This cutting-edge exhibition reflects on over 2,000 years of history, drawing together manuscripts, prints, Jewish ritual and ceremonial objects, art, film, literature and cultural ephemera, from board games and cartoons to costumes and figurines. Exhibits from the museum’s collection are complemented by loans from Europe, North America and Israel.

A highlight of the exhibition is Rembrandt van Rijn’s painting, Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver, 1629, an early yet artistically mature work from a private collection that is rarely seen in the UK. Contemporary and newly commissioned artworks, including an archive-based video piece by Jeremy Deller, reflect on the exhibition themes.

Abigail where did inspiration for this exhibition come from?

I started thinking about this exhibition about five years ago.  As with ‘Blood’ our exhibition in 2015, I felt it was vital that the Museum is a space that can tackle some of the trickier and more sensitive issues that surround Jewish life and perceptions of Jews, by offering context and the long view.

What is the main message behind the exhibition?

Myths and stereotypes have origins, and this exhibitions brings together objects from over 2000 years of history to examine these origins.  It is vital that we challenge ourselves and understand how these myths and stereotypes came to be in order to fight hatred and ignorance today.

Who are the key players behind the project?

All of the team at the Jewish Museum and our guest curator Joanne Rosenthal have helped to create this exhibition, and for the second time we have partnered with the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, who worked with us on Blood (2015).  They have also helped to put together the accompanying book of essays.

What factors did you have to take into consideration in preparing the show?

There were many factors that we had to consider. For example,  would people think we were reinforcing anti-Semitic stereotypes by showing this material? How do we sensitively display material that is so grotesquely antisemitic?  How would both our Jewish and non-Jewish audiences respond to seeing such material? We discussed these with our colleagues at the Pears Institute, and ran focus groups.  To illustrate the difficult discussions involved in working this subject, we’ve also included an ‘Alternative commentary’ in the exhibition that gives an insight into some of the discussions that the curator Joanne Rosenthal and I had about how to display and talk about objects, it’s a new approach but one that visitors have responded to well.

What are your favourite elements of the exhibition?

We have a wonderful Rembrandt on loan from a private collection, Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver (1629), thought to be his first masterpiece and rarely seen in public.  It is a wonderful piece as Rembrandt’s view of Judas as a complex man with a troubled conscience, unsuccessfully attempting to return his money, contrasts with earlier depictions that show the moment when he takes the coins. Thanks to support from Art Fund, we also have two brilliant newly commissioned works by contemporary artists Jeremy Deller and Doug Fishbone that respond to the themes of the exhibition.

We’re living in increasingly unsettled times; what is the museum’s priority in creating greater awareness of issues facing the Jewish community?

The Museum’s priority is to offer the public a place where they can confidently and calmly explore the history of Jews in Britain, and join our discussions. Jewish traditions encourages learning through questions, which is why we approach difficult subjects with no easy answers in order to fight hatred and ignorance and build bridges.

Why should people come and see this exhibition?

At a time when antisemitism is on the rise and rarely out of the news, it is vital that people understand where dangerous stereotypes and tropes originate and how they have developed over time. Jews, Money, Myth offers audiences a safe space to understand better the history of myths that link Jews and money.

Jews, Money, Myth 

A major exhibition at the Jewish Museum London

19 March – 7 July 2019

www.jewishmuseum.org.uk / @jewishmuseumLDN

IMAGE: Nutcracker in shape of Fagin © Jewish Museum London

Using archive footage and interviews with notable cultural commentators and artists such as Artemy Troitsky and Igor Shelinsky, as well as the rap artist Husky, Vomero documents the early adopters of Western consumerist culture. The second part seeks to examine the world of their ‘children’— the inheritors of this legacy. We sat down with Clayton Vomero to hear more about his thought provoking film and his creative process.

Clayton how would you summarise 3OHA in one paragraph?

It’s a really hard thing to summarize a film before it comes out as there are so many pieces working together that are only relevant if they connect to people when they watch it. And this film more than anything else I’ve made plays with these subliminal codes of culture and politics and attempts to take them apart in regard to one transformative historical event which is the coup in 1991. So in that sense, in August 1991 a series of events were set into motion by a long simmering desire for consumer goods and the freedom they represented, and this led to a rapid dissolution of the Soviet Union. As one -ism fell apart, another in the form of capitalism took hold creating an abstract mix of western culture and russian values that continues to evolve and be re-exported to this day.

What inspired you to tell this story?

I was interested in two things. The fascination that the west had with things deemed “post-soviet”. And the current political world-view that Putin is disseminating through various agit-prop lunatics like Nigel Farage, Viktor Orban, Steve Bannon, etc. and this concept of “post-truth”. I felt like I could examine these ideas indirectly by talking to real people who are caught in the middle of it all. And not real people like factory workers, but the real people who work in the image factory of the internet that are often unwitting accomplices in the dismantling of reality.

Why is now the right moment to tell this story?

I’m really interested in this conflict between real and fake, this growing ability to live as a fantasy of who we actually are and this avatar-ness that is replacing us as people. It feels like we’re increasingly disappointed with ourselves in real life situations to the point that we barely want to leave our homes. It’s so much easier to broadcast ourselves and our value out to the world than it is to have the reality of it go unvalidated in every day life and then question interactions as to why someone didn’t respond. It’s like the fear of silence or lack of approval has caused constant anxiety.

Who are the key players in the process – both in front of, and behind, the camera?

The key players were absolutely Maria Babikova and Alexander Khudokon. Maria and I did research together for months before shooting and then she was with me through the entire 2 month shoot and then the 6 month edit. We heavily referenced Generation “П” by Victor Pelevin and Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexeivich and did research right up until the very end of the edit. It was just constant unwrapping and discussing and really it would be a completely different film without her. The same goes for Sasha who was the cinematographer. We talked so much about images and meaning and came up with very intricate languages for each section of the film and he showed me completely different ways to look at what we were doing. Also, Husky is just a phenomenal mind. He was our first interview, our first shoot day. And it set the tone for how seriously we could take the entire film. He set an incredibly high bar for everyone else.

What made you want to become a filmmaker? 

I can’t remember. I watched so many movies as a kid. We didn’t have much money growing up and so all we could do was rent movies, etc. I think I’ve had one family vacation. So it just always meant so much to invest in sitting down to watch a film. It was really a way to discover myself and to feel that there was another world outside of Staten Island. And then as I got into creative circles in NY I started to feel like I wanted to see myself better represented in media by people actually like me. I’ve always found myself having to fight for the most accurate and least contrived representation of a story. To not allow money people to succeed at trying to make people into better entertainment. I want everyone in my films to feel as if they’re speaking for themselves and not fitting in to some idea or misreading that I have of them. I just think people are so much more interesting than what the status quo imagines them to be.

What do you feel are the necessary skills to pursue this line of creative work?

Empathy, a sense of honesty, and an ability to let a film becomes it’s own and not “yours”.

What has been the best feedback you’ve ever received on your work?

When my short film GANG was released I came to London for a screening and some kids from South London pulled me aside after the screening and just heaped so much praise on the film and what it meant to them. One guy just said in a really tough way “Your film…I’m not sure how to say this cuz I know how it sounds. But I’ve never felt so free before, it made me feel like I could fly out of my flat, like I could be just as magical as the people in your film.” It always really stuck with me where that sits between making something that intellectually challenges people but gets past entertainment and into a place that really means something. And for a film about some kids from Staten Island to mean so much to kids from South London, really showed me how powerful human empathy can be.

Can you tell us what you’re going to be working on next?

There’s a new script for a feature film called Sacer that I’m finishing up now and hope to start shooting by the end of the year. It’s a culmination of everything I’ve done to this point in one big fucked up story about what it’s like to be poor in NY.

http://claytonvomero.com/

IMAGE: 30HA, 2017 – 2018. ca. 60 mins, film still featuring Husky

Your new exhibition, A COVEN A GROVE A STAND, explores the folklore surrounding witchcraft and its history in the East of England, and comes at a time where witchcraft and magic has become quite popular in the art world and wider culture. What is it about this subject that is so captivating to the general public?

Yes, the timeliness in terms of a wider cultural resurgence is quite striking. The start of the project coincided with the unveiling of a memorial at Colchester Castle last summer, dedicated to “the victims of the Essex Witch Hunts… in the hope of an end to persecution and intolerance.” The Castle is just a stone’s throw from Firstsite, and you can see the cells where many local suspected ‘witches’ were imprisoned and interrogated. In the autumn, I started noticing posters for a new drama, A Discovery of Witches (whose title is clearly a reference to Matthew Hopkins’ 1647 account, The Discovery of Witches), and I think the Netflix remake of Sabrina the Teenage Witch started airing around the same time; I watched a couple of episodes out of curiosity, but I’m more of a Buffy fan… And then there’s the convergence of popular and political culture in the countless times a certain orange-tinted, hate-inciting misogynist bully has tweeted WITCH HUNT in the last couple of years, claiming victimhood from the actual victims and survivors of violence and persecution, and offending those who identify as witches…

I think the enduring fascination and fear around witchcraft and magic reflects the need to make sense of seemingly inexplicable, ‘irrational’ or supernatural forces, malign and benign – to seize power or ‘take back control’, in the face of all sorts of economic and political uncertainty, and cultural anxiety. I also think the seductive and terrifying figure of the witch reappears across cultures and centuries, precisely because s/he is a figure of and for power, resistance and revolt.

During the Essex witch trials, eighty percent of the hundreds of accused were women – often single, elderly and widowed. Malcolm Gaskill argues against the dismissal of witchcraft as bygone superstition, and for understanding the continuing prevalence of magical belief and practices. Silvia Federici suggests that what the persecuted women had in common were poverty and sexual transgression, and asserts that “they were not only victims… but women who resisted their impoverishment and social exclusion”. I’m interested in how persecutions in the past resonate with the present, and how we might bear witness to their traces, beginning with the names of individuals collectively dehumanised as witches and victims. Who do we blame for our personal misfortunes or society’s ills? And who gets to be included or excluded from that ‘we’?

You were commissioned to create the work as part of New Geographies, a three-year project which aims to bring awareness to local reflections and stories of overlooked places. Did the brief dictate what elements needed to be included in the project, or were you given free reign to create? How did you find this journey?

The brief invited artists to respond to sites nominated by the public across the East of England. I noticed that seven of the 270 nominations made references to witches. So rather than focusing on a single site in isolation, I wanted to think about how these disparate sites across Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk might be connected through their associations with witchcraft, and the intersection of folkloric and historic narratives.

The project evolved in close conversation with the Firstsite team, who were very open to different processes and possibilities – there were no preconceptions or presumptions about the modes or forms that the work might take. Engagement was an important dimension, and I was interested to explore how this might be embedded into the making of the work, rather than as post-exhibition add-on or afterthought. So, there are onsite and offsite strands to the project – in the form of the current gallery-based exhibition where some beautiful elements have been made with local communities – and an offsite walk devised with the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), with an online and app-based alternative audio-guide, which will hopefully go live in May. This dual approach allows questions of place to come to the fore – who owns it, how do we inhabit or occupy it, how do we come to know or forget certain histories.

Much of the exhibition was realised on site across four gallery spaces: there are blackboard walls covered in handwritten text, two multi-channel sound pieces looping with a video piece, embroidery hoops and ribbons, and of course, a 4-metre high, 8-metre wide inverted ‘tree’ constructed from recycled cardboard… They’re individuals works but also very much interweaving and related, as their names suggest – SISTER O SISTER; CRUEL MOTHERS; GROSS LOVER/CRUEL MOTHER; SEVEN SISTERS; ONE/HUNDREDS; SCORE FOR VOICES. There’s the cumulative effect of encountering in different forms and registers the same 110 names of persecuted individuals, as you move through the spaces – handwritten, spoken, stitched, printed. The sound creates two circles of voices, singing and speaking, overlapping harmoniously or disjunctively, depending on your view. I want there to be a sense of place and displacement, to both respect and demystify the mythological, and in a way, reactivate history.

You have researched into many local stories such as ‘Old Knobbley’, an oak tree believed to be 800 years old situation in the woods around Mistley where ‘witches’ were thought to have hidden from persecutors. What other fascinating stories have inspired the work?

Well, there’s another ancient oak tree, the Witch’s Wooden Leg in the ruins of St Mary’s Church, in East Somerton. The story here is that a woman was buried alive as a witch, and a tree sprang from her wooden leg, destroying the church. So these trees connect two of the nominated sites as a particularly evocative symbol, both of sanctuary and power. There’s also Kitty Witches’ Row in Great Yarmouth, whose name is said to refer to badly-behaved ‘women of ill-repute’; and the Witch’s Heart in King’s Lynn’s Tuesday Marketplace, where a woman named Margaret Read was burned as a witch for using witchcraft to kill her husband, a crime of petty treason. There are also several locations in St Osyth, Manningtree and Mistley in Essex, where numerous women were accused and executed as witches.

As part of the exhibition you have included local communities such as members of Colne and Colchester Embroiderers’ Guild and Colchester Bangladeshi Mohila Shomity, as well as asking visitors to write the names of victims of the witch hunts with chalk on a black wall. Do you hope to bring these local stories to life through community engagement? What has the response been so far?

The exhibition features unique and beautifully stitched embroidery hoops made by members of the Colne and Colchester Embroiderers’ Guild, Stitch ‘n’ Bitch, and YAK (the Youth Arts Kommunity), each bearing one of the hundred and ten documented names, while the Bangladeshi women’s group helped with the looping of two hundred red ribbons, for those who remain nameless. I was moved by the sympathy and empathy of the many makers (mostly but not exclusively women), who actively sought out, rediscovered and shared between them the stories and histories behind the names. There’s something incredibly powerful about this collective yet individualised making and sharing, as a kind of collective witnessing, an active commitment into memory.

You describe A COVEN A GROVE A STAND as a fluid project, how do you anticipate the exhibition and project will evolve over time?

I see this as the first stage of an ongoing project. The second stage will take the form of the new RGS walk and sound work in May. It’s fluid in the sense that there are distinctive works and elements that could be reconfigured or recomposed in different ways. It’s also fluid in terms of the many possibilities for development. I would love to move or transpose the ‘tree’ to other locations and reassemble or remake it in other materials. I also want to develop a seven-channel moving image piece that responds to the seven sites, which I still haven’t managed to visit! Then there’s the collective, performative and folk music dimensions, which I’d like to explore further… So, while there is already a body of work here, I feel that I have only scratched the surface.

Do you have any exciting new projects coming up?

I’ve been working on (and off) on an essay film – which is perhaps more an epic poem film – called Re Moves. This has come out of another three-year project, called Black Artists and Modernism, which was led by Sonia Boyce and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It was filmed over a year, from February 2017 to 2018, and it moves between collections, exhibitions and studios to reflect on the movement of particular artists and artworks in and out of visibility and history. The film features the work of Keith Piper, Lubaina Himid, David Medalla, Jananne Al-Ani, Sanderson/Conroy and Phaophanit/Oboussier, among others. I’ve been a bit side-tracked by witches lately, but I’m hoping to finish it the summer.

A COVEN A GROVE A STAND will run until 22 April 2019 at Firstsite, Colchester. For more information, visit: https://firstsite.uk/whats-on/coven-grove-stand/

Image: Installation view, susan pui san lok, A COVEN A GROVE A STAND, 2019. Photo Douglas Atfield, Courtesy Firstsite

How did your new sound commission, A Stitch Outside Time, come into being? How long did it take to develop from conception to realisation?

The idea came about during my initial meetings with Focal Point Gallery. There was a suggestion to make a piece for the line between London Fenchurch Street and Shoeburyness. After thinking about the idea of a soundtrack I suggested the idea of a GPG based system so the sound was directly related to the location. It was actually quite a long and technically complex process. The synthesis and pattern generating procedures were developed in Max/MSP and then the iPhone programmer was able to translate that into the code for the smart phone. I guess it was something in the region of six months to complete and involved several stages of testing and various in between stages to check the synthesis was correct.

Have you worked with this kind of technology previously?

I made a piece for Sage Gateshead, their “flagship” commission for the Great Exhibition of the North, and that involved sourcing lots of environmental sounds from the region. So to do this we developed an app that the public could use to collect sounds and upload them to my server. That’s the only other piece I’ve made using smartphones. I kind of like the relationship between the phone and the environment. I guess there’s some commonality there with the two pieces.

What was the inspiration behind The Concept of Time is Intrinsically Incoherent?

It’s really hard to answer that. But I think a key point for me was getting material samples – the vinyl for example – and also the context and Southend’s history with fun fairs. So it’s a bit like a kind of phenomenology of funfair aesthetics in one sense, but fused with structures and ideas from quite different sources.

What is the interplay between the different works, from the main labyrinthine mirror installation to the large shimmering curtain in the gallery window, and smaller installation featuring a balloon?

For me I like the audience to build their own responses to things like this, their own readings etc. But there are some clear connections to me, for example the strobe room is a point in space, the curtain is a plane and the maze is a 3 dimensional nonlinear space. They all deal with different forms of sound, light and pattern generation. The commonalities are in terms of an interest in the kinds of geometry, colour, light, sound that feature in my work.

You have a wide range of influences including experimental cinema, electric music subcultures, contemporary philosophy and physics. How do you feel these have had an impact on the new work?

Well as a young person these things were part of my alternative world – I mean, distinct from the world I grew up in which was systematically broken up throughout the 1980s. I have to say however that physics is not my thing – I mean I wish I had the determination to understand that stuff but I don’t.

For me an important movement in cinema was the structuralist and materialist film movements of the 60’s and 70’s. The ideas about foregrounding the process of making film, the tools and vocabularies is, I think, something that I carried over to my work with sound to some extent. A kind of methodology that is quite different to orthodox electro acoustic practices for example.  

What do you have coming up next?

I just did a show with Okkyung Lee in New York – actually a piece developed from the train line commission using some of the synthesis and patterns in combination with improvised cello.

I have a show in San Francisco tomorrow, next week in The Hague I present a new work ‘Hominin’ which involves dance, kinetic objects, light and sound. Then off to Buenos Aires to make a new commission for percussion ensemble, then a show in Montevideo and a few shows in Italy after that. I have a large project at HangarBicocca in Milan, responding to the work of Sheela Gowda – a few new collaborations and commissions which I’m quite looking forward to.

The Concept of Time is Intrinsically Incoherent runs until 21 April. For more information see: http://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibition/mark-fell/ and for further details about A Stitch Outside Time see: http://www.fpg.org.uk/project/a-stitch-outside-time/

Image: Installation view, Mark Fell, The Concept of Time is Intrinsically Incoherent, 2019. Photo: Anna Lukala, Courtesy of Focal Point Gallery

You’ve had notable commissions at Southbank Centre, Pallant House and Leeds Art Gallery to name but a few – how do you approach different architectural spaces?

Each response to an architectural space starts with a conversation with the space. A bit like a question and answer scenario with me asking the questions and the building giving answers. Depending on the answers from the building is the response it will get from myself. Different aspects like the architectural language, geometry or dimensions of a space are important factors but also its social character, daily use and audience or history.

This is the 10th anniversary of the Towner Art Gallery building and your biggest commission yet, this must be a very exciting time for you. What is the process for this kind of commission? What has struck you so far about the space and Eastbourne?

The opportunity to paint the entire outside wall space of Towner Art Gallery and thus turning the entire building into an artwork is indeed extremely exciting. The painting will turn the building into a kind of public installation / sculpture in the town of Eastbourne, highly visible from many different perspectives. During my first visit to Eastbourne I was particularly struck by the architectural ensemble of the Towner and its adjacent buildings with a fascinating richness of diverse architectural styles and histories. The complexity and energy of Towner’s facade is really striking.

A national company founded and based in Eastbourne, Brewers, is supplying the paint – is this significant? What will be the process of picking the colours?

First a big Thank You to Brewers for doing so, it is of course significant in the way that I will not have to consider budget restrictions in terms of the amount of paint I will need but can fully concentrate on my artistic vision. A sponsorship like this frees up a whole range of ideas and possibilities. I have used paint from Brewers for many projects in the past and are familiar with the products they sell. The process of picking the colours always starts in the second phase of the design process after most formal questions are solved through sketching. Moving on from a more general idea about the colour decisions in preliminary sketches, these are getting finetuned from choosing the final colours out of comprehensive colour charts like the Natural Color System, RAL or British Standard. Brewers will then be able to mix all colours accordingly.

What do you hope for people to take away once the work is in situ in June?

One of the most exciting things with commissions for artworks in the public domain is its visibility and access to the wider public and not just to visitors of a museum or gallery. Painting the outside of Towner Art Gallery brings art to the street and into the city. It will be seen by a huge variety of people and I do very much hope most of them will enjoy the painting and make them curious about what’s inside. To me it feels a bit like dressing up the Towner for a party.

 You have a number of exhibitions opening in Germany – can you tell us more? How is the approach different with gallery shows?

 My current show ‘If Only’ has just opened at Petra Rinck Gallery in Düsseldorf and there is another wall painting project coming up with the Overbeck Gesellschaft / Kunstverein in Lübeck in May. The main difference between a gallery show and a site specific project is probably that one consists of a variety of works in different mediums and sizes produced over a period of time and afterwards put together for an exhibition, whereas a work like the one for Towner Art Gallery is developed for the particular site and will only exist in conjunction with the building and has a temporary life.

Image: Lothar Götz in front of his installation at The MAC Belfast, 2013. Photo: Jordan Hutchins.

 State of Matter continues VITRINE’s engagement with Brussels-based artist Kato Six’s practice through a series of site-specific sculptural configurations. Six previously participated in the group exhibition Identify Your Limitations, Acknowledge the Periphery at VITRINE Basel in 2017, which explored VITRINE’s unique exhibition space (a 16-metre glass showcase) by inviting artists to devise site-specific artworks that inhabit the restrictions and potentials of the gallery space. It seemed fitting to invite Kato Six to present a solo show of new works given that much of her practice adopts these methods. Six embraces VITRINE’s exhibition space, toying with materiality, immateriality, three-dimensional and two-dimensional which manifests into the presence (or absence) of human activity.

Seemingly drawing influences from Arte Povera, Modernism and Abstraction, Six expands the realms of painting, drawing and sculpture, employing a wide range of material within her oeuvre including dye, wood, wallpaper, concrete, wax, rope and dust particles. Through the use of familiar materials, Six recalls not only personal, but collective memories through a series of theatrical, sculptural assemblages that reference still lives distanced and abstracted from their original function.

Despite a generous number of works in the exhibition, State of Matter seems much sparser and pared down in comparison to her past installations. Although still meticulously staged, Six is particularly interested in heightening the viewers understanding and sensitivity to the material nature of the works which, in turn, leads one to observe the light, shadow and reflections cast in and around the works; questioning where the artwork begins and where it ends. Central to this new body of work is her distinctive response to the gallery’s architecture. As challenging as the space can be, Six simultaneously works with and against it, grappling with the two dimensional, tableau-like quality of VITRINE. Extending beyond the walls, Six plays with the margins of space through subtle disruptions and configurations which shift with the time and light of the day.

Sculptured boxes with deep blue, glossy liquids are dispersed throughout the gallery floor. Using Methylene Blue, a photoactive medicine and dye often used to treat methemoglobinemia^[1] as well as the liquid used in an injection which allows abnormal skin tissue planes to be identified, further alludes to Six’s subtle indications of the presence and absence of the human body. These contained, sculptural worlds reflect their immediate surroundings – the track ceiling lighting, the edges where floor meets wall or even the viewer – while changing your way of looking. Over the course of the exhibitions life span, the Methylene Blue will crystallize, further altering the material’s function and materiality from its intended use.

Fixed and unfixed seems to be a recurring motif within the exhibition. Calling to the intangibility and impermanence of material, a series of black and white and coloured MDF dust works populate the gallery walls. The process, Six says, was discovered by making other sculptural objects. Using a sanding machine, the artist directs the machine towards the surface where the wood particles settle. Framed and rendered into various shapes in gradient tones, they call to the remnants of former sculptural works that could have existed – the frail and faint elements of projects that did not make it into the exhibition.^[2]

In opposition to the fleeting nature of many of the works that inhabit the gallery, a red and white rope work wades throughout the space, tracing the topology of its environment. A recurring material in many of Six’s installations, the rhythmic quality of this work leads the viewer across the gallery space as it loops up and down, before collapsing on the floor in a giant knot. Topology, knitting and knotting is further articulated in a delicate pencil drawing towards the end of the exhibition space. The fibres of the material are obsessively traced with incredible mathematical precision, the markings quivering across the paper into an intricate web.

Like those affiliated with the radical Arte Povera movement, Six’s artworks are all part of a single continuum. Each artwork is specific to every moment, yet timeless and changing as well.^[2] Six’s works rotates, morphs, distorts, repeats, and loops back on itself in new constellations, yet memory and familiarity remain prevalent. Interested in not only the placement of works but the placement of the viewer, Kato constructs a multifaceted environment that can be viewed from a multitude of perspectives: across the public square, against the window, and through reflections and shadows cast around the works and by the works themselves.

Positioned between material and immaterial, Six’s poetic approach to the placement of the works in State of Matter at times, function as ephemeral and fleeting suggesting impermanence or domesticity. Asking the viewer to pay close attention to not only their own position when observing, but to the finer details, the physicality and perceptions of space – the transitory states of matter.

Kato Six State of Matter is on view at VITRINE, London until 21 June 2019

VITRINE

15 Bermondsey Square

London SE1 3UN

Open 24/7

^[1] Methemoglobinemia is a blood disorder in which an abnormally high amount of methemoglobin — a form of hemoglobin — is produced. Hemoglobin is the molecule in red blood cells that distributes oxygen to the body. In some cases, methemoglobinemia can cause sufferers skin to turn blue. See ‘Blue Fugates’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates (last accessed 21 March 2019)

^[2] Six, K. (2014) Interviewed by c-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e for her solo exhibition Re-located into Silence. Available at http://www.c-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/0_PR_KS_ENG2.pdf (last accessed 10 March 2019).

^[3] Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Arte Povera: Art from Italy 1967-2002 (Sydney, Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002), p11.

Lead image: Kato Six, State of Matter, 2019. Installation view, VITRINE London

• At the heart of the exhibition are 10 major new photographic projects, directly influenced by treasures in the V&A’s vast collection. In preparation for the exhibition, Walker visited object stores and conservation studios, meeting many of the museum’s curators, conservators and technicians. He scoured the V&A’s 145 public galleries, scaled the roof of the 12-acre South Kensington site, and explored the labyrinth of Victorian passages below ground level.
• Along the way, he encountered luminous stained-glass windows, vivid Indian miniature paintings, jewelled snuffboxes, erotic illustrations, golden shoes, and a 50-metre-long photograph of the Bayeux Tapestry, the largest photograph in the museum’s collection. These and many other rare artefacts have inspired Walker’s monumental new photographs, and feature in the exhibition designed by leading British creative, Shona Heath.
• Designed by leading creative director and Walker’s long-term collaborator Shona Heath, the exhibition showcases over 300 items, encompassing photographs and the V&A objects that inspired them, short films, photographic sets and props, scrapbooks and sketches. Heath’s spectacular design guides visitors on a journey through Walker’s enchanted world.
• Text written by Walker adds personal insight and celebrates the talents of the many collaborators who help bring his ideas to life, including stylists and creatives Katy England, Amanda Harlech and Jerry Stafford, and hair and make-up artists Malcolm Edwards, Julien d’Ys, isshehungry and Sam Bryant, among others.
• The exhibition begins with 100 pictures from Walker’s previous projects and extracts from his Super 8 films, displayed in a sleek, white space. Walker first came to prominence in the 1990s with his unique approach to visual storytelling, blurring fantasy and reality to create pictures that can be surreal, lavish, humorous and touching.
• These images are populated by some of the biggest names in fashion: models including Edie Campbell, Lily Cole, Karen Elson and Stella Tennant and designers including Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Comme des Garçons and Rick Owens. Walker’s reference points are disparate, ranging from fairy tales to The Beatles’ lyrics, yet his photographs share a sensibility that is unmistakably his own. He avoids Photoshop and other virtual tools in favour of beautifully crafted physical sets and awe-inspiring locations, from Myanmar to Japan and Mexico.
• The first room of the exhibition displays these inventive fashion stories alongside portraits of luminaries such as Sir David Attenborough, Peter Blake and David Hockney, and a constellation of performers including Riz Ahmed, Cate Blanchett, Björk, Timothée Chalamet, Beth Ditto, Daniel Day-Lewis, Claire Foy, Saoirse Ronan and Solange Knowles. One wall is devoted to the photographer’s muses, including performers Tilda Swinton and Lindsay Kemp, models Kristen McMenamy and Kate Moss, and the artist Grayson Perry. The first part of the exhibition concludes with five projects devoted to the nude.
• Towards the end of the exhibition, visitors enter a pastel-hued room reminiscent of a grand country house. A film projection flickers within a vast fireplace and the walls are hung with multiple portraits inspired by Edith Sitwell’s clothing and jewellery in the V&A’s collection. This shoot with Tilda Swinton, herself a distant relative of Sitwell, took place at the family’s manor house, Renishaw Hall. As well as recognisable faces such as Swinton and Karen Elson, Walker’s new pictures are populated by a diverse cast of up-and-coming performers and models, celebrating beauty in all its forms.
• Beyond the exhibition, several of Walker’s film installations appear throughout the museum’s permanent galleries, including the Tapestries Gallery and Norfolk House Music Room. The Modern Media Gallery in the V&A’s Photography Centre will screen his newest film, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, a ballet performed by dancers from the Michael Clark Company in costumes inspired by paper dolls in the V&A Museum of Childhood. Walker rewrote the original Hans Christian Andersen tale to create a moving gay love story, narrated by actress Gwendoline Christie.

Tim Walker: Wonderful Things 
Galleries 38a and 38
21 September 2019 – 8 March 2020
vam.ac.uk | #TimWalkerxVAM

The exhibition is divided into seven thematic strands, the first of which is ‘The Slade’, where many of the artists in the exhibition trained. It was here that their tutor, the renowned draughtsman, Henry Tonks, described them as a ‘crisis of brilliance’, such was their talent. The other themes – the Great War, Religion, Landscape, The Artist’s Muse, The Long Weekend and World War II – will enable us to look at how artists experienced and portrayed their shared histories.

A particular highlight is Mark Gertler’s The Doll, which is a striking still-life painted just after he left the Slade; in it an everyday object is imbued with an almost sacred reverence. In Brockley in April, David Jones brings a spirituality to the place of his birth, just as Stanley Spencer did with Cookham. In Spencer’s painting of the Last Supper, the scene takes place in Cookham malthouse; and in the monumental Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta (unfinished on Spencer’s death), Christ is shown on a boat, in a wicker chair, preaching to the inhabitants of Cookham

A mystical painting by Glynn Philpot is another highlight – his Ascending Angel, looming above what is probably an artist’s garret shows a divine event in an everyday setting. Elevating the commonplace was something of a specialism for Spencer. In Sarah Tubb and the Heavenly Visitors, ‘Granny Tubb’ is shown on her knees in Cookham High Street convinced that the world had ended. She is accompanied not only by celestial beings, but also by the less-than-celestial grocer’s son.

Spencer is famous for his singular vision, but Counterpoint sets out to demonstrate that he was part of a zeitgeist which spawned some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

Amanda Bradley, Exhibition Curator

For more information see: https://stanleyspencer.org.uk/forthcoming/

Image credit: Mark Gertler, The Doll, 1914, oil on canvas, 762 x 508mm. Courtesy of The Ingram Collection of Modern British Art

The Giudecca Art District will launch at the 2019 Venice Biennale and will encompass 11 art galleries and art spaces and 3 national pavilions including Estonia, Iceland and Nigeria as well as launching a new contemporary art space Giudecca Art District Gallery and Garden. Opening in May over 60 artists from 30 countries will be included in 20 exhibitions on the island for the launch of the art district.  Founding art directors of the Giudecca Art District include Venetian art directors Pier Paolo Scelsi and Valentina Gioia Levy. Art spaces including the newly established Giudecca Art District Gallery and Garden will be central to the Giudecca Art District as well as additional collaborations with established art galleries and spaces including Chiesa delle Zitelle, Starak Foundation, Galleria Sant’Eufemia, Spazio Bullo, Spazio Raunich, Sudiolacittà, and Spazio Silos with more art galleries to be announced next month.

Over the past 50 years the island of Giudecca has hosted a series of significant historical exhibitions including Marina Abramovic’s first performance in 1976 and a 2017 Zuecca Project Space exhibition, Damien Hirst’ first Venice show and Ai Weiwei’s 2013 Art Biennale show Disposition, making Giudecca synonymous with both emerging and cutting edge contemporary art talent.

While over 60 artists will be exhibited as part of the international launch of the Giudecca Art District, Body as Home by acclaimed artist Aleksandra Karpowicz with October! Collective will be the flagship installation for the launch of GAD and a focal point for this new dedicated space for independent contemporary art.

Curated by Miguel Mallol, Body as Home is a three channel film presented in tryptic that documents a journey of self-discovery, identity, migration and a search for the meaning of home. Filmed in 4 different cities; Cape Town, London, New York and Warsaw, Body as Home  captures 3 protagonists in each city – a local, a visitor and the filmmaker herself in order to explore the concept of home in regard to geographical location, one’s placement within society, and personal identity.  The film explores how notions of physical selfhood and our sense of home overlap. Body as home looks to address the relationship between human physicality, sexuality and identity and urge viewers to accept and feel at home in their own bodies.

Other major installations and exhibitions opening with the launch of the Giudecca Art District include the Take Care of Your Garden exhibition which will see work by 8 international artists exhibited in a large outdoor garden. Works include Te Veo, Me Veo at the Chiesa delle Zitelle by artist Lidia Lèon (DOM), Tu vs Everybody a collaboration by six Italian artists, We are Humanity by Lilli Muller (USA) and Randi Matushevitz (USA), There Are No Titans by artists Waseem Marzouki (SIR), Gip Depio (USA) and Tanner Goldbeck (USA).

• Kara Walker was born in Stockton, California in 1969 and was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work is represented in major museum collections across the USA and Europe and she has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award and the Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship.
• She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is the Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. A major survey exhibition of her work opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2007 and travelled to Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth. Other solo shows of her work have been held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Camden Arts Centre in London and Metropolitan Arts Center (MAC) in Belfast.
• Kara is perhaps best known for her use of black cut-paper silhouetted figures, often referencing the history of slavery and the antebellum South in the US through provocative and elaborate installations.
• Her works have featured prominently in exhibitions around the world since the mid-1990s. Her first large-scale public commission opened in the derelict Domino Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn in 2014 and powerfully addressed the history of sugar production. Over 10 metres high and 23 metres long, A Subtlety was a monumental sculpture of a sphinx-like figure, covered in sugar and surrounded by smaller figures made of toffee, brown sugar and molasses.
• She has since designed and directed a production of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma for the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, and most recently she created The Katastwóf Karavan 2017, a musical installation as part of the Prospect.4 triennial in New Orleans. Taking the form of a calliope (a steam-powered organ) set inside a steel wagon and encircled by silhouetted figures, the work was used in a series of live performances as well as programmed to play songs related to African-American experience.
• Frances Morris, Director, Tate Modern said: ‘Kara Walker fearlessly tackles some of the most complex issues we face today. Her work addresses history and identity with a powerful directness, but also with great understanding, nuance and wit. Seeing her respond to the industrial scale of the Turbine Hall – and the wider context of London and British history – is a hugely exciting proposition.’
• Wonhong Cho, Executive Vice President, Hyundai Motor said: ‘We look forward to the fifth Hyundai Commission by Kara Walker, known for her explorations of history, culture, race and identity, and to the new ways in which she will engage audiences in the Turbine Hall. In partnership with organizations across the globe, Hyundai Motor will continue to invite international audiences to unique creative experiences.’
• Since Tate Modern opened in 2000, the Turbine Hall has hosted some of the world’s most memorable and acclaimed works of contemporary art, reaching an audience of millions each year. The way artists have interpreted this vast industrial space has revolutionised public perceptions of contemporary art in the twenty-first century.
• The annual Hyundai Commission gives artists an opportunity to create new work for this unique context. The commissions are made possible by the long-term partnership between Tate and Hyundai Motor, confirmed until 2025 as part of the longest initial commitment from a corporate sponsor in Tate’s history.

Image credit: Kara Walker (c) Ari Marcopoulos