British Art Show 8 opens in Leeds on Friday 9 October and the city – currently bidding to be European Capital of Culture 2023 – is responding with a raft of additional activity. Leeds-based writers and artists Amelia Crouch and Lara Eggleton report on what the city’s homegrown and artist-led organisations are up to as Leeds City Council throws its support behind a showcase of the city’s buoyant visual arts scene.
The fourth British Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent comes as the industry in the city is enjoying a modest upturn. Reporting from the city, Bob Dickinson finds plenty of evidence of ceramic creativity alongside well-founded concerns over the loss of traditional industrial skills.
Now in its third year, London’s Art Licks Weekend continues to expand beyond its south east beginnings, and this year features an increasing number of venues in the south west of the city. Pippa Koszerek speaks to the two artists behind Streatham Hill’s DOLPH projects, who will be sharing the ‘secrets’ of their practice during the four-day festival.
The Shock of Victory exhibition at Glasgow’s CCA brings together artists from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Greece and Palestine to explore artistic responses to the post-referendum climate and broader political realities. Chris Sharratt finds out more from three of those involved.
Deutsche Börse Prize nominee Zanele Muholi has been documenting the LGBT community in her home country of South Africa for nearly ten years, creating a body of work that has been shown around the world. As a show of her photography opens in Liverpool, Laura Robertson talks to her.
As part of the LightPool project, which is introducing new projection mapping technology to Blackpool’s famous illuminations, Grundy Art Gallery has been transformed by a series of installation environments celebrating artists’ fascination with the properties of light.
The inaugural Plymouth Art Weekender presents work across the city by over 400 local, national and international artists. Artist and AIR Council member Steven Paige welcomes this audacious new festival and looks at how the city’s visual art ecology has developed in the five years since British Art Show 7.
The South African artist William Kentridge is a staple of international art biennials, a critically acclaimed art superstar known for his theatrical, thoughtful work. With an exhibition featuring two new films currently showing at London’s Marian Goodman Gallery, Dany Louise discovers more about the politics and processes behind his art.
For the Coastal Currents festival, Tod Hanson has created a site-specific work that covers the entire floor of the historic Durbar Hall in the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery. Dany Louise finds out about his process, inspiration and influences.
To launch our new series of picture-focused articles, we take a look at Los Angeles-based USC Fisher Museum of Art’s current exhibition which explores the complex relationship between humans, the oceans, and the things we throw away.
As part of this year’s Heritage Open Days across England, six artists have been commissioned to produce site-specific work at the English Heritage site Fort Brockhurst in Gosport. Pippa Koszerek speaks to the artist and curator behind the Space Interrupted project.
In her latest short film, Marianna Simnett – one of two filmmakers selected for the 2014-15 Jerwood/FVU Awards – focuses on a surgical procedure and ‘biobot’ cockroaches. Chris Sharratt overcomes his squeamishness to ask some questions about her work.
The inaugural North festival of contemporary art opens in Warrington in October with a series of city pavilions and an exhibition that invites artists’ responses to Ikea. Laura Robertson speaks to some of the artists involved and the London-based gallerist behind the event.
While it is known internationally for its annual media arts prize and September festival, Ars Electronica is also firmly rooted in its home city of Linz, Austria thanks to its stunning building and work with schools. Chris Sharratt talks to artistic director Gerfried Stocker who explains how, 20 years after he joined the organisation, the relationship between local and global working remains crucial to its success.
Talbot Rice Gallery’s TRG3 programme provides space for artists to realise new bodies of work in response to Edinburgh University’s collections, architecture, and academic expertise. Richard Taylor talks to the gallery’s curator and two of the artists he’s been working with.
Iraqi-born, Cardiff-based artist Rabab Ghazoul is one of five artists featured in the Iraq Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, with a three-channel video piece that focuses on Tony Blair’s testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry. Chris Sharratt finds out more.
Last year, artist and curator Emma Sumner took a research trip to India which saw her visit an extensive network of organisations at the heart of this vast country’s contemporary art scene. Here she highlights three of them and explores what can be learnt from their approach to art and funding.
After an £8million redevelopment project designed to open up new dialogues between its collections of decorative and fine art, York Art Gallery is preparing to reopen. Amelia Crouch speaks to the curator of the gallery’s core collection of ceramic art Helen Walsh, and to fine art curator Laura Turner, about how this dialogue is continuing with a series of new commissions by contemporary artists.
Berlin-based artist Phil Collins’ latest film installation at Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow has developed from an 82-minute long film he made over the course of a year in collaboration with the city’s people and its institutions. Chris Sharratt speaks to the artist about the development of the project, his interest in Glasgow and its inhabitants, and the transformative power of a pop song.
As part of The Grand Tour, a Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire initiative connecting historic collections with contemporary art, the artist Pablo Bronstein has brought some Chatsworth House bling to the white cube gallery spaces of Nottingham Contemporary. Wayne Burrows finds out why.
The London and Mull-based artist Charles Avery discusses his ongoing project, The Islanders, and its evolution for a new site-specific commission as part of this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival.
As part of his 18-month Chisenhale Gallery Create Residency, artist Yuri Pattison has been looking at the world of tech start ups, hack spaces and peer-to-peer sharing. Prior to the launch of a new website and series of digital sculptures, Michaela Nettell met him to discuss transparency, data and what contemporary art can learn from the networked society.
Over the course of this year’s Manchester International Festival, the top floor exhibition space of the Manchester Art Gallery will be occupied by Ed Atkins’ Performance Capture, a durational project revolving around the ongoing production of a single computer-animated video. Luke Healey takes a tour of the exhibition and speaks to the artist.
Tate Britain’s new series of regular exhibitions, Contemporary Projects, focuses on recent works by emerging artists who are not yet part of the gallery’s collection. Lizzie Carey-Thomas, curator of the inaugural exhibition The Weight of Data, speaks to Pippa Koszerek about the context, process and ideas behind the show.
An ambitious new artist-led festival is taking place across Manchester and Salford this weekend, with studio spaces and major venues hosting a number of projects produced especially for the festival alongside, open studios across both cities. Bob Dickinson meets artists and festival directors Elisa Artesero, John Lynch and Roger Bygott to find out more.
