a former church in London, Oct 13-16.
Warhol first met Bardot at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967 when she actively supported his attempt to show The Chelsea Girls there after the original planned screening had been cancelled. In 1973, at the height of her fame, she announced her retirement from making films. That same year Warhol received the commission to make her portrait. At the time he was shifting his focus from filmmaking back to painting, and perhaps viewed her coincidental screen exit as the perfect opportunity to commemorate and idolize her in art.
The exhibition, Mittelland, consists of six vast oil paintings (often exceeding 3m x 4m) which explore a sense of displacement within anonymous urban scenes that are both familiar and alien. The locations are primarily peripheral or transitional spaces, such as corridors, gates, stairs and a balcony and make reference to the idea of relocation and dislocation. The notion of emergence and recession also reflects the way the figures inhabit the space of the paintings; nothing is fixed, the characters are merely passing through these states.
SALON VERT is announces the first solo exhibition in the UK by American artist Lucy Liu. When not appearing on stage or screen, Liu can often be found in her art studio in New York. Born to Chinese immigrant parents in Jackson Heights, New York, Liu attended the New York Studio School for drawing, painting and sculpture from 2004 to 2006. For over two decades Liu's practice as a visual artist has encompassed, and often combines, painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, embroidery and collage.
The Québec Triennial 2011. The Work Ahead of Us⎯one of the most important and highly anticipated art events of the season⎯will be presented at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal from October 7, 2011 to January 3, 2012. For this second edition of the Triennial, the museum has put together a show on an unprecedented scale that will fill all eight of its exhibition galleries and spill over into its indoor public spaces, as well as Place des Festivals in the Quartier des Spectacles and the Espace culturel Georges-Émile-Lapalme at Place des Arts.
Kunsthalle Bern presents Santu Mofokeng's first international retrospective. A leading South African photographer, Mofokeng consistently subverts the alleged certainties of cultural and racial histories, questioning photography's politics of representation and its objectivity, in works dealing with a variety of issues; religious rituals, memorials or desolate landscapes. Mofokeng's black-and-white photographs are lasting images of humanity, recording not just adversity and oppression, but also happy moments and the indomitable human spirit.