Whitechapel Gallery in London is currently showing Melanie Manchot: Celebration (Cyprus Street).   This project addresses concepts of individual and community identity by revisiting the tradition of public street parties and festivals popular in 20th century London.  Drawing inspiration from these past events captured in newsreels and photographs, Manchot creates and documents her own 21st century street party.

Manchot realized Celebration by working closely with Cyprus Street inhabitants and organizing a party in this Bethnal Green, East London neighborhood.  The artist captured gathered residents as they posed for a group portrait using 35mm film – a medium with historic connection to old newsreels.  Blending photography and film, Manchot used a single tracking shot that pivoted to create a comprehensive, durational group portrait.

Melanie Manchot:  Celebration (Cyprus Street) also includes  photographic portraits of individual Cyprus Street residents.  Manchot’s new film and photographic work is juxtaposed with archival footage selected by the artist of historic street celebrations such as peace parties that took place in 1919 and 1945.  This arrangement allows the gallery visitor to view the changing faces of communities that have coalesced around London’s streets over time.  Most importantly, Manchot’s work reveals the diversifying effects of global migrations on a particular contemporary community.

Celebration (Cyprus Street) is exhibited as a part of the Whitechapel Gallery’s Education Programme.  It was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and was funded by Film London (Digital Archive Film Fund) and Arts Council, England.

Melanie Manchot lives and works in London.  She is represented by Goff + Rosenthal in New York.  Manchot earned an MFA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in London and works in photography, film and video.

Melanie Manchot: Celebration (Cyprus Street) will remain at Whitechapel through 14 March 2010.

Alema Rose, Aler IDP camp, Uganda, Heather McClintock, 2006

The College of Charleston’s Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art presents a photographic exhibition that pairs Jonathan Torgovnik’s Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape and Heather McClintock’s The Innocents:  Casualties of the Civil War in Northern Uganda.  Torgovnik and McClintock’s respective photographic series address specific African humanitarian crises through capturing a selection of survivors in photographic portrait.

Valerie with her Son Robert © Jonathan Torgovnik

Jonathan Torgovnik’s series Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape addresses the aftermath of the humanitarian crisis in which more than 100,000 women were sexually assaulted by the Hutu militia during the 1994 Rwandan genocide that saw the massacre of over 800,000 Tutsis.  All of the photographic portraits on display feature a survivor with her children.  Torgovnik chose to pair each photograph with a text panel that relates each woman’s statements about her personal journey.  The highly intimate photographs present resilient women coping with raising children conceived by rape, the possibility of HIV infection and with the stigma they face within their communities.  A video featuring interviews with these women accompanies the photographs.

Abalo Joyce, Lacor Hospital, Gulu Uganda, Heather McClintock, 2006

Heather McClintock’s The Innocents: Casualties of the Civil War in Northern Uganda presents the physical impact of Uganda’s conflict from a personal perspective.  Since the 1980s the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has rebelled against the Ugandan government, resulting in the death of thousands and the uprooting of millions into displacement camps.  Women and children have been acutely affected by the violence;  thousands of children have been abducted and enslaved as sex slaves, porters and soldiers.  McClintock’s photographic portraits result from the artist’s almost year-long stay in Uganda and her efforts to document the suffering of the Acholi tribe.  The portraits are accompanied by text panels largely filled with the artist’s own words.  McClintock’s quiet and personal images capture individual Northern Ugandans’ suffering and struggle to survive.

Valentine with her daughters Amelie and Inez © Jonathan Torgovnik

Torgovnik and McClintock have created photographic portraits defined by highly emotive compositions and rich colors.  The portraits successfully depict the personal impact of warfare and the artists are to be commended for their efforts to bring attention to humanitarian crises.  However, the emphasis upon individual stories of victimization does not do justice to the complexities of the Rwandan genocide or the Civil War in Northern Uganda.  The photographs themselves lack pedagogic content, which is instead derived solely from wall text that only roughly outlines the conflicts while also largely focusing on the personal.

Torgovnik received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York.  He is a cofounder of Foundation Rwanda and presently serves on the faculty of the International Center of Photography in New York.  McClintock received her B.A. from New England College.  Both artists’ featured photographic series have been well received.  In 2007 Torgovnik was awarded the National Portrait Gallery’s Photographic Portrait Prize for an image from Intended Consequences and took part in leading the Eddie Adams Barnstorm Workshop 2009.  McClintock was awarded the Merit of Excellence and Honorable Mention in the 2007 Color Awards Photography Master’s Cup for The Innocents.

For the duration of the exhibition, the Halsey Gallery will serve as a drop-off point for used book donations to Better World Books, which sells these donations to help fund literacy and education initiatives.  On 19 February, artist Heather McClintock will be on hand at the Halsey Gallery for an exhibition walk-through in conjunction with a screening of The Rescue of Joseph Kony’s Child Soidiers.

Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape and The Innocents:  Casualties of the Civil War in Northern Uganda will be on view at the Halsey through 13 March 2010.

Copyright of John Gerrard. Courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery.

The Thomas Dane Gallery in London presents an exhibition of new work by John Gerrard from 2009.  Sow Farm (near Libby, Oklahoma) depicts a particular instance of animal factory farming facilitated by a large computer-controlled complex devoid of human presence.  Lufkin (near Hugo, Colorado) presents an oil derrick in action.  Like related previous works such as Animated Scene, Sow Farm and Lufkin acknowledge the artificial and detrimental ways we manipulate the environment.  Effectively set in the visually bare plains of middle America, Gerrard underscores the alarming depletion of natural resources that supports our culture of consumption.

Copyright of John Gerrard. Courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery.

Gerrard’s technique is as compelling as his subject matter is relevant.  The artist builds upon traditions of painting, photography, cinema and sculpture while actually working with the video game technology Realtime 3D.  Like many contemporary artists working in complex new media, Gerrard develops the creative concept behind each work while relying upon specialists to help realize it.  The artist photographs each site from a complete 360 degree radius.  His production team in Vienna, led by long time collaborator and producer Werner Poetzelberger, then completes the work – turning the artist’s photographic stills into continuous, animated cinematic panning shots.  Complex details are accurately replicated at each site by 3D modeling, which is guided by topographical and satellite data.  It typically takes a few years to replicate each site over a particular period of actual time – showing changes in light, weather and season.

The end result – a subdued hyperrealism – hardly points to the immense efforts of its creation. Sow Farm (near Libby, Oklahoma) and Lufkin (near Hugo, Colorado) are shown throughout an entire 365 day year.  The work’s projection on a large-scale screen engulfs the viewer in a calm and contemplative viewing experience well suited to serious subject matter.

Copyright of John Gerrard. Courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery.

John Gerrard is represented by the Thomas Dane Gallery in London as well as the Simon Preston Gallery in New York City.  Gerrard lives and works in Dublin, Ireland – where he was born – and Vienna, Austria.  He received his BFA in Sculpture at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing at the University of Oxford in 1997.  He earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000 and an MSc from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in 2001.

Following Daily Serving coverage of John Gerrard in February of 2009, Gerrard presented Animated Scene as a collateral project at the 53rd Venice Biennale.  Currently, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden houses the artist’s exhibition, Directions, which will remain through 31 May 2010.  In late March 2010, Gerrard’s public projection, Oil Stick Work, will open at the Canary Wharf underground station in London as part of London’s Art on the Underground Programme.

Copyright of John Gerrard. Courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery.

John Gerrard’s exhibition at the Thomas Dane Gallery – his first in London – opens 3 February and remains through 6 March 2010.

At this year’s SCOPE Miami Contemporary Art Show, duo Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw present Sweat Shoppe, their multimedia performance group.  Situated in an open and inviting space outside of the booth environment, the Sweat Shoppe’s interactive installation space hosts local bands, DJs and live performances each day of the SCOPE Miami Art Show -  combining art, music and technology in an innovative and accessible way.  The performance aspect of Levy and Blake’s Sweat Shoppe showcases the artists’ creation dubbed ‘video painting’.  Video painting allows Levy and Blake to ‘paint’ video anywhere they choose – temporarily marking architectural surfaces with their video images.

In the context of SCOPE, visitors are given the opportunity to use rollers to video paint – revealing through each stroke a video image projected onto the wall.  Video painting was created by the artists through their own specially designed software used in combination with other elements such as light projection and roller paint implements rigged with a button that triggers LED.  It may be difficult to understand the technological complexities of Levy and Shaw’s video painting creation, but participating in the performance is simple.

SCOPE International Contemporary Art Show is a large, global contemporary art fair that supports innovation and work in new media.  SCOPE can also be found annually in New York, London, Basel and the Hamptons.  SCOPE Miami Art Show is on through 6 December 2009.

Courtesy: Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo/ The Quiet in the Land, Laos/ the Artist

The Mizuma Art Gallery of Tokyo is showcasing artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s ongoing project Breathing is Free: 12,756.3 at Art Positions in Art Basel Miami Beach 2009.  This complex and meaningful project is a statement on the current condition of the refugee and, in Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s words, a ‘reflection and offering to the refugees whose lives are to run or to perish’.  As an artist with resources and a passport, Nguyen-Hatsushiba is part of the global elite, whose mobility effortlessly enables movement across national borders.  Through his step and sustained mental and physical discipline the artist physically embodies the desire and struggle of the powerless refugee that is on the move and longs, as the artist notes, ‘to be on “the other side” instead.’

The work is defined not only by Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s act of running, but by the deliberately plotted path the artist takes which crosses any national and ethnic divisions.  In his effort to run 12,756.3 miles – equivalent to the most direct circumference of the earth – Nguyen-Hatsushiba chooses urban areas with a history of forced displacement.  The artist has completed runs in places such as Geneva, Tokyo, Singapore, Manchester and Ho Chi Minh City.  The paths taken in each of these places forms a  shape – often organic – with metaphorical meaning.

Courtesy: Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo/ The Quiet in the Land, Laos/ the Artist.

On view in the Mizuma Art Gallery booth at Art Basel Miami Beach is video footage from a selection of Nguyen-Hatsushibi’s runs paired with ‘earth drawings’ or ‘running drawings’ which map his route from an aerial perspective.  These ‘drawings’ are actually lambda prints created by transposing GPS data of his movements onto aerial photographs of each of the cities chosen for the project.  These GPS transfer prints reveal the symbolic shapes formed by the path of his runs.

Nguyen-Hatsushibi’s film The Ground, the Root, and the Air:  The Passing of the Bodhi Tree from 2004-2007 (single channel video, 14 min, 30 sec) is also on view.  This video explores globalization and resulting loss of tradition in Luang Prabang, Laos.  The image of the runner, an empty stadium, the lantern, the Mekong River and the Bodhi tree serve as symbols of this economic change – as well as hope for the future.

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba has shown internationally and can be found in important collections such as the Centre Pompidou and the Whitney Museum of American Art.  He received his BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.  Nguyen-Hatsushiba currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City.  His current project for Breathing is Free: 12,756.3 is set in Chicago.

Art Basel Miami Beach ends 6 December 2009.

Arthouse of Austin TX presents Corner Store by Okay Mountain in the IMPULSE section of this year’s PULSE Miami Contemporary Art Fair.  Commissioned by Arthouse specifically for PULSE, the installation is  elaborately researched and accurately realized.  Corner Store envelopes the visitor within the environment of a gas station or convenience store typical to Texas and the Southern United States.  All elements of Corner Store’s retail environment are realized by Okay Mountain, including wall murals, posters, video (surveillance camera), lighting, musical and ambient soundtrack.  Multi-media sculptural elements define the space and include the counter, coolers and products for sale like cans of ‘Shit with Beans’ and the ‘Sans L’Enfant Morning After Peanut’.  All of the items and their prices are listed in a products flyer available to each visitor.  The contents of the store can be purchased from appropriately attired clerks behind the counter.

Okay Mountain humorously critiques the consumerism that defines the art fair, while making typically inflated art prices accessible to all visitors with some products priced under $10.  Brazenly referencing Claes Oldenburg’s The Store (1961), the concept of Corner Store is nonetheless relevant through its placement in the contemporary art fair environment and through the completeness with which it executes the convenience store prototype.  Corner Store’s immersive quality is thoroughly engaging and creates an uncanny familiarity for the American visitor.

PULSE Contemporary Art Fair is dedicated solely to contemporary art, with its IMPULSE section dedicated to solo artist presentations.  PULSE takes place annually in both Miami and New York.  This year’s PULSE Miami is located at The Ice Palace through 6 December.

Nonagon 2008, Courtesy the Artist and the Third Line

Dubai’s Third Line Gallery presents new work by Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Nova section.  Farmanfarmaian’s series of mosaics of mirrors succeed, according to the Third Line Gallery, in combining ‘the intricate ornamentation of Iranian architecture with the aesethetic of modern abstract expressionism’ – both of which appropriately reflect this artist’s background.  In creating these mosaics, Farmanfarmaian worked closely with Iranian craftsmen whose skill set is traditionally passed from father to son.  Individual mirror pieces were carefully constructed and painted then arranged and applied to a wooden backing to create each elaborate geometric shape according to the artist’s design.  All of the mosaics in this series fit within the diameter of a 100 cm circle.

Pentagon 2008, Courtesy the Artist and the Third Line

Aside from being aesthetically compelling through shape and the brilliant reflection of light, Farmanfarmaian’s works in mosaic contain profound symbolic meaning.  In Persian culture, the mirror represents life.  Furthermore, the carefully designed geometric shapes reference abstract ideas of creation and existence.  The circle is an important symbol that is representative of origin and of eternity; the triangle evokes the concepts of harmony and the human soul.  Numerical symbolism derived from Islamic geometry applies further meaning to the shapes.

Square 2008, Courtesy the Artist and the Third Line

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian attended the Fine Arts College of Tehran and later the Parsons School of Design (1949).  The artist has shown extensively internationally and was included in the exhibition East-West Divan:  Contemporary Art from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan at the 2009 Venice Biennale.  The artist’s work can be found in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Queensland Art Gallery, Australia – in addition to other important institutions.  Farmanfarmaian lives and works in Tehran.

Art Basel Miami Beach continues through 6 December 2009.