Tag Archives: Bruce Hainley

LondonTown.com: Cutting-edge US artist receives first major European show in London this summer

Raven Row gallery in Spitalfields hosts a retrospective of ground-breaking US artist Larry Johnson.

LONDON, June 08, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — One of America’s most interesting contemporary artists is to receive his first major European exhibition at a new gallery that focuses on cutting-edge, avant-garde art. Raven Row is a non-profit contemporary art exhibition centre in Spitalfields that is housed within two eighteenth-century merchants’ houses integrated with new galleries and its next exhibition, Larry Johnson: On Location runs from 11 June to 9 August 2015. It is directed and funded by Alex Sainsbury of the Sainsbury family, whose family have funded many great art projects in London, such as the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery. Raven Row is a very different enterprise, offering thoughtful shows on lesser-known artists and allowing visitors to explore the fascinating quarter of Spitalfields. The area is filled with fashionable boutiques, great shops and cool bars and restaurants. To explore its attractions, see LondonTown.com, where you can also find the latest room rates for hotels in London.

On Location brings together a selection of works by Larry Johnson from the early 1990s to the present. The show’s uncontested star is Los Angeles, the city in which Johnson has lived and worked all his life. For over thirty years, LA’s physical and imaginary appearance has served as the set for the artist’s photo-based investigations of the glamour industry, replete with fading stars and premature deaths. Johnson’s work bears the marks of a generation of artists sampling readymade images and texts to create seductively laconic pictures. Yet the colourful sheen of Johnson’s photo-based works is also a foil for sexual, political and semantic tension. The artist’s pictures are encryptions of a Hollywood demi-monde, referring to the cultures from which his work emerges queer, political, filmic and theoretical.

The exhibition is curated by Los Angeles-based writer Bruce Hainley, and by Antony Hudek, Curator and Deputy Director of Raven Row. Commie Pinko Guy, a publication edited by Hainley with new essays by Morgan Fisher, Lisa Lapinski, Hainley, Hudek and Wayne Koestenbaum, as well as reprints of classic underground queer writing, will accompany the exhibition. For more information on this and other exhibitions in London’s cutting-edge contemporary art scene, see LondonTown.com.

-end-

About LondonTown.com
LondonTown.com is the number one Internet site for London. With over 18 years of experience assisting visitors to the capital, they pride themselves on their customer service and editorial independence – no banner advertising or paid for content is allowed. The LondonTown.com team assist in finding cheap London hotels, sightseeing tours, ticket information and events. Trusted and with a loyal following, LondonTown.com is a very reliable source of recommendations and advice on what to do in London. http://www.LondonTown.com

LondonTown.com: Art film screenings at London’s best gallery this summer

Tate Modern screens new and classic avant-garde and artists’ films this summer.

LONDON, June 08, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — The Tate Modern has announced its summer season of cinema screening and film premieres, which will take place in the gallery between May and July 2015. The Tate Modern is one of the world’s leading contemporary art galleries, and its extensive programme of events includes a summer film season that introduces new art film as well as rarely-seen work by inspiring and maverick filmmakers. The screenings cost £5. The gallery is located on the South Bank close to Blackfriars, London Bridge and Waterloo rail stations. For more information on things to do in the area, and to see the latest rates for cheap hotels in London, see LondonTown.com.

Films programmed this summer at the Tate include Agnes Martin’s Gabriel on 5 June, which takes place in conjunction with Tate Modern’s retrospective of Agnes Martin. This evening presents the artist’s only completed and rarely screened film. It follows the wanderings of a ten year old boy in rural New Mexico, where Martin lived and worked, in a contemplative study of landscape and nature. On 12 June, Sharon Lockhart will present her newest body of films and photographs in a unique opportunity to see this ambitious work in progress, followed by a conversation with Tate’s senior curators Catherine Wood and Andrea Lissoni. Created in collaboration with a group of 15 young women in Poland, the project empowers the authority of the girls’ voices and their perspectives on the world. Over the weekend from 19-21 June, Parviz Kimiavi will feature. Spanning four screenings over three days, this will be the UK’s first major survey of maverick filmmaker Parviz Kimiavi, a pioneer of alternative cinema in 1970’s Iran. Kimiavi created surreal and hallucinatory films, using non-professional actors and harsh desert landscapes.

On 26 June, A Night at the Pictures: An evening for Larry Johnson will honour the legacy of artist Larry Johnson. Curator Bruce Hainley and writer Wayne Koestenbaum will discuss his work, followed by a specially selected cult film. On 8 July, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc’s new film will be screened. This addresses political issues alongside scientific and anthropological histories. Drawing on a personal photographic archive, the film presents a young fictional researcher who leads a group between the IFAN Museum in Dakar and the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. The screening will be introduced by a live concert by the electronic music act PAL. Finally, over three days from 10-12 June, The Film Will Always Be You: South African Artists on Screen will explore the film work of key artists in South Africa. It begins with a rare showing of William Kentridge and Angus Gibson’s Freedom Square and Back of the Moon 1986 (part of the Johannesburg Free Filmmakers’ Co-Operative) and ends with the UK premiere of Robin Rhode’s Recycled Matter 2015. For more information on this summer of screenings, see LondonTown.com.

-end-

About LondonTown.com
LondonTown.com is the number one Internet site for London. With over 18 years of experience assisting visitors to the capital, they pride themselves on their customer service and editorial independence – no banner advertising or paid for content is allowed. The LondonTown.com team assist in finding cheap London hotels, sightseeing tours, ticket information and events. Trusted and with a loyal following, LondonTown.com is a very reliable source of recommendations and advice on what to do in London. http://www.LondonTown.com