The first solo exhibition in the UK of the Swedish artist Petra Bauer opened last week at Focal Point Gallery.
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A chance to see two films selected by Dan Kidner (Focal Point Gallery Residency Programme Manager 2009/2010) for the Holocaust Memorial Day.
Tris Vonna-Michell’s exhibition No more racing in circles — just pacing within lines of a rectangle is on at the Focal Point Gallery until 20 March.
Mike Sperlinger in conversation with David Campany
If you are interested in photography, you might need to call in sick tomorrow! At 11am tomorrow morning at the Focal Point Gallery, Mike Sperlinger, the assistant director of LUX in London, who has curated the current show at the Focal Point, ‘Let’s Take Back Our Space’, will discuss the project with David Campany, a writer specialising in photography and its relationship to cinema. He’s written, for example, one of the Phaidon’s survey publications – Art and Photography.
The event is open to the general public and is free.
Also, on 9 December, there is another Creative Network meeting between 5.30-7.00pm. Matt Holmes, Partnership Manager at Southend Central Library will discuss the various opportunities for artists to engage with the library, the new outlook of the ground floor exhibition space and the different communities it represents. To book please call 01702 534108. Free.
For more info about the show, read our previous post HERE.
Focal Point Gallery WEBSITE
Let’s Take Back Our Space, curated by Mike Sperlinger includes works by Robert Morris, Marianne Wex and Cerith Wyn Evans. Body language is, as the late Big Brother has taught us, inescapable. How we read, record, imitate and interpret gestures informs everything about our daily lives, from culture and convention to our most ‘natural’ and intimate relationships. ‘Let’s Take Back Our Space’ brings together the work of three artists – Robert Morris, Marianne Wex and Cerith Wyn Evans – who, in their radically different ways, explore body language as something at once urgent and inherently ambiguous.
The show takes its title from an encyclopaedic photographic project by the German artist Marianne Wex. Over several years in the mid-1970s Wex, who had originally been a painter, built up an extraordinary archive of thousands of images of people, which she began to categorise according to their body language. Mixing her own street photographs with images clipped from newspapers and advertisements, she cumulatively catalogued the way that male and female identities were formed and reinforced through everyday gestures; the way, as she put it, that they ‘took up space’.
Wex’s photographic project is accompanied by two other works in the exhibition. The first is Robert Morris’s 21.3 (1964); originally a performance made by the artist while he was studying and teaching art history in New York, the action was subsequently re-staged with an actor and filmed by Babette Mangolte in 1994. In the work, the performer lip-synchs a famous art history lecture by Erwin Panofsky called ‘Studies in Iconology’ from 1939, which discusses the different levels of how we understand the everyday gesture of someone raising their hat – a typical greeting of the era, which might now seem quaint.
The second accompanying moving image work is Cerith Wyn Evans’s Kim Wilde Audition Tapes (1996), which, we are told, consists of footage the artist discovered in a skip in Soho. Male models audition in a studio for a role in a pop video, responding to the off-screen director’s prompts to act naturally with excruciating self-consciousness. Under the cold eye of the camera, body language and male sexuality are manufactured for commercial ends.
Listen to Marianne Wex talking about her project HERE
The exhibition is open until 14 December 2009.
Focal Point Gallery WEBSITE
Ages 8 to 12 years
Do you have a child interested in art? They will be able to learn new skills and develop existing expertise in drawing and using the digital cameras and editing software in our Digital Workroom.
Sessions run on Saturday mornings between 10.30am and 12.30pm.
14, 21, 28 November and 5, 12 December.
Cost £5 per person, or £20 for five sessions. Booking is essential.
focalpointgallery@southend.gov.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1702 534108
Focal Point Gallery / Southend Central Library, Victoria Avenue, Southend-on-Sea, SS2 6EX, UK
‘Let’s Animate’: ‘Digital People’ at Focal Point Gallery
Thursday 29 October, 10am to 3pm
In this practical drop-in gallery education session, which will cater for all abilities and age ranges, you will be able to try your hand at animation, as well as view moving image works made during the project ‘Digital People’. ‘Let’s Animate’ is a workshop led by students from Milton Hall Primary School, St Mary’s Prittlewell Primary School, A level students from Greensward Academy, as well as artists from the Southend-based film organisation The White Bus. This workshop is free. Please call to let us know if you are planning to visit.
Funded by Southend Education Trust
Focal Point Gallery, Southend Central Library, Victoria Avenue, Southend-on-Sea, Essex SS2 6EX
T: 01702 534108, http://www.focalpoint.org.uk
‘The Big Draw’ with Paul Housley and Pat O’Connor
10 October 2009, 10am to 4pm
Southend Central Library
Artists Paul Housley and Pat O’Connor have a reputation for creating strong figurative drawings and paintings. In this event, you will be able to meet the artists, find out how they work, and collaborate on the production of new images with them. This is a practical drop-in event for all ages and abilities. This event is part of The Big Draw, a national annual event to promote drawing. Booking is not essential, but it will help if you let us know you are planning to visit.
Organised by Focalpoint Gallery, http://www.focalpoint.org.uk
Southend Central Library /Victoria Avenue, Southend-on-Sea, Essex SS2 6EX
Tel: +44 (0)1702 534108
Creative Network meeting
7 October 2009, 5.30-7pm
Focal Point Gallery
This event provides artists with the opportunity to review the progress of their work with their peers, and to learn about other artists’ projects. Please book, stating if you wish to present your work. Free.
