Open West - Award Winners exhibition

4 Seen: The Open West 2011 Award Winners will be at The Gardens Gallery, Montpellier Gardens, Cheltenham from 7 September until 13 September.
The exhibitors are Shan Hur, Helen Murgatroyd, Ellen Nolan and David Theobald. Examples of their work appear below, together with blurbs supplied by Open West.
Open West 20112 will be held in Gloucester Cathedral: the deadline for applications is 31 October 2011 - details and application forms on the Open West website.

Shan Hur, Ball in the Pillar, 2010

Shan Hur will be exhibiting a site-specific sculpture, expanding on his maxim ‘one brick cannot make a wall’ and continuing the themes of intervention and surprise that run through his work. Shan sees language and images in the debris of construction sites and plays with the disruption of normal perception. He completed his MFA at the Slade in 2010 and was spotlighted in The Independent as one of the year’s 40 most promising UK art school graduates.    

Helen Murgatroyd, Five Onions Printing Jig, 2010

Helen Murgatroyd will also be creating an installation in response to the site and influenced by her recent residency in rural North Cornwall. Inspired by Royal Mail sorting offices, kitchen utensils and the ideals of cottage industries, Helen invents tools and workstations to allow the duplication of her drawings. Helen is the recipient of a number of awards including the RCA Sustain Award and the Wooda Residency Award, and has work in private collections including the Conran Foundation. She completed her MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in 2010.

Ellen Nolan, Safety in Numbers: Untitled (Group 1)

 Ellen Nolan’s photographic project, Safety in Numbers, was developed as a result of a short but intensive collaboration with Cheltenham Bournside School and Sixth Form Centre. Safety in Numbers is an observation on the dynamics and identities of a group of Cheltenham school children within the context of a modern school. These photographs explore and reflect the collective realism of an institutional dynamic. Since graduating with an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London in 2008, Ellen has been exhibiting internationally. Gallery commissions and shows include The Photographers Gallery and Grimmuseum, Berlin.

David Theobald, Trill (2010) Screen shot from digital animation of original photographs and downloaded images.

 David Theobald’s new animation Workers Playtime is a playful contemporary reboot of the morale raising radio show of the same name broadcast from the factory floor throughout the 1940s and 1950s. His films are animated loops structured from photographs, scanned images or single fames extracted from video footage, blended together to create a familiar yet alien environment. Recent exhibitions include this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and Re:Animate at the Oriel Davies Gallery, Wales. David completed his MFA Art Practice at Goldsmiths College in 2008.

Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth, Audience 1, Florence, 2004

There is a wonderful exhibition of work by Thomas Struth at the Whitechapel Gallery, until 16 September. Read reviews by Adrian Searle, and Sean O'Hagan, and see a selection of images below.

Thomas Struth, Gereonswall, Cologne, 1982

Thomas Struth, Alte Pinakothek, Self-Portrait, Munich, 2000

Thomas Struth, San Zaccaria, Venice, 1995

Thomas Struth, Pantheon, Rome, 1990

Thomas Struth, Mailänder Dom, Milan, 1998

Thomas Struth, Semi Submersible Rig DSME Shipyard, Geoje Island, 2007

 

Image Manipulation

Roger Tooth, Head of Photogaphy at the Guardian, has written a short piece about image manipulation and journalism. He argues that context is key and that, for example, a picture of the Duchess of Cambridge, used on the cover of Grazia, in which her partner's arm was removed and replaced by a cloned copy of her own right arm, is acceptable because it is pure 'illustration'; it would not, however, be permissible in a the context of a news story. He suggests that practices which were routine in a darkroom, such as cropping and toning, are broadly acceptable but that the moving of pixels or "cutting and pasting" is absolutely not. However, he explains that picture editors are increasingly reliant on trust and that readers are increasingly alert to attempts to deceive, eg, the recent picture of President Assad of Syria swearing in the new governor who seems to be strangely floating above the carpet.

The Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton on the Grazia cover on 9 May (left) and the original image (right). Photograph: Grazia/Getty Images

A Syrian state agency photo of the president swearing in the newly appointed governor of Hama is suspected of being a cut-and-paste job. Photograph: AP

For further examples of image manipulation, see Photo Tampering throughout History.

The Museum of Everything

Museum of Everything installation by Ruby Bradford

The Museum of Everything, an exhibition of work made by artists working outside the mainstream, curated by James Brett, has been installed in Selfridges and will run until 25th October. Read a review by Adrian Searle and a conversation between James Brett and Nigel Warburton.

Museum of Everything installation in Selfridges

Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander, New York City, 2002

Timothy Taylor Gallery is showing two bodies of work by Lee Friedlander: America By Car and The New Cars 1964. Read feature by Sean O'Hagan and gallery Press Release. The show runs from 1 September to 1 October.

Lee Friedlander, Nebraska, 1999

Neon

Joseph Kosuth, Neon, 1965

It is the centenary of neon, more or less, as I have learned from a feature by Peter Conrad in the Observer. Neon was discovered in 1898, but it was 1910 when Georges Claude demonstrated a  commercial application for neon lighting, which he patented in 1911 - hence the cetenary.
Below is a selection of examples of both commercial and fine art neon.

Piccadilly Circus (1950s?) Photograph: Rex Features

David Noble, Night Scene, Butlin's Skegness John Hinde Ltd (1960s?)

Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths, 1967

'Nathan's Famous' photographed by Kirsten Hively - see her Project Neon and Flickr site

Michael Craig-Martin, installation on Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2006

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Ici On Danse, 1996

Mark Kelly, Nothing Is So Important That it Needs To Be Made In Six Foot Neon, 2009

Stephen Atonakos, Incomplete Neon Square,1977

Tracey Emin, Love is What You Want, 2011

Martin Creed, Work No.240, Fuck Off, 1999

Hirst's Spots

Gagosian Gallery has announced that it will present “The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011” by Damien Hirst in January 2012. The exhibitions will take place simultaneously across each of Gagosian Gallery’s eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong.

Hirst on Spots:

I had an argument with an assistant who used to paint my spots. A fantastic argument. Because it's, like, nothing comes out of my studio unless I say it comes out of the studio. You've got loads of people working. You've got people you care about that you've known for long periods of time. When she was leaving, and she was nervous, she said, 'Well, I want a spot painting. I've painted loads for you. I've painted these spot paintings for a year, and I want one'. A year in the studio, getting paid a fiver, a tenner an hour, whatever it is. So I said, 'I'll give you a cheque for seventy thousand quid if you like. Why don't I just do that? Because you know you're going to sell it straight away. You know how to do it. Just make one of your own.' And she said, 'No. I want one of yours.' But the only difference between one painted by her and one of mine is the money.
[...]
I only ever made five spot paintings myself. Personally. I can paint spots. But when I started painting the spots I knew exactly where it was going. I knew exactly what was going to happen, and I couldn't be fucking arsed doing it. And I employed people. And my spots I painted are shite. They're shit. I did them on the wrong background, there's the pin-holes [from the compass] in the middle of the spots which at the time I said I wanted, because I wanted a kind of truth to it. Under close scrutiny, you can see the pocess by which they were made. They're shit compared to... The best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel [Howard]. She's brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.
Hirst, Damien and Burn, Gordon (2001) On The Way to Work, London: Faber and Faber: "Interview 4: Outbuilding, Combe Martin, Monday, 30.08.09", pp82 and 90.

Below are some examples of Hirst's Spot Paintings.

Damien Hirst, Spot Painting

Damien Hirst, Aurothioglucose, 2008

Damien Hirst, BNPS-Skatole, 1995

Damien Hirst, Spot Painting

Damien Hirst, Controlled Substances Key Painting (Spot 4a), 1994 (Tate Collection)