Latest news with #Serpentine
Scotsman
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh Art Festival: The former Team GB gymnast leading festival line-up
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Performance art by a former Team GB gymnast and a film drawing connections between members of the queer community across history in four different languages of Scotland are included in specially-commissioned works for the 21st anniversary of the Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF). Ex-gymnast Lewis Walker will headline EAF, which runs from August 7 to 24, as the festival hosts its own pavilion for the first time. A shared hub on Edinburgh's Leith Street, the space will host many of the new commissions and projects, resident artists and discussion, as well as exhibited artworks. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The festival spans from Leith to West Lothian, and from Haymarket to the Old and New Town, with works both indoors and outdoors. Bornsick, by Walker, a former Team GB gymnast and a recent graduate of London Contemporary Dance School, reflects the idea that people inherit illness — born into a system that shapes them before they can define themselves. Co-commissioned with Serpentine, the autobiographical narrative by Walker will be performed on August 23. Meanwhile, Lewis Hetherington and CJ Mahony's film, Who Will Be Remembered Here, is a fieldwork performance project with Historic Environment Scotland and the organisation's team of historians and researchers. Four writers have been commissioned to each create a piece of text for performance, each responding to one of four sites which spans the whole of human history in Scotland. Each responds in a different language: Robert Softley Gale in English, Harry Josephine Giles in Scots, Robbie MacLeòid in Gaelic, and Bea Webster in BSL. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Edinburgh Art Festival has unveiled its programme. | EAF Kim McAleese, director of EAF, said: 'We're so excited to be announcing our EAF25 programme. At the heart of this year's programming is the call to reflect on how ancestral knowledge can guide us in addressing contemporary challenges. 'We are inviting audiences to reflect on our collective relationship with the natural world, drawing inspiration from the wisdom of those who came before us — those who foster cycles of care, sustenance and resilience. There are also recurring motifs of classical myths, folklore, modern feminist empowerment, queerness through the lens of Scottish history as well as thoughts on what it is to be human - exploring concepts of the body as a temporary vessel that is often shaped by societal expectations.' JUPITER RISING x EAF will return for a one-night-only festival within a festival at Jupiter Artland on the outskirts of the city, with a line-up including TAAHLIAH and Ponyboy. Lewis Walker will perform Bornsick. | EAF A major retrospective by land artist Andy Goldsworthy and the queer ceramic and textile animals of Jonathan Baldock will be held at the Royal Scottish Academy and will continue beyond the festival into November. A performance art piece by pioneering feminist artist Linder has already been announced. First presented at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, the retrospective will then open EAF. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
Perth Now
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Cate Blachett co-hosting Serpentine summer party 2025
Cate Blanchett is co-hosting the 25th Serpentine summer party. The 55-year-old actress is "honored to co-chair the Serpentine party" fundraising event on June 24, which sees key figures from the art, culture, fashion, architecture, business and technology worlds descend on Kensington Gardens on London to support the Serpentine art gallery. The attendees will be able to take in the new Serpentine Pavillion called 'A Capsule in Time', which was created by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, and Cate said it is "an inspirational opportunity" to be leading the proceedings. She is quoted by as saying: "Supporting our cultural institutions and their power to illuminate the world at large and our place within it is of paramount importance. "I'm honored to co-chair the Serpentine party and its summer festivities where so many creative forms - architecture, performance, music, science and digital narratives - intersect. "To come together around a pavilion created by Tabassum, whose socially driven work particularly in her home country of Bangladesh to meet the challenges faced by Rohingya refugees, is an inspirational opportunity." As well as being able to experience the Serpentine's summer programme, guests will be able to rub shoulders with rising London-based fashion designers as they show off their creations on their friends. Bettina Korek, the Serpentine's chief executive officer, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Serpentine's artistic director, said: "[We are] deeply grateful for the opportunity to celebrate our community and artistic program with a true creative icon. "We are looking forward to an unforgettable evening, where the elegance of a classic British garden party will meet the energy of a salon attended by global luminaries.'
The Guardian
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Towering trunks, disturbing dolls and deep-sea daydreams – the week in art
Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the RootsThis veteran environmental artist has been celebrating trees for almost six decades. Does his bark still have bite? Serpentine, London, 3 April to 7 September Dormitorium: The Film Décors of the Quay BrothersCreepy dolls and east European atmosphere from the artists formerly known as the Brothers Quay. Watch out for the stag ejaculant. Swedenborg Society, London, until 4 April Textiles: The Art of MankindAmbitious global overview of textiles as art, from ancient times to our own era. Fashion and Textile Museum, London, until 7 September José María VelascoInformative and scientifically observant views of 19th-century Mexico – but Velasco doesn't rock. Read the full review here. National Gallery, London, 29 March to 17 August UnderseaImaginary worlds of the sea from premodern monsters to contemporary daydreams, with Paul Delvaux and Michael Armitage. Hastings Contemporary, 29 March to 14 September If you don't think this portrait looks much like Donald Trump, you and he are in agreement … bigly! With a laser-like focus on urgent domestic matters, the US president this week bemoaned that the painting hanging in the Colorado state capitol building didn't flatter him and demanded it be taken down. He even found time to insult its creator, saying: 'The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on [sic] me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older.' Full story here. SAD. Grayson Perry has a new alter ego, who has her own alter ego Spanish artist Joan Miró painted over his mother's portrait A new documentary about female war artists has a cringey title New York's Frick collection is reopening, and it's teeming with masterpieces Photographer and teacher Hicham Benohoud turned his students into art A book about Picasso's lovers might not be the feminist slam dunk it wishes Burmese political prisoner and painter Htein Lin befriended his guards so he could smuggle in paint American artist Thomas Kinkade was a proto-influencer who built a multimillion dollar brand The Avenue at Middelharnis by Meindert Hobbema, 1689Some of the most characterful trees in art soar above a road in this renowned landscape. These Dutch alders have a very distinctive appearance with their fluffy foliage crowns and branchless, but furry leaved, tall trunks. They resemble palm trees in Los Angeles, which might be one reason why David Hockney is fascinated by this work. What Hockney has spoken about and imitated in his own art, however, is Hobbema's complex perspective that he claims has two vanishing points. This is also a highly symbolic view of a humanised landscape. The new Dutch Republic in the 17th century relied for its success, and even survival, on land reclaimed from the sea. The low-lying flat vista here evokes a Dutch world where human intervention shapes nature. It would be barren without the tended, manicured avenue of alders that leads gently into town in a harmonious ideal of nature governed wisely by its human regents. National Gallery, London If you don't already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here. If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@
The Guardian
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I spent six years just repeating dots and lines': the great painter Arpita Singh on a lifetime in art
When Arpita Singh's Remembering opened this week at the Serpentine in London, despite being one of India's leading artists, it was her first solo institutional show outside her native land in her six-decade-long career. It also marked the first time the Serpentine has given over its main galleries to a show by a south Asian artist. But Singh, who spends most of her waking hours in her Delhi home studio, is muted in her reaction. 'Serpentine is a known gallery, so it is a prestigious thing for me,' is about as effusive as she gets. At 87, Singh is reluctant to give her time to anything that might take her away from her canvas – and that includes this interview. Her vivid, unhinged paintings, chock-a-block with adrift figures, motifs and text often structured by narrow borders crammed with ornament, have won her a devoted following. In an epic Mappa Mundi-like piece, My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising, perspectives jar and scales switch in a way that jauntily recalls storytelling scroll paintings and lavishly detailed miniatures. These splashy, discordant canvases are also stacked with influences from the European modernists Singh encountered during her fine art studies at Delhi Polytechnic in the late 1950s under modernist legends Biren De and Sailoz Mookherjea. 'In our third year, our professor took us to the library and introduced us to western art,' Singh recalls. 'I was so impressed by Der Blaue Reiter and Kandinsky. More so than the French artists.' At the time, international art could be seen only in printed reproductions. India was a recently independent country, and although Nehru, then prime minister, had just opened the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi, it was not – and isn't today – a space for touring shows from the west. But the little that Singh saw deepened her curiosity, and she went on to read those artists' writings. She singles out Paul Klee as her favourite. Forty-eight years after absorbing his written output, she finally stood face to face with his original paintings during a trip to Switzerland. The experience was revelatory. Singh tells me that she wanted to say: 'Master, I have come back to you.' Klee's influences are particularly apparent in one of Singh's earliest watercolours, a patchwork of lightly painted shapes of colour that opens her Serpentine show. For many, this will be strikingly at odds with the figurative imagery that has made her one of India's most highly valued female artists. Singh's style fluctuated after art school, when she was also a consultant at the Weavers' Service Centre, a government co-op tasked with preserving and promoting India's textile traditions. One can see her testing different styles in off-kilter scenes where Chagall-like waywardness is crossed with surrealist eccentricity. Being given her first solo show in the centre of Delhi by Kekoo Gandhy, an esteemed art dealer, plunged her into a period of doubt and introspection. Feeling that she was 'not moving naturally on canvas' she decided to give up 'painting figures' and turned to the fundamentals – dots and lines – in an effort to retrain herself. 'For six years, I kept repeating these dots and lines,' she says. 'It naturally became an abstract form.' When she did return to figuration, in the 1980s, the social and political experiences of a country reeling from Indira Gandhi's imposition of emergency rule suffused her ostensibly whimsical worlds. And yet, even as Singh's paintings make allusions to state violence, most often through the inclusion of a lurking military figure, her work from this time can seem curiously dulled and undramatic. Look closely and amid the chubby flowers and squat aeroplanes, most of her subjects seem forlorn and apathetic. As Atul Dodiya, a fellow artist who is close to Singh clarifies: 'The work is superficially childlike and naive, but it comes from deep experience.' It would be wrong, however, to consider her work an articulation only of her life. Women take up a large portion of space in her paintings, usually eclipsing men. But their colouring, often a chalky pink or pale, distances them from Singh. The goddess figure brandishing a small pistol in the painting Devi Pistol Wali is not a stand-in for Indian society. Neither is it a statement of female power in the face of victimisation. 'It is nothing like that,' Singh tells me. 'Why must I see her as a source of power? Neither do I see a man as a source of power. Both are the same for me.' When I gently ask her about the maternal figures that recur in her works and how her experience of motherhood (Singh's only daughter, the artist Anjum Singh, died of cancer aged 53 in 2020) might have affected her practice, she replies with a question: 'How can that change my work?' Singh has never allowed herself to feel limited. She stayed clear of the artistic debates that consumed others such as the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group and Group 1890, and has avoided being dogmatic about her process. That might be why, over her illustrious career, she has been reluctant to speak to the press. She has, it seems, been protecting the freedom of her vision. Singh's stimulus is varied, her practice porous and her paintings animated by their time. As Nilima Sheikh, another of India's visionary artists who has written on Singh's work and exhibited with her extensively, told me, Singh 'has a way of seeing things completely, which I have tried to emulate'. This comprehensive vision is fed by newspaper stories, text from books and exhibition catalogues, aspects of theatre and dance that mix with her memories. 'Things happen on their own,' Singh says. 'The affairs of political and social life come into my painting like the way light comes as colour and breeze comes as movement.' Ultimately, Singh is concerned with form and visual drama. And she realises these with apparent ease; her paint glides – from areas where it looks like sheets of paper to patches of thick impasto – so effortlessly that, she says, it feels as if the paintings are painting themselves. Arpita Singh: Remembering is at Serpentine North gallery, London, until 27 July
