We recently covered the big-ticket exhibitions, blockbuster art shows and spectacular museum openings worth travelling for. In this edition of our seasonal art exhibitions round-up, we introduce smaller exhibitions at art galleries, events away from the big art centres, and more intimate experiences across the globe.
The Visual Arts Centre of Clarington on the outskirts of Toronto celebrates Canada’s national Culture Days weekend with the “Clarington Outdoor Art Festival”, featuring fine art, music and food, all from local artists and artisans. The result: an arts event in a scenic setting with a real community feel.
There has been no shortage of big museum openings in recent years, but the Main Museum has chosen a different approach. While its future home in Downtown LA undergoes renovations leading up to a planned 2020 opening, select smaller spaces within the museum open intermittently under the name “Beta Main”, offering short sneak peeks of what lies ahead. [Photo by Chris Wormald]
Silas von Morisse Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn returns from its summer break with an exhibition that sets a more contemplative mood for autumn and winter. Koiman II – Years Without Summers (24 Nocturnes) is a series of film projections accompanied by music and drawings, dedicated to artist Monika Weiss’ late mother, as well as “to current refugees and migrants around the world”.
When talking about intimate museum experiences, there’s no getting past the Mmuseumm, a freight elevator in Lower Manhattan housing New York’s smallest museum. It may be small in size, but its ambitions are pretty substantial. Officially described as “storytelling about the modern world”, “a contemporary natural history museum”, “a design museum about people” and “Object Journalism”, it tackles each of these areas, currently hosting 13 exhibitions simultaneously.
One of the Mmuseumm‘s most moving exhibits to date can currently be viewed in London. Future Aleppo is a paper model of the Syrian city by teenage refugee Mohammed Qutaish. He started rebuilding the city while he was still living there, as it was being destroyed by the war all around him, before his family fled to Turkey. The small section currently on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum had already been smuggled out of the country previously, so it is the only part that survived the real city’s destruction.
Sir John Soane’s Museum has always been an impressive place. Its namesake added to his private and business residence throughout his life, and bequeathed the ensemble to the public. Today, it mainly shows Soane’s collection of art, objects and architectural models. For London Design Festival 2018, Studio MUTT is bringing to life four characters imagined by Sir John Soane as future inhabitants of his house. [Photo by Gareth Gardner]
The Art on the Underground project is certainly not small, but it allows anyone using the London tube to interact with contemporary public art during their commute. To mark the centenary of the women’s suffrage movement, this year international women artists have been commissioned. A new work is due to be unveiled at Brixton station in September, introducing artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby to an audience of tens of thousands daily. [Artwork: Heather Phillipson, my name is lettie eggsyrub, Gloucester Road station, 2018. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo: GG Archard]
The general sense of impending global doom, coupled with the #metoo movement’s focus on the lack of female spheres of influence, make the exhibition title Waking the Witch seem particularly timely and appealing. The touring exhibition by Legion Projects will first be shown at Oriel Davies Gallery in Wales, and will result in a crowdfunded “grimoire”, a book of spells resulting from workshops and collaborations during the the entire tour. [Artwork: Fiona Finnegan, under the birch trees]
Another exhibition that could be read as a comment on the commodification of feminism, a critique of fashion journalism or a series of observations on high-strung modern lifestyles is showing at in focus Galerie in Cologne. Sandro Giordano’s In Extremis: Bodies with No Regret is a series of “short story” photographs showing perfectly styled people, mainly women, who have fallen flat on their faces in the middle of their busy lives. The results are at once aesthetic, somewhat comical and mildly disturbing.
Artist studio open days are always worth a visit, giving you a chance to see how your art sausage is made, discuss works of art with those who create them, and cut out the gallery middleman by purchasing works directly at the source. Surely there’s no other place in the world where the artist and their studio have been more mythologised than in Paris, so why not start there – for example with the open days in the vibrant Ménilmontant quarter.
In Brisbane, the Clayton Utz Award will be awarded for the 10th time this year. Open to Queensland-based artists or those with a strong connection to the state, it is accompanied by a year-long exhibition at Lethbridge Gallery. The show of work by all finalists opens two weeks before the winner is announced. [Photo: What peace there may be in silence, by Vincent Parisi and Samantha Haworth]
Seeing as there’s no shortage of art fairs across Asia – and no shortage of patrons eagerly visiting each time a new one pops up – it’s great that the Affordable Art Fair continues to offer an alternative for those wishing to invest in art on a smaller budget. The Singapore edition comes to town in November.
The group of artists that make up the OpenArtCode collective bring artistic variety and an international flavour to any venue where they exhibit their work. This autumn, the third edition of OpenArtCode Tokyo takes place at the city’s Metropolitan Art Museum, with painters, sculptors and performance artists from all over the world and in conjunction with AJAC (All Nations & Japan Artists’ Co-Operation).
August House is so much more than a place that houses artist studios. The Art Deco building in Johannesburg has a rich history and an active present, with more than 50 artists currently working and creating within. During the city’s art week, you can see for yourself, when it throws open its doors for an Open Studio FRINGE Art Affair.
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