eye.on.art

Welcome to eye.on.art first newsletter of the year!

We begin 2017 with a new website and a very British artistic diary starting with Dzhangal at Autograph ABP, an exhibition by London-based South African photographer Gideon Mendel who created an installation using objects he gathered during visits to the ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in Calais. Displayed at Rivington Place, toothbrushes, playing cards, worn-out trainers, teargas canisters, and children’s dolls conjure alternative portraits of the ‘Jungle’ residents that also stand in for the plight of displaced people everywhere. Date: 6 January – 11 February 2017, opening Thur 5 Jan 6:30 – 8:30pm.

At Tiwani Contemporary, Field Work gathers works by Rita Alaoui, Theo Eshetu, Katia Kameli, Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Youssef Limoud, Abraham Oghobase, Thierry Oussou and Robel Temesgen who have anchored their practice in a deep examination of the mechanics of history. The works selected for this exhibition rely on retrospective, historiographical strategies, acts of excavation, collection or preservation, and an interest in archaeological methodologies. Date: 13 January – 25 February 2017. Private View: Thursday 12 January, 6:30 – 8:30pm.

Stephen Lawrence Gallery unveils My Granddad’s Car, the culmination of an on-going project between artists Sayed Hasan and Karl Ohiri, exploring notions of migration and heritage, as seen through their relationships with two cars inherited from their respective late grandfathers in Pakistan and Nigeria. Date: 12 January – 10 February 2017. Private View: Friday 20 January, 6 – 9pm.

In Nottingham, New Art Exchange (NAE) is launching the much-anticipated UNTITLED: art on the conditions of our time, a new touring exhibition co-curated by Paul Goodwin and Hansi Momodu-Gordon, produced by NAE. This show adopts a progressive stance on exhibition-making, allowing new ways of thinking about art by African diaspora practitioners. Artists exhibited: Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Barby Asante, Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom, Phoebe Boswell, Kimathi Donkor, Evan Ifekoya, Cedar Lewisohn, Harold Offeh, Ima-Abasi Okon, NT, Barbara Walker. Date: 14 January 2017 – 19 March 2017. Launch event: Friday 13 January, 6pm – 9pm.

As one women photographers exhibition draws to a close (see the review of Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s at The Photographers’ Gallery and our take on its undebated Eurocentric perspective), the Whitechapel Gallery opens Terrains of the Body. Drawing from the National Museum of Women in the Arts collection, this show features photography and video works by 17 artists focusing their camera on the female body as a vital medium for storytelling, expressing identity and reflecting individual and collective experience.

Artists exhibited: Marina Abramović, Rineke Dijkstra, Anna Gaskell, Nan Goldin, Charlotte Gyllenhammar, Candida Höfer, Icelandic Love Corporation, Mwangi Hutter, Kirsten Justesen, Justine Kurland, Nikki S. Lee, Hellen van Meene, Shirin Neshat, Daniela Rossell, Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation, Janaina Tschäpe and Adriana Varejão. Date: 18 January – 16 April 2017.

Finally Tanzanian-born British artist Lubaina Himid is opening Navigation Charts at Spike Island, Bristol (20 Jan – 26 March). This is the first in a series of projects that will see her work simultaneously at Modern Art Oxford with another solo exhibition, Invisible Strategies (21 January – 30 April) and her participation to The Place is Here at Nottingham Contemporary (4 February – 30 April), a major exhibition bringing together around 100 works by over 30 artists and collectives exploring the pivotal 1980s decade for British culture and politics. 

A Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston where she leads the Making Histories Visible research project, Himid is featured in Frieze Magazine Jan-Feb 2017 issue. She will also discuss her historic career as an artist and a pioneer of the Black Arts Movement in the 1980s. See Frieze for more information.

Best 2017 wishes from eye.on.art!