#contemporaryart

Simone Leigh's Sovereignty at the U.S. Pavilion, Venice Biennale

Beyond the Canvas

Nov 20, 2022
1 min

Simone Leigh's Sovereignty at the U.S. Pavilion, Venice Biennale

"I like the idea of thinking of femininity as something solid and enduring rather than always something fragile and weak." - Simone Leigh As the 59th of the Venice Biennale draws to a close, I'm looking at the photos I took (they are decent, for once) of Simone Leigh's large-scale sculptural work and I'm having some belated thoughts. Leigh's figurative sculptures in bronze and ceramic (the latter is her medium of choice) illustrate her relentless focus on the exploration and

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Remembering David Wojnarowicz, artist and activist (1954–1992)

Beyond the Canvas

Jul 22, 2022
1 min

Remembering David Wojnarowicz, artist and activist (1954–1992)

"One of the strongest feelings I have about death is that it's a time when the energy we carry is dispersed and becomes a part of everything." - David Wojnarowicz It's been 30 years since David Wojnarowicz died of AIDS-related illness at the age of 37. I remember seeing his survey exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2018 and being struck by the poignancy and brutal honesty of his work, a genuine punch in the gut. Wojnarowicz was, for all intents and purposes,

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Sarah Ball (et al.) at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Beyond the Canvas

Jul 9, 2022
1 min

Sarah Ball (et al.) at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

There is a milky evanescence to this mesmerising portrait by British artist Sarah Ball, and the longer I stood in front of it, the more it was drawing me in. There is nothing conventional or normal about Emma. Look at the size of the head, the length and thickness of the white eyelashes, the texture of the hair, the clownish quality of her makeup, the uber plump lips. Her shimmery face is odd and beautiful, her eyes aloof and alluring. She looks fake but feels real, her gaze

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Beyond the Canvas

Jun 12, 2022
1 min

Gates of Turan, Firouz FarmanFarmaian at the Venice Biennale

Sometimes the Venice Biennale takes you places you'd never dream of going to. A decision to escape the mad crowds of San Marco and take the ferry to Giudecca meant I was rewarded with a mesmerising insight into a nomadic culture I knew nothing about. Firouz Farman-Farmaian has recreated a traditional Kyrgyz environment where we see, hear, smell (the felt banners hanging from the ceiling are made of yak wool) and, mostly, feel. It is also possible to sit on a rug underneath th

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Beyond the Canvas

Mar 7, 2022
1 min

Ukrainian artists: Artem Humilevskiy

"During the quarantine period, I began to create staged self-portraits at home. In the photo, which was the beginning of the series, I seem to be hiding behind house plants in the corner, symbolically and succinctly denoting the existing dead-end state of each person during a pandemic. In my subsequent works, although I turn to self-irony, nevertheless, photographing myself in the nude, I live moments of self-acceptance. Over time, the series of self-portraits went beyond the

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Beyond the Canvas

Mar 2, 2022
1 min

Ukrainian artists: Artem Volokitin

Artem Volokitin was born in 1981. He lives and works in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, home to 1.4 million people and less than 20 miles from the Russian border. Kharkhiv was therefore an obvious target for the invading forces. Last Sunday, Russian troops entered the city and started bombing it to the ground. We know the strategy, we have seen it in Aleppo. And in Chechnya before then. In response to the upheavals of 2014, the so called Revolution of Dignity, the sub

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Beyond the Canvas

Feb 26, 2022
2 min

Ukrainian artists: Oleg Tistol

My dear Ukrainian friend Halyna makes veggie borsch for me. She also makes kapusta (red cabbage), Olivier (Russian) salad and blinis, which we eat with smoked salmon and lashings of smetana (sour cream). She feeds me her food in the same way she does everything: with generosity and pride. Every time she cooks is a bit special because that's when she talks about her childhood memories, her late parents and their life on a farm in what was then the USSR. No cooking today, she h

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Beyond the Canvas

Feb 24, 2022
1 min

Ukrainian artists: Marina Skugareva

There are moments in life when our fear is such that we scramble for ways of taming it, in the hope that this crippling fear will somehow dissolve. And when we feel at our most powerless, all sorts of coping mechanisms kick in as we go down unexplored avenues trying to believe we can do something, anything, This is one of those moments. Me, I turn to art, like I always do. So today I'd like to showcase the work of Marina Skugareva, born in Kyiv, Ukraine in 1962. I don't know

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Beyond the Canvas

Jan 3, 2022
2 min

The universality of misogyny

"When I went to New York in 1992, I recognized that there was a genre called installation art, and had an idea that I will pop out from walls. I wanted to pop out from walls, from stuffy walls." -Yun Suk-nam Reminiscent of the Dadaist and Surrealist objects that lost their function to be transformed into something attractive and unsettling, the Godmother of Korean Feminist Art has produced beautifully upholstered armchairs and sofas that you cannot sit on. I love the contrast

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Throwback to Rudolf Stingel at Palazzo Grassi, Venice

Beyond the Canvas

Dec 30, 2021
2 min

Throwback to Rudolf Stingel at Palazzo Grassi, Venice

Current rabbit hole update: scandals and crimes in the art world, of which I am delighted to inform you there is an abundance of. One episode of Ben Lewis' superb podcast ART BUST tells the story of American art dealer turned fraudster Inigo Philbrick's spectacular fall from grace. It's a compelling listen, during which Lewis also points out the dismally shoddy due diligence and the opacity of the resale market that de facto enabled the jaw-dropping magnitude of Philbrick's s

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Beyond the Canvas

Dec 1, 2021
1 min

On World AIDS Day

"If I have to change my lifestyle, I don't want to live." - Robert Mapplethorpe In this powerful self-portrait Robert Mapplethorpe looks us straight in the eye. The glowing black background and the focused use of light make his head and his hand look almost detached from his torso, as if floating in mid-air. The skull sceptre he is so forcefully holding in the foreground symbolises the awareness that death was coming for him. Mapplethorpe would die of an AIDS-related illness

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Beyond the Canvas

Sep 14, 2021
2 min

Paula Rego at Tate Britain, London

Coming out of this extensive and excellent survey, you get a strong sense that Rego's work is an intoxicating blend of the political and the personal, an intricate map of her identity both as a woman and as a Portuguese citizen. Grown up during Salazar's fascist dictatorship, Rego started calling out the regime's domestic and colonial abuses when she was only 19, by which time she had moved to the UK. Since then, she has never ceased pointing her finger at political and socia

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Richard Mosse - Displaced, Fondazione MAST

Beyond the Canvas

May 24, 2021
2 min

Richard Mosse - Displaced, Fondazione MAST

'Beauty is the main line to make people feel something.' - Richard Mosse It's easy to be fooled by the alluring colours of the striking photo chosen for the advertising poster of this superb exhibition at the MAST Foundation, but anyone who may have been misled by that imagery soon realises what the show is really about. Mosse is interested in the themes of war, displacement and migration, and with his camera he captures beauty and tragedy where there's conflict and destructi

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Beyond the Canvas

Mar 23, 2021
2 min

Laura Aguilar's courageous rebellion

“My photography has always provided me with an opportunity to open myself up and see the world around me. And most of all, photography makes me look within.” - Laura Aguilar In her series of self-portraits set in the rocky desert landscape of the American Southwest, Laura Aguilar used her body like a sculpture, she is a human monolith. Her large body is draped on a big boulder whose shape echoes hers. It's hard to say whether she felt at one with nature or whether she was try

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Beyond the Canvas

Feb 4, 2021
2 min

Kerry James Marshall IS the canon

“Who needs to NOT think of you as a Black artist to consider you a real artist?” - Kerry James Marshall There are a handful of artists whose work I revere to the point that I don't dare write about them. Kerry James Marshall is one of them, and today I'm taking the plunge. I came across this video where he cites Langston Hughes' writings on how Black artists should not aspire to paint or write like white people, but rather should "express their individual dark-skinned selves

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Rewriting the art canon: Kehinde Wiley's triptych for Penn Station, NYC

Beyond the Canvas

Jan 29, 2021
2 min

Rewriting the art canon: Kehinde Wiley's triptych for Penn Station, NYC

"I like Venetian painting a lot: looking at Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is one of my favourite things to do. When I went to my first Venice Biennale, I was blown away when I saw the works of these artists on the ceilings. The technical proficiency impressed me." - Kehinde Wiley Although these days our lives are mostly confined within the domestic walls, the time will come again when we get to enjoy the thrill of being in a public space that has been elevated by art. You know, t

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Experience and participation in Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project

Beyond the Canvas

Jan 12, 2021
2 min

Experience and participation in Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project

“Having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility.” – Olafur Eliasson I saw this dazzling installation in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, and I'd be lying if I said I remember what I experienced at the time - I'm drawing a blank. But for some 80 anti-war protesters, this humbling light-clad space became a stage on which they could voice their anger. It's 2003, American and British troops have invaded Iraq and P

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Beyond the Canvas

Jan 8, 2021
2 min

May Steven's Dark Flag

"Political activity does not interfere with my work, it feeds it. And if I'm interested in racism and fighting racism, then that should show up—will show up—in my work.” - May Stevens A committed civil-rights activist and feminist, between 1967 and 1976 Stevens produced a series of paintings called Big Daddy, where she addressed and channelled her anger towards her own father's racist views. Painted at the end of that period, Dark Flag marks the 200th anniversary of the Decla

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Beyond the Canvas

Nov 1, 2020
2 min

Kim Abeles' Smog Collectors

"The Smog Collectors materialize the reality of the air we breathe. I place cut, stencilled images on transparent or opaque plates or fabric, then leave these on the roof of my studio and let the particulate matter in the heavy air fall upon them. After a period of time, from four days to a month, the stencil is removed and the image is revealed in smog." - Kim Abeles Since the beginning of the year, wildfires have burned over 4 million acres in California, with 5,000 firefig

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Annie-Rose Fiddian-Green: Celebrating the lungs of our planet

Beyond the Canvas

Sep 27, 2020
1 min

Annie-Rose Fiddian-Green: Celebrating the lungs of our planet

"During lockdown I moved to north Norfolk where my attention was captivated by the ancient trees that hold the space there so powerfully. Fascinated by the biological communication that trees have with each other, I began research into the magic of forests." - Annie-Rose Fiddian-Green Trees, the immortals. The one irrational theory my otherwise staunchly rational self insists on hanging on to. Their magic, their power, their interconnectedness - I immediately saw it in these

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