Between: barbican centre

Showing posts with label barbican centre. Show all posts

Saturday, 20 November 2021

Artlyst - Isamu Noguchi: Socially Engaged Art

My latest review for Artlyst is of Noguchi at Barbican Centre:

'Rarely exhibited archive materials and photographs offer illuminating insights into Noguchi’s life and highlight his humanist values. Less clearly articulated is the extent to which Noguchi engaged with spirituality in his practice. Embracing social, environmental, and spiritual consciousness, Noguchi thought art ‘comes from the awakening person’. Awakening is what we might call the spiritual or a linkage to something flowing very ‘rapidly through the air’. Artists are those who ‘come with less obstruction’ to this flow. To be open to flow, artists try to ‘overcome barriers’ such as ‘habit and convenience and fear and accommodation’ or ‘barriers of the self and what everyone thinks about art’. As such, Noguchi saw ‘no conflict between spirituality and modern art’ as art ‘opens another channel to our non-anthropomorphic deity’, the invocation still being to God. He did, however, view Zen as providing a more direct linkage [to art] than through other mystical forms’ with the spiritual being’ direct appreciation of the thing itself’. As a result, he believed ‘you can’t say whether art came from the spiritual or vice versa’.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Articles -

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Velvet Underground - Beginning to See the Light.

Friday, 19 August 2016

Martin Parr: Work and Leisure

Firstsite is currently presenting the largest Martin Parr exhibition in the UK since 2002 coming direct from The Hepworth Wakefield and tailored especially for Firstsite with additional content including Martin Parr’s own extraordinary personal collection of postcards. Martin Parr: Work and Leisure comprises more than 300 photographs that span the past 40 years, presenting a chronological overview of Parr’s most celebrated works.

From his early Yorkshire-based black and white photographs of rural communities through to his more recent vivid explorations into consumerism, this exhibition includes rarely seen images from his series The Non-Conformists taken at the beginning of his career reflecting his experiences of living in Yorkshire, and The Last Resort, one of the most significant bodies of British photography, documenting leisure time in the seaside town of New Brighton, as well as a universal shift from monochrome to colour photography.

In addition to this Hepworth Wakefield touring exhibition, Parr has also, in 2016, exhibited at the Guildhall Art Gallery and curated an exhibition at the Barbican.

Unseen City: Photos by Martin Parr at the Guildhall Art Gallery celebrated Parr's tenure as the City of London’s photographer-in-residence, a position he took up in 2013. He has documented life in the City ever since – from private ceremonies, processions and banquets to high-profile public occasions. Granted unprecedented access to these events, he has been able to capture moments that would usually go 'unseen'; on display in the exhibition were behind-the-scenes shots of unguarded moments featuring Lord Mayors, dignitaries and even the Queen. His photographs provided a unique visual account of contemporary London.

For Strange and Familiar at the Barbican, Parr brought together over 250 compelling photographs and previously unseen bodies of work, in order to present a vibrant portrait of modern Britain. From social documentary and portraiture to street and architectural photography, the exhibition celebrated the work of leading photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rineke Dijkstra, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, and considered how international photographers from the 1930s onwards captured the social, cultural and political identity of the UK.

Martin Parr has been described as 'arguably Britain’s greatest living photographer.' These exhibitions make that argument.

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Duke Special - Step To The Magical.

Sunday, 19 April 2015

Modern art in City churches

Death Mask of Jesus Christ by Enzo Plazzotta can be seen at St Mary Abchurch.

"Plazzotta was born in Mestre, near Venice and died aged sixty after having worked in London as a sculptor for more than half his life. He always maintained his links with Italy and had a studio at Pietrasanta in Tuscany from 1967.

He studied at the Accademia di Brera in Milan under Giacomo Manzù, among others. His studies were interrupted by World War II in which he became a Partisan leader near Lago Maggiore.

After the war Plazzotta took up sculpture again and following a commission from the Italian Committee of Liberation to commemorate their successful collaboration with the British Special Forces, he came to London to present the statuette personally to the Special Forces club. This proved to be a major turning point in his career as a sculptor for, liking the English and the freedom of political thought, he decided to make London his home.

He gradually established himself as a portrait sculptor but found this field rather limiting and preferred to experiment with his growing fascination for movement, developing techniques for conveying it in such diverse subjects as dance, horses and the human form.

There was also a stronger, more deeply expressive and less immediately appealing side to his work. Through his studies and adaptations of mythology and classical/Christian themes he was able to convey great power and emotion encompassing the frequent vain striving of mankind."

"In 1976 Plazzotta was knighted by the Italian government and was awarded the title of Cavaliere for his services to art. The artist died in 1981. His work can be seen today in several public spaces throughout London, such as the Barbican Centre, the College Gardens of Westminster Abbey and the Royal Opera House."

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Ben Harper - Picture of Jesus.