MUSING: The Shared Idea in Reykjavík

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i8 Gallery Reykjavík info@i8.is

(I)ndependent People Reykjavík Arts Festival 18 May–3 June 2012

www.artfest.is www.independentpeople.is

Reykjavík Arts Festival 2012 announces (I)ndependent People, a large-scale collaborative international visual arts project that will involve many of Reykjavík's exhibition spaces, museums, galleries, and public spaces during the festival season and throughout the summer. Focusing on contemporary visual art from the Nordic and Baltic region, (I)ndependent People asks if and how collaboration can operate in a continual negotiation between contesting ideas and desires, yet allowing unplanned and transformative action. All participating artists are engaged in established or temporary joint ventures, that serve as a dynamic investigation of artistic subjectivity and authorship.  The extensive project brings together 29 artist-collectives with the collaboration of over 100 participants. (I)ndependent People is curated by Swedish curator and theorist Jonatan Habib Engqvist and made possible through exchange and collaborative undertakings between a cluster of museums,galleries, artist-run spaces and institutions.Several projects will be realised during the course of the exhibitions, some with uncertain results. "By putting the 'I' in parenthesis and giving up the authorship of a singular artistic Subject, a specific uncertainty is created and another, hybrid identity is made possible. The in-between state of such collaboration can become a site for social and cultural change.

DIGITAL MUSEUM: Digital Archeology

NEW YORK BRANCH OFFICE ... Click Here 

A PARISIAN MANIFESTATION ... Click Here

BRISBANE/TUNBRIDGE DIVISIONS ... Click Here & Here

Tony Cragg 2007

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Tony Cragg New York exhibition:  Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 Marian Goodman Gallery 

Tony Cragg brings a characteristic energy and his experience of material to to inform multiple perceptions, new ways of seeing and thinking. He says he seeks "a relationship with materials and things in the physical world without using preconceived notions of an already occupied language." The collection included sculptures in bronze, stainless steel, stone, and wood which expanded Cragg's vocabulary of "early forms" and "rational beings".  Cragg says, "The work I'm making is only possible because of the previous work of three or four months ago and that was only possible because of the work of nine or twelve months ago. Even if its not a linear thing…

WEBSITE

Feathers in 3D

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Moscow based designer Masha Efremenko created a beautiful collection of feather headdresses and came up with a brilliant way to present them, in this 3D video exhibition by Transparent House. Set in what appears to be some heavenly universe, these works of art come to life as the viewer closes in on each model. The production is minimalistic and super dynamic at the same time. A really great product of love.

PARKS: Places to Muse

"Sitting on the tiled foot of the World War Two monument (monochrome soldier on a marble plinth) I recall Armistice days, the eleventh of the eleventh, that fell on a school days and being marched down to William Woodward for the 11:11 memorial service. If we had the foresight to bring flowers, or our parents had foresight to furnish us with them, we could be relieved as cross-legged statues at one point in the service with the chance to lay the flowers at the foot of the monument. The flowers were usually home-picked, their stems wrapped in wet paper towel and then tinfoil – geraniums, a couple of fern leaves... "CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

MEGAN GARRETT-JONES: "On 18th April 2011, I made a small commitment to walk in a park every day for a year and make a record of the PARK: TIME: SPOT: and VISTA: I would like to share with you these records, to publicly acknowledge days forgotten or lost, and to make a pledge in your presence. With the launch of the next stage of this project, Advice to Park Users, I will be posting weekly findings from my research online for a year. Starting with a whisper, a small but urgent imperative to address mental well-being, I would use readily available space provided by the ubiquitous public park for my strategy to be a better person and simultaneously, an artist ..."

Rate the following statements as follows: 1- Strong agree, 2- Mildly agree, 3- Don’t want to answer, 4- Mildly disagree, 5- Strongly disagree.

a. I may cry when on the phone to utilities companies or unemployment services.
b. The best I feel doesn’t reach the intensity of the worst I feel.
c. I know where some rosemary grows in the vicinity of my home.
d. I have been euphoric over flowers or other type of plant.

Please complete the survey and return to the researcher/artist at megan.garrett.jones@gmail.com

GhostNet ART: Meanings and a Message

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The Long Tide exhibition at the Artisan Gallery in Brisbane is a collection of designs and sculptures made from ghost nets - fishing nets that have been left or lost in the ocean.

THE LONG TIDE: CONTEMPORARY GHOST NET ART IN PARTNERSHIP WITH GHOSTNETS AUSTRALIA AND CURATED BY TASHA FINN 

GhostNets Australia, an alliance of 22 Indigenous communities who work together to care for country, are bringing the devastating effects of ghost nets to the public’s attention with The Long Tide. This colourful exhibition of artworks woven from discarded commercial fishing nets aims to introduce this brilliant new genre of contemporary weaving, highlight the work of key artists, and raise awareness of the environmental impact of ghost nets.

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CULTURALproduction AND the WWW

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www.thisispaper.com is a new international design, architecture and fashion magazine with the latest news straight from the artists and the designers.

Contact info Email hello@thisispaper.com 

http://thisispaper.com/filter/design#Muller-Van-Severen-Furniture-collection

WEBSITE RATING

2 random design links from the magazine

http://thisispaper.com/filter/design#Form-Us-With-Love-Slab-Vases

Who said science was boring? AND, who said that science is science and art is art and never the twain shall meet?

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO  ON FACEbook

From a duck to a skeleton to a robot dinosaur: scientists created this fabulous kinetic sculpture, called On the Move, to demonstrate to children the concept of energy transfer. The Launchpad team at London's Science Museum and Engineered Arts Ltd created this cause-and-effect chain of events in a warehouse in Cornwall. No soft toys were injured in the making of this film.

NEW FEATURE: Website Rating

A SPANISH VISION

Upcoming Exhibitions at CGAC 

Santiago de Compostela, Spain CGAC 

 www.cgac.org 

De la generosidad. Helga de Alvear Foundation Collection Curated by Miguel von Hafe Pérez 23
March–17 June 2012 

The act of collecting, especially when it stems from a private impulse with a public vocation, is essentially an act of generosity. An act of generosity which entails that the collector understands the work of art as a culturally relevant structure and that it gives way to the creation of discourses that are open to multiple interpretations. Drawn from the Helga de Alvear Foundation collection, De la generosidad begins with a group of works from late modernism that unfold chronologically into two periods: the neo-avant-gardes of the sixties and seventies and contemporary works, specifically those that revise modernity. 

Gravity and Disgrace Ep. 1 Curated by Miguel von Hafe Pérez 30 

March–1 July 2012 

Paraphrasing the title of the exhibit Gravity & Grace: The Changing Condition of Sculpture 1965-1975, held in London in 1993, Gravity and Disgrace Ep. 1 is based on the principle of processual and theoretical instability that characterises contemporaneity to make an observation on the creative moments that represent a world in vertiginous mutation. Thus, the works presented in this first episode of an event that later unfolds into other moments of exhibition, publication, and consideration, originate from practices that question the contemporary conditions of social construction, contrasting the notion of balance and harmony with the most fruitful questions regarding failure as a process, contextual flow as a critical tool, and the revision of the aporias of modernism as basic elements for a broader understanding of the present. 

Rafel G. Bianchi. La bandera en la cima Curated by David G. Torres 

30 March–24 June 2012 

La bandera en la cima is the first full presentation of the project that Rafel G. Bianchi began in 2007: painting in a detailed manner the fourteen highest mountains in the world, the fourteen eight-thousanders. A feat that in the world of mountaineering is brimming with heroism and which, in its reiteration as an artistic project, betrays the role of the artist involved in an absurd task. In addition to the fourteen final paintings, drawing a comparison between the documentation of mountaineering and the documental strategies of conceptual art, La bandera en la cima also collects the traces of its process through drawings, photographs, films or posters, many of which have been developed in collaboration with other artists.

NEW FEATURE: WEBSITE RATING

NEW DIGITAL ENTITIES: A new aesthetic ??

• DIGITIZING IDEAS: A Seminar 
• COMMON KNOWLEDGE: A Seminar 
• 21 and 22 April 2012 
• Moderna galerija auditorium, Cankarjeva 15 – Museum of Modern Art plus Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova - MSUM Tomšičeva 14 SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia T
•  www.mg-lj.si

Digitizing Ideas ...  Looking at the way the digital media are changing our society, we can observe two main developments: we are faced with increasing control and possibilities for surveillance on the one hand, and on the other, a previously unimaginable amount of freely accessible knowledge, ideas and information on the internet. In museums, digitalisation processes open new possibilities and obstacles. The results of digitalisation of collections and archives are computed/digital images. They are often considered reproductions, copies of material works, but we should also think of them as completely new digital entities. With such images new aesthetic forms are emerging, entailing new possible interpretations, compositing and perception. The seminar Digitizing Ideas is organized in the frame of the project Digitizing Ideas: ARCHIVES OF CONCEPTUAL ART PRACTICES. The project is a collaboration between Moderna galerija (Ljubljana, Slovenia), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb, Croatia), Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (Novi Sad, Serbia) and Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw, Poland). Speakers: Florian Cramer, Branka Ćurčić, Andreja Hribernik, Gerald Raunig, Laurence Rassel, Aleksandra Sekulić, Richard Stallman 

Common Knowledge Seminar ... The purpose of the seminar Common Knowledge is to encourage reflection on a possible new and different approach to creating common knowledge, more in sync with our time than the prevalent epistemological and institutional models. The seminar will be divided in two main parts, the first one entitled Horizontal Connections, and the second one, Verticality in the Service of Common Knowledge. The first part will focus on the new global conditions and on the fact that we require more equality in creating knowledge under these conditions, and the second one, on the need to redefine institutions so that they can attune themselves to this new situation. Speakers: Zdenka Badovinac, Bart de Baere, Jesús Carrillo, Charles Esche, Pascal Gielen, Brian Holmes, Vasif Kortun, Rastko Močnik, Georg Schöllhammer, Madina Tlostanova 

NETWORKS FOR MUSING

CMRK exhibitions in Graz, Austria CMRK is a network of four independent institutions for contemporary art based in Graz: Camera Austria, Kunstverein Medienturm, [ rotor ], and Grazer Kunstverein.

•  Margherita Spiluttini und dann (reframing architecture) Camera Austria 21 April–10 June 2012
• Nicole Six and Paul Petritsch View may be denied by cargo Kunstverein Medienturm 21 April–9 June 2012
• ELSEWHERE Christoph Grill, Anna Jermolaewa, Mahony, Micha Payer + Martin Gabriel, Isa Riedl, Jun Yang [rotor] 21 April–16 June 2012 
•  Tanja Widmann eine von euch Grazer Kunstverein 21 April–9 June 2012

Click on the links to explore the network and visit the institutions online 

ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION AVAILABLE 

GOOGLEart ... a new place to muse

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Google Art Project premieres upgrades in Chicago CARYN ROUSSEAU April 4, 2012 

High tech merged with high culture Tuesday at The Art Institute of Chicago when Google Inc. announced an upgrade to its Google Art Project initiative, adding thousands of works in dozens more countries. The project provides access to more than 30,000 ultra-high resolution images of paintings, sculptures and photographs from 151 museums and other institutions in 40 countries ... Google Art Project launched in February 2011 with about 1,000 artworks from such institutions as the Tate Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Uffizi in Florence and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. "From now on anyone can visit these great institutions with just the click of a mouse," Google President Margo Georgiadis said. "This project breaks down all of the barriers and allows people to study art in a seamless way." ... It's all part of Google's ambitious effort to enable anyone with an Internet-connected device to check out the vast reservoir of human knowledge and creativity stored in libraries and museums around the world. Google already has made digital copies of more than 15 million books during the past seven years, although it can only show snippets from many of them because of copyright restrictions. The company also has been scanning manuscripts and other documents in public and academic libraries. Now, the Internet search leader is expanding its art collection ... Click here to read more 

Click here to go to GOOGLEart 

SHOULD KIDS BE BANNED FROM ART GALLERIES?

Jacqueline Maley – Jacqueline Maley is the Canberra-based Parliamentary Sketch Writer for The Sydney Morning Herald.  

"There are about ten thousand things children would rather do than traipse around a place where they have to be quiet and look at static objects they don’t understand." I was half way through the gallery, somewhere between the flat, post-Gothic Madonna/Jesus stuff and the later, more interesting portraits - the ones where the people actually start to look like people - when I really wished all the children would go away. Like the rest of the people at the National Gallery that day, I had come to look at the Italian Renassaince paintings. Unlike the rest of the people of the National Gallery that day, I hadn’t taken my children along. In part this is because I don’t have any. But I like to think that even if I had half a dozen of them, each of whom was perfect and special in their own way, and at least one of whom was sure to grow up to be a great artist, I still wouldn’t have brought them ... Click here to read the full story

10 DESIGN JOURNEYS

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"10 Design Journeys takes 10 works that came into the Tasmanian Wood Design Collection prior to 2002 and matches them with 10 works made in the years since. Peter Adams, Axiom Design, Mark Bishop, Linda Fredheim, Stuart Houghton & Craig Rosevear, Brad Latham, Patrick Senior, Paccy Stronach, Witt Design and Marty Wolfhagen, each come from very different points of design departure... Over the last ten years some have returned to their beginnings, others have taken radically different paths, all are driven by the transformation of their ideas into physical form. Changing technology, traditional values, sustainability of resources, social conscience and the quality of aesthetics, all permeate their work to differing degrees. " 

The exhibition included a series of short concentrated video interviews, produced by the Design Centre's Lauren Dean, visitors whether on-site or online, will hear designers talk about their work, their ideas and what drives them. 

The Design Centre is leading the way with 21st Century exhibition design here and setting new benchmarks against which exhibition design can be measured.

MUSING, MUSEUMS & LIES

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FROM “Hunting the Collectors: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums, Art Galleries and Archives

• Editor: Susan Cochrane and Max Quanchi 
• Date Of Publication: Feb 2007 
• Isbn13: 9781847180841 
• Isbn: 1-84718-084-1 

 CHAPTER 3: The perils of ethnographic provenance: the documentation of the Johnson Fiji Collection in the South Australian Museum RODERICK EWINS 

“This essay addresses the vexed questions of provenance and authenticity of objects that have been collected and made accessible for study. It calls for an exploration of the way in which these have often been uncritically accepted solely on the basis of notes and comments made by the original collectors. The difficulty is that the authority with which collectors were able to speak varied enormously, and even when the collectors obtained objects personally from the original owners, it cannot be assumed that they understood clearly the names, purposes or provenance of the objects they obtained” [RE] ..... “The problem with things is that they are dumb .... And if by some ventriloquism they seem to speak, they lie once removed from the continuity of everyday uses in time and space and made exquisite on display, stabilised and conserved, objects are transformed in the meanings that they may be said to carry [1 Crew & Sims 1991: 159.]” – “ ..... Most collectors had made little or no effort to establish exactly where, or by whom, they had been made or used. And second, a few of these collectors had passed on notes with the objects, ranging from terse to quite expansive, about the names, nature and uses of the objects in their originating society. Such notes were, as usual, carefully transcribed into the catalogues of the Museum, and thence onto labels identifying the objects in display cases, to give them some voice and overcome their dumbness ..... The trouble with all of this transcribing and labelling was that in many cases the ventriloquist’s voice did indeed lie. Most dangerous was the case where the lie was mixed with smatterings of truth. Non‑specialist visitors and observers in the Museum, if they read these labels carefully (as I have observed many doing), were given a range of false impressions and thus attitudes, even convictions. They were no longer, as they were when entering the museum, merely uninformed. They were now misinformed, and took away with them erroneous and misleading information on which to base future judgements, and to pass on to others.” [RE] Pages 32 & 33

 Roderick Ewins Link: Click Here 

BOOKlink: Click Here  

FRED WILLIAMS:Infinite Horizons

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Rediscover Australia through the eyes of one of the nation's greatest artists. This comprehensive retrospective highlights Fred Williams' strength as a painter, revealing his distinctive approach to oil painting inspired by Australian landscapes. 

This is the first major exhibition to focus on Williams in more than twenty five years. 

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHT

Short Course: Enhance your understanding of Fred Williams and this exhibition by joining the gallery for a more detailed look at Fred Williams’ art and role in Australian art. 

Fist talk: Sat 5 May, 2–4.30pm 

The man behind the work,  Dr Deborah Hart, curator of Fred Williams: Infinite Horizons delves into Williams’ perspectives on art and museums, as well as his insights into locality and the painting process, as revealed through her research into his diaries and a range of interviews with the artist. 

 Speaker Dr Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, Australian Paintings and Sculpture post-1920, NGA

A National Gallery of Australia Exhibition.