Artes Mundi

YouTube video: The Visitors | Ragnar Kjartansson @HangarBicocca  

Artes Mundi is an internationally focused arts organisation that identifies, recognises and supports contemporary visual artists who engage with the human condition, social reality and lived experience.

Don't miss the chance to see contemporary art on the subject of 'the human condition'. There are artworks to view in three venues: the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, FfotoGallery at Turner House in Penarth and at Cardiff's Chapter Arts Centre. 

I spent a wonderful hour watching,  listening, sitting, wandering around  Ragnar Kjartansson's  The Visitors (2013). If as I do you enjoy  live music, art and people this is an overwhelming and emotionally affecting work, it  left me feeling rather positive about the human condition . 
http://www.artesmundi.org/en/artists/ragnar-kjartansson



Other works are more difficult and deal in dark subjects, I am thinking particularly of Dutch artist Renzo Martens 'known for his satirical and disturbing video documentaries in which he travels to war-torn countries and places himself narcissistically at the centre of the action, demonstrating how Western spectators consume distant trauma. In 2012, Martens helped found the Institute for Human Activities and initiated its five-year Gentrification Program. By means of strategic inversion Martens comments on the ways in which Western media depict the non-Western world'.
http://www.artesmundi.org/artists/renzo-martens

A Conference will be held at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Straight from the Horse's Mouth, in partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University School of Art and Design will be a series of talks and conversations offering a rare opportunity to hear the Artes Mundi 6 shortlisted artists speak about core themes and concerns that are central to their practice.

Cardiff Metropolitan University School of Art and Design, Llandaff
Wednesday 21 January 2pm - 6pm
Thursday 22 January 10am - 5pm
Tickets and more information here (conference followed by a social gathering at Chapter, Canton at 7pm).


Read about all the artists here

Artes Mundi employs a team of Live Guides as mediators who have met the shortlisted artists and have extensive knowledge of their work.If you would like to walk and talk with one of the Live Guides in the Museum in Cardiff  join a  tour.  Lasting 45-60 minute the friendly and informative tours are led by one of the  Live Guides and give an overview of the exhibition and its themes.
2pm daily at the Museum (book on arrival at the Information Desk)
For talks and tours at Ffotogallery and Chapter , check their websites for further details.

Lights Out on August 4th

“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, August 1914

National Library of Wales Cymru 1914 archive

Everyone in the UK is invited to take part in LIGHTS OUT by turning off their lights from 10pm to 11pm on 4 August, leaving on a single light or candle to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War .

Millions of people are expected to participate and hundreds of local authorities, iconic buildings, national organisations including the BBC and the Royal British Legion, parish councils and places of worship have already pledged their support. Iconic landmarks such Blackpool Illuminations, the Houses of Parliament, Eden Project, Imperial War Museums and Tower Bridge will turn off their lights; the Royal British Legion has launched a campaign for at least one million candles to be lit across the UK and theatre productions including those of the National Theatre’s War Horse, both nationally and internationally, will invite their audiences to take part in LIGHTS OUT after their curtain calls.

 Leading international artists have been commissioned by 14-18 NOW to create special public artworks, for one night only in the form of a light source.

Bedwyr Williams’ work Traw will be a large-scale video and sound installation  at the site of the North Wales Memorial Arch, Bangor. The memorial takes centre stage in front of images projected onto the enormous facing wall of Bangor University’s new Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre.

Taking photographs found in the Cymru 1914 archive, Williams has created a sequence of images of local soldiers and civilians   affected by WW1. Excluding all uniform and references to rank, the close up faces reveal something of the individual’s personality and personal sacrifice in a war where death was measured in millions.

Bedwyr Williams is one of Wales’ leading visual artists. In 2013 he represented Wales at the Venice Biennale.

Commenting on the project Bedwyr Williams said: “As a young art student I walked past the memorial arch in Bangor many times and I have to admit that I never gave it a huge amount of thought. Working on this project I’ll never be able to walk past this place again without thinking of the lives lost fighting in the First World War.”

Artes Mundi

Miriam Backstrom The Opposite of Me is

Artes Mundi, Wales’s biggest contemporary visual art show is back for its 5th exhibition in its new home, the National Museum of Art, on the top floor of National Museum Cardiff. For the first time Artes Mundi  is in partnership with organisations such as Cardiff-based multidisciplinary arts centre Chapter, who will provide an additional venue for some of the works.

Exhibition: 6 October 2012 – 13 January 2013
The shortlisted artists were selected from over 750 nominations covering every continent in the world except Antarctica. Their art  has one overriding theme in common; their work explores social themes, telling stories of lived experience and gives a platform for commentary on the world today.

Miriam Bäckström (Sweden)

 Bäckström’s ongoing interests explore how history is told, and processes of creating and recreating memory using photography, text, theatre and video.

Tania Bruguera (Cuba)

Since the late 1990’s Tania Bruguera’s artistic practice has often reflected back on the social, cultural and economic experience of being Cuban.

Phil Collins (England) Informed by the visual traditions of cinema and television, Phil Collins’ diverse practice is based on close engagement with place and community.

Sheela Gowda (India) For Sheela Gowda the social and cultural reality of India has formed the basis of her practice.

TeresaMargolles (Mexico) Teresa Margolles’ work focuses on the collective turmoil of the Northern Mexican social experience where drug-related organized crime has resulted in widespread violence and murder.

Darius Mikšys (Lithuania) For Mikšys, installations provide the opportunity to experiment, conceptualise, and re-imagine processes of making, displaying and engaging with art.

ApolonijaŠušteršič (Slovenia) Artist and architect Apolonija Šušteršič has focused on the social aspects of living environments manifested in art as well as architectural contexts since the 1990’s.

Events are scheduled throughout the duration of the exhibition. http://artesmundi.org/en/news/whats-on-artes-mundi/#

On 29 November an international panel of judges will award one of the artists the £40,000 Artes Mundi Prize, the UK’s largest art prize

Open Educational Resources at UAL and MIT

There are many free resources on the Internet, we know this;  the ones known as  Open  Educational Resources: (OER's) comprise educational material that can be freely used by anyone without any copyright restrictions. An OER can be anything from a streamed video like this one showing the sand casting process to this link to an entire course on Anthropology

The sandcasting video, is from Process Arts, managed by Chris Follows at University of the Arts London (UAL)  c.follows@arts.ac.uk

Process Arts  focuses on "making" in art and design . This  site shows  insights into the acts of making and encourages users to share knowledge and experience online. You can  go there to explore  traditional and contemporary creative technical processes , and see work and the processes involved in its making online through  video, text, image and sound .

sample stills sequence

here are the most viewed items from Process Arts. Look to the right of the page for a full list of Resources

Interesting courses including bibliographies, online texts and images etc  are available from the MIT site where the Anthropology course linked above was taken from. Courses include many other subject areas of interest such as media studies, history, literature, music and theatre arts, women's and gender studies. MIT is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose mission  is "to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century".

The Arts Desk

Anish Kapoor’s Leviathan, a commission for the Monumenta series at the Paris Grand Palais

Here's a great newletter to keep you up with a wide range of items on what's new and good in the media and the arts . Here you will find theatre and film reviews, features on matters of interest such as  'Is Classical music relevant?'or a list of this year's Festivals , and CD, DVD and book reviews and interviews with people from the arts and a comprehensive listing of whats on in cinemas, theatres, galleries and concert halls. Sign up and get a weekly round up of all this in your inbox. As well as seeing  the very latest in the arts you can also view the archives of the newsletter. To subscribe look for the box on the right hand side of this page halfway down

Turner Prize 2011-shortlist announced

The annual Turner Prize has turned its back on London and travelled north to the Baltic Gallery in Gateshead, opening this year on 21 October.

The shortlist has just been announced and this year includes two painters, George Shaw and Karla Black, who are joined  by sculptor Martin Boyce and video artist Hilary Lloyd.

some pictures of the nominees work here

Adrian Searle (Guardian art critic) on this year's nominees