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Phenomena Fine Art, Manchester (2026)

05/01/2024

New exhibition review:
Meredith Monk: Calling
Oude Kerk, Amsterdam. NL

‘New York based musician, composer, performer, choreographer, installation artist, and pioneer of new opera and music-theatre Meredith Monk exhibits Calling, a retrospective of her work from her multi-disciplinary practice since the 1960s to the present day. '
‘The voice in these works is the instrument that needs no accompaniment and the languages of vocal words and text that are rarely used in her work become obsolete, replaced with a universal language of timbres, textures and tones: a vocabulary of sound and musical abstraction that expresses certain emotions that words cannot’
Meredith Monk: ‘Calling’ is Curated by Beatrix Ruf in collaboration with the Oude Kerk and the Hartwig Art Foundation and coincides with her exhibition and performances with the same name at Haus der Kunst in Munich, 10/11/23 – 03/03/24
Meredith Monk: Calling
Oude Kerk
Oudekerksplein 23
1012 GX Amsterdam, NL
21/10/23 – 17/03/24

link to review on LinkedIn

05/01/2024

New exhibition review:
Meredith Monk: Calling
Oude Kerk, Amsterdam. NL

‘New York based musician, composer, performer, choreographer, installation artist, and pioneer of new opera and music-theatre Meredith Monk exhibits Calling, a retrospective of her work from her multi-disciplinary practice since the 1960s to the present day. '

‘The voice in these works is the instrument that needs no accompaniment and the languages of vocal words and text that are rarely used in her work become obsolete, replaced with a universal language of timbres, textures and tones: a vocabulary of sound and musical abstraction that expresses certain emotions that words cannot’

Meredith Monk: ‘Calling’ is Curated by Beatrix Ruf in collaboration with the Oude Kerk and the Hartwig Art Foundation and coincides with her exhibition and performances with the same name at Haus der Kunst in Munich, 10/11/23 – 03/03/24

Meredith Monk: Calling
Oude Kerk
Oudekerksplein 23
1012 GX Amsterdam, NL
21/10/23 – 17/03/24

link to review on LinkedIn in bio

20/12/2023

Visited FOAM photographic gallery in Amsterdam this afternoon & saw the compelling video work Recommence -2012 by the Saudi artist Sara Abu Abdallah. This work, being part of FOAM's 'Contemporary female artists from Saudi Arabia' exhibition. A work in which she bravely intervenes the Saudi ban on women drivers and other existing engendered roles and rules imposed by the Suadi state. Such an intelligently committed and performed work.
This exhibition is ongoing until 14th February 2024.

FOAM
Keizersgracht 609
1017 DS Amsterdam
The Netherlands

18/12/2023

Nan GOLDIN: THIS WILL NOT END WELL
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL.

In this exhibtion Nan Goldin has taken on the role of film maker, creating slide shows that feature thousands of her photographic works screened in one of the six specially constructed indivdual viewing spaces in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. This huge exhibition presents its audiences with the unavoidable opportunity to see through the lens of one of the most significant female artists who in her practice, has continued to document the existence of the counter cultural, the marginalised and the traumatic experiences of the human condition.
Spanning the decades from the 1980s to 2022 from Europe to the USA, her work has remained as raw and intimate as the experiences portrayed in her themes, and this exhibition brilliantly can not fail to demonstrate that.

NAN GOLDIN: THIS WILL NOT END WELL

Runs from Oct 7, 2023, until Jan 28, 2024
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL.

30/08/2023

Dinu Li: A Phantom’s Vibe

Entering the dimly lit atmospheric labyrinth in esea contemporary’s larger gallery space, we are met by an array of altar like sculptural assemblages of new and collected used artefacts including car wing mirrors, vibrant pom poms and assimilated ritualistic headwear. All the assemblage works are resting on used plastic crates and market trollies, held together by plastic ties in reggae colours or are integrated into black metal self-assemble market stall frames with orange building netting and red and white danger tape.

An assembled shack covered in red, white and blue striped tarpaulin commonly found in markets in South East Asia accommodates the screening of Li’s video work ‘Nation Family’ (2017) This work was made in collaboration with his cousin revisiting a labour camp where his cousin was once incarcerated and is now a popular holiday destination in China.

In the background, Li’s own dub track ‘Skanking Hawker’ and a compilation of Chinese tribal mountain songs drift in and out as if giving us a track of focus and influencing our pace as we wander through this captivating exhibition.

The idea of drifting through Hong Kong market stalls that are fused with childhood memories collectively with Jamaican sound systems in the adjoining gallery act as an evocation of the Phantom’s Vibe. This being the song ‘Always Together’ that Li first heard when visiting ‘working class markets’ growing up in Hong Kong, later in his youth it resurfaced in a Manchester Hulme/Moss Side inner-city blues party, then again it appeared years later unexpectedly on YouTube. Li later discovered that it was actually recorded in a small Chinese-run recording studio in Jamaca.

This exhibition of newly commissioned and existing works brilliantly validates Li’s personal discourse with contemporary and hybrid identities, colonial history and the ‘underrepresented history of the Chinese coolies in Jamaica’

Dinu Li: A Phantom’s Vibe
22 June – 29 October 2023
esea contemporary
13 Thomas Street,
Manchester, M4 1EU
United Kingdom

eseacontemporary.org

23/08/2023

ARTIST ROOMS - LOUISE BOURGEOIS

ARTIST ROOMS - Louise Bourgeois occupies the entire ground floor of the Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool. This exhibition has been realised as part of the ongoing ARTIST ROOMS programme, that since 2009 in collaboration with diverse local partnerships, has continued to present the work of international modern and contemporary individual artists in solo exhibitions for the public to access across the UK. Each ARTIST ROOMS exhibition involves works that have been kindly gifted (particularly from the Anthony d'Offay Gallery) to museums and galleries in Britain and are now under the custodial ownership of the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland.

To those familiar with the work of Louise Bourgeois, the idea of an unintentional retrospective of one of the most influential artists of the 20th century can be justified by the addition of loaned works from the Easton Foundation included in this exhibition. This validates the inspired, consistent and necessary processes that Louise Bourgeois appropriated in her tenacious study of her own identity, herself as the ubiquitous subject, her life experiences and her work as an artist.

Untitled (1996) occupies the first side gallery space on the ground floor incorporating her own clothes that she had worn at various stages in her lifetime. Hung on the outstretched arms of a freestanding fabricated steel frame, individually they take on the shape of the human body and hover with the evocation of her memories and experiences and how in time they formed her identity both physically and emotionally. She created this work at the age of 85.

Spider (1994) spans the second side gallery floor area. The constant protector and predator asserting her dominant immediacy while protecting her eggs nestled within. This huge weaver of dwellings, prey traps and repairer of damage is silent, assertive and remains menacing. The spider being a reoccurring metaphor in Bourgeois’s work, acquired from her influential relationship with her own mother, her own maternal instinct and the process of the constant weaving and embroidering that was led by her mother within her family’s antique tapestry restoration business that she experienced as a child.

The remaining gallery areas are inhabited with a selection of her drawing, painting and sculpture, accompanied by the renowned photographic portrait of her by Robert Mapplethorpe (1982) smiling to the camera while holding a huge bronze patinated representation of male ge****ls tucked under her arm.

Louise Bourgeois said that if her work does not touch you, then she has failed.

It would be difficult not to feel the lure of compassion in the intimacy of her celebration of her life and her identity realised by her profound expertise in expressing and communicating these themes that continue to perceptibly radiate from her work.

I don’t think that this exhibition would fail to touch anyone.

Artist Rooms - Louise Bourgeois -8th July
9th September 2023
Grundy Art Gallery
Queen St
Blackpool FY1 1PU

04/08/2023

First visit to Liverpool Biennial 2003 ‘uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things’. Just overwhelming to view what could be crammed into one afternoon of a selection of the many gallery and site specific exhibitions occupying all corners of the city.
Curated by Khanyisile Mbongwa, this 12th Liverpool biennale takes its thematic context from the isiZulu word uMoya meaning as quoted ‘spirit, breath, air, wind, temper and climate.’
The history of Liverpool, the lost and the returning, the process of healing and the celebration of the voice that refuses to be silenced are reoccurring themes and preoccupations of the international artists selected to exhibit and Liverpool as a city itself. Work exhibited has been specially commissioned, or renowned existing work has been thoughtfully selected and loaned from existing collections.
What makes this edition of the Liverpool Biennial challenging is its scale, not only in navigating from location to location as is expected in any big city, but that it is cohesive in that all the many works exhibited are so loaded both visually and contextually, that they are difficult to disengage from.
Credit to the curation and planning of this ambitious edition of the Liverpool Biennial.
I’m now exploring my next visits to catch up on the other exhibitions before 17th September and it’s all free!
Seen so far:
Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński’s enveloping installation ‘Respire (Liverpool) at FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool City Centre.
Nicholas Galanin, Raisia Kabir, Kent Chan and Benoit Piéron installations at Bluecoat, 8 School Lane, Liverpool City Centre.
Edgar Calel, Fátima Rodrigo Gonzales, Francis Offerman, Gala Porras-Kim, Guadalupe Maravilla, Iso do Rosário, Lubaina Himid, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Sannon Alonzo and Torkwase Dyson at Tate Liverpool, Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool Waterfront.
Photographed:
Benoit Piéron, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Francis Offerman, Torkwase Dyson, Guadalupe Maravilla, Kent Chan, Edgar Calel, Raisia Kabir, Shannon Alonzo.
Liverpool Biennial 2023
‘uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things’
10 June – 17th September 2023
www.biennial.com

17/06/2023

Gordon Cheung “The Garden of Perfect Brightness” new exhibition at the Atkinson museum and gallery, Southport
“The Garden of Perfect Brightness” takes its title from the English translation of the Chinese Yuanming Garden in Beijing. As the title anticipates, Cheung investigates a history of imperialism, globalisation, Chinese diaspora and further, the destruction of Chinese cultural achievements and embodiments from recorded events that took place during the second o***m war in the 1880s.

To the present and the progress of capitalism, cultural development, our relationship with the spiritual and natural worlds in the sphere of the ever advancing digital age are open themes that Cheung poetically and philosophically explores. Pulped copies of the Financial Times are reformed, sculpted and revalued as “traditional Chinese ‘scholars rocks’ or ‘spirit stones’ “. Landscape and still life paintings informed by Chinese and Dutch/Flemish historical artistic triumphs, realised through Cheung’s unique process of digitisation and relief application, are stunning and accompany the sculptural works in this exceptional exhibition.
I think Stephen Whittle (Atkinson Principle Museum & Gallery Manager) sums it up in his own words “this is the most beautiful exhibition we’ve shown at the Atkinson.”
Gordon Cheung: “The Garden of Perfect Brightness”

Saturday 3 June 2023 until Saturday 9 September 2023

The Atkinson

30/05/2023

Hew Loke: The Ambassadors.
Commissioned by the Lowry in 2019, this significant work by Hew Loke follows his preoccupation with the history of colonial and postcolonial power and their relevance in present society. Having first been shown in London and Rotterdam due to delays with the pandemic, this brilliant exhibition is at the Lowry Gallery in Salford until 25th June 2023.

25/04/2023

Ha! My old studio at STEIM on the Achtergracht stars in the closing scene of an ITV Van der Valk episode.

Researching and developing my 'LIVE' project alongside the ever brilliant Steina Vasulka being the last time I was in residence there. Such an inspiring part of my creative development!

Phenomena Fine Art

05/01/2024

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30/08/2023

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