|
|
|
London, United Kingdom
Tate Britain
Turner Prize 2009
Dates: 6 Oct 09 - 16 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Millbank London SW1P 4RG
Tel: +44 (0)20 7887 8888 Website
The annual hunt for trends and themes that inevitably accompanies the announcement of the Turner Prize shortlist has fallen this year on the works of contemporary surrealist Enrico David, installation artist Roger Hiorns, Glasgow-based artist Lucy Skaer, and wall-based artist Richard Wright. Drawing is in, while Glasgow’s standing as a British centre for contemporary art is recognised with two of the artists living and working in the Scottish city.
The exhibition is curated by Lizzie Carey-Thomas, the Tate’s curator of contemporary British art: “If anything characterises this year’s shortlist it is probably craft and drawing, which underpin all of the artists’ work. They also have a very direct engagement with their materials and the process of making in the more traditional sense of the word.”
Another key theme that engages the four, she says, is the process of transformation. “Lucy Skaer, for example, always starts with a found image that she transforms through a process of transcribing it from one format to another,” said Carey-Thomas. “Through that process she attempts to slow down our understanding of what we are looking at, to draw attention to the act of looking.” Skaer, who divides her time between Glasgow and London, has meditated on diverse themes in past works, including whales, prison cells and the artist Leonora Carrington.
Italian-born David, like Skaer, often appropriates and uses pre-existing imagery in his sculptures, paintings and works on paper that feature comically grotesque cloth dolls and harlequins—he is shortlisted for solo shows at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, and the Seattle Art Museum. Glasgow-based artist Richard Wright (b1960), who just sneaks in under the prize’s under-50 criteria, moved in the early 1990s from figurative paintings on canvas to delicate, hand-drawn patterns and marks applied directly on to walls. The drawings relate closely to their architectural context, often sitting modestly in unlikely corners or on decorative features.
Roger Hiorns is shortlisted for his Artangel-commissioned exhibition Seizure, 2008, for which he filled a disused 1960s South London flat with 90,000 litres of liquid copper sulphate to create an alien, cavernous space coated in intense blue crystals. Hiorn’s knowledge of his materials is such that he can set the works in motion and then allow them to take their course.
Carey-Thomas suggests there will be surprises in the show but that the artists have remained focused on the long view. “Yes, it’s the Turner Prize and it has a higher profile than most shows of contemporary art, but I don’t think that’s really entered into their decisions as to what to show. They’ve approached it thinking about where they are now in their practice, where their work is going and wanting to reflect that in the exhibition above and beyond anything else.”
The artists were selected by Charles Esche, director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Jonathan Jones, art critic, Mariella Frostrup, writer and broadcaster, Andrea Schlieker, director of the Folkestone Triennial and Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain and the jury’s chair. The winner of the £25,000 award—the runners-up receive £5,000 each—will be broadcast live on Channel 4 on
7 December. James Hobbs
Seattle, USA
Henry Art Gallery
Jeppe Hein: 360° Illusion II
Dates: 7 Nov 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: University of Washington, 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 41st Street, Box 351410 Seattle 98195
Tel: +1 206 543 2280 Website
Allan Sekula: Waiting for Tear Gas
Dates: 6 Oct 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: University of Washington, 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 41st Street, Box 351410 Seattle 98195
Tel: +1 206 543 2280 Website
Vortexhibition Polyphonica
Dates: 3 Oct 09 - 31 Dec 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: University of Washington, 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 41st Street, Box 351410 Seattle 98195
Tel: +1 206 543 2280 Website
Polaroids: Mapplethorpe
Dates: 24 Oct 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Photography
Post-War (1945-70)
Address: University of Washington, 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 41st Street, Box 351410 Seattle 98195
Tel: +1 206 543 2280 Website
Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain
Dates: 24 Oct 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: University of Washington, 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 41st Street, Box 351410 Seattle 98195
Tel: +1 206 543 2280 Website
Seattle Art Museum
Nicolas Provost: Selected Works
Dates: 16 Sep 09 - 31 Mar 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 100 University Street Seattle 98101-2902
Tel: +1 206 625 8900 Website
Michelangelo Public and Private: Drawings for the Sistine Chapel and other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti
Dates: 15 Oct 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: 100 University Street Seattle 98101-2902
Tel: +1 206 625 8900 Website
SAM Next: Heide Hinrichs
Dates: 7 Nov 09 - 13 Jun 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 100 University Street Seattle 98101-2902
Tel: +1 206 625 8900 Website
Everything under the Sun: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham
Dates: 11 Jul 09 - 22 Aug 10
Categories: Photography
Address: 100 University Street Seattle 98101-2902
Tel: +1 206 625 8900 Website
Alexander Calder: a Balancing Act
Dates: 15 Oct 09 - 11 Apr 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: 100 University Street Seattle 98101-2902
Tel: +1 206 625 8900 Website
|
|
|
