BAFTA Art Diary

The film industry is in full swing with awards season counting down to its zenith at the Oscars next month. Before all eyes descend onto Hollywood, London will host the 67th British Academy Film Awards in celebration of film and documentary. The esteemed BAFTA awards are generally viewed as a signifier to Oscar success and with Gravity receiving the most nominations amongst a pool of brilliant talent from 2013 - including 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street and Blue Jasmine to name only a few - this year’s ceremony at the Royal Opera House will guarantee plenty of action and drama on the night.

In the run-up to this weekend’s BAFTAs I pick the most inspiring exhibitions on show in London town; from large-scale installations to intimate works of art, the capital offers a range of celebrated talent equal to that on the silver screen:

Bailey’s Stardust at the National Portrait Gallery 

If you want to know where all the stars are hanging out in London head to the National Portrait Gallery where a landmark exhibition of David Bailey’s photographs chart more than half a century of electric imagery that spans popular culture, celebrity and reportage from around the world.

Bailey's Stardust runs until 1st June 2014 at the National Portrait Gallery. 

Jack Nicholson, 1978 - David Bailey

Richard Deacon at Tate Britain

Discover Turner Prize winning sculptor, Richard Deacon’s material manipulation in a major exhibition presented at Tate Britain. A range of large-scale mixed media sculpture and organic drawings reveal Deacon’s prolific career for sinuous forms over four decades. The gallery’s recent £45million renovation is a masterpiece in the marriage of the historical and contemporary worth exploring on your visit.

Richard Deacon runs until 27th April 2014 at Tate Britain.

It's Orpheus When There's Singing #7, 1978-9 - Richard Deacon

Globe Head Ballerina at the Royal Opera House

Look no further than the venue for this year’s BAFTAs for a dose of contemporary art. In fact, look upwards along the façade of the Royal Opera House to view Yinka Shonibare, MBE’s gravity-defying public art installation Globe Head Ballerina, which takes residence with neighbouring street performers in the heart of Covent Garden on Bow and Russell Street.  Find out more about the installation commissioned by the Royal Opera House in my review Street Dance.

Globe Head Ballerina will be on display at the Royal Opera House until 2017.

Globe Head Ballerina, 2012 - Yinka Shonibare, MBE

Martin Creed at sketch

Whimsical and witty are the main ingredients to Martin Creed’s art practice. What’s the point of it? is a survey of the controversial artist’s signature works currently on show at the Hayward Gallery. To immerse yourself fully in the conceptually curious world of Creed cross over the Thames to Mayfair and pay a visit to the Gallery at sketch where the artist has redecorated with aplomb the restaurant’s famed salon; curating its furniture, furnishings, tableware and artwork as well as designing a custom marble floor. Mixed in with the culinary creations of Head Chef Pierre Gagnaire, the total effect creates one of the most stimulating rooms in the city. 
The Gallery at sketch may be viewed during the day – for dining advance reservations are strongly recommended.

 Martin Creed in the Gallery at sketch 

ICA Off-Site: Dover Street Market at Dover Street Market

Art meets fashion in the latest of the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ Off-Site projects. Returning to its former address in Mayfair, now occupied by fashion emporium Dover Street Market, a collection of rare archival material occupies the exterior and interiors of the emporium across all six floors. Not unfamiliar with in-store art interventions amongst its designer collections, Dover Street Market makes for the ideal canvas in this evocative homecoming where seminal art activity was staged between 1950-1968. More details on the blog - Back to the Future

ICA Off-Site: Dover Street Market opens this week at Dover Street Market through to 6th April 2014.

ICA Off-Site: Dover Street Market

Richard Hamilton at Tate Modern

The late British artist Richard Hamilton is affectionately known as Daddy Pop. A leading member of the Independent Group in the Fifties debating art, architecture and theory, it was at the ICA in Dover Street where the earliest work of Pop art is cited - Hamilton’s very own 1956 collage, Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? showcased in the This Is Tomorrow exhibit. Themes of American consumer culture, celebrity and politics inspired Hamilton to create a number of influential images on art history’s timeline from the twentieth century. London pays tribute to Hamilton with an exhibition at the ICA’s main gallery on The Mall as well as with a retrospective at Tate Modern, which promises to be an immersive mash-up of the artist’s affiliation with the worlds of architecture, product design and film throughout a career that dates from the 1950s to the artist’s final series of paintings created in 2011.

Richard Hamilton opens 13th February at Tate Modern through to 26th May 2014. 

Swingeing London, 1968-9 - Richard Hamilton

Hannah Höch at Whitechapel Gallery

Head East to Whitechapel Gallery to the view the original ‘cut and paste’ works of Hannah Höch. A driving force in the development of twentieth century collage, Höch was a member of Berlin’s Dada movement and transformed everyday printed material into intimate artworks. Over one hundred collages feature in this first major exhibition in Britain and include themes on fashion, finance and feminism in a post-war Germany.

Hannah Höch runs until 23rd March 2014 at Whitechapel Gallery. 

 

Für ein Fest gemacht (Made for a Party), 1936 - Hannah Höch

Click here for a full view of my BAFTA Art Diary map of London


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Art, Culture & Lifestyle 

Images courtesy of David Bailey, sketch London, Whitechapel Gallery
ICA and the estate of Richard Hamilton

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Arcadia - Leo Fitzmaurice

Last month I visited the enchanting estate of Bretton Hall, home to Yorkshire Sculpture Park. A short drive from neighbouring art hub The Hepworth Wakefield (Sound And Vision, September 2013), the open-air gallery is set amongst the undulating verdant Wakefield landscape and has been showcasing large-scale works by national and international artists through a changing exhibition programme since 1977. 

I was determined to make a northbound pilgrimage up the M1 to the much lauded and largest exhibition of work to date by Yinka Shonibare, MBE, before its end this month. 

FABRIC-ATION features the wild mixed media practice from the British Nigerian artist’s career over the past decade as well as two major commissions entitled Wind Sculpture, which breathe a new direction for Shonibare and premiere in the Park’s formal landscape. 

Wind Sculpture - Yinka Shonibare, MBE

Exploring themes of identity, stereotype and African-ness within the context of a superficial multicultural age, the artist’s witty playfulness spans from the patterns that adorn his now-signature use of Dutch Wax textiles to wordplays of titles, through to the metaphors of objects that are found in his divinely decapitated tableaux. In the interior gallery space, conceptually loaded works bridge the resurgence of protest that defined 2011 (HOPE Less, December 2011) – golden guns and Blackberry handsets make reference to the murdered Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi and the London riots respectively – they are held in the adolescent hands of a new body of work, Revolution Kids that comprise of hybrid taxidermy figures.

 The distant high rise of the Emley Moor broadcasting tower 

While this series pays homage to the tumultuous year that was 2011, the course of history will project an additional facet onto these artefacts: with continuing unrest in the Middle East and clandestine abuse across social media amongst youth culture, Revolution Kids may be the firstborn of a generation of works to come.

The two outdoor sculptures are sumptuous in scale as well as substance in their setting and it is impossible not to make references to the aesthetics of luxury and money that is produced by these gravity-defying plumes of textile print. 

In as much are the number of undergarments that are meticulously created to costume Shonibare’s Victorian subjects of which he is most known, the layer upon layer of narrative that the works on display in the exhibition posses are magnetic and will have both the dandy and academic drawn into the ruffles of resonance that is uniquely Yinka Shonibare, MBE.

Over the years I have been very fortunate to visit some of the most beautiful public and private outdoor art collections in the world and Yorkshire Sculpture Park effortlessly makes the cut. As Leo Fitzmaurice's art-cum-road sign suggests on entry to the Park, I had arrived in Arcadia. Visitors may explore the manicured sanctuaries that are the surrounding areas of Bretton Hall where works by Hans Josephsohn, Barbara Hepworth, Jonathan Borofsky and Roger Hiorns with his celebrated Seizure installation, all take residence. 

 Hans Josephsohn

 Jem Finer

Antony Gormley

Ramblers may venture into the five hundred acre countryside to discover iconic installations by Antony Gormley, Andy Goldsworthy, Henry Moore and David Nash to name but a few. 

 Peter Liversidge

 Magdalena Abakanowicz

 Jonathan Borofsky

 Barbara Hepworth

Henry Moore

Located two kilometres directly opposite the Park's main exhibition centre, The Longside Gallery is a contemporary outpost for both Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Arts Council Collection. It is also as close to white cube as one will get when the stunning panorama spans a field of grazing cows and is worth the walk, or shuttle bus, to view the space. Currently on show are works by collaborative partnership Lucy + Jorge Orta concerned with global sustainability.  

If you missed FABRIC-ATION visit Yorkshire Sculpture Park for a synopsis of the exhibition. London's Royal Museums Greenwich will play host to Shonibare's indoor and outdoor artworks during its Winter programme - Yinka Shonibare, MBE at Greenwich will be on display across several sites in the maritime museum's network of exhibition spaces from 18th September 2013 - 14th February 2014. 

Lucy + Jorge Orta runs to 3rd November 2013 at Longside Gallery - for visitor information click here. 

Visit jonathanvelardi.com/writing for more on art, culture and lifestyle

Street Dance

Elegant, poised and seemingly still, a new member has joined the cast of street performers in London’s historic Covent Garden. While many made-up, foiled or glittering creations vie for your attention at eye-level, this performer commands an elevated view on the corner of Bow and Russell Street.

Globe Head Ballerina, 2012

I am of course referring to the celebrated artist Yinka Shonibare, MBE’s public art commission by the Royal Opera House earlier in the summer as part of the London 2012 Festival. Globe Head Ballerina contributes to Shonibare’s growing repertoire of public art after the Fourth Plinth Commission, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, installed in Trafalgar Square in 2010, as well as the artist’s conceptual aesthetic of past times. Inspired by a photograph of Margot Fonteyn, prima ballerina assoluta of The Royal Ballet, the sculpture sees a dancer suspended in pose and structure, scaling the façade of the Royal Opera House and encased in a large-scale snow globe. Almost cosmic in appearance, the sculpture's vertical installation draws your eye up to its untouchable vantage overlooking Covent Garden Market and its fellow resident performers.

Never one to disappoint on detail, Shonibare dresses the dancer in Dutch Wax fabrics - with its loaded perception of African identity via colonial supremacy - that are now synonymous with the artist’s range of work. Tailored by the Royal Opera House Costume Department, a tutu and shoes are fitted to a body cast from Soloist, Melissa Hamilton, and keeping with the artist’s tradition of headless mannequins, a replica Victorian world globe rests on the dancer’s shoulders and is a nod to the international work around dance, as art form, that the Royal Opera House has been dedicated to since the mid-eighteenth century. The dancer slowly rotates in her sphere and evokes a sense of wonder and spectacle amongst the buzz and pace of the streets below in the heart of Theatreland. Shonibare explains,

“… a very grown up piece of public sculpture than can be enjoyed by all. It’s like a life-size fairytale ballerina jewellery box that will spin”.

This is not the first time Shonibare has channelled dance into his art works as a medium to explore dialogues of culture and gender, politics and power, all packaged in a seductive scape of colour and sartorial elegance. Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball), 2004 featured in the artist’s nominated Turner Prize exhibition and Odile and Odette, 2005 in collaboration with ROH2 at the Royal Opera House that involved dancers from both The Royal Ballet and Ballet Black, affirm his interest of physical expression within the context of experimental contemporary art. Public, playful and possessing pulling power in London’s oldest piazza, Globe Head Ballerina is a magnificent partnership of art and art form between contemporary artist and performing arts institution.

Globe Head Ballerina will be installed on Bow and Russell Street until 2017 – visit the Royal Opera House for more details.

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