An Interview With…

The huge importance of an exhibition setting or space has long been acknowledged by exhibition goers and emphasised by curators who pain-stakingly spend months reinventing a space in order that it best presents, supports and reflects the work on display. Itinerant art gallery Squid & Tabernacle has taken the concept a step further, deliberately avoiding the restrictive rootings of a bricks and mortar gallery location, instead finding specific locations to suit their exhibitions.

The concept of a nomadic gallery makes perfect sense, allowing the artist and curators to have even greater freedom and input into the final finish and feel of the exhibition as a whole.

You will currently find Squid & Tabernacle located in a disused shipping container just round the corner from Dalston junction Station, Hartwell Street to be exact. ‘An unlikely spot for an art gallery’ was my first thought, but apparently not. The thriving art community that exists and continues to grow in Dalston means the gallery is never short of visitors and apparently many of the other containers on the site also serve as functioning offices or community spaces.

So impressed was I by the ingenuity and logic of the Squid & Tabernacle project, I set out to meet the gallery founders Hanna Sorrell and George Major one boiling hot June evening. Despite our meeting location being an uncomfortably over heated metal box, both were kind enough to answer my questions and shed some light on the intriguing concept that is Squid & Tabernacle.

The Future of Architecture: The AA School’s Projects Review Exhibition

A new exhibition of work by 650 students will go on display this Friday (25 June) at the Architectural Association School. The exhibition is set to demonstrate some of the most radical and experimental thinking in architecture and cultural enquiry today (these images should give an idea of just how futuristic we’re talking).

From sketch to render, hybrid collage analysis of a lawnmower flywheel detail – Drawing project. Wiktor Kidziak, First Year Student

The exhibition opening will also mark the grand opening of the AA School’s newly expanded Bedford Square campus which will be open to the public for the first time.

Surreal House at The Barbican Art Gallery

“For Our House is our corner of the world. As has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word.”
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1958

The Barbican Gallery’s latest exhibition ‘Surreal House’ is a fascinating psychosocial labyrinth of barely lit chambers each exploring the surrealist concept of the home in varying mediums and disciplines. The exhibition combines a hotch-potch of memorabilia, animated furniture, cinematic vistas, convulsive forms and phantom guest, making for a somewhat disorientating and absorbing journey.

Berlin Pillar of Art 2010

June 2010, see’s the launch of Art Below‘s third Berlin Pillar of Art project, an initiative first set up by Ben Moore whereby 14 foot high Pillars in the districts of Berlin Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg are adorned with works by selected artists. The year the project will be run in collaboration with Art Barter, a public art exchange platform set up by Lauren Jones and Alix Janta.

Neon Porn? That’s fun art!

Five Marching Men, 1985

In my recent trip to Berlin I visited the National Gallery in the Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum of Modern Art. They are currently showing the first major retrospective in Berlin of the internationally famous American artist Bruce Nauman. The exhibition ‘Dream Passage’ runs from 28 May – 10 October 2010 so if you’re planning a trip to the German capital in this time, I’d really recommend a visit. This exhibition is a thoroughly dynamic, experiential immersion into modern art. Colourful, polictical and enjoyable, this was one of the best exhibitions I’ve been to in months.

Since the middle of the 1960s, Bruce Nauman has worked with a diverse range of media; his extensive oeuvre includes sculptures, films and videos, photographs, neon works, prints, installations and vocal works. This exhibition focuses predominantly on Nauman’s neon, film and architectural pieces.

Acupuncture Art Competition 2010

Acupuncture Clothing and Lazy Gramophone are offering a great opportunity to all designers and artists out there. They asking entrants to design T-shirts and shoes for the London clothing company with first prize winning £500 plus a free gift of a product where your artwork is used and runners up winning £200 plus a free gift of a product where your artwork is used.

Daimler Contemporary Berlin

You’ll find the Daimler Contemporary gallery neatly tucked between a sky rise business complex and a quaint coffee shop on Alte Potsdamer Straße, Berlin. The awning and sun umbrellas of the neighbouring Kaffe Haus, make the grand double doors of the Daimler building easy to miss, but once discovered, you’re rewarded with the joyful sense of accomplishment that comes with uncovering some hidden treasure. After ringing the bell and attempting to over come the language barrier in a battle to gain entry, simply stepping forth into the building feels like a thrilling success.

Picasso: Peace and Freedom

Still Life with Skull, Leeks and Pitcher (Nature morte avec crâne, poireaux et pichet) 1945

Tate Liverpool is currently staging a major exhibition bringing together 150 works by Picasso from across the world – Picasso: Peace and Freedom. The show exhibits paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics related to war and peace from 1944-73, alongside a wide range of letters and ephemera. The exhibition also uses archive material to further explore Picasso’s work in the cold war era, and how the artist transcended the ideological and aesthetic oppositions of east and west.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is undoubtedly the Charnel House (1944-45); last seen in the UK fifty years ago. This masterpiece artwork was inspired by a short documentary about a Spanish Republican family who were brutally murdered in their own home. It is Picasso’s most politically explicit painting after the better known Guernica (1937). There is also a portrait of the Rosenberg’s, the communist couple who were famously executed during the 1950’s in the US.

The Charnel House, Paris 1944-1945

This eye opening exhibition throws new light on Picasso’s political position and its significance for his post war output, by putting key works alongside excerpts from the artist’s papers held by the Picasso Archive at the Musée National Picasso in Paris. In doing so, the exhibition reveals Picasso’s undeniably influential status in political matters of his lifetime.