Rosebud by James Richards @ The 55th Venice Art Biennale
video installation filmed by JEJ for FACADES
Rosebuds 2013
James Richards's videos and installations cull an intimate dreamlike vision from massive stores of visual information. Pieced together from sources including You Tube, LUX's moving image archive, books, and footage Richards shoots himself. His videos often examine the visceral surfaces of vernacular imagery. His works draw influence from the fractured contemporary milieu of information exchange as well as "scratch video"- a British video art genre of the 1980s and the 1990s, characterized by radical politics, fast cuts, and found footage....
ART for PEACE12 selected images below all shot by MC
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FACADES strongly supports Art for Peace together with artists- Laila Shawa, Damien Hirst, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Charming Baker, Stuart Semple, Sarah Lucas, Langlands & Bell, Antony Gormley,Sam Taylor Wood, Nancy Fouts, and Gavin Turk who's works are featured above.
Please proceed to the Society Section of FACADES for Malcolm Crowthers' feature article "AKA Peace"...
Joana Vasconcelos Sculptural Installations5 Images of huge sculpture/installations below: 1-Valkyrie Crown 637 x 425 cm, 2-Full Steam Ahead (Red #1) 160 x 150 cm, 3-Tetris 17th Century (Detail Image) 378 x 336 x 308 cm, 4-Luso Tetris 248.5 x 234.3 x 142 cm, 5-Tetris Keil 182 x 224 x 98 cm
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Haunch of Venison presented a new site-specific sculptural installation by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos.
Following her celebrated exhibition at Château de Versailles and the announcement that she will represent Portugal at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Joana Vasconcelos has created a site-specific installation of large–scale sculptural works that fill the spaces of Haunch of Venison’s Mayfair gallery.
In this exhibition, and frequently in her work, Vasconcelos incorporates objects and materials from daily life into large, intricate and colourful assemblages that explore issues of identity, politics of gender, religion, class and nationality.
In the first gallery space is Full Steam Ahead (Red #1), a sculpture constructed in the shape of a water lily with a steam iron in place of each petal. The petals of the sculpture open and close, mimicking the movement of a real flower, emitting steam as the iron plates reach vertical position.
The second and third galleries are filled with giant constructivist-inspired, brightly tiled structures that resemble the block graphics from the retro computer game Tetris. Each of the tiled blocks is punctured by long textile tentacles that weave and meander around the rigid structures. This series is made up of four groups differentiated by the style of tile used to cover each surface: Tetris 17th Century uses replicas of original 17th century tiles; Luso Tetris is made with smaller tiles illustrated with different figurative and rural Portuguese motifs; Tetris Waves references both Great Britain and Portugal’s special relationship with the sea with wave patterned tiles; and Tetris Keil is an homage to the late Portuguese artist Maria Keil known for the use of decorative tiles in her work.
In the upper gallery a large textile form, covered in a patchwork of traditional Portuguese fabrics, is suspended from the skylight, with huge tendrils that trail up and down the gallery’s staircase from the gallery below conjoining with the sculptural forms in the second and third galleries. The work, titled Valkyrie Crown, celebrates monarchy and in particular the British Monarchy and Queen Elizabeth II in her Jubilee year. The work is part of the Valkyries series, started in 2004, that references a Norse mythological female character that decides who lives or dies in battle. This series of sculptures combine issues of nationality and womanhood, themes that are fundamental to Vasconcelos’ work.
Press Release by Haunch of Venison -103 New Bond Street London W1S 1ST. www.haunchofvenison.com
The Vivisector: Sherman-Bellmer-Sommer4 Images below starting off with Cindy Sherman's Untitled, #316, 1995 Color photograph 121,9 x 81,3 cm (unframed) 48 x 32 inches (unframed)
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The Vivisector (curated by Todd Levin), investigates two bodies of work by Cindy Sherman: the photographic series ‘Sex Pictures’ (1989-1992) in which the artist examined the body through mannequins and prosthetics, and a subsequent series of black and white images entitled ‘Broken Dolls’ (1999), depicting dismembered and reconstructed figurines. The exhibition will contextualise and re-evaluate the importance of these specific series in Sherman’s oeuvre. While Sherman’s compositions are the cynosure of this exhibition, work by artists including Morton Bartlett, Georges Bataille, Hans Bellmer, Bruce Nauman and Frederick Sommer will also be on display, illustrating a collective interest in the transgressive figurative form. In addition, “Les oiseaux dans la charmille” (also known as “The Doll Song”) from Jacques Offenbach’s opera ‘The Tales of Hoffmann’ will provide a musical backdrop to the exhibition, recounting the story of a poet who is deceived into falling in love with a mechanical doll.
The title of the exhibition refers to the act of cutting open a living organism for physiological or pathological investigation. The idea of opening up and exposing a living body is central to Sherman’s practice, particularly evident in the base materialism of these unflinching effigies. In the ‘Sex Pictures’ Sherman, for the first time, delegates her role in her imagery to dolls and dummies, masked and manipulated to resemble living beings. The colour images focus in on the incomplete object, whether it be genitalia or scattered limbs, and alternate between obscene visions of the body and straightforward illustrations of specific practices, crippling the drive of sexual desire in the process.
The latter series ‘Broken Dolls’ created in 1999 marked the artist’s first return to black and white photography since the Untitled Film Stills of 1978-1980. The low contrast matte grey and washed out refracted light of the photographs imbue the works with a soft romantic appearance, juxtaposing the harsh sexual imagery. Through melting and cutting, Sherman dismembers and reconstructs the mutilated dolls in violent and sexually explicit poses; the doll depicted in ‘Untitled #347’ distorts in the grip of pain or pleasure, while in ‘Untitled #335’ the figure offers itself to the viewer in an obscene stance, implying an autonomous participation in the scenes depicted.
Press Release by Sprueth Magers (Berlin/London)-7A Grafton Street, London W1S 4EJ. www.spruethmagers.com
Fusions in Art & Fashion: Basso & Brooke |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
London's dynamic fashion duo Bruno Basso & Christopher Brooke constantly amuses us with their genius in mixing colours, patterns, prints, and products, with a touch of spicy humour.
Above are 10 images selected by FACADES
from the Archives of Basso & Brooke
www.bassoandbrooke.com Enjoy!
