Tag Archives: London

Bailey’s Stardust

29 July 2015

This month Spin will be meeting at the National Galleries on Wednesday 29 July (please note change of date) to talk about Bailey’s Stardust exhibition which opened last week.

The exhibition includes hundreds of photographs by David Bailey. Coming to prominence in Swinging Sixties London he has made an outstanding contribution to photography with his thought-provoking portraits.

Bailey’s Stardust is the largest exhibition of David Bailey’s portraits to be shown in the UK with over 300 portraits including works that depict Bailey’s time in East Africa, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Delhi and the Naga Hills, as well as icons from the worlds of fashion and the arts, striking portraits of the Rolling Stones, Catherine Bailey and the East End of London.

We will be joined for the discussion by Edinburgh-based photographic artist, writer and critic

Dark Light by Alison Watt

22 February 2007 at 6pm

Dark Light is ‘a painting that can literally be stepped into’. Scottish painter Alison Watt, who is currently artist-in-residence at the National Gallery in London, has created a room within a room in the form of a metal cube. Step inside and eloquent paintings of black cloth are revealed.

In previous solo exhibitions, namely Fold at the Fruitmarket Gallery in 1997, Watt presented diptychs of fabric and figure. Three years later in Shift at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, only the fabric and the suggestion of a human form remained. In 2004, she created Still, a composite of four 6ft paintings suspended in the Memorial Chapel of Old St Pauls Church. This personal homage to this extraordinary space was one of the highlights of the Edinburgh Festival of 2004, and is now on permanent display.

As Watt’s paintings have become increasingly engulfing and abstract, Dark Light is the fruits of her ambition to create an installation piece, made as a result of her Creative Scotland Award.

We will be looking at this exciting new work and will also consider the shift from figurative painting to abstraction which is ever prominent in contemporary art, as well as focusing on the relationship between the dealer and the artist.

Spin-Off Trip to Frieze Art Fair, Scope, Zoo Art Fair and Pilot 2004

15-17 October 2004

Friday 15th October to Sunday 17th October 2004 was a very special weekend in London with four big contemporary art fair: Frieze, Scope, Zoo and Pilot. From top class international artists to young artists that have yet to find representation, and from the biggest galleries in the world to independent curators. The programme included:

FRIEZE ART FAIR
Approximately 150 of the worlds top contemporary galleries were on hand for the second instalment of Londons new international art fair, housed in architect David Adjaye’s custom-designed structure in Regent’s Park.

ZOO
Less commercial, and set up as an alternative to Frieze, the Zoo fair featured 22 London galleries, many from the East End, that have been in operation for three years or less. The fair was organized by London dealer David Risley and independent curator Soraya Rodriguez, and took place in a pavilion at the London Zoo. The fair itself was non-profit, designed to raise money for Risley’s new Museums Fund, which supports museum acquisitions of works by emerging artists.

SCOPE LONDON
This American collective of artists and curators invited approximately 35 international galleries to show work in the Melia White House Hotel in Regent’s Park; that is, in the hotel rooms, showers and beds.

PILOT
One hundred international curators, critics, artists and collectors were asked to each nominate one artist without commercial representation that they held in high regard. These artists took part in PILOT, an event hosted at Limehouse Town Hall, a spectacular Victorian building in the heart of East Londons artist and gallery quarter.

We introduced members to an array of galleries, curators and artists while we were doing the circuit, gradually building up a picture of the world of contemporary collecting, and making the experience more digestible and relaxed. In addition, we attended a number of openings including Expander at the Royal Academy and Ori Gersht at Andrew Mummery at the Tea Building in Shoreditch (the funky new home for several London galleries).

Bus to TEA BUILDING approx 6.30-10pm
We have been invited to the private view at the Andrew Mummery Gallery of Ori Gersht‘s work. There will be other gallery openings in this new and happening gallery complex in Shoreditch. There is will be time for food and drink in the acclaimed T Restaurant, before we head back into town at 10pm. The bus will stop at a tube station and drop the rest of us at the hotel.

Sunday 17th October
FRIEZE ART FAIR from 11am
Approximately 150 of the world’s top contemporary galleries are on hand for the second instalment of London’s new international art fair, housed in architect David Adjaye’s custom-designed structure in Regent’s Park. Among the special projects is a dance club on the fair grounds designed by the Los Angeles-based collective Los Super Elegantes in collaboration with New York artist Assume Vivid Astro Focus (aka Eli Sudbrack). We will be chatting to the Scottish galleries, doggerfisher and Modern Institute, and hopefully a few more besides. There is a lot to see, and your day pass will allow you to come and go all day.