Victoria Miro welcomes NJIDEKA AKUNYILI CROSBY in her artist portfolio
Victoria Miro announced late last month that she is “delighted” to be representing Njideka Akunyili Crosby - this year’s winner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize.
As a succession to the $25,000 award, the 32-year-old Nigerian born artist, is now to be represented by one of the “grandes dames of the Britart scene”- the internationally acclaimed art dealer with dual London gallery spaces, Victoria Miro.
“Informed by art historical and literary sources, Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s complex, multi-layered works reflect contemporary transcultural identity…Akunyili Crosby’s large-scale figurative compositions are drawn from the artist’s memories and experiences,” it is noted on Victoria Miro’s website.
As she pushes a melange of acrylic, paste, colour pencils, charcoal, marble dust, collage and transfers, the LA based artist populates her work with images of family and friends, in scenarios with details derived from everyday domestic experiences in Nigeria and America.
Combining collage and photo-transfer to provide texture and complexity, Crosby’s bold yet intimate paintings are described as “among the most visually, conceptually, and technically exciting work being made today.”
Her painterly compositions feature images with a thematic resonance to each particular work, which derived from personal archives, Nigerian lifestyle magazines and sourced from the internet.
When concluding the decision for Crosby’s James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize, the jurors wrote: “Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s nuanced work reflects the increasingly transnational nature of the contemporary art world…She has created a sophisticated visual language that pays homage to the history of Western painting while also referencing African cultural traditions. Akunyili has a striking ability to depict deeply personal imagery that transcends the specificity of individual experience and engages in a global dialogue about trenchant social and political issues.”
Crosby has participated in numerous exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including most recently “Draped Down”(2014) at The Studio Museum, “Sound Vision” (2014) at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and “Bronx Calling: The Second Bronx Biennial” (2013) at the Bronx Museum. She will see her work featured in the New Museum Triennial in 2015.
BRIGHTON MUSIC FESTIVAL
This December, the DRILL : FESTIVAL is coming to Brighton, and we’ve selected five exciting acts to be sure to check out!
This December, the DRILL : FESTIVAL is coming to Brighton, and we’ve selected five exciting acts to be sure to check out!
Boasting more than 100 bands, artists, films, talks and exhibitions and across 14 different venues, DRILL : BRIGHTON will feature numerous not-be-missed acts. Here are five bands – Wire, Gold Panda, These New Puritans, East India Youth, and Three Trapped Tigers – that we are most excited about.
The original curators of the DRILL : FESTIVAL, Wire is an English rock band that emerged in 1976. Renowned for their prolific role in London’s punk rock and post-punk scene, the band played at myriad venues in the city before dissolving – and then reforming – in the 1980s. In 2013, the band introduced the DRILL : FESTIVAL in London, as a means to “show-case their impact on and relationship with groups and artists from younger generations”.
English composer and electronic music producer Gold panda gained prominence in 2010 with his debut album, Lucky Shiner. Since then, he has toured the world performing and promoting his music, emphatically described by The Guardian as “combination of warm, lo-fi electronica, a patchwork of crackly samples and melodies that stick”.
Based in London, art-rock act These New Puritans cite a wide range of influences as inspiration, from New York-bred Wu-Tang Clan to the happy songs of the Smurfs. With a timeless sound ambiguously described as “very 1970, but also quite 1610, 1950, 1979, 1989, 2005 and 2070” (The Guardian), These New Puritans are not-to-be-missed!
Known as East India Youth, English electronic musician William Doyle is new to the music scene. While having only released his first album, Total Strife Forever, in January of this year, East India Youth has been working on his craft for years. Initially focusing on pop music, he attributes his current electronic sound to the experimental work he created as a way to combat “the boredom of being at the very end of the central line, without any friends or social life in London.”
Unlike the previous four bands, Three Trapped Tigers is an instrumental act. Described as noise-rock, their dreamy music has been described as “the sound of imagination itself”, and “aggressive, beautiful and frightening all at once”. Experimental and raw, Three Trapped Tigers are sure to bring a new vibe to DRILL : BRIGHTON.
Be sure to check out the rest of DRILL : BRIGHTON’s impressive line up here and see them live 4-7 December!
BLOOMBERG new contemporaries moves to THE ICA
Tajinder Dhami Electric Dream: Will Synthetic Intelligences Dream of Electric Sheep, 2014.
Tajinder Dhami Electric Dream: Will Synthetic Intelligences Dream of Electric Sheep, 2014.
New Contemporaries is the leading UK organisation supporting emergent art practice from British art schools, whose aim is to promote and provide a platform for new and recent fine art graduates. In our current issue, we spoke with the director of Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Kirsty Ogg about the latest artists to join this year’s exhibition. After opening as an integral part of the Liverpool biennial in late September, the collection is now heading further South to London, where it will remain until late January.
With previous New Contemporaries including the Chapman Brothers, Damien Hirst and David Hockney, there is always electricity in the air at the show, with new artists showcasing their potential to join the ranks of the modern masters. This year, the final selection for the show promises to deliver a range of innovative practice, including moving image, printmaking and performance, with artists exploring themes ranging from current affairs to human behaviour and the body. Whether it be Alice Hartley’s bold large scale screen prints or Yi Dai’s poetic and subtle paintings, the exhibition will appeal to anyone looking to have their perspective challenged.
From 26th November to 25th January, the exhibition will be at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, where the public can come to see the work of the fifty five participants involved in the show. To find out more about the exhibition, and to read more about our discussions with a few of the artists on display, pick up a copy of the latest ROOMS and check out the website.
Bloomberg Aspirations: A Contemporary New Generation. Read our interview with Director Kirsty OGG and Artists MKLK , Alice HARTLEY, Frances WILLIAMS, Jesc BUNYARD by Suzanne Zhang in our current issue ROOMS 15 Breakable
BLOOMBERG new contemporaries moves to THE ICA
Tajinder Dhami Electric Dream: Will Synthetic Intelligences Dream of Electric Sheep, 2014.
Tajinder Dhami Electric Dream: Will Synthetic Intelligences Dream of Electric Sheep, 2014.
New Contemporaries is the leading UK organisation supporting emergent art practice from British art schools, whose aim is to promote and provide a platform for new and recent fine art graduates. In our current issue, we spoke with the director of Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Kirsty Ogg about the latest artists to join this year’s exhibition. After opening as an integral part of the Liverpool biennial in late September, the collection is now heading further South to London, where it will remain until late January.
With previous New Contemporaries including the Chapman Brothers, Damien Hirst and David Hockney, there is always electricity in the air at the show, with new artists showcasing their potential to join the ranks of the modern masters. This year, the final selection for the show promises to deliver a range of innovative practice, including moving image, printmaking and performance, with artists exploring themes ranging from current affairs to human behaviour and the body. Whether it be Alice Hartley’s bold large scale screen prints or Yi Dai’s poetic and subtle paintings, the exhibition will appeal to anyone looking to have their perspective challenged.
From 26th November to 25th January, the exhibition will be at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, where the public can come to see the work of the fifty five participants involved in the show. To find out more about the exhibition, and to read more about our discussions with a few of the artists on display, pick up a copy of the latest ROOMS and check out the website.
An evening with artists FRANK BOWLING
The Royal Academy of Arts hosts ‘In Conversation with Frank Bowling’ ahead of the artist’s Traingone exhibition in Stockholm’s Spirit museum, looking at selected works from 1979–96.
Frank Bowling RA moved to London in 1950 from Guyana and nine years later began studying at the Royal College of Art after gaining a scholarship. Since graduating in 1962, Bowling has travelled the world with studios in both London and New York. His work has transitioned from figurative to abstract pieces, exploring and experimenting with colour, size and texture.
His upcoming Traingone exhibition named after one of his 1966 paintings, showcases his intriguing attention to colour that emerged in his later work and the unique textures he created. Allowing the colourful paint to take control of the finished work, dripping down the surface; he called his paintings ‘poured’, relinquishing control and leaving the appearance of his work to chance.
In 2005 Bowling was elected as a member of the Royal Academy of Art, becoming the first black Royal Academician in the institution’s 200 years and for one evening he returns and will be conversing with Mel Gooding, art critic and author of the Frank Bowling monograph for the Royal Academy.
Bowling’s work can be found permanently displayed in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, as well as in the Tate Gallery in London.
3D PHOTOGRAPHY IN VICTORIAN AGE
Who would have thought that among the already eminent hats Dr. Brian May wears, the founding figure of Queen, a guitarist and an astronomer, he is now adding one more as the co-curator of “Poor man’s picture gallery”: Victorian Art and Stereoscopic Photography at Tate Britain. It’s another kind of fine debut. For the first time Tate hosts the rare displays of stereographs collected by May where photographers like Michael Burr and Alexis Gaudin seized the 3D craze at the very birth of photography in 1850s. Stereographs consisting two photographs taken in marginally varied positions are place side by side, when viewed up close, the three-dimensional tableaux invites gasps that are no less astonished today than at their first creation 150 years ago, in return influencing traditional paintings of its days.
“Poor man’s picture gallery”: Victorian Art and Stereoscopic Photography
On view at Tate Britain
13 Oct 2014 – Apr 2015
CHEYENNE SCHIAVONE
The thing about someone whose work traverses painting (although the term is non-conclusive here), music and writing is that, she/he can really fathom a coherent language in any form to hit a dissonant note but still leave you strangely affiliated inside. Cheyenne Schiavone’s watercolour is one as such, an unshrinking but recognizable scrutiny of us and “the others” marked in permanent paint.
You studied history prior to becoming a painter and DJ, has that intellectual engagement determined your thinking as an artist?
Choosing studying history was more of an evidence to me, but it has probably strengthened me in my core logic: in any field – whether it’s art, thought or practice of any kind – I’ve always been thinking in terms of origins, aspects and then consequences. As everyone knows, it’s also the basic schema of an essay. I guess this is why the conclusions I use to give as an artist are not particularly gentle.
Take one example from the series No Future, you wrote “On ne nait pas femme, on le devient.”(One is not born a woman, one becomes.) How much volume does text speak in your paintings?
Let’s say that my work doesn’t consist so much in the representation of what it depicts, but rather in the analysis of a particular topic. This is mainly observations of a very contemporary social malaise, and the text is of major importance to me in order to confront a lot of ideas so that their manifestations in the final work are not exclusively emotional and may cause a kind of break in the minds of people I’m talking to.
“…WORDS AND SHORN THOUGHTS ARE THE RAW MATERIAL OF THE ATMOSPHERE THAT CAN BE FOUND IN WHAT I DO.”
This year you have handwritten Le Petit Prince with illustrations on a sketchbook. Was handwriting the entire story a form of meditation?
In a way, yes. In fact, this project was born as a result of an umpteenth reading of the original work by Saint-Exupery. It then became clear to me that the thought put in abyss through the various protagonists that the Petit Prince meets throughout his journey naturally unravels a major part of the problems that the human faces in his lifetime, making it more of a philosophical manual than the childish tale you are given as your first book – which seems quite a heresy but can do no harm. The message it delivers is indisputably universal; so, although I was seeking it out someone in particular, this work made possible reactions on my own and of course of a wider audience.
The paintings are bemused in either a moment of disposition or a fleeting gesture of the body. Do you consider your work a swift, impressionistic rendering or a meticulously built composition? How much planning goes into it?
It is an established fact that I bring more attention to the idea of hich result my painting than to its rendering: it consists more of a process of dislocation and renewed perspective of human emotions and expressions of a troubled time than to a substantive pictorial work. These paintings are only messages, sometimes abrupt and wild, tending to express one of these obvious issues and disorders that a thought, such as emitted in Le Petit Prince for example, could likely resolve. It is a thought ahead report, but intuitive in its realization and expression. As such, time is not particularly to take into account.
Do your characters all have a reference in real life?
No, my characters are just nowadays’ human beings, therefore experiencing major issues arising from the progressively installed existentialist doctrine of our time, scanning numerous theological, philosophical or moral concepts which, although perceived by contemporaries as a form of obscurantism, enabled man to rest on a few fundamental rules for his balance.
Do you ever project yourself in the paintings? How do you think about self-portraits?
I practiced a lot self-portrait, and will probably do it again in the future; not by self-interest but because I felt that these visions were mine. They echo an analysis of a question I digested my way, but which are rooted in the human, and then not necessarily me. That’s why the characters I paint have less and less overt signs of particular identity. It’s more in order to express really personal primal screams that I sometimes still go through it.
Bearing many roles – painter, DJ, scriptwriter – how do you balance the ears and the hands at work?
The balance among the three roles comes naturally because, somehow, I express the same things in all these areas: things that are inseparable from the information we have all more or less assimilated so far, which make some of us not pessimistic but skeptical and willing to move forward without forgetting the considerable luggage we are dragging up that hill.
Which one of these roles took shape first?
It has probably all begun with writing. This, of course, left the door open to many other forms of expression: words and shorn thoughts are the raw material of the atmosphere that can be found in what I do.
Do you see these roles as separate or a unity?
Definitely as a unity. I’m not free, I’m three. Maybe more… who knows?
How would you say your perception of painting has evolved thus far?
I don’t really consider my work as painting but like “journalistic pop art”, in a way. Besides, I don’t hide my shortcomings in terms of technique, so what I do hasn’t affected my vision of painting in any way: facing a painting or any other pictorial work, I keep an ignorant look. I don’t deny having received a good culture nor appreciating the finesse of a well done job, but I could never let these things take precedence over the shock that happens – or not – inside me.
Your latest exhibition at Young International Artists (YIA) is open now in Paris. What’s to be expected?
The exhibition “Sang Neuf” is part of the YIA, a FIAC Off art fair and dedicated to the French artistic new guard. It’s a great privilege to exhibit during the contemporary art week in Paris… so I’m really glad to be part of it and there will be a lot to see. But as far as I’m concerned, I let the bad student raging in me talk and made of the space that was given to me, with the kind support of Arnaud Faure Beaulieu (mister No Mad Galerie), a place where words and slaughters will know no compromises.
Exhibition Sang Neuf is open now in Paris, 22 – 26 Oct
BLOOMBERG New contemporaries 2014
Since 1949 Bloomberg New Contemporaries has given a platform to the UK’s brightest emerging artistic talent. This year the exhibition begins at Liverpool’s World Museum before moving once again to London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts.
BNC gives final year and recent graduates a chance to display their work to the public. From almost 1,400 submissions, this year’s selectors; Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Enrico David and Goshka Macuga, have given the spotlight to the most promising few.
Celebrating the organisation’s 65th year running, fifty-five artists have been chosen, coming together to produce a diverse and exciting exhibition of talent. Those selected have joined a roster that has previously included names such as Jake & Dinos Chapman, Tacita Dean, Mona Hatoum, Mike Nelson, David Hockney, and Damien Hirst.
With a focus on moving image, performance and print making, there are a plethora of themes being explored this year. Many venture into exploring materiality and methods of production in their work, while others delve deeper into the subjects of current affairs, human behaviour, language, desire and the body.
With many prestigious artists having started out here, there are high hopes for these artists and what they will be capable of in the future.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the World Museum 20th September to 26th October 2014
Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the ICA 26th November to 25th January 2015