Mona Hatoum Archives

Liverpool Biennial 2012

2-5 November 2012

The Liverpool Biennial 2012 is the UK’s largest festival of contemporary art. Sally Tallant, who was previously Director of the Serpentine Gallery, was appointed Artistic Director and Chief Executive in November 2011.

Liverpool Biennial is presented free to the public every two years over a ten-week period. Alongside the Biennial exhibition, the festival includes the John Moores Painting Prize, Bloomberg New Contemporaries and City States, as well as additional exhibitions presented through a thriving independent scene.

Liverpool Biennial 2012 considers the question of ‘hospitality’ as its starting point under the name of The Unexpected Guest. It brings together the work of 60 artists in venues across the city. Leading and emerging artists have been commissioned to make permanent and temporary public artworks as well as long-term community based project.

For the first time, the iconic Cunard Building – one of Liverpool’s Three Graces sited between the Port of Liverpool Building and the Royal Liver Building – will be used to exhibit contemporary art. The building was once the headquarters and main passenger terminal for the world’s most famous shipping company, the Cunard Steamship Company.

Other venues include Bluecoat, FACT, Open Eye Gallery, Walker Gallery and Tate Liverpool as well as Liverpool One, The Monro and publically sited artworks across the city.

We discussed the work of the following artists: Andrea Bowers, Mona Hatoum, Pamela Rosenkranz, Superflex, Christodoulous Panayioutou, Runo Lagomarsino, Sylvie Blocher, Ahmet Öğűt, Kohei Yoshiyuki, Mark Morrisroe, Sinta Tanra, Keith Arnatt, Gilbert & George, Layla Curtis, Simryn Gill, Sophie Calle, Pak Sheung Chuen, Yael Bartana, Thomas Hirschhorn, Elmgreen & Dragset, Oded Hirsh, Dan Graham, John Akomfrah, Ming Wong, Akram Zaatair, Janine Antoni, Dane Mitchell and Dane Mitchell.

Our weekend trip for members took place from 2-5 November 2012.

Spin-off Trip to the Venice Biennale 2005

21-25 October 2005

For our first overseas trip, Spin members visited one of the most exciting, prestigious and significant contemporary art festivals in the world, the Venice Biennale.

The 51st International Art exhibition marked the 110th year of its existence, and surprisingly, the first time that two women had been at the directorial helm. Maria de Corral and Rosa Martinez, art historians, critics and independent curators from Spain, created two very different, but complementary shows that captured the spirit of the international, contemporary art scene. Universally and critically acclaimed, the 2005 Biennale was hailed as one of the most coherent, intelligent and imaginative shows in recent memory.

Held every two years, the Venice Biennale brings together over 70 nations, and among the countries exhibiting in 2005 for the first time, were Morocco, Albania, Afghanistan, China and Northern Ireland. The Giardini, house the official national pavilions (31 in total) which showcase the best of each country’s contemporary artists. In 2005, Britain was represented by the controversial duo, Gilbert and George.

One of the main highlights of the Spin trip, was a visit to the Italian Pavilion in the Giardini. Maria de Corral has curated an exhibition entitled The Experience of Art which presented the work of over 40 established and up-and-coming, international artists. Working in a variety of media, from installation and painting to sculpture and video, artists included Rachel Whiteread, Francis Bacon, Willie Doherty, William Kentridge, Barbara Kruger, Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Agnes Martin.

Members also visited Always a Little Further, curated by Rosa Martinez, housed in the Arsenale – the famous old dockyard of Venice. The work of over 40 international artists was beautifully presented in this unique environment, featuring videos, photography, painting, sculpture and installation. Louise Bourgeois, Mona Hatoum and the Guerrilla Girls feature in the line-up.

Of the 30 collateral exhibitions and events spreading across the city of Venice, Spin members visited Scotland’s second presentation at the Biennale, Selective Memory: Scotland & Venice, housed at the Scoletta, next door to the historical Scuola de San Rocco. Glasgow-based artists Cathy Wilkes, Alex Pollard and Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan created challenging new work in a visually powerful show. We also visited the Welsh and North Irish pavilions and the presentations from Lithuania, Estonia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Ukraine and Iran.

Incommunicado

25 March 2004 at 6pm

As promised, here is some more information about the upcoming Spin event in this impressive exhibition from the Hayward Gallery in London which opened here at the weekend. The Hayward blurb for the show is very illuminating, so I thought I would reproduce it here:

‘The desire to communicate can be a powerful motive behind the production of art, but it is the fallibility of communication that provides the subject for this exhibition.’

Curated by Margot Heller, Director of South London Gallery, Incommunicado brings together contemporary international film, video, photography, sculpture, drawing and text-based work to explore the manifestations and consequences of communication going wrong. The show examines personal misunderstandings, cultural and political clashes and linguistic and expressive limitations.

The importance of language in this context is introduced through work by Samuel Beckett, simultaneously signalling the writers influence on younger generations of visual artists. Central to the exhibition is Comedie (1966), a recently re-discovered film made in collaboration with Marin Karmitz, which reveals the poetic and absurd results of separating language from meaning. Other artists include: Pavel Buchler, Phil Coy, Omer Fast, Angus Fairhurst, Mona Hatoum, Christian Marclay, Bruce Nauman, Hirsch Perlman, Smith/Stewart, Erika Tan, Lawrence Weiner, Francesca Woodman and Chen Zhen.

You can probably tell from this that there will be elements of humour, absurdism, and poetry as well as a stimulating underlying theme to think about, and so it is highly appropriate (and gratifying) that we will have the artist John Beagles to help us negotiate it all! As well as being a lecturer in the Centre for Visual and Cultural Studies at Edinburgh College of Art, John works alongside Graham Ramsay in their art practice as the video/performance/installation art duo Beagles and Ramsay. They have had solo shows all over the place including Canada, Australia and the Netherlands, and are a very popular part of the contemporary scene in Scotland. You might have seen them last year at Zenomap, Scotland’s contribution to the Venice Biennale, the Stills Gallery or at the Collective Gallery.