Wednesday

Richard Wentworth & Bold Tendencies

Tonight, May 27, marks the unveiling of Richard Wentworth's new commission AGORA for Bold Tendencies at Frank's Cafe in Peckham Rye.

Go.




Saturday

Art at Glyndebourne

We are very proud of our role in developing the visual arts programme with Glyndebourne, bringing
together White Cube and Carmody Groarke and the legendary opera house in Sussex to create a unique platform for contemporary art within a music-based institution: White Cube at Glyndebourne.

As instigators and producers of objects, environments, events, and programmes there is little more satisfying for us when a collaboration is made real.

The new production of Donizetti's Poliuto demonstrates the point we are eager to discuss: the porousness between forms of art- the video work 1365 Days Without Red by Anri Sala has deeply influenced the stage images assembled by the designers Julia Hansen & fettFilm.  A story set in Armenia, in 257 A.D., via the imagination of a 19th c. Italian composer, reanimated via a thoroughly 21st c. vision.

The inaugural exhibition in the gallery displays a series of new paintings by the German artist Georg Baselitz. Please visit the White Cube website for a full press release about this exhibition curated by Andrea Schlieker.


Poliuto production image courtesy of GFO/ Tristram Kenton






La fontana va

2014
Photo: Jochen Littkemann





Thursday

Georg Baseltiz at Glyndebourne

Glyndebourne & White Cube's new partnership opens a pop-up gallery at Glyndebourne on May 21st. New paintings by the great German artist Georg Baselitz form the inaugural exhibition. To celebrate the opening, we have produced a limited edition of fifty screen-printed wool blankets by Baselitz titled Alte Elisabeth, 2010. Available exclusively from Glyndebourne.

Tuesday

Desktop Exhibition



I often wonder about everything involuntary and automatic, when we put our conscious selves away and let things migrate towards or away from one another. Every week the desktop of my laptop fills with images people send, images that inspire, images sent back and forth to factories, things to remember.
Then on Friday I trash or file it all so I have a clean start to the next week. Only recurring obsessions remain.
We just had a long weekend and I fell behind in my routine. As I was about to tidy up, I liked the unintentional exhibition before me and decided to make a record of it.
PS that's the Man Mo temple, in HK, in the background.

 Something saved for Shezad Dawood.
 The telly in Richard Wentworth's History is Now exhibition
 Studio Alchimia FOREVER
 I have to pick a ****ing lining colour
 Curious about my past I opened Pandora's box.
 I don't care about trainers but I have a client that does....
 So pretty.
Something by De Chirico to wear to Glyndebourne? Maybe not.
 Richard Wilson's arm.
 The unprintable mug.
 I can't remember how or why this ended up on my desktop but it makes me happy.
 Southwark tree peony.
 Sister of Southwark tree peony.
 A new bowl by Keith Lewis.
 Richard Wentworth telling me something.
 ****ing colour corrections. Stresssssssss!
Upside down pic, but PERFECT! vitreous ceramic plaque commemorating the launch of the VW Golf from Schmid McDonagh on Church St. NW8.
I am having a personal Paolozzi revival since his work was featured in History is Now at the Hayward. The exhibition is finished now but the catalogue is a good record of the show.
 Elizabeth Porter informs......
 This fella might be on my desktop for a while.
He makes my head feel like this.
 Resin artists in China are proving a blast to work with!
Rose Uniacke was sent from another planet to torment us with exquisite objects. She has some bamboo lampshades in her window that are interfering with my sleep.
Why is this on my desktop?
Ready to begin again.




Monday

Monday Portrait: Death by Pixel




Sandrine Dulermo and Michael Labica shot the cover image and several interior shots, including this one for last weekend's FT How to Spend It

It is a troubling publication, but more so when it unintentionally elevates itself into the realms of Art.

This image is greatly aided in its print version by the degraded reproduction, but its power deserves acknowledgement: Repulsive and compulsively beautiful at the same time, a great image.

We curate via Google images and asked it to show us images of similar power. Computer says Cranach.


‘Adam & Eve’, Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1520

Thursday

Grayson Perry & Minion Yellow

How does the collective unconscious work? 

Choices made by intuition which unexpectedly chime with other events, reassure that order of some kind, albeit mysterious, exists. Lesson of the day: trust your instincts!

Yellow is a tricky colour but when it's right, it's right. Grayson knows it, as the new scarf we designed together for Turner Contemporary shows, and so does Pantone as reported in The Guardian.

To be honest, we hadn't heard of Minion Yellow before today but we agree with with the sentiments of Leatrice Eiseman, the Executive Director of the Pantone Colour Institute: PANTONE Minion Yellow "is a colour that heightens awareness and creates clarity...the colour of hope, joy and optimism".

Perhaps minion and optimism are not words one would usually associate with one another but let's not quibble about the details, this is a blog.


This silk scarf has been created for Grayson Perry's exhibition Provincial Punk at Turner Contemporary  which opens in Margate on May 23.

Sunday

Orbit No.1

We keep a list of artists and designers whose work holds a place in our studio's belief system. Sometimes they drift out of sight or mind for a while, but the list is made of those who reappear with reassuring regularity. Selected with 'pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey' precision, here is the first, Marcel Broodthaers.


At your supplier (Vinegar of Eagles) (Chez votre fournisseur [Le Vinaigre des Aigles]) 1968
in the Museum of Modern Art, New York


Comma and Exclamation Mark, 1970

The goose, the wing (L'oie, l'aile), 1970


 Les Portes, 1969



Monday

Monday Portrait: amuseum

I have a complicated relationship with magazines, but my defence mechanism failed on sight of this one. amuseum can explain itself better than I can, but it irresistibly resists classification.


Praise for amuseum aside, the cover by Kristian Hammerstad provoked a 5 minute research project into monkeys & art. 

The tumlbr page Monkeys in Art History has provided an excellent introduction to the subject.

Skeleton of a monkey sitting on the stump of a tree, c.1730-32, 
From: W. Cheselden, Osteographia, or the anatomy of the Bones, 1733.


Lajos Kassák: Animal-collage, 1923


And before I put this subject away for the day, I googled "monkey as Hamlet" and of course there are pages of images.......


 Ape with Skull, by Hugo Rheinhold, c. 1893 CE.




Y, The Last Man. Now I can stop.