Unmissable Autumn Exhibitions!
Autumn: it sucks doesn’t it? Wrong! There’s an incredible array of indoor entertainment for art fans happening right now if you know where to look. Let Heather Garner guide you through some of the best around the UK…
Frieze Art Fair (above)– today until 18 October 2014 @ Regent Park, London — £15 (5-7pm entry)/£33 (one day)
For all who are interested in the latest of what contemporary art has to offer, you’ve got to visit Frieze Art Fair. With a plethora of tours and talks to attend, artworks to see (and buy if you can afford it), and fantastic people watching, this year there’s an additional exciting new project called Live: an endeavour to experience the best of participatory and performance-based works. You can also access Frieze Sculpture Park for free!
Edwin Burdis – now until 1 November 2014 @ Primary, Nottingham — FREE
With references including 1990s rave culture, a love of science fiction films, socks and Jay-Z (!) Edwin Burdis’s month-long residency in this former school has culminated in a major sound and sculpture installation. Entitled UIB (The United Islands of Brittle-leen), it is set in an imaginary (and waterlogged) future Britain. Read our illuminating interview with the artist here.
Qasim Riza Shaheen: Autoportraits In Love-Like Conditions – now until 2 November 2014 @ Cornerhouse, Manchester — FREE
In a case of art imitating life, Manchester-based artist Qasim Riaza Shaheen explores real and imagined connections that exist between people in his own life — through the creation of a body of work that has been appropriately split into two parts. Autoportraits is the first of these in which installations, performances, drawings and mixed media works examine love and longing. The second part, entitled The Last Known Pose, begins 20 September, bringing with it tangible connections between the two displays.
Ai Weiwei – now until 7 December 2014 @ Yorkshire Sculpture Park – FREE
Curated entirely through communication with the artist via the internet due to his house arrest in China, this exhibition provides a contemplative setting for the Ai Weiwei’s and activist’s conceptual work. Based in the YSP’s beautiful and recently refurbished chapel, viewers are treated to readings of poems written by the artist’s father Ai Quing on the first Sunday of every month at 2pm over the autumnal season.
Anselm Kiefer — now until 14 December 2014 @ The Royal Academy, London — £15.50
With five star reviews all round, in what is set to be the most important UK exhibition to date of his prolific and challenging works, Kiefer follows in the footsteps of the likes of David Hockney and Anish Kapoor who all have tackled the expansive main galleries at the Royal Academy. As well as exhibiting a stunning wealth of paintings, sculptures and installations from four decades, we are treated to a number of new works created in response the Academy’s gallery space. An ‘exciting rollercoaster ride of beauty, horror and history’ (The Guardian).
Gerhard Richter – now until 20 December 2014 @ Marian Goodman Gallery, London — FREE
An exciting exhibition of new works by the 82 year-old artist demonstrates Richter’s continuous fascination with the abstract and aleatory principles of painting. Technology and painting blend into one another in his latest digital prints, proving Richter’s desire never to rest on his laurels. Look out for the monumental 7 Panes of Glass (House of Cards) — ‘sheets of glass propped against each other at angles that produce the illusion of shards slicing through, layering and dislocating light.’
Turner Prize 2014 – now until 4 January @ Tate Britain, London — £10/8.60
Once again the infamous Turner Prize returns with the cream of contemporary British art. Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell are this year’s nominees (weirdly, three of the four are graduates of the Glasgow School of Art) and are sure to provoke debate amongst critics and the wider public about the state of art today, and the relevance of the Turner Prize itself. Read our lowdown here.
MIRRORCITY – now until 4 January 2015 @ Hayward Gallery, London – £10.90/9
Largely channelling sci-fi stalwart J. G. Ballard,, and showcasing artists including Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost, the brilliant Susan Hiller, Sci-Fi New Death artists Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, and future art stars Pil and Galia Kollectiv, MIRRORCITY takes on the increasingly popular and exceedingly relevant topic of the digital era. Expect to traverse the boundaries between digital and physical spaces, and question the challenges and consequences of living in this technological age.
Glenn Ligon – Call And Response – now until 11 January 2015 @ Camden Arts Centre, London — FREE
America’s most eminent conceptualist ‘weaves together wide-ranging influences from literature, visual arts and popular culture’ to produce a thought provoking experience that confronts the history of US slavery and civil rights. Drawing direct inspiration from minimalist composer Steve Reich’s 1966 piece Come Out, repetition of language is used to hammer home topics of race, sexuality, violence and language. Look out for Tate Liverpool’s summer show next year with Ligon alongside Jackson Pollock.
Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010 — now until 8 February 2015 @ Tate Modern, London — £14.50
Meteor dust, potatoes, soot, bubble wrap and even snail juice: these are some of the seemingly bizarre materials that Polke experimented with over his artistic life and now Tate Modern is providing a unique opportunity to see these eccentric materials in all their splendour. Through the media of painting, sculpture, drawing, notebooks and photocopies, we are invited to delve into his ‘hallucinatory, poisonous, gorgeous and unsettling works that still reverberate with a strange, dark humour’ (The Guardian).
Haunted House – 31 October 2014-17 January 2015 @ The Grundy, Blackpool — FREE
Did you know that Blackpool’s favourite art gallery is meant to be haunted? Playfully moving contemporary artworks next to and around its historic collection displays, by the ‘phantom’ and unseen hand of the curator, expect a supernatural and surprising show this Halloween with critically-acclaimed artists including Susan Hiller, David Hockney, Aura Satz and Susan Phillipsz — whose piece, Lowlands, won her the Turner Prize in 2010.
They Used To Call It The Moon – 31 October 2014-11 January 2015 @ Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art, Gateshead — FREE
As the nights grow longer over the autumn months, the spectre of the moon is ever present and seems to be the perfect subject for this sci-fi inspired exhibition. Packed with lunar mythology, conspiracy theories, utopian and dystopian visions, lunar maps and photographs, we are treated to an international perspective on the endless artistic inspiration the moon and the new space race can arouse.
Transmitting Andy Warhol — 7 November 2014-8 February 2015 @ Tate Liverpool — £8.80
One of our fave Warhol quotes states thus: “I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do.” The sense of humour, of course, behind an incredible and vast collection of work; he notoriously wanted to produce thousands of masterpieces during his lifetime. His first solo exhibition in the North of England showcases some of Warhol’s most illustrious painting and print, film, drawing, sculpture, installation and more that, for better or worse, changed the way we consume culture and celebrity today. Look out for the Marilyn paintings, his fashion illustrations for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and the Dance Diagram — dance steps printed on canvas displayed on the floor.
Stan Douglas — 7 November 2014-15 February 2015 @ Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh — FREE
The Canadian artist — who came to prominence in the mid-1990s with film installation Der Sandmann, and was a highlight of Documenta X — is known for examining complex ideas of narrative, fact and fiction. Exhibiting a great selection of film, video and photography here at Fruitmarket — including Der Sandmann – expect to explore ‘the intersection of history and memory in evocative, mesmerising artworks’. Look out for Corrupt Files (2013): material renderings of pure digital data that apparently look like ‘beautiful abstractions’.
Art Of The Lived Experiment – 8 November 2014-11 January 2015 @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE
Curated by Aaron Williamson and as part of this year’s DadaFest – the celebration of deaf and disability art in visual art, music, comedy and debates — uncertainty and the inevitability of continual change is portrayed through a series of provocative performances, films and sculptures. Highlights include Gold Lamé by Tony Heaton — a souped-up Invacar (invalid car) transformed into a shiny gold bauble — and Katherine Araniello’s video of her negotiating the cobbled streets of Liverpool’s Albert Dock in her wheelchair.
Type Motion – 13 November 2014-8 February 2015 @ FACT, Liverpool – FREE
Text, typography and the moving image are celebrated in over 200 hundred artworks at FACT this autumn. The use of text in art is no new feature, but in this exhibition the creative opportunities of this medium are exploded beyond 2D print and into the more ambitious realms of film, advertising, computer demos, computer games, projection mapping, virtual reality, coding, data interaction, design and websites. Expect artworks by Marcel Duchamp, Eduardo Kac, John Baldessari and Paul Sharits and more.
Heather Garner
