The Open West 2012 - Gloucester Cathedral

Emma Critchley, Single Shared Breath, 2011, video installation

The Open West 2012 is currently installed in the glorious setting of Gloucester Cathedral where it is open to view until 31 March.

This, the 4th annual Open West competition, has been selected from an international submission, by organisers Lyn Cluer Coleman and Sarah Goodwin, together with artists Iain Andrews and Dan Chadwick. 90 works by 55 artists are on show. The cathedral is a formidable space in which to show contemporary art - however Lyn and Sarah have exercised great curatorial skill and sensitivity in their installation of the work which is  respectful of the architectural space but not overwhelmed by it.

A selection of works is illustrated below.

Aaron Distler, Between Here and Here, 2010, steam bent hardwood

Tina Hill, Excavating Babel, 2009, installation of over 2,000 books

Catherine Dormer, Shimmer (detail), 2011, digital print on silk

Ione Rucquoi, Ballet Shoe I, 2011, ballet shoe, gold plated acupuncture needles

Angela Conway, For One Removed, I, 2011, emulsion paint on paper, chalk, graphite

Jiho Won, Memory Pond, 2010, glass

Jackie Brough, Continuity, 2011, silk, organza, concrete

Kentaro Yamada, Hackney Sublime, 2011, broken glass window, perspex

Jonathan Wright, No Head for Heights, 2010 plastic, pewter, neon

HENRY/SEATON, Ante-Chamber: 187 Objects (detail), 2011, concrete and plaster

George Petrou, My Brother, 2010, video installation

David Teager-Portman, Other Side, 2010, concrete, canvas, boat, handmade bricks

Gilbert & George: London Pictures - White Cube

Gilbert & George, Schoolboy, 2011

Gilbert & George have, over recent years, been systematically stealing newspaper bill posters from newsagents - 3712 in total. Now 292 of these posters have been turned into the London Pictures, 72 of which are currently being exhibited at the 3 London White Cube galleries until 12 May. Grouped together by themes - yobs, schoolboys, stabbings, killers, paedos - they add up to a gruesome portrait of contemporary London life.

Read a profile of the artists by Nicholas Wroe, a news report about the exhibition and exhibition notice on the White Cube website.

Gilbert & George,  Sex & Money, 2011

Gilbert & George,  Knife Murder, 2011

Gilbert & George,  Paedo, 2011

Gilbert & George,  Cemetery, 2011

Gilbert & George,  City Money, 2011

Gilbert & George,  Kills Straight, 2011

Man Ray (Film & Music Night) - Xposed Club, 14 March

Poster by Mark Unsworth

On Wednesday 14 March, Xposed Club will present an evening of improvised music to accompany a selection of silent films in the Chapel of Francis Close Hall, at the University of Gloucestershire.

Peter Urpeth (piano) and Stuart Wilding (percussion) will create soundtracks for Man Ray's 1928 film L'Etoile De Mer (The Starfish) and Emak-Bakia (Leave Me Alone) from 1926, as well as Dimitri Kirsanoff's 1929 Brumes d’Automne (Autumn Mists). They will then be joined by the Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra to accompany videos by Michael Basov.
Watch: L'Etoile de Mer, Emak-Bakia, Brumes d'Automne, and films by Michael Basov.

Kiki de Montparnasse in a still from Emak-Bakia by Man Ray (1926)

Kiki de Montparnasse in a still from L'etoile de Mer by Man Ray (1928)

Nadia Sibirskaia in a still from Brumes d'Automne by Dimitri Kirsanoff (1929)

Michael Basov, still from Rooks

Michael Basov, still from Digital Clepsydra

Michael Basov, still from Perforated Memory

Thomas Ruff - Gagosian Gallery

Thomas Ruff, nudes dr02, 2011

Astronomy and pornography are the twin preoccupations which, via the internet, supply the material for Thomas Ruff's two exhibitions at Gagosian Gallery: MA.R.S is at the Britannia Street gallery and Nudes is at Davies Street (both until 21 April). 

Ruff is a graduate of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, famous for the influential teaching of Bernd and Hilla Becher on a generation of photographers which includes Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer as well as Ruff.

For the MA.R.S series Ruff has injected colour into black and white images of Mars, taken from the NASA web site; for Nudes he has taken images from internet pornography, enlarged them to monumental scale producing blurred and painterly images. 

Read Geoff Dyer's essay: Porn and the shadow side of paradise: ThomasRuff's Nudes. See also 2003 article in Tate Magazine and video of Ruff talking about his work in 2010.

Thomas Ruff, ma.r.s. 04_III, 2012

Thomas Ruff, ma.r.s. 01_III, 2012

Thomas Ruff, nudes ro04 (detail), 2011

Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan - Tate Modern

Alighiero Boetti, Aerei, 1989

Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan at Tate Modern until 27 May is a rare opportunity to see the work of this intriguing artist. Boetti, who died in 1994, was included in Germano Celant's 1967 Arte Povera exhibition and subsequently developed a socially collaborative practice that anticipated relational aesthetics. Dividing his time between Italy and Afghanistan, but also working in Ethiopia, Japan, Pakistan and Guatemala,  his work includes world maps emroidered by Afghan craftspeople, collaboratively produced biro pen drawings, mail art and a box containing a light bulb (Lampada Annuale, 1966) which, teasingly, lights up for only 11 seconds per year - at a random moment.

Read reviews by Laura Cumming and Adrian Searle. See also articles in Parkett (1990) and Art in America (2001) - both  available on the Sperone Westwater website, and Frieze (2000).

Alighiero Boetti, Mappa del Mondo, 1994

Alighiero Boetti, Mappa del Mondo

Alighiero Boetti, Ping Pong, 1966

Alighiero Boetti, Immaginando Tutto, 1982

Alighiero Boetti, Lampada Annuale, 1966

Ha Ha What Does This Represent? - Standpoint

Ad Reinhardt, How to Look at Modern Art in America (detail), 1946

A detail from Ad Reinhardt's 1946 drawing, How to Look at Modern Art in America, provides the title for an exhibition of contemporary abstract painting at the Standpoint Gallery until 31 March: Ha Ha What Does This Represent? 

Exhibiting artists are:

Andrew Bick (lecturer on the MA Fine Art course at the University of Gloucestershire), Matthew Collings and Emma Biggs, Katrina Blannin, Hazel Chalk, Ben Cove, Stewart Geddes, Dan Hays, Vanessa Jackson, Roger Kelly, Caroline List, Gina Medcalf, Alex Gene Morrison, Carol Robertson, James Ryan, Francesca Simon, Daniel Sturgis and Trevor Sutton.

The exhibition is sponsored by abstract critical - see article by David Ryan.

NB Selected illustrations below are representative of the artists' work but are not necessarilly works included in the exhibition.

Andrew Bick, OGV [Double Spider] Dirty B, 2009

Emma Biggs & Matthew Collings, The Unseen, 2010

Katrina Blannin, Ultrapolation, 2009

Ben Cove, Crosses and Quadrangles, 2011

Alex Gene Morrison, Vanish, 2010

Carol Robertson, Starstream, 2011

Daniel Sturgis, Living Well, 2007

Trevor Sutton, Japanese Folk Song, 2011

Jeremy Deller: Joy in People - Hayward Gallery

Jeremy Deller, Art Exhibition

Jeremy Deller is, I think, one of the most interesting of contemporary British artists and I am looking forward to visiting Jeremy Deller: Joy in People at the Hayward Gallery. (This was not his choice of title, as he revealed in an interview on radio 4's Front Row (20 Feb), he proposed Animal, Vegetable, Pop Music.)

Treats in store include a 3D film of bats, a re-creation of Deller's teenage (and later) bedroom, a film of his restaging of the 1984 Battle of Orgreave between striking miners and the police, the remains of a bomb blasted car from Baghdad, a film about 1970s wrestling star Adrian Street, and free tea from a reconstructed Lancashire café! A Middle Class Hero is something to be!

Read a reviews by Adrian Searle and Laura Cumming.

Jeremy Deller, Open Bedroom, 1988-1994

Jeremy Deller, Exodus, 2012

Jeremy Deller, The Battle of Orgreave, 2001

Jeremy Deller, Valerie's Snack Bar, 2009

Jeremy Deller, Life is to Blame for Everything